Translating Chinese Traditional Wushu Terms From The Perspective Of Skopos Theory

Wushu, as one of Chinese traditional sports, has a long history and is rich in both connotation and form. With the implication of Chinese people's spirit, it is considered as a precious cultural heritage. For wushu is deeply embedded in Chinese traditional culture, it will surely contain the essence of Chinese culture. In fact, wushu not only accumulates thousands of years ancient Chinese sports culture, but also correlates with traditional philosophy, political ethics, military thoughts, literature and art, medicine and social customs. In a way, wushu is the cyclopedia of Chinese culture. With the widespread of wushu, Chinese culture becomes popular among foreign people and to some extent promotes international exchanges in many fields. In August 2008, wushu will show in the Olympic Games as a performance sport, which proves that the importance of wushu in spreading Chinese culture is recognized by more and more people at home and abroad. For this reason, translation of wushu terms should be highlighted in order to carry forward wushu, to spread Chinese culture and to promote international exchanges.However, a careful review of domestic researches on this topic indicates that there are insufficient research achievements. First, research in this field has been overlooked in China for a long time and there are very few articles and publications on translations of wushu. Second, in all these few articles translation techniques are discussed in a restricted scope without a sound and systematic theoretical framework. Furthermore, such articles are short of insights into such aspects as the characteristics of wushu terms, the development of wushu, the status quo and possible translation strategies. Therefore, current theoretical researches on the translation of wushu terms are not quite helpful in practice.In view of that, this paper makes the following attempts, where the originality lies: Based on German Skopos theory, the paper tries to offer a suitable theoretical explanatory framework to understand the activity of translating wushu terms, analyze its characteristics, and justify some translation strategies and techniques. The paper tries to give a systematic and comprehensive analysis of the translation of wushu terms. With emphasis on the careful analysis of the features of wushu terms, it reviews the history of wushu development in order to fully illustrate the profound cultural connotations of wushu. Not confined to the discussions of translating techniques and strategies, the paper attempts to reveal the nature of the translation of wushu terms and correlates the translation of wushu terms with the mission of spreading Chinese culture and promoting international exchanges, which will surely provide a new perspective to look into such activity.In short, the ultimate purpose of this paper is to provide a new perspective for wushu translation, encouraging more wushu and translation lovers to join this work thus to boost wushu translation field and to promote the transmission of wushu and Chinese culture.