A Study Of Ken Liu's English Version Of Santi From The Perspective Of Thick Translation

In November 2014,a science fiction novel--The Three-Body Problem,the English version of Santi,was published in the United States,whose translator is a Chinese American science fiction writer Ken Liu.The English version of Santi is popular in the science fiction industry of the United States after the publication.It won the seventy-third sector “the Hugo Award” and was nominated “the Nebula Award” by the association of science fiction fantasy writers in 2014.In 1993,Appiah put forward thick translation theory.The core of the theory is to translate the source language text in a richer culture and language environment by using annotations,and the purpose of it is to provide readers with background knowledge information to facilitate readers' understanding and appreciation.In 2010,Martha P.Y.Cheung adopted thick translation strategies in An Anthology of Chinese Discourse on Translation Volume 1: From Earliest Times to the Buddhist Project,which reproduced source language to the maximum extent,presented the rich connotation of Chinese traditional translation theory and proved the value of thick translation theory in translation practice.There are three forms of thick translation in the English version of Santi: addition,footnote and postscript.Addition is to supplement the potential useful information in the target text,providing the culturalknowledge and technological knowledge for the English readers.In footnote,the explanation of proper nouns of the Cultural Revolution,historical background knowledge and nouns of the culture with Chinese characteristics supplies cultural background,and the explanation of some scientific and technological terms helps readers' understanding of the story.In postscript,the translator Ken Liu talks about the translation difficulties resulting from differences between Chinese and Western in culture and language,and summarizes his translation strategies,translation style and translation standards in this novel.At the same time,the original text author Liu Cixin also writes a postscript in English to introduce the writing background and the writing origin of Santi in detail.All of these are useful to help readers understand the story.In addition to the introduction and the conclusion,this paper consists of four chapters.The first chapter summarizes the theoretical framework:thick translation theory.It is about a brief introduction of thick translation,major forms of thick translation and the reasons for thick translation.The second chapter introduces additions in Ken Liu's English version of Santi,which is divided into two parts: informative additions and explanatory additions.The third chapter analyzes footnotes in Ken Liu's English version of Santi.These footnotes are about cultural knowledge and technological knowledge.The fourth chapter discusses postscripts in Ken Liu's English version of Santi,which is made up of the author's postscriptand the translator's postscript.During the analysis,main reasons for the phenomena of thick translation in The Three-Body Problem,including the unique background and the scientific and technological knowledge,are discussed in the thesis.On the one hand,the culture revolution background results in understanding difficulties in the cultural aspect;on the other hand,hard science fiction contains plenty of scientific and technological terms,which is an obstacle to readers.This paper aims to find out how thick translation strategies in Ken Liu's English version of Santi help readers understand science fiction better,which can prove the value of thick translation theory in translation practice of science fiction.