A Study On E-C Musical Translation From The Perspective Of Performability

With endless exploration of artists and successful commercial operation,musicals have become one of the most critical entertainments in people’s leisure life.In 2007,Cats was introduced to the Chinese audience and performed for more than 70 times,which has been proved to be a huge success.Because of the resounding hit of Cats,Mamamia obtained the copyright and was translated into Chinese as well.In order to make the plays easier to understand for the domestic audience in China and make them more enjoyable when they watch the performance,some of them will be translated into Chinese.Correspondingly,the demand of translated musicals in the musicals market of China is increasing day by day,which makes the study on musical translation stand out conspicuously in the field of translation studies.Based on three translations of Cats including Xue Fan’s translation for stage,Fei Yuanhong’s translation for page and Wang Hao ’s translation for score collection,a comparative study is applied in this thesis along with a quantitative study,in order to analyze the feasibility of performability in musical translation and the unique features of musical translation for stage performance.The findings of this study are as follows:(1)The feasibility of performability in musical translation can be proved in the research considering that musicals are a special drama form which shares the basic elements with drama.(2)Although musicals are a subclass of drama,it still has its own unique features;therefore,the translator should pay attention not only to its literariness but also its musicalsity.(3)Through the comparative study among three Chinese translation versions of Cats,the author found that translators apply performability in their works in different degree due to the function of the text.