Description
Shaping the detective in Agatha Cristie’s The Murder of the Orient Express
Charikleia Smyrli
MA ‘Translation: Greek, English, Russian’
The study attempts to explore differences in the way a Greek and a Russian target version of Agatha Christie’s novel Murder on the Orient Express shapes the detective, Hercules Poirot. The data derive from the two last chapters of the novel, where the tension escalates before the detective unveils the truth. The study uses a theory of identity (Schwartz, Luyckx, Vignoles 2011) to highlight aspects of the detective’s character as manifested in the two translations. Most of the findings are confirmed by a questionnaire addressing seven English-Greek-Russian trilingual MA students, aged 22-40. The study shows how Greek and Russian translators are renegotiating Poirot’s figure. The detective appears more polite, elegant and gentle, in Greek, while in Russian more humorous, comprehensive and simple. The study suggests that translation practice is a rich resource for studying identity construction in fiction, raising awareness of the translators’ potential to manipulate identities.
