Translation Strategies For Terminology Pertaining To Ancient Chinese Warfare

Sanguo Yanyi(Romance of the Three Kingdoms,??????)is the first full-fledged classical Chinese literature in China's history.It has gained a great reputation since its first publication during the reign of the Ming Dynasty(1368-1644).Sanguo Yanyi is listed as one of the Four Great Books of Wonder and one of the Ten Books of Talent.In a nutshell,Sanguo Yanyi plays a vital role in China's history and remains as a landmark when it comes to Chinese literature.The Three Kingdoms(220-280 AD)was the tripartite division of China among the states of Wei,Shu,and Wu.This period was a period of turbulence in China's history.Therefore,in Sanguo Yanyi,there are many grand descriptions of the military affairs,strategies and battlefields during this period.How to vividly translate these wonderful descriptions into foreign languages has become a problem that so many translators have to face.Westerners have long extolled the virtues of ancient Chinese military treatise.However,terminology in the field of ancient Chinese warfare is an area often overlooked by translation scholars.Hence,the purpose of this paper is to further fill the gaps in this filed,better explore the strategies of translation in terms of terminology in the field of ancient Chinese warfare,and contribute a systematic case study to this long-overlooked field.Lin Yutang's notion of fidelity in translation isChina's famous translation notion.Guided by this notion,this paper will respectively discuss the translation strategies three English versions employ in their translation of Sanguo Yanyi,which touches on weapons,tactics,strategy,grand strategy,military ranks,and so on.By comparing the original text with the translation,this paper analyzes the translation of military terminology in these versions.Finally,this paper come to the conclusion:Author's "psychology of writing" must be taken into consideration.Both Yu and Taylor don't notice what the author wants to tell.In order to make it readable,Yu's and Taylor's versions adopt the strategy of omission,which fails to reflect the emotional coloring that the original text wants to express.Compared with them,Moss Roberts stays much closer to Lin's fidelity rule.Hence,this version is much more conducive to the research on the translation of terminologies pertaining to ancient Chinese warfare.Based on the researches of the predecessors,this paper is expected to further arouse people's interest in the translation of ancient Chinese military treatise through more detailed examples and analysis of novel theories,thus "telling the Chinese story well,spreading China's voice well,and connecting China and the world."...