Not so uncanny after all : Bram Stoker's Dracula in translation

What is the cost of translation? This is the essential question of this thesis. Comparing three interdependent texts, namely a Victorian novel and its Norwegian and German translations, is the means by which an answer to that question shall be given. Bram Stoker’s 1897 novel Dracula is today one of the standard works of Gothic fiction. Modern vampire fiction shows clear references to Stoker’s original work. Also translation of the text is an intertextual act of interpretation and reference. But do the existing Norwegian and German translations of the text do justice to the original work? Dracula, being a complex work, composed of diverse texts, albeit edited by a more or less unknown editor. This complexity asks a lot of the reader – and the translator – who has to (re-)construct the plot during the reading process. The reader is confronted with different media, different genres and different registers of languages use in this one fin-de-siècle novel. Additionally, the novel’s then from 1897 has to be realised in the reader’s now of 2011, which is a challenge as well: to what degree shall the original text be transported to the reader’s now, and to what degree has the reader to be led back to the novel’s then? Vampire fiction, nowadays being a popular genre following in the wake of Stoker’s 1897 novel, has over the years contributed to an increasing degree of simplification concerning the vampire motif. This has apparently left its traces also in the works of translations of the text: a lot of the original’s ambiguity, one has to conclude, is reduced or even lost in translation. In order to prove this claim, the argumentation will approach the problem from two sides: Firstly, the complexity of the original will be demonstrated, with special focus on media, genre and use of language – the text itself is challenged. Secondly, selected text excerpts will be compared to their respective translations – in order to challenge the theory. Stoker’s ambiguous literary work seems to be outsmarting its translators – or is simply in need of a new translation both in Norwegian and in Germa