On The Translation Of Martial Arts Novel Under Translation Compensation Theory

In recent years,the Confucius Institutes have been set up all over the world with the promotion of China?s international status and national cultural soft power.Chinese martial arts gyms have also won the favor of many foreign friends,which mirrors that the spread of Chinese martial arts culture to the outside world is very effective.Simultaneously,the English version of The Legend of the Condor Heroes has been published since 2018,reflecting that foreign readers are becoming more and more enthusiastic about Chinese martial arts culture.Therefore,it is the trend of the time to translate martial arts novel into English.The works of Jin Yong,one of the greatest writers of martial arts fiction,are abundant with profound Chinese traditional culture and unique martial arts connotation.As a result,the study of the English version of his typical novel is representative that directly provides reference for the future translation of martial arts fiction.As a means for Chinese literature to become global,translation has been a tool to disseminate Chinese culture to the world and the translator is the messenger who shoulders the burden.However,the translator frequently fails to find equivalent words in the target language or encounters cultural vacancies in the course of translation,especially when translating martial arts fiction which is deeply rooted in traditional Chinese culture.Under this circumstance,translation loss occurs from time to time,thus applying translation compensation strategy is indispensable in order to ensure that the rendition is faithful to the original text to the greatest extent and meanwhile restore martial arts connotation and culture.As a theoretical system that needs to be perfected,translation compensation requires to be studied in more aspects to expand its scope and depth.It is hoped that the study on the compensation strategies in the English rendition of martial arts novel will contribute to the construction of the theory.Based on the theory of translation compensation,the thesis carries out a case study of Jin Yong?s martial arts novel The Deer and the Cauldron to discuss the compensation examples and explore the losses and the reasons for the compensation in its English version,combining with the characteristics of martial arts fiction.After analyzing the linguistic data,the thesis studies the causes and compensation methods for translation vacancies from three aspects: the chapter headings,martial arts elements and cultural elements.It is found that paraphrase with annotation is a very suitable compensation strategy for chapter titles.As for the unique Chinese martial arts elements that are concerned with personal names and nicknames of characters,martial arts moves and martial arts schools,free translation with annotation and amplification are the most efficient compensation methods.When confronted with Chinese traditional cultural elements in the novel,including material culture,social culture,institutional culture,historical culture and religious culture,amplification,paraphrase and adaptation are the most appropriate compensation strategies and techniques.Through the case study of translation compensation in the English translation of The Deer and the Cauldron,the author hopes to give some guidance to the translation practice of martial arts fiction.In this way,the quality of the English rendition of martial arts novel is improved,the development of the English translation of martial arts fiction is promoted,and ultimately Chinese martial arts culture is boosted to go global.