A Comparative Study of Strategies for Translating Military Terms in the Complete English Versions of San Guo Yan Yi

摘要

San Guo Yan Yi is widely acknowledged as the first full-length romance novel of history that ever appeared in China and one of the "Four Great Chinese Classics". It also has a lot of military terms which carry unique Chinese cultural connotations. However, deeply rooted in traditional Chinese culture, those terms are likely to give rise to obstacles in translating, especially for translators whose cultural background differs greatly from what the novel is set. For this reason, this study attempts to compare strategies adopted to translate such military terms in the two complete English versions of San Guo Yan Yi. It is found that in translating the cultural elements of weapons, military attires, and military strategies, Brewitt-Taylor's version tends to be more domesticated, explicit and liberal to make the translated text more natural for target readers to enhances the acceptability of the translated text among the ordinary, while Roberts' version is more foreignized and faithful to make the translated text more informative for target readers, particularly scholarly ones to get a detailed picture of ancient Chinese culture, with the flavor and structure of the original text maintained to the largest extent.