On The Engligh Translation Of Lu Ding Ji: From The Perspective Of Manipulation Theory

From the mid-1950 s to the early 1970 s, Jin Yong has created fourteen familiar and widely circulated works. As Jin Yong’s last novel, Lu Ding Ji was translated into English by the English translator John Minford and then published by Oxford University in1997. As the Chinese traditional martial arts novel, Lu Ding Ji is very difficult to translate. However, the translator of Lu Ding Ji---John Minford is an excellent translator and sinologist who has both great translation skills and rich knowledge of traditional Chinese culture. Therefore, The Deer and the Cauldron received good response among Chinese and western readers as soon as it was published, and Jin Yong is also quite satisfied with this translation. The successful translation of Lu Ding Ji has great enlightenment to the translation of Chinese martial arts novels in the future. It is worthy of profound study of scholars. Therefore, this paper chooses it as a case study.So far, the research results about The Deer and the Cauldron are the following: discussion about translation strategies, such as using "domestication" or "foreignization" when translating martial arts movements; discussion about the transmission of cultural images in the translation; the embodiment of translation theories in translated version. These research results include positive as well as negative attitude towards The Deer and the Cauldron. By comparing The Deer and the Cauldron and Lu Ding Ji, the author found that there were many rewritings in The Deer and the Cauldron, such as the adjustment of the original section title, political background and religious discourse. However, no research has ever explained this phenomenon before. In this thesis, the author will find out these rewritings, explore their deep reasons and explain the phenomenon with the help of Andre Lefevere’s manipulation theory, especially ideology and poetics.This paper is divided into six chapters. The first chapter mainly introduces the research background, purpose, significance and method of this paper as well as the framework of the thesis. The second chapter makes a review of previous studies about The Deer and the Cauldron at home and abroad. At the same time, it points out existing problems about the researches and puts forward solutions. Chapter three introduces the theoretical basis of this article---Andre Lefevere’s manipulation theory. In the fourth chapter, the ideology is divided into two parts: social ideology and individual ideology. The first part illustrates the effects of social ideology on the rewritings of The Deer and the Cauldron from four aspects of political, religious, moral, ethical and folk culture. The second part explains the influence of personal ideology on rewriting. The fifth chapter studies the influence of poetics on The Deer and the Cauldron from the two aspects of literary device and literary theme. The sixth chapter summarizes the full textand points out the results of this study.This paper finds out that Minford’s translation process is indeed under the control of ideology and poetics.In order to make the translation accepted by the western readers, the translator makes proper rewriting of the original text.Finally, this chapter also points out the deficiencies of this paper. Through this study, the author hope to provide reference for the study of the English translation of martial arts novels.