This study is an interdisciplinary study of translation studies and imagology. Imagology or Image studies is a study of national and ethnic stereotypes presented in text or other mediums. In recent years imagology have been increasingly used in the fi...
This study is an interdisciplinary study of translation studies and imagology. Imagology or Image studies is a study of national and ethnic stereotypes presented in text or other mediums. In recent years imagology have been increasingly used in the field of Translation studies. However, in Korea, imagology has not yet got its attention.
Based on this background, this study aims to examine national images in translations of famous detective fiction; Sherlock Holmes. It is motivated by two research questions: (i) How the national images have been translated into Korean, (ii) Whether the difference in the target readership affects those translation strategies.
In order to examine the national images in translation, this study analyzed the Sherlock Holmes and its translations. Arthur Conan Doyle provides a conservative perspective to preserve the order of society through the story of Sherlock Holmes. Furthermore, the story reflects the anxiety of the Victorian British arises from the influx of colonists to their country. Therefore, readers of Sherlock Holmes can identify the author’s ideology from those characteristics,
For the study, Sherlock Holmes and its Korean translations from five different publishers were chosen as data for this study. Specifically, three translations(TT1, TT2, TT3) aimed at adults, and the other two(TT4, TT5) at children to investigate the translation strategies of national images. To compare and analyze the aspects of national image translation quantitatively and qualitatively, this paper present strategies; (1) reflection of image, (2) modification of image, and (3) elimination of image.
The 325 case analysis results show that the tendency to reflect the image of the original text was most dominant in all five translations. Whereas in the two translations of children, the modification and elimination of image were more prominent than the other three translations. Particularly the elimination strategy was remarkable. In the case of elimination, the expression was changed into the individual characteristics or deleted the sentence entirely.
Overall, the findings suggested that the genre of detective fiction, which contains and reveals the author’s ideology, is a suitable genre for translation research. Furthermore, this study brought attention to imagology, the new applicable discipline of translation studies,
To supplement the limitation of this study, future research is necessary to expand the scope and try other research methodologies to observe the readers‘ reponses of translated national images, and investigate intentions of the professionals from publishing industry through in-depth interviews.