A Comparative Study Of The Two English Versions Of Teahouse In Light Of Context Theory

Unlike novel and poem translation which have received keen attention from scholars, drama translation, as an indispensable part of literary translation, has always been a neglected area due to the dualistic nature of drama. Most of the translation theorists study drama translation from the perspective of style, culture, aesthetics or performability, less has been done in applying the theories of linguistics, especially context theory to translation studies to conduct a systemic study, therefore their views and principles on drama translation lack of theoretical support and tend to be subjective.Context, as an important notion in systemic-functional linguistics, exerts great influence on language use and its function. Context is the actual environment in language use. Where there is language interaction, there is context. According to Halliday, translation is an activity of language interaction. And it is the nature of translation to keep the meaning and function unchanged in the process of translation or in other words tries to achieve equivalence in both function and meaning between source text and target text. Therefore, the translator should take specific contexts of the source text into consideration and dig out the original writer’s hidden thoughts and real intention, then express the source text adequately in target language and recreate appropriate contexts in target text.Recently, more and more attention has been drawn on the application of context theory in SFL to translation studies and context theory provides a theoretical framework for the systemic study of translation. However, little has been found in applying context theory to the translation of modern Chinese drama. Teahouse is one of Lao She’s most influential and is also regarded as a monumental work in the history of modern Chinese drama. Owning to the specific context of culture and context of situation as well as the complexity of characters in the play, the translator need to give a detailed analysis of the original text, in order to seek equivalence in both meaning and function to the utmost in the target text. This thesis adopts discourse analysis to make a comparative analysis of the two English versions of Teahouse within the framework of context theory. The thesis taking the characteristics of dramatic language into consideration, examines whether the equivalence of meaning and function has been realized between source text and target text from three strata of context of culture, context of situation and context of co-text and analysis how context theory affects the apprehension of source text, the translation strategy of the translator and the selection of language expressions in the target text.