A Report On E-C Translation Of A Line To Kill (Excerpt) Guided By Steiner’s Hermeneutic Translation Theory

Detective fiction,one of the most well-loved genres in popular literature,mainly focuses on the occurrence of criminal cases and the process of deduction and detection.A Line To Kill(2021),a detective novel written by Anthony Horowitz,is selected as the translation material.Based on the analysis of text and language features of detective fiction,the translator carried out the task under the guidance of Steiner’s hermeneutic translation theory,attempting to summarize both key and difficult points while doing E-C translation of such novels,and to sum up some applicable translation methods and techniques,so as to provide useful references for E-C translation of detective fiction in the future.A Line To Kill was first published by Penguin Random House in 2021.Anthony Horowitz,the author of this book,is a celebrated British novelist and screenwriter.This book revolves around a criminal case that took place on Alderney,an isolated island.The writer is adept in resorting to descriptions of portrait,action and mental activity to suggest the motives of each character and the secret relationships between them,further to set clues and suspense for the plot development.All this has posed a great challenge for the translator to present a similar artistic effect in translation and reproduce the suspensesetting and tension-building of the original work.In the process of translation,the translator carried out the analysis,comprehension and reproduction of the original text according to Steiner’s fourfold translation motions—"trust","aggression","incorporation","restitution".She found that this theory can be used to guide the translation of detective fiction effectively.In the stage of trust,the translator conducted a comprehensive investigation of the selected text to confirm the writing ability and status of the writer,the quality and value of the content,and then established trust with the original text.In the stage of aggression,with the assistance of contrastive linguistics,the translator focused on solving the problem of understanding the meaning of difficult words,phrases and sentences,further to grasp the surface meaning as well as the extended meaning.In the stage of incorporation,the translator took into account the expression patterns of target language and strived to present artistic features in the translation which are similar to those of the original text.In the stage of restitution,the translator compensated for the loss of information in the previous stages and tried to restore the balance between the original text and target text.This report mainly finds that when it comes to creating a certain atmosphere,the use of rhetorical devices in environmental descriptions,such as metaphor and personification,should be retained to the greatest extent possible.Normally,literal translation can be adopted directly,while in particular cases like the occurrence of palindrome—a figure of speech with special structure that has different forms in Chinese and English,the appliance of free translation and transcreation will be conducive to restoring a similar rhetorical effect.In regard to words or phrases carrying certain colors of their own,exaggeration or amplification can be applied in the enhancement of their rhetorical features,so as to deepen the degree of atmosphere rendered.In the setting of suspense and clues,the translator needs to have a clear understanding of the storyline of detective fiction,and perceive the connection between the preceding and following parts of the novel in advance.Faced with the action descriptions between characters,the translator should attach great importance to the translation of verbs in the original text,which helps to achieve the reproduction of a mystery and tense atmosphere.All these solutions mentioned require the translator to give full play to his or her subjectivity and creativity.