| Along with the success of Chinese martial arts movies in the global film industries, there comes a rising awareness of translating Chinese martial arts fiction into English, since literature centering on martial arts has been a major source for the creation of films. Despite the flourishing new school of martial arts fiction in the1950s, only domestic readers as well as overseas Chinese enjoyed the pleasure brought by fictions of this genre English-speaking readers remain mostly unfamiliar with Chinese martial arts fiction. Throughout the history of translating martial art fiction into foreign languages, excellent translation remains rare. There are a certain number of translated versions online, yet the number of those providing a high quality as well as a sound plot is few. This limited number of translation and the demand for further translation studies becomes the bottleneck for martial arts fiction to reach greater heights in the global arena. With the purpose of discussing the appropriate translation techniques of martial arts fiction, the present thesis takes a closer examination of the translation of Xue Shan Fei Hu, a renowned fiction produced by Jin Yong as the subject of study from the perspective or Lefevere’s rewriting theory.Among the15novels created by Jin Yong, Xue Shan Fei Hu is the first one which got published in English. It is translated by a Hong Kong translator named Olivia Mok, and was released in1993under the English title Fox Volant of the Snowy Mountain. Though the fiction is merely two hundred pages long, and contains relatively fewer fighting scenes compared to other novels of Jin Yong, the difficulty of translation is still huge, due to the unique style created by Jin Yong, as well as the great gap between Chinese and Western cultures. According to the Rewriting Theory proposed by Andre Lefevere, translation is rewriting, and during the process of projecting an image into foreign culture, translation is largely manipulated by three factors, namely ideology, poetics and patronage. Thanks to this theory, translation is analyzed in a context of culture, and translation studies is no longer source-text oriented, the consideration of culture background soon brings an comprehensive analysis on the translating process and corresponding results. For a translator, he can also choose his or her own translation strategy by taking those three control factors into account. Olivia Mok make it quite explicit that she would introduce Chinese martial arts fiction as a new genre into Western world, bring Jin Yong’s work to life to readers, introduce Jin Yong as a master storyteller, present genre-specific device in penning a classical work. This purpose inevitably brings about translation difficulties like the rendering of martial arts feats, appellation of names, historical setting, poems, literary devices, dialogue and monologue. By employing various translation techniques, the translator manages to give a full play of Chinese martial arts culture without sacrificing readability.It is really praiseworthy to have a full translation like Fox Volant of Snowy Mountain completed in the early1990s. Not only does her translation present a mythical and absorbing martial world to Western readers, but also it is a faithful reflection of the Rewriting Theory. While balancing the manipulative factors, Olivia Mok’s choice of culture elements in addition to translation techniques provide valuable lesson for other translators. By analyzing her translation from the perspective of Rewriting Theory, the thesis demonstrate some most frequently encountered difficulties in C-E translation of martial arts fiction, and some practical translation techniques based on some typical examples in the novel. It is hoped that the present research can throw some fresh insight into the in-depth studies of the translation of martial arts fictions. |
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