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Article published In:
Translation and Challenges of the Third Millennium
Edited by Frans De Laet, Brankica Bojović and Boris Hlebec
[Babel 65:6] 2019
► pp. 769–786

Bram Stoker’s Dracula and its undead stories of translation

| West University of Timișoara

Studying the translations of Bram Stoker’s Dracula, one of the most successful novels of all times, may reveal, even nowadays, several surprises. First published by Constable on 26 May 1897, Bram Stoker’s Dracula has never been out of print, and it has been translated into about 30 languages (Light 2009). This article starts with an analysis of some keywords in Bram Stoker’s sources on Transylvania and their translations from Romanian into English, and points to some inaccurate translations which influenced the novelist to locate the action in Transylvania and change the name of the main vampire character. The following subchapters examine the recent research on the first translations of Dracula, discussing the Hungarian translation (1898), the Swedish variant (1899) and the Icelandic versions (1900, 1901), and the last section is dedicated to the translation into Romanian, published in 1990.

Keywords: Dracula , Bram Stoker, Vlad the Impaler, translations of Dracula , Gothic, vampires
Article outline
  • 1.Translations in Bram Stoker’s sources for Dracula
  • 2.The Hungarian translation (1898)
  • 3.The Icelandic version Makt Mirkranna (1900, 1901)
  • 4.The Swedish version Mörkrets makter (1899)
  • 5.The Romanian translation (1990)
  • References
Published online: 17 January 2020
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/babel.00124.cri
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