Comparative analysis of the translation methods of slang words in hard-boiled crime fiction: James Hadley Chase's Mission to Siena and its two Estonian translations

Abstract

This thesis focusses the detective fiction subcategory of hard-boiled crime fiction and its main characteristics specifically slang words and their translation strategies. The analysis is based on James Hadley Chase's Mission to Siena (1955) and its two different translations from English into Estonian, both published in 1991. The first part of the thesis consists of an overview of detective crime fiction and its subcategories with a focus on hard-boiled crime fiction and its characteristics. In the following slang is defined and the most used translation strategies for translating slang are described. The first part also contains a deliberation on the possible reasons for the phenomenon of two simultaneously published different translations. The second part of the thesis focusses on the comparative analysis of the translations of Mission to Siena by Votele Viidemann (Missioon Sienas) and Kaimo Vuks (Kilpkonna tuleb otsida Sienast). The translators' choices concerning translation methods used for slang words translation are compared and analysed.