English Translation Of Cyber Martial Arts Fiction From The Perspective Of Chesterman's Translation Norms

The traditional translation research doesn't pay much attention to popular fiction such as martial arts fiction,while putting more focus on serious literature.In recent years,the emerging themes like Wuxia,Xianxia and Xuanhuan of the cyber martial arts fiction have made a hit in the western world.The cyber martial arts fiction,through the continuous adaptation to the needs of the domestic readers market,has also attracted a large number of overseas readers,which motivated the birth of Wuxiaworld.com.With the expansion of translation research boundary,the translation activities of popular fiction are no longer regarded as a simple conversion process from source language into target language.The translator group's strategy begins to be valued,and has become a new area for translation research.Based on Chesterman's classification of norms into expectancy norms and professional norms,this paper conducts an analysis of Wuxia as well as Xuanhuan and Xianxia fiction on Wuxiaworld.com.The expectation norms are discussed from the perspectives of the prevailing translation strategy,the similarity between western and Chinese ideology,and the target readers' expectation by investigating the primary translation norms of the website and the founder of Wuxiaworld-RWX's viewpoints of translation given in various interviews and meetings.Concerning the professional norms,the analysis is processed from the perspective of accountability norms,communication norms and relation norms.As for the expectancy norms,this thesis finds that:1)regarding the prevailing translation strategy of the website,RWX puts forward the translation strategy of balance and getting close to the target language.The translators have a certain degree of freedom to add,delete and reconstruct the source text appropriately.2)as for the similarity between eastern and western ideology,the western elements in the Chinese cyber martial arts fiction,the overlap between Xiayi spirit in Chinese literature and Chivalry in Western literature,as well as the common admiration for the strong and the powerful,make it easier for western readers to accept both unfamiliar and familiar types of popular fiction;3)concerning the expectation of target readers,due to the dual identity of the translator as both translators and readers,the translator responsibility system is also a main factor to enhance the reception of translationAs for the professional norm,1)from the perspective of accountability norms,the translators demonstrate their professionalism and responsibility by making translation prescripts,notes and the glossary.2)as for the communication norms,the translators make great efforts to achieve successful communication of Chinese culture-loaded expressions;3)In terms of the relation norms,the translators adopt different translation methods to restore the original characteristics of the source text according to the relationship between the original text and the target text.Concerning the specific translation methods adopted by the website's translators in light of professional norms,this thesis finds that:1)when dealing with the translation of character names,the translators try to apply transliteration as much as possible.In Wuxia fiction,the translators often put a note after a person's name,supplementing the meaning of each word in his/her name.But in Xuanhuan and Xianxia fiction,some of the characters' names are not commonly used in modern Chinese,so the translators adopt literal translation more often.2)when dealing with the names of weapons,martial arts and skills in Wuxia fiction,in most cases the translators completely restore the image of each word,while omission and replacement of those images are more often used in Xuanhuan&Xianxia fiction.3)most Chinese idioms are supplemented with explanation of meaning,even with the deletion and substitution of images.Only a few proverbs and fables with complete meanings are preserved 4)in addition,there are differences among the translators in translating the same religious image according to their respective characteristics in different works.5)the description of the fighting scene in Wuxia fiction is more complicated,so the translators may reconstruct or resequence sentences to a certain extent.Since the battle descriptions of the Xianxia&Xuanhuan fiction are more coherent and colloquial,the translators have to translate them into the appropriately written language.6)in the translation of dialogues,the translators may omit some unnecessary and redundant contents,or adjust the position of the speech tags within the dialogues,and make some addition to achieve a smoother logicThe significance of this paper lies in the preliminary systematic study of the cyber martial arts fiction,and proves the existence of certain translation norms in the cyber fiction translation on Wuxiaworld.com.The research can be a reference for the translation studies and practice of Chinese popular fiction.