A Critical Study Of Translation Of The Adventure Of Sherlock Holmes (1896-1927) And Its Influence On Huo Sang's Detective Stories In The Perspective Of Rewriting Theory

The fiction translation of late Qing and early Republic period is an important part of the third translation upsurge in the history of China, assuming a prominent position in the history of modern literary translation in China. Detective fictions, represented by The Adventure of Sherlock Holmes, were translated into China as a new literary genre and welcomed by many Chinese readers. The boom of detective fiction translation lay in many subjective factors as well as many objective ones. The actual translation campaign and translation methods were influenced by translation norms and social fashion prevailing at that time in China. Detective fiction translation exerted a great impact on Chinese native detective fiction creation, playing a significant role in and providing an inspiration for Chinese modern literature transformation.In recent years, detective fiction translation's far-reaching influence and significance of late Qing and early Republic period drew wide attention. Most of the detective fiction translators adhered to the principle of translating its meaning and rewrote the original text at random, so many scholars and researchers accused that detective fiction translation of late Qing and early Republic period was not faithful to original text in terms of content or form. Since 1970's, with the advent of cultural turn in translation studies, the traditional prescriptive paradigm gradually gave way to the new descriptive paradigm, shifting from linguistic orientation to cultural orientation. And many scholars began to place detective fiction translation of late Qing and early Republic period in a broad social and cultural context so as to carry out translation studies more completely and objectively. However, many studies on western detective fiction translation ignored its influence on Chinese native detective fiction creation. In fact, Chinese native detective fiction creation was greatly influenced by western detective fictions introduced into China.Based on Lefevere's Rewriting Theory, the thesis approaches the detective fiction translation of late Qing and early Republic period by placing it in a broader social and cultural context in a descriptive sense. By analyzing the factors leading to the upsurge and flourishing of detective fiction translation in late Qing and early Republic period, the thesis is to compare different versions of The Adventure of Sherlock Holmes's translation in different phases in order to explore how translators manipulate original texts under the influence and constraints of dominant ideologies and poetics in the target culture. Translators adopted different kinds of translation strategies such as deletion, addition and rewriting to rebuild the female images, protagonists, and so on to ensure acceptance of Chinese readers. Meanwhile, the thesis also lays emphasis on how Cheng Xiaoqing inherited and imitated The Adventure of Sherlock Holmes when creating his own Chinese native detective fiction: Huo Sang's Detective Stories and how narrative skills employed in western fictions influenced and propelled Chinese modern literary transformation.