Translator’s Mirror for the Romantic

<p><em>The Translator’s Mirror for the Romantic: Cao Xueqin’s</em> Dream <em>and David Hawkes’</em> Stone is a book that uses precious primary sources to decipher a master translator’s art in <i>Stone</i> a brilliant English translation of the most famous Chinese classic novel <i>Dream</i>. </p><p>This book demonstrates a bilingual close reading which sheds light on both the original and its translation. By dividing the process of translation into reading writing and revising and involving the various aspects of Sinological research textual criticism recreation and literary allusions this book ventures to emphasise the idea of translation as a dialogue between the original and the translated text between the translator and his former self and a learning process both for the translator and the reader of his translation. </p><p>Any student of Chinese language and literature or Chinese–English translation will benefit from this book; for students and scholars who want to study David Hawkes and his <i>Stone</i> this book is an indispensable aid. Readers will be interested to see how a non-theoretical analysis could be used to evaluate this translation for it makes an extremely important and useful contribution to this subject.</p>