Translating the couleur locale of Elizabeth Gaskell’s North and South

Abstract

This thesis deals with translating a dated text in such a way that the time spirit and the cultural identity of the source text remain tangible in the translated text. A chapter of Elizabeth Gaskell’s novel North and South is translated into Dutch and analysed in four different categories as described by Christiane Nord. The finding of this thesis is that by varying between modern and old-fashioned language, and by not translating typical English names and measurements, the spirit of the text will remain largely intact.