Dream of the Red Chamber
Characters

Dream of the Red Chamber contains an extraordinarily large number of characters: nearly 40 are considered major characters, and there are over 400 additional ones. The novel is also known for the complex portraits of its many women characters. According to Lu Xun in the appendix to A Brief History of Chinese Fiction, Dream of the Red Chamber broke every conceivable thought and technique in traditional Chinese fiction; its realistic characterization presents thoroughly human characters who are neither "wholly good nor wholly bad", but who seem to inhabit part of the real world.

The names of the characters in particular present a challenge to the translator, since many of them convey meaning. David Hawkes left the names of the masters, mistresses, and their family members in pinyin (Jia Zheng and Lady Wang, for instance); translated the meanings of the servants' names, (such as Aroma and Skybright); and put the names of the Daoists and Buddhists into Latin (Sapientia); and those of actors and actresses into French.
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