Romance of the Three Kingdoms, its translations in Spanish and its repercussion in the Hispanic world

Abstract

Romance of the Three Kingdoms is an important literature masterpiece and is worthy of studying from multiple angles. The translation is one of them. The objectives of the present article are, firstly, to introduce the translations of the book into different languages with special attention to Spanish; secondly, to analyze the repercussion of the novel beyond the literary ambit; and, thirdly and lastly, to revise the translation studies about the historic work. To reach the first two objectives, a revision of the translation of the book has been done. The products derived from the novel and translated into Spanish, such as films and videogames, have also been studied. The bibliographical revision has been accomplished by using the database Reference and Advice Coalition of National Libraries (全国图书馆参 考咨询联盟, Quanguo Tushuguan Cankao Zixun Lianmeng). The results show that the work has been translated into many languages of the world; however, there are only a few translations into Spanish. Despite the translation shortage, products based on the novel, such as films and videogames, have been detected and they have had a great popularity in Spain. Finally, among the analyzed studies (books, articles, doctoral thesis and masters’ thesis), only a small part focuses on the Chinese-Spanish combination. This highlights the existing research gap in this regard.