On The Translation Of Wei Xiaobao's Speech In John Minford's Version Of The Deer And The Cauldron

The Deer and the Cauldron (Luding Ji in Chinese pinyin), the last martial arts novel by Louis Cha, fully demonstrates his excellent craftsmanship in language employment. The great novel presents its readers a unique and colorful martial arts world:the underworld of River and Lake (江湖), in which the people have their own jargon and their own code of conduct, whose strong flavor of Chinese characteristics inevitably results in the difficulty in its English translation. In the year of 1997, Professor John Minford, a well-known sinologist, finished his profound English version of The Deer and the Cauldron:The First Book and made it published by the Oxford University press. Hence, those questions, such as whether the translated texts would be accepted by the western readers and would convey the errantry spirit elegantly and sincerely, have been the hot topics concerned by the relevant translation studies. The thesis attempts to find out the answers by a close study of Wei Xiaobao's (Trinket in the English version) speech in the translated version from the perspective of the communicative translation theory by the method of random sampling. Finally, the thesis comes to the conclusion that the communicative translation mode is mainly employed in Professor Minford's translation.Professor Minford attaches much emphasis to the cultural conflict between English and Chinese and the receptivity of the English readers. When translating, he, with a communicative translation mode in most cases, generally employs such techniques as literal translation, free translation to recast the original text in order to ensure a natural conveyance of the original meaning.The thesis holds the point that in translating the text with characteristic cultural meaning, the translator's working mode or strategy adopted is mainly determined by his purpose of translation, his attitude towards these two cultures, his forecast of the cultural background of target readers and their receptivity. Professor Minford succeeded in transplanting Chinese culture in The Deer and the Cauldron and made it a classical translation to spread Chinese martial arts culture. The original idea Professor Minford adopts in his translation work and his master-hand can be appreciated in the study of Wei Xiaobao's speech in his English version, which will shed some light on our future practice in translation.