On Ken Liu's English Translation Of Chinese Science Fiction

Chinese science fiction Santi and Beijing Zhedie have won the Hugo Award for Best Novel in 2015 and the Hugo Award for Best Novelette in 2016 respectively.The two Hugo-winning works have opened a door for the Going-global Program for Chinese Culture.It is worth mentioning that both these two works are translated by Ken Liu,a Chinese-American.According to communication theory,the translator plays a crucial role during the communication process.The successful going-out and widespread acceptance of Santi(The Three-Body Problem)and Beijing Zhedie(Folding Beijing)are greatly attributed to Ken Liu's excellent translation.Therefore,the study on Ken Liu's translation has great academic value.Currently,there are only few researches on Ken Liu's translation,of which the research depth is to be deepened and the research perspective to be broadened.Under the framework of communication theory,this paper takes the English version of Santi as a case study.By analyzing Ken Liu's translation methods employed in The Three-Body Problem,the author attempts to provide some implications for the Going-global Program for Chinese Culture.Firstly,the author reviews and organizes previous studies on science fiction translation both at home and abroad and related studies on Santi.Then,the author introduces translation studies from the perspective of communication theory.According to communication theory,the translator builds a bridge for the author and the reader.In the body part,after a brief introduction to Liu Cixin(author),Ken Liu(translator),and the source text,the author focuses on the analysis of Ken Liu's translation methods.For Chinese culture-loaded contents(historic figures,slangs,dialects,idioms,and political expressions during specific period),Ken mainly adopts transliteration plus annotation,paraphrase,literal translation plus annotation,addition,and reduction.For technical contents,he tends to use back-translation and paraphrase.For the pure fictional words,he coins words.By analyzing and studying the English version of Santi,the authorhopes to shed some light on the translation of Chinese science fiction.Lastly,based on the previous analysis,the author provides some implications for the Going-global Program for Chinese Culture from the aspects of source text selection,translation model selection,and translation effect.