Based on a thorough case study of Yang's and Hawks' translations of the fictive kinship terms of address"姐姐/妹妹"in Honglou Meng, this paper analyzes the cultural and contextual connotations of the terms in the original, discusses comparatively the misinterpretations of the translations from target readers and explores the cultural orientations and translation strategies of the two versions, proposing that in translating these cultural-and-contextual-bound terms, translators should be bi-culturally conscious and take into account target readers' interpretation as well as make cultural compensations so as to bring out the exact people relations and retain contextual and cultural connotations.
