| As a new genre of Western popular fiction, detective novel has been prevailing eversince its appearance. As an exotic, detective novel has gained its popularity among Chinesereaders and set off a detective fiction boom as soon as it was introduced in the late QingDynasty, mainly because of its numerous similarities with China’s traditional detectivenovel. In modern translation stage, the amount, scope and speed of detective novel beingtranslated were all in the forefront among various categories of literature translation,which has exerted a tremendous impact on the modernization of Chinese literature andeven on social progress. However, detective novel has been neither enduringly popular norbecome a widely recognized form of literature, and world-class detective writers andworks have not appeared in China.Why did detective novels once prevail in China for decades yet failed to thrive? Avariety of reasons accounts for it. Uneven translation quality, the translator’s owncompetence, the application of translation skills are all bound to affect the development ofdetective novels in China. Therefore, based on the writer’s own English-Chinesetranslation practice of The Last Stroke by Lawrence L. Lynch, this report analyzes thelinguistic features of detective novel and the main translation methods for detective noveltranslation under the guidance of Nida’s functional equivalence theory and summarizes theexperience gained from the translation practice. Meanwhile, this report offers twosuggestions about the E-C translation of detective novel. Hopefully, this report willcontribute to generating more excellent detective novels loved by Chinese readers, andmake some useful references for Chinese writers to learn from foreign counterparts andworks.There are five chapters in this report. Chapter One is the introduction of background of the research, the significance of the study and the thesis structure. Chapter Two is theliterature review. The author analyzes the features of detective fiction and provides thebasic information of the source text. Chapter Three is about the preparation beforetranslation and the theoretical foundation of the report. Chapter Four deals with theapplication of Nida’s functional equivalence theory to E-C detective novel translation andthe basic tenets and strategies. Chapter Five is the conclusion, which consists of thesummary and limitations of the research. In addition, some suggestions have been providedfor further researches. |
