莎士比亚和曹雪芹几乎是同一时代的文学巨匠,其写作的故事内容可有一比。可是他们由于身在不同的国家,几百年来他们享受的待遇非常迥异。莎翁不仅在世时可以安稳地写出37部戏剧和154首十四行诗,而且身后被广泛翻译出版,享誉全世界。而曹雪芹在世时也只是悄悄地写《红楼梦》,拿不到稿费,穷困潦倒,身后也只在中国的文学界享受声誉;他既不能红遍全中国,更不能被世界所知晓、所推崇。这充分反映了两位文学家在几百年间所处的人文环境也一直是迥异的,且中国的翻译界不去翻译《红楼梦》,也要负很大的责任。 Shakespeare and Cao Xueqin are almost literary masters of the same era, the content of the story can be written in a ratio. However, because they are in different countries, they have enjoyed very different treatment for hundreds of years. Shakespeare not only can safely write 37 plays and 154 sonnets at the time of his death, but also has been widely translated and published behind the world and is well known all over the world. When Cao Xueqin was alive, he just quietly wrote A Dream of Red Mansions, unable to obtain the royalties, and was impoverished. He enjoyed only a reputation in literary circles in China. He was neither popular in China nor even esteemed by the world. This fully reflects that the cultural environment in which the two writers lived for hundreds of years has always been different and that the Chinese translators have a great responsibility not to translate the “Dream of Red Mansions.”