英文摘要 |
During the late Qing and early Republican periods, translations of western detective novels were popular in China-especially Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's famous stories of Sherlock Holmes. Over the decade after these stories were introduced into China, the number of Chinese translations of stories about this famous British detective steadily increased and, to a certain extent, inspired Chinese writers to write their own detective novels. The translation and transculturation of the Sherlock Holmes stories has already attracted interest from many scholars. However, much less research has been done on the ''gentleman-cambrioleur'' (gentleman burglar) Arsène Lupin, and his adventures. These stories by the equally famous French novelist Maurice Leblanc were not introduced into China until 1912. This paper examines the Chinese translations of Arsène Lupin during the twentieth century, in the early republican Shanghai. As a famous popular literature writer, editor, and translator, Zhou Shoujuan contributed the most in translating Arsène Lupin stories into Chinese at that time. Through Zhou's adaptation and modification of the original texts and characters, Arsène Lupin travelled throughout China. By transforming Arsène Lupin into a mercurial character, known as ''Xia,'' after an ancient Chinese warrior folk hero, Zhou created a unique fictional world for his readers. Through transcultural comparisons and close examination, this paper discusses how Zhou Shoujuan shaped the image of Arsène Lupin from a burglar in France to a folk hero in Shanghai. It also examines how Zhou Shoujuan showed his cultural imagination through translations; and demonstrates how his translations and interpretations represent the dialogue between Chinese and Western literary traditions and cultural values. In the last section, the paper illustrates the cultural connotations of Arsène Lupin's extraordinary adventures in modern China by carefully comparing the original French texts with their Chinese and English translations. |