A Study Of Chinese Translation Of Detective Fiction In Late-Qing-Early-ROC In The Light Of Philosophical Hermeneutics

Detective fiction, which was treated as an educational tool, was introduced into China in late Qing Dynasty and early Republic of China (Late-Qing-Early-ROC). Because of its popularity and public entertainment, detective fiction was popular and welcomed by the refined and popular taste. Most of the detective fiction translators adopted free translation strategies, thus translations in that period were quite different from the original ones, and were criticized by some critics because of its unfaithfulness to the original ones. However, that is because these critics put the translations in the framework of traditional linguistic translation theory. If we put them in the three principles of Gadamer's philosophical hermeneutics: historical understanding, fusion of horizons and effective history, we will get a new understanding.Hermeneutics, a theory of understanding and interpretation, is closely related to translation. Nowadays the application of hermeneutic theory to translation study has been studied extensively and the general applying hermeneutics to translation study is the theory of historical understanding, fusion of horizon and effective history proposed by Gadamer.By taking Gadamer's hermeneutics as the theoretical basis, this thesis makes a study on detective fiction translation. By combining the hermeneutic theory with the analysis of different translated versions, the author here intends to point out that the so-called unfaithful translations of detective fiction in that period are reasonable"faithful". A translation is only a product of the prejudice of its own time; the translator's horizons can not be exactly the same as the author's.Because considerable Chinese readers are fond of Conan Doyle's The Adventure of Sherlock Holmes, the author has chosen his detective stories translated by Cheng Xiaoqing who is one of the most significant translators and writers of detective stories.There are four chapters and a conclusion in this thesis.Chapter 1 is the generalization of the whole thesis, which includes the research background, presentation of research methodology, research organization and research significance of the thesisChapter 2 gives a literature review. In this chapter a brief introduction of hermeneutics to translation studies both at home and abroad will be stated. At the same time, this thesis discusses the relationship between hermeneutics and literature translation. Then the related previous studies on detective fiction translation will be presented, which also includes the characteristics of detective fiction.Chapter 3 demonstrates the main issues of Gadamer's three principles of hermeneutics, including the historical understanding, fusion of horizons and effective history, which provide a strong theoretical support for this thesis.Chapter 4 is the main part of this thesis. It explains why the so-called unfaithful translations of detective fiction in that period are reasonably"faithful"by combining Gadamer's hermeneutics with the analysis of examples. At the beginning of this chapter, the author analyzes the characteristics of detective fiction translation in that period. This part also includes the translation strategies adopted in the process of translating detective fictions.With the analysis of the translated versions, the author has concluded that: based on Gadamer's historical understanding, fusion of horizons and effective history, the relative social and cultural functions of translation can be found, which is experienced from its production to realization in translational language society and which is based on adapting and meeting the basic demand of translation language.