| Sherlock Holmes’ stories were written by Conan Doyle,a well-known British novelist.It can be said that the status of Sherlock Holmes in the minds of readers all around the world is immeasurable.China’s first translation of Sherlock Holmes’ stories emerged in 1896.To this day,56 stories and 4 novels have already been translated into Chinese and Sherlock Holmes series has become an important focus of literary research in China.In terms of translation studies,there have been a few studies on the Chinese translations of Sherlock Holmes’ stories in China.However,at present,none of the research papers have systematically analyzed the Chinese translations of Sherlock Holmes’ stories in the whole history from a theoretical point of view.Thus,there is substantial room for further research in the thesis.In order to fill the gap in the field of research,the thesis first takes a comprehensive examination on the details and features of the Chinese translations of Sherlock Holmes’stories during three periods.According to a careful analysis of previously collected data,it can be found that from the last decades of 19th century to the early decades of 20th century,China saw an upsurge in translations of Sherlock Holmes’ stories.At the time,the publication of translated works was almost synchronized with that of original works,and the most popular translations were republished in different forms several times.However,the first 17 years of PRC witnessed a pretty significant decline in the numbers of translations of Sherlock Holmes’ stories,and the publication of Sherlock Holmes’stories experienced dramatic twists and turns in this period.It was not until the recent 30-odd years that there was a remarkable upsurge of publications of Sherlock Holmes’stories in China.In this period,every publishing house scrambled to translate and publish Sherlock Holmes’ stories.Various kinds of translated versions appeared and met different needs of audiences;meanwhile,the quality of different translated versions varied greatly.As a whole,the Chinese translations of Sherlock Holmes series went through some ups and downs in the whole history.Afterwards,an analysis is presented to systematically investigate the Chinese translations of Sherlock Holmes’ stories from the perspective of manipulation theory.More specifically,within a framework of the manipulation theory,the thesis mainly discusses the development of translated works from an objective perspective.This development in different historical periods will be affected by some cultural factors.These factors mainly refer to ideology,poetics,and patronage.Thus,analyzing from the asects of ideology,poetics,and patronage,the thesis illustrates how the translations of Sherlock Holmes’ stories have been marginalized in the early years of the PRC,and how the translations of Sherlock Holmes’ stories have been centralized in the late Qing dynasty and since the reform and opening up.From this analysis we can learn that the ideology,poetics and patronage in different historical periods have a great influence on the selection of source texts.China experienced two great upsurges in translations of Sherlock Holmes series,mainly because this series echoed the ideology,poetics and patronage in different historical periods of China.The study of the Chinese translations of Sherlock Holmes’ stories in China analyzes the translations from a macro-historical perspective,which provides a deep understanding on how the factors within the cultural system influence the process of translation.The author hopes that this thesis can promote the research to a wider scope,and also can provide further researches from different perspectives and with references. |
