A Study Of The Cultural Misreading In The English Translation Of The Deer And The Cauldron By John Minford

This thesis,by conducting a comparative research on Jin Yong’s Lu Ding Ji and its English translation The Deer and the Cauldron by John Minford,adopts cultural misreading theory as the basis to discuss the cultural misreading cases in The Deer and the Cauldron,i.e.misreading of martial arts culture,misreading of ecological culture,misreading of material culture,misreading of religious culture,misreading of linguistic culture and misreading of social cultureThe previous studies of the translation of The Deer and the Cauldron were mainly conducted in terms of translation strategies.The number of its studies from cultural perspective is limited,and there is no study conducted from the perspective of cultural misreading.Different from the previous studies,this thesis is conducted from the perspective of cultural misreading by comparative study and case study,to discuss the classification of the cultural misreading cases in John Minford’s English translation of The Deer and the Cauldron.The reasons of cultural misreading are also analyzed into three groups.Based on these three groups,the corresponding translation strategies are proposedAfter the data analysis and discussion,the present study has the major findings as follows.The cultural misreading cases in The Deer and the Cauldron can be divided into six categories,namely,the misreading of martial culture,including the misreading of martial movement;the misreading of ecological culture,including the misreading of climate and animal;the misreading of material culture,including that of clothes,weapons and containers;the misreading of religious culture,including that of evils and gods,the misreading of linguistic culture,including that of slang and dialect;and the misreading of social culture including the misreading of appellation,government affairs and punishment.Moreover,the three reasons of cultural misreading have been pointed out,namely,the cultural differences between the West and China,the translator’s improper understanding of the Chinese culture in The Deer and the Cauldron and the translator’s intention to promote the book’s reception in Western countries.Accordingly,this thesis proposes two types of translation strategies and a translation suggestion.The first group is for the cultural misreading caused by cultural differences,which includes word coinage and annotation,apart from the commonly used strategies such as literal translation,free translation,transliteration and omission.The second group is for the deliberate misreading of Chinese culture,which includes transliteration and annotation.The suggestion is that the translator should conjure up what has been described in the text and describe the image in the target language,which can improve the correctness of culture informationThis study is of both theoretical and practical significance.Theoretically,it has filled the gap of the study of martial arts fiction conducted from the perspective of cultural misreading.Hopefully,it can provide new examples for the future studies of cultural misreading.Moreover,it has implications for the future studies of the cultural misreading on other literature works.Practically,this study has summarized the translation strategies which can avoid the cultural misreading with negative effects,and the strategies Minford has used to misread the culture with positive effects,with the hope that the study can offer some implications for future translation of martial arts fiction.There are two limitations of the present study.Firstly,this study is on the cultural misreading in the English translation of martial arts fiction The Deer and the Cauldron,so it might not be applicable to other non-martial arts fiction.Moreover,due to the limitation of time,only a few cultural misreading cases in The Deer and the Cauldron have been discussed.Hopefully,the future research can be conducted on the unexplored cases.