Preface Hong Lou Meng (HLM for short in this thesis) is a great classical Chinese novel written in the mid-eighteenth century during the reign of Emperor Qianlong of the Qing Dynasty. Intertwined with the tragic love between Jia Baoyu and Lin Daiyu, this novel depicts multifarious contradictions in four big aristocratic families represented by the family of Jia, and displays many characteristics of Chinese feudal culture, including clothing, food, architecture, social system, conventions, philosophy, education and art, etc. The novel involves over two hundred beautiful and well-designed traditional verses which not only constitute an inseparable part of the whole work, but also reflect traditional Chinese culture. Up till now, HLM has been translated into over a dozen foreign languages including 9 English versions, among which Yang Xianyi & Gladys Yang’s A Dream of Red Mansions and David Hawkes & John Minford’s The Story of the Stone plete versions and the two most outstanding ones. Compared with studies on the translation of the narration in this novel and the cultural information in various aspects in daily life, studies on the translation of its poetry are to be further deepened. In this thesis, the author would view the English translation of the poetry in this novel from the reproduction of the writer’s intentions and the conveyance of “Three Beauties”. By studying the translation of these poems, we may see the necessity and possibility of the translation of the poetry in this novel. The principle of the “Three Beauties” which is a guide to the translation and criticism of poetry refers to “beauty in sense, beauty in sound and beauty in form”. It has been put forward again by Professor Xu Yuanchong based on his predecessors’ research and his own practice. It means that the translator of poetry should endeavor to make his/her version faithful to the original. But he/she should not stop just here: from this point the translator must continue his/her effort
