C-E Translation Of Chivalrous Spirit In Jin Yong’s Martial Arts Fiction

Chinese martial arts fiction, as one of the most influential and widely read forms in Chinese literaturework, attracts readers from all walks of life for its distinctive features. Different from other literary formssuch as Japan’s samurai bushido stories, England’s knight chivalry traditions and America’s gunslinger“Western” tales, martial arts fiction is considered as a treasure of Chinese classical culture. As anindispensable part of the Chinese literature, Chinese martial arts fiction is still not well-know to westernreaders. When more and more foreign literatures are introduced to the Chinese readers, it is a great pitythat same thing is not happening to Chinese literature as it is supposed to be. However, Olivia Mok, thetranslator of Louis Cha’s martial arts fiction named Fox Volant of the Snowy Mountain, set an inspiringexample and contributed greatly in spreading Chinese chivalrous culture to the world.Chinese martial arts fiction builds up a wonderful world called Jianghu with martial artists who havetheir own code of conduct, concepts of honor and loyalty as well as the heroic spirits. All the distinctivefeatures of martial arts fiction and the unique stylistic characteristics of Louis Cha’s works pose greatchallenges to the translators. The thesis aims to explore the connotation of chivalrous spirit and its Englishexpressions from four aspects: forms of address, interpersonal relationship, national spirit and way of actas well as translation strategies and methods of chivalrous spirit that Mok adopted on the basis of Skopostheory in her version Fox Volant of the Snowy Mountain.Through a close study of Chinese chivalrous spirit from four aspects by collecting and analysizing alarge number of samples under the guidance of translation brief and three rules of Skopos theory, theauthor draws the conclusion that for address forms, complicated terms in interpersonal relationship, Mokadopts different translation methods, such as transliteration, literal translation, metaphrase plus explanationand paraphrase to make the target text acceptable to the western readers. While translating chivalrous spiritsuch as national spirit and knight-errant’s way of act, the translation strategies of domestication andforeignization, semantic translation and communicative translation can be employed in Mok’s work. Withabove translation strategies and methods, the translator realize the aim to transmit Chinese chivalrousculture as well as making ordinary western readers better understand the connotation of Chinese chivalrousspirit.According to Skopos theory, the choice of translation method is determined by the translation Skopos.As a translator, Mok uses different expressions and adopts varied translation strategies and methods to achieve the translation Skopos. We will conclude that Fox Volant of the Snowy Mountain is adequate inthat it satisfies the requirements of the translation brief, achieving the purpose of spreading Chinesechivalrous culture to the ordinary western readers. Skopos theory also offers a new perspective to thetranslation study on martial arts fiction. In addition, the thesis aims at furthering a better understanding ofChinese chivalrous spirit and providing some academic value to later translation studies. The authorbelieves that more scholars will devote themselves to the related study of martial arts fictions and moretranslated works will come out so as to facilitate the communications and exchanges between Chineseculture and other cultures in the world.