关键词: 《红楼梦》, “红译”, 情态动词, 情态量值, 语用取向

Abstract: The study on modal verbs has been a topic of heated discussion in linguistics at home and abroad. Many studies on translation of Honglou Meng have been conducted in recent years, but few have been carried out from a pragmatic perspective of modal verbs. Firstly, this paper analyzes the domestic studies, together with the modal values and pragmatic orientation of modal verbs, using a corpus-based descriptive approach to show the distribution of modal verbs in Hawkes and Yangs English versions. Secondly, this paper exemplifies the pragmatic orientation of modal verbs in the two English versions in terms of epistemic, dynamic and deontic modalities, pointing out the necessity to consider what pragmatic orientation can be adopted to construct the identity relationship between the given subject and the other person.

Key words: Honglou Meng, studies on translation of Honglou Meng, modal verb, modal value, pragmatic orientation