A Report On The Translation Of English Detective Stories From The Perspective Of Hermeneutical Translation Theory

Dumb Witness is a detective novel written by Agatha Christie and highly popular among Chinese readers.So far,this novel has been translated into Chinese many times and four versions of the translation have been published.Unfortunately,somewhat those translations cannot satisfy today’s Chinese readers nor cater to their tastes due to out-of-date wording or improper or incorrect translations.Thus,it is high time to re-translate the concerned novel and carry out certain research on the present translations of English detective stories.Based on the theoretical principles of Hermeneutics,this report takes the translation of Dumb Witness as the case study to explore how George Steiner’s Fourfold Translation Motion Theory can be put into practice in translating English detective stories into Chinese.By comparing my own translation of the concerned story with its other two published versions,the report has listed and analyzed ample examples about cultural words,long sentences,and discourse tricks to examine the effectiveness of the translation strategies and methods inspired by the Fourfold Translation Motion Theory,in hope that this report will open up some new topics for the research on English-Chinese translation of the detective stories.The report is mainly composed of five parts.The first part offers a general introduction to the textual and linguistic features of the detective stories by Agatha Christie as well as their translations into Chinese,with Dumb Witness in particular.The second part focuses on the translation theory of hermeneutics.The third part briefly summarizes my own translation of the concerned story.As the body part of the report,the forth part takes the Dumb Witness(from Chapter One to Chapter Ten)as the case study,focusing on the application of the Fourfold Translation Motion Theory to the translation.The fifth part reflects on the strategies and methods adopted in translating the Dumb Witness and explores whether the hermeneutic translation theory could be put into practice more widely in translating into Chinese other English detective stories rather than only those by Agatha Christie.