Spiritual Resemblance: Strategies In Translating Stage-Oriented Drama

In the history of translation studies, drama translation has been least explored among all literary genres. The general accepted view on the absence of theoretical and practical studies rest with its dualistic nature of being a performing art and also being literature. Translating of stage-oriented drama, due to its performable nature, differs from other literary translation in that stage-oriented drama translation does not only mean the transfer in linguistic aspect, but also involves other non-linguistic factors. After all, the ultimate end of translating dramatic text is to bring the lifeless words on the page to life on the stage, precisely the visual and acoustic images, alive and dynamic.The existing studies on drama translation and its practice by now are mostly conducted for reading, and have left out the primary characteristics of drama as an art form and ignored study on dramatic language. What drama bears and intends to show are displayed mainly through the media of dramatic language with its unique characteristics. Therefore the main purpose on the part of drama translators is not to isolate the play text but to place it in the comprehensive theatrical system, straining for retaining the characteristics of dramatic language in the target text.The principle of spiritual resemblance represented by Fu Lei plays a significant role in Chinese translation theories. As not only a guiding and evaluating principle, but also the highest criteria translators strive for, spiritual resemblance means the closeness of the TT to the ST to the greatest extent. Spiritual resemblance, on the one hand, refers to the retaining of the overall spirit, style, tone, energy etc. of the ST in TT; on the other, it implies that the recreation of each word or sentence is just to the point, precise and exquisite to make the words or sentences alive and dynamic, and also qualified to manifest the overall style or spirit of the original. The present author combines the principle of spiritual resemblance with stage-oriented drama translation, exploring the possibility of retaining the characteristics of dramatic language in target text and the strategies and skills on doing that, taking examples from the Chinese versions of Bernard Shaw's Pygmalion and English versions of Lao She's Teahouse, with the guiding principle and evaluating criteria of spiritual resemblance.