Translator's Compromises In Rewriting

As the symbolic of detective novels,“Sherlock Holmes Memoir” series is quite famous not only in the Europe,but also being popular detective literature around the world.In fact,as early as AD1896(the late Qing dynasty),there was a translator named Zhangkunde who first introduced Sherlock into the Progressive Paper.In the following two decades,lots of Sherlock series flooded into China and translated by a group of famous translators including:Linshu,Bannong and so on.Due to its huge success and popularity,Chinese public society finally columned all the 44 cases and published them as “Holmes Adventures” in 1916.Lots of researchers have done the findings about Sherlock's introduction and translation in the late Qing and early public China previously,yet these findings were shared same views and seems not so reliable.Based on that,I proposed my views in this article.There are three cases in my study: whether Zhang's translation was filled with enlightenment meaning? Or weather Linshu's translation motivation of “ The opening strange case of Sherlock ” was influenced by the political events or trend? Else,the 1916 Sherlock stories was just following the rules emerged from New Cultural Movement and the May4 th movement later? And I got some insights after collecting the first-hand information and translation texts: Zhang's translation was more loyal to the original than the later translations and without so much enlightening elements translated in;Lin's case was quite complicated,which represented his compromises attitude in his translation career.And I also found the discourse in translator's preface was totally contradicted with his content and his translation motivation in that phase,during which time,the only purpose in translating for him was making money and earning his life.Linshu chose the long novel genre which he could handle and rewrite it in a popular way.So it turns out the reason Linshu changed the image of the story's role so as to added the political and enlightenment discourse in his translated texts was to attract more readers in market;While the1916 Sherlock case as a symbolic was not only a rewriting influenced by the New Cultural Movement and social chaos,but also the combination of old rituals and new values,therefore is quite worthy digging in.Actually,that was another case that made not only to call for mainstream ideology and poetic,but also reflected the diversified themes at that time.Therefore,I picked the rewriting theories proposed by Lefevere as the framework in my study.Different from other studies related to Sherlock Holmes detective series,I did notmechanically use the main concepts or key terms,such as: ideology,poetic or patronages to define those findings that I've eventually found.Instead,I consider all of these findings as a good resource of fulfillment which can be used to enrich the set of rewriting theories in translation studies.