Exploring The Sources Of The Changing Translations Of Sherlock Holmes’ Detective Stories From The Perspective Of The Translation Theory Of André Lefevere

Sherlock Holmes’ detective stories have received huge popularity since they were first translated and published in China in 1896. In the translation history of Sherlock Holmes’ detective stories in China, there are two comparatively representative periods. The first is the translation boom between the late Qing Dynasty and the early Republic of China and the other is the boom since China’s reform and opening up. Most of current studies only focus on the translations of Sherlock Holmes’ detective stories in the first period. And some of them even fail to give a systematic and complete analysis. This paper studies the translations of Sherlock Holmes’ detective stories in the two different periods, trying to do a more comprehensive and multi-angle research.The research is mainly based on the translation theory of André Lefevere. In the 1970 s, the translation studies started to move towards the field of cultural studies. In the 1980 s, translation studies shifted from the linguistic orientation to culture orientation. As one representative of cultural school, André Lefevere points out that translation is a kind of rewriting under the manipulation of ideology, poetics and patronage. This theory has provided a special angle to describe and explain lots of translation phenomena. And it can be applied to analyzing and to explaining the changes of the translations of Sherlock Holmes’ detective stories in the two different periods.With the help of the translation theory of André Lefevere, this paper aims to find out the changing translations of Sherlock Holmes’ detective stories in the two different periods and the factors which result in these changes.From the perspective of the translation theory of André Lefevere, we can see that ideology; poetics and patronage all have influences on translations of Sherlock Holmes’ detective stories and lead to all kinds of differences of the translations in the two different periods, such as the deletion or reservation of plots, the change or reservation of women images and the deletion or reservation of psychological description, etc..However, the subjectivity of the translator plays an important role in the translation process, which sometimes results in the differences of translations in the same period. This thesis is expected to shed some light on translations of Sherlock Holmes’ detective stories in future studies.