On Conflicts Between Translator And Author In The Book And The Sword

The spread and influence of Louis Cha’s works are unmatched by any othermartial arts fictions. As a representative of martial arts fictions which is a uniquegenre in Chinese literature, Cha’s works shall be paid high attention in translationfield and be chosen as one of classics to be translated into English.Shu Jian En Chou Lu is the first martial arts fiction of Louis Cha, and theEnglish edition The Book and the Sword is translated by English journalist GrahamEarnshaw and published in2004, which is one of those English editions of Cha’sworks. As a special genre in Chinese traditional popular fictions, martial arts fictionsface many difficulties in translation activity during which many conflicts arises.Works of Louis Cha are second to none in martial arts world, and this Englishtranslation version receives good responses; therefore it is selected to be the case tobe studied on its conflicts in intentions and in language strategies between translatorand author.In literary translation, because of the huge differences both in time and spacebetween the author and the translator, they tend to have conflicts in recognition andpractice, representing as conflict in intentions and conflict in language strategies. Thelatter conflict is mostly caused by the former conflict, and the former conflict can beconcluded from the differences in personal backgrounds and cultural contexts.Nevertheless, such conflicts cannot be criticized by the name of disloyalty; on thecontrary, those conflicts show their positive functions in translation studies. From theperspective of intersubjectivity theory, translation is a dialogue and interactionbetween two subjects—author and translator, and conflicts allow translating existingin a new form. View of intersubjectivity requires that studies on translation shall beoverall considered, which challenges the traditional solipsism view of subjectivityand emphasizes the sharing and co-being of divergences and rejecting solipsism ofsubjectivity theory. It is obvious that hybrid translation of martial arts fictions is more easily to receive the recognition and understanding of western reader, and theconflicts themselves show the collision and coexistence of cultures which mayprovide new views to the English translation of Chinese classics.The paper views the conflict in intention and the conflict in language strategybetween translator and author, and makes explains and discussions from theperspective of intersubjectivity theory, trying to further prove the explanatory abilityof intersubjectivity theory in translation field, meanwhile to provide references to theEnglish translation of Cha’s martial arts fictions.