How suspense in detective fiction is affected when translated : a case study based on textual analysis of three Chinese translations of The Hound of the Baskervilles

Abstract

Suspense as represented in translated fiction is an under-researched field. To date, there appear to be no published studies of suspense in translated versions of detective fiction. This thesis aims to examine how suspense is re-created or re-presented in translation into Chinese, and whether and how the translation changes the sense of suspense. The investigation is based on an exploratory comparative textual study of three recent Chinese translations of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s The Hound of the Baskervilles, one of Sherlock Holmes’ most renowned cases. The thesis adopts Iwata’s (2008) model of suspense as the theoretical framework and modifies it to better identify the suspense as conveyed in the source text and the three translations. Van Leuven-Zwart’s (1989) transeme model is used to examine semantic shifts in the three Chinese translations to determine how suspense is re-created and affected in the target texts. The findings suggest that all three translators have shown inconsistency when tackling suspenseful conditions as various shifts are detected in each translation. The translators choose to make no shift or a certain degree of semantic shift each time, based on their own understanding and interpretation of the selected text, leading to divergent re-creation of suspense. The thesis identifies potential contributors to translation of suspense which may impact on future research and practice. The data presented here relate to Chinese translation, but may be applied to other language pairs