作为《红楼梦》的重要英译者之一,大卫·霍克思出于热爱,完成了这部作品的译介。通过翻译,霍克思尽可能忠实地再现原著的文学价值和文化内涵,使这一经典文学作品在世界范围内得到更广泛的认可。以《红楼梦》中牙牌令作为研究对象,可以探讨这一中国传统知识在译者霍克思笔下再现于英语读者的知识生成方式,以此深入分析霍克思在知识生成中的内在原则和行为动机。知识生成方式、内在原则和行为动机三者有机统一。知识在文学文本中的生成与译者整体的翻译行为紧密相连,与其行为动机也相吻合。译者在行为动机的指导下,根据内在原则采取不同的方式将知识再现,即生成知识。霍克思从情节叙事的连贯与完整和读者接受下的可读与易读出发,坚持以译介核心知识为主、减轻非核心知识负荷为辅的内在原则,采取了看似矛盾的信息增添和删减的两种处理方式。霍克思英译牙牌令的知识生成彰显了译者如何在文学作品的知识生成过程中发挥其主体作用。

David Hawkes, one of the foremost English translators of Hongloumeng, completed the translation out of a profound love for the work. His goal was to faithfully reproduce the literary value and cultural connotations of the original text, thereby securing broader global recognition for this classic work. This study focuses the traditional Chinese banquet game Yapailing, thus exploring how this traditional Chinese knowledge is represented and generated for Western English readers through Hawkes’ translation. By doing so, it delves into the intrinsic principles and guiding motivations underlying Hawkes’s knowledge generation. The modes of knowledge generation, intrinsic principles, and guiding motivations are organically unified. The knowledge generation in literary texts is closely connected to the translator’s overall translation behaviour and aligns with his/her motivations. Guided by these motivations and adhering to intrinsic principles, the translator employs different modes to represent knowledge, thus generating it. Aiming at the coherence and completeness of the narrative as well as the readability and accessibility for readers, Hawkes adpots seemingly contradictory approaches of adding and reducing information, which actually help insist on prioritizing the core knowledge in translation while reducing the burden of non-core knowledge for readers. Hawkes’s knowledge generation in the English translation of Yapailing exemplifies how the translator plays an active role in knowledge generation within literary works.