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Study on Overseas Readers' Evaluation and Dissemination Effect of the English Translation of Romance of the Three Kingdoms

Zhuolu Zhu, Shiyi Yu, Juan Wang
DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.21013/jems.v20.n2.p3
Abstract
In evaluating the translation quality and translation value of literary works, one of the most important assessment links is to focus on the degree of acceptance of translations by readers. Through the study of overseas readers' evaluations and dissemination effects of English translations, we can comprehensively and accurately assess the impact of different translations on readers, provide more scientific guidance and decision-making basis for the translations of classical literature, and promote the dissemination of Chinese literature overseas, thereby contributing to the enhancement of China's cultural soft power. It can provide more scientific guidance and decision-making basis for the translation of classical literature, promote the overseas dissemination of Chinese literature, and boost the enhancement of the soft power of Chinese culture. This study collects readers' evaluations of Martin Palmer's English translation of Romance of the Three Kingdoms, which is ranked first in the review data on Amazon and the official website of Goodreads, through the Octopus data collector, and conducts text data mining on it, utilizing the KHCoder text analyzing tool and adopting a combination of qualitative and quantitative methods, to analyze the readers' reviews of the high-frequency words and semantic mapping were analyzed. It was found that the factors affecting overseas readers' evaluation of the English translation of Romance of the Three Kingdoms include: the length of the full translation, the confusion and difficulty in memorization and phonetic comprehension of Chinese character names due to the names and words in the English translation, and the completeness of the translation in retaining the essence of the original work. Therefore, the subsequent translation of Romance of the Three Kingdoms not only needs to grasp the two perspectives of linguistic accuracy and cultural adaptation, but also should take more account of the preferences and needs of overseas readers, and optimize and adjust these aspects in a targeted manner.
Keywords
The English translation of Romance of the Three Kingdoms; Martin Palmer; Reader evaluation; Dissemination effect; Octopus Collector; KHCoder
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