Cultural Loss In Ying Ruocheng’s English Translation Of The Family

Cultural loss is the focus of drama translation and translation criticism.Compared with other texts, drama language features colloquialism, conciseness,personalization, and performability which make cultural loss in drama translationmore common.The Family by Cao Yu is one of the classics of Chinese drama. The drama isabout a traditional Chinese feudal family as well as the fates of the family membersand it depicts the ethics and feudal morality in the1920s. Although The Familytranslated by Ying Ruocheng successively promoted Chinese drama to the west andwon the recognition of the western audience, there is cultural loss in the promotion ofChinese culture of the original text in the translation.The cultural loss in the translation of The Family mainly includes thecharacterization, dramatization and traditional Chinese ethics and morality. Thethesis analyzes cultural loss in dialogues, soliloquy and appellations incharacterization, poetic effect of language and image as well as performance on stagein dramatization, and lastly, in the traditional ethics and morality in Ying’s translation.With respect to the different extent of the above-mentioned cultural loss, the thesisexpounds on the causes of cultural loss and its effect on the function of dramatic textand analyzes possible further improvement.