Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde:A Case-Study in Translation?

Abstract

Translation is able to put the hard question simply. The title itself of Stevenson's Strange Case ofDrJekyll and Mr Hyde forces the translator to decide: what kind of case is the strange one in which Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde are implicated? For a French translator the question is interestingly vexed, since the English 'case' has a breadth of reference which no French equivalent enjoys. A medical or psychological case is best rendered as un cas. Cas does also have a judicial sense, but does not translate 'case' in the sense of a detective case.2 This is more accurately translated by the word affaire? Both the medical and detective uses of 'case' are clearly available to Stevenson, since, as we shall see, he uses them in his text. So which should it be? The translator is right to pause over the word in Stevenson's title. The local problem of how to translate a single word raises here the fundamental question of what kind of story the novel tells. Is Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, to borrow the definitions of the OED, 'a record of the progress of disease in an individual', or is it rather an account of 'a set of circumstances requiring investigation by the police or other detective agency'? Is it, in other words, un cas or une affaire} Translations of Strange Case ofDrJekyll and Mr Hyde in the word's widest sense of critical summaries and film versions as well as translations into other languages have overwhelmingly assumed the answer to be cas. The novel emerges from these translations as a psychological case-history of Jekyll with a wider social significance. Rosemary Jackson's description of the novel sets out this view: it is 'usually seen as the clearest allegory of Victorian hypocrisy and repression ... The other side of the human returns to act out latent libidinal