The Application of Translation Variation Techniques in Martial Arts Fiction: Taking The Book & The Sword as an Example

Distinguishing itself from normal novels by being endowed with Chinese unique chivalrous spirits, Chinese martial arts fiction is the epitome of Chinese culture since it shares a wide range from martial arts styles, heroes’ nicknames, national conflicts, love and hate between schools and heroes, and poems to human’s body structure. Together with the destitute of martial culture in western world, the complicated plots of martial arts fictions make it extremely difficult for translators to do the work if he adopted complete translation strategy. According to the author’s observation, quite a number of translation variation techniques including large scale of addition (added explanations), deletion, etc. have been applied in English-translated Chinese martial arts novels. Therefore, the author intends to take this opportunity to testify the reasonability and practicality of the application of translation variation strategy and techniques in translating martial arts fictions by analyzing Chinese famous kung fu novel The Book & The Sword translated by English writer Enshaw.