Drama Translation From Chinese To English

Drama has dual natures.On the one hand,drama is one of the literary genres with its purpose to be readable.This is the literary feature shared by other literary genres.On the other hand,drama is also a form of performance art with its major purpose to be performed on the stage;this is known as the performability of drama.It is the dual natures of drama that lead to the complexity of drama translation.The notion of performability was first put forward by Susan Bassnett and considered as an important principle of drama translation.But she later strongly opposed to performability because she thought that there was no clear definition of performability and it was not operational enough.However,many scholars do not agree with her.They believe that because drama script is finally to be performed on the stage,performability is undoubtedly of great importance to drama translation.Although Ying Ruocheng has never expressed his support to performability,he puts forward several principles of drama translation in order to make drama performable.Therefore,based on the drama translation principles of Ying Ruocheng,the study chooses three dramas translated by Ying Ruocheng as the case study.Ying Ruocheng believes that it is necessary to take into consideration orality,gestuality and acceptability in terms of drama translation.From the perspective of orality,translators need to use live and concise language;from the perspective of gestuality,translators need to make the actions and emotions behind actors' dialogues explicit to audience;from the perspective of acceptability,translators need to make audiences understand every expression specific in one culture.Based on the above three principles,the author chooses three aspects,including deixis,discourse markers and culture-loaded words,to carry out the case study.The author analyzes the specific principles of drama translation under the general principles.In addition,based on the above three aspects,the author also describes and summarizes the translation strategies in The Family,Teahouse and Uncle Doggie's Nirvana.