The Abbey Grange

[Dithiothreitol]

Is it an abbey named Grange or a grange named Abbey?

The Abbey Grange is the name of a country manor in a Sherlock Holmes short story. What is confusing me is that I found the majority of Chinese translations are using 格兰其庄园(an abbey named Grange), but I also found some Japanese translations are using 僧坊荘園(the monastery grange) or アベ荘園(a grange named Abbey), and yet the French translations are mainly le manoir de l'abbaye (the manor of the abbey).

I'm assuming that it's a grange with perhaps an abbey nearby, hence the name, but I'm not so sure.

And the same goes for Dingle Dell. We are trying to do some translation exercises and again I’m not sure whether it's a dingle or a dell, or is it a combination of both? This just feels impossible to find a perfect translation.

 

[probus]

It is neither. As you said yourself, it is the name of a country manor. A country manor is a very large home in the countryside.

Also, by the way, Dingle Dell would be a dell which is called Dingle Dell to distinguish it from other dells. And dell is archaic. Nobody uses it nowadays except in place names.

 

[jutfrank]

I don't think it's a good idea to try to translate names literally like that.

 

[probus]

I don't think it's a good idea to try to translate names literally like that.

As a footnote, Dithiothreitol, it would be reasonable to conjecture that there was an abbey nearby when the first part of the house was built. But remember that most of the British abbeys were destroyed during the reign of Henry VIII. The putative abbey was probably no more than a ruin at the time Conan Doyle was writing about.