A Comparative Study On The English Translations Of Tea House

Drama is considered as an integral part of literature and art.Tea house,a perfect combination of language and drama,is one of the greatest works which stands for the top achievements of Laoshe in language arts.With three acts of this play,Tea house reflects every aspects of Chinese society and culture,which poses a severe challenge towards translators.Based on two most influential English versions of Tea house(translated by Ying Ruocheng and Howard Gibbon respectively),this paper makes a comparative study from the perspective of receptional aesthetic.There are many researches between the two English versions of Tea house actually,however,most of which are carried out in terms of Skopos theory,functional equivalence,stage culture,etc.And this paper is intended to fill up the blank in the area of receptional aesthetic.To be more specific,this paper places more emphasis on the dynamic process among the author,work and readers as well as the experience of reading.This paper is divided into six parts:The first part focuses on the introduction of the play-writer,namely Laoshe;the second part gives a general introduction to Tea house,including the background and features of language;the third part discusses the receptional aesthetic theory and its theoretic characteristics;the fourth part demonstrates the the background and significance of this study;the fifth part makes a comparative analysis of these two English versions from seven perspectives,such as Beijing dialect,colloquial words,culture-loaded words and so forth;the last part is conclusions.The author summarizes the whole paper and comes to a conclusion that the translator should be guided by the aesthetic theory and use compound translation methods so as to achieve the acceptance of the readers.Besides,a good translating work can not be achieved without the enthusiasm of the translators.In addition,deficiencies and limitations of these two English versions are also addressed in the paper.Through the analysis of these two English versions translated by Ying Ruocheng and John Howard Gibbon respectively,the paper points out that comparative analysis between different translations is of great significance to the development of translation theory and the launching of classic versions.And the author hopes to give some guidance for Chinese culture fans and drama translators,which can promote further development of Chinese drama translation,finding its own way to the world.