A Study Of Drama Translation Around The May4th Movement

The May 4^th Movement is an important period in Chinese history. At that time whether the social conditions or culture of China were all in a transitional period. In this period, it witnessed another climax of translation in China and it also contributed to the development of drama. Through the translation and presentation of foreign plays, the dramas of China both in the selection of texts and writing skills have changed and it gradually matures.This thesis studies the dramatic translation of the May 4^th Movement---mainly the drama translated from English into Chinese. Taking system theory(Polysystem Theory, norms and rewriting theory) as its theoretical framework, this thesis describes and explains the selection of the texts and different translators'choice of translation strategies in this period. Polysystem Theory, norms and rewriting theory are all target-oriented, which emphasize the impacts and constrains of various factors of the target system on the translation and the influences of translation on the target literary system. According to these theories, like other literary types of translation, drama translation is also dominated by the forces of target culture and society. So the target environment and the drama system of the May 4^th Movement exerted great impact on the translation of foreign dramas regarding the selection of texts and the choice of translation strategies in the process..A large number of foreign dramas were translated into Chinese during the May 4^th Movement. According to incomplete statistics, about 170 play texts were translated and published, involving nearly 70 writers of 20 countries. This study shows that there are two standards for the selection of the script in this period: one is"art for art sake"which is for the pure art; the other is the reality service. Drama is able to reflect social problems and criticizes the reality.The study shows that the factors which influence the translation strategies are various, but there is always one factor in the dominant position in a special case of translation, for example, Hong Shen's adaptation of Wilde's Lady Windermere's Fan analyzed in this thesis, the main translation strategy used is adaptation and domestication. This translation met the ideology of the society and the expectations of the audiences of that time, so the performance of this play was a great success. However, in the time of the May 4^th Movement, the dramatic literature of China was in a transition period. In order to import new styles and skills of drama, some scripts were translated literally, like Tian Han's translation of Wilde's Salome. Through the investigation of these two translation scripts, it shows that the main factors which influenced the choice of the translation strategies were: the social situation and ideology of the target system, the norms and development and changes of drama in the subsystem of the target system, the intentions of the translator and the expectations of the audiences etc. No matter what translation strategies the translators used, their translations were restricted to some extent by target literature literary system, yet their translation also made great influence on the target literature system especially the theater subsystem.