Pragmatic Analysis On Yu Guangzhong’s Drama Translation

Drama, as an ancient literature genre, has many features that differ from other literature genres. It has always been an attractive art form among the people. Owing to its popularity, there have been many translators who have rendered countless prominent plays into various languages. However, the study on translation has long been neglected with little systematic theories and standards.Pragmatics, as a new branch of linguistics, studies the language in use. It focuses on the daily conversation and studies the meaning that can not be explained by semantics or analyzed by traditional grammar. Dialogue is the soul of drama, therefore, it is proper and necessary to apply the pragmatic theory in drama translation. The pragmatic theory can guide and help the translator to grasp the intention of the characters and transfer it to the readers and audience. This thesis intends to conduct a detailed analysis on Yu Guangzhong’s translation of Wilde’plays armed with the pragmatic theories, aiming to prove that pragmatics is of great value in drama translation and Yu Guangzhong’s drama translation is pragmatic equivalent. Due to the limitation of time and space, only two pragmatic theories are covered, namely, Speech Act Theory and Conversational Implicatures.In the conclusion part, the author proves that Yu Guangzhong’s drama translation achieves pragmatic equivalence based on the Speech Act Theory and Conversational Implicature. In the process of drama translation, the translator should take both the pragmatic equivalence and semantic equivalence into consideration. Although pragmatics can not guide the whole process of translation, it does play an important role in improving the drama translation.