On the Generation of Legal Image in Translated Literature: A Comparative Analysis of Buck's and Shapiro's Translations of Shuihu Zhuan

Shuihu Zhuan, one of the four Classic Chinese Novels translated and disseminated worldwide presents an intertextual system.Among all the translations, Buck's All Men Are Brothers and Shapiro's Outlaws of the Marsh are respectively recognized as the first full English translation and the best English translation existing though not without dissenting opinions.This paper, assuming the emerging imagological approach in translation studies, focuses on the reconstruction of legal image in translated literature.It is shown that both translators, inspired by the stories of heroes' violation of imperial courts' feudal system, consciously or unconsciously employed the same or similar Western chivalry and Christian elements when translating Chinese legal culture, manifesting a homogeneous thinking of legal image reconstruction.Compared with Buck's hope for the representation of the novel's linguistic style, Shapiro tried to reshape the very essence of traditional Chinese legal landscape, reflecting his heterogeneous approach.In a nutshell, Buck reconstructed the holistic literary image of the outlaws and Shapiro the cultural image of the moral code of the outlaws, epitomizing multi-dimensional historical and socio-cultural factors and the interaction between auto-and hetero-images in context.