Translation Report Of The Face Of Chiang Kai-shek

This translation report is based on the author's translation of the play script of the Chinese drama The Face of Chiang Kai-shek.This Chinese dramatic work is a phenomenal one in recent years.It consists of two acts,over 28 thousand words in total.There has been no other English translation yet.Three reasons for choosing this play script to translate are as follows.First,the script is of high quality with attractive plot and vivid characters.Second,after hundreds of times of performances,the play has been popular and highly commented for years.Third,the story is about the “face culture”,depicting a typical Chinese society.In translating this play script,the translator aimed at providing an English translation as reference when the drama is performed overseas in English.Furthermore,the translator hopes more great dramatic works like The Face of Chiang Kai-shek can be put on stage overseas.Drama features both “performability” and “literariness”.The dual nature increases difficulty for the translation.The principle of performability in drama translation emphasizes that a dramatic text should be performance-oriented rather than reading-oriented.The translator followed the principle of performability and took speakability,actability and acceptability as practical guidance on this translation.Through repeated reading and modification,where several translation methods and techniques were applied,including liberal translation,literal translation,addition,shift and so on,the translator managed to preserve the performability in the English translation.There used to be doubt about the practicability of performability and this report proves that performability is practical in translation.