A Study Of Characterization In Translating Hamlet Into Chines

Theatrical translation study has always been a neglected area of translationstudies. The study on “performability” of a text has taken up a large percentage oftraditional studies.“Performability” probes have, to say the least, two deficiencies.One is that it lacks scientific proof. Second, studies on “performability” fail to regardplay text as a reading material.Apart from “performability” studies, some scholars have conducted theirresearch from a cultural perspective. Though studies from cultural perspectivebroaden the scope and possibilities of translation studies, they nevertheless have theirown limitations in implementing the criteria of theatrical translation and in providingguidance for translation practice.This paper aims at developing new approaches toward the standards of theatricaltranslation. Play as a literature genre has its unique way of presenting theatricalcharacters and personalities through dialogues. In translating Hamlet, three aspects arefundamental for characterization–rhetorical devices, poetry and stylistic markers. Acomparative study is made on translations of Zhu Shenghao and Bian Zhilin.Zhu renders Hamlet into prose, losing the rhythmic value of poetic charm yetreserving the aesthetic value of the original text. He was nevertheless able to translatethe ballads of the characters. Bian translated Hamlet into poetry, loyal to original textin form. He translated the rhetorical devices according to each character’s desert. Interms of stylistic markers neither the translations is satisfactory.This paper makes a probe into the representation of theatrical characters throughcomparing the dialogues of several characters with mainstream literature critic ascriteria. Research methods of this paper include same-language literature comparison,stylistic markers analysis, quantitative analysis, etc. This paper tries to discover thedifference in character representation and contribution to theatrical translation criteria.