From "Ideal Knight-errant" To "imperfect Detective"

Sherlock Holmes: The Complete Novels and Stories is viewed as one of themost popular translated works in China. The novel has successfully created SherlockHolmes as a legendary detective with humanity. On one hand, he is wise, capableand experienced. With enormous strength, meticulous thoughts, great subtlety,scientific methods and exquisite detective skills, he has triumphantly solvednumerous unusual cases, in which truth has been revealed and justice has beenupheld. On the other hand, he also bears a quantity of bad habits, such as arrogance,sluttery and addiction to morphine and cocaine.In Chinese versions translated in different periods, however, the image ofSherlock Holmes varies. Generally, in the versions translated in the Late Qing andearly Republic period (1840-1919), the image of Sherlock Holmes is close to atraditional Chinese ideal “knight-errant”, who is full of heroic spirit and is alwaysready to redress injustice for disadvantaged groups, meanwhile, his bad habits havebeen omitted or desalted to some extent; while in the versions translated after thefoundation of the PRC, especially after the Reform and Opening-up, the image ofSherlock Holmes has comparatively returned to the image of the imperfect detectivedepicted in the source text. This is a special phenomenon worth noticing andstudying.This paper chooses two representative versions, respectively, the firstcollection of Sherlock Holmes series published in1916and the first publiclyreleased collection after the Reform and Opening-up published in1979-1981, tocompare the variations of Sherlock Holmes’ image from the angle of imagology, andfurther discusses how the image of Sherlock Holmes has been imagined,reestablished, and toolized under different social and cultural contexts. By exploringthe “reflection” of “self-image” to the image of “other” in the1916version and the “representation” of the image of “other” in the1979version, the paper reveals thecrucial role that translation activities have played in reconstructing the image of“other”, expressing “self-image” and promoting the interactivity between “self” and“other”. In the meantime, the paper also points out that with the variation of time andsocial contexts, the image of Sherlock Holmes may continue to change under theimpact and integration of foreign cultures and native culture.