The reception of the english translations of Hongloumeng: Insights from topic modeling

As a text mining technique, topic modeling automatically extracts and classifies clusters of similar words from a corpus to infer potential topics in it. In the present study, this technique was used to analyze readers’ reviews of two English translations of Hongloumeng so as to find out how this Chinese classic has been received by the English-speaking readers around the world. It is revealed that “translation quality,” “editing and binding,” and “marketing and pricing” are the three topics that have been most frequently discussed by English readers. Both practical and theoretical implications can be drawn from this study. Practically, the study demonstrates that a successful promotion of Chinese classics in the English-speaking world requires not only faithful translation strategies and effective multimodal designs but also a reasonable mechanism for pricing and marketing. Theoretically, by using topic modeling in mining translation data, the research showcases the applicability and potential for applying the method to corpus-based translation study and thus expands the field into new territories.