Translation of Horror, Mystery and Suspense in Detective Novel: A Case Study of the Chinese Translation of The Hound of the Baskervilles

• Main Authors: CHUNG, CHENG-YU, 鍾承羽
• Other Authors: WU, YI-PING
• Format: Others
• Language: en_US
• Published: 2018
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/e9cwwb

碩士 === 國立高雄第一科技大學 === 應用英語系口筆譯碩士班 === 106 === The Hound of the Baskervilles is regarded a Gothic fiction, which contains elements of horror, suspense, mystery, supernatural, monster and crime. This thesis analyzes the horrible, suspenseful and mysterious effects using by Vinay and Darbelnet’s translation strategies. From 1992 to 2017, fifteen Chinese translations of The Hound of the Baskervilles have been published in Taiwan. Twelve translations are published for general readers, and three are published for children. This thesis investigates two translations with lower similarity. The first one is translated by Zhi-yi Wang and published by Faces Publishing Ltd in 1999. The second one is rendered by Xiao-ying Song and published by Shi Teng Publisher in 2014. The findings shows that Song’s choice of words is scarier than Wang’s. Wang’s translation is mostly equivalent to the original, including the wordings, phrases and the contents, so the horrible effect is weakened. Conversely, Song often changes the words or phrases of the original in her translation and adds extra descriptions to create the horrible effect. In translating mystery elements, Wang tends to keep the mystery and questions unanswered, while Song often explicates the unnatural or unreasonable place, and her wordings are more intriguing than Wang’s. As for the suspenseful effect, Wang’s translation is more succinct and clearer, and the suspenseful atmosphere is transmitted better than Song’s. Though Song tends to add extra descriptions or sentences to enhance the suspenseful atmosphere, her renderings sometimes transmit the wrong meaning. To sum up, the application of the amplification strategy is helpful to enhance the horrible atmosphere, and explicitation and amplification strategies do enhance the mysterious and suspenseful atmospheres in the translations of The Hound of the Baskervilles. On the other hand, the use of modulation and lacunae strategies does not enhance but reduces the horrible, suspenseful and mysterious effect in the translations. Translations that paraphrase the original meaning are more vivid and colloquial. Song’s translation does not stick to the original text. She uses different wordings and adds extra descriptions to make her translations more vivid. Wang’s translation is faithful to the original, but the horrible and mysterious effects are not strengthened or presented vividly as Song’s.