A Study On Yu Guangzhong’s Drama Translation

In addition to the creation of poetry and prose,Yu Guangzhong also translates many works of other genres,including English dramas.As for drama translation,Yu Guangzhong mainly renders Oscar Wilde’s four works.When translating Wilde’s dramas,Yu Guangzhong reckons that the audiences in the theatre should be taken into consideration besides the readers of the text.Therefore,the language in drama translation should be brief and rhymed to reproduce the literariness in the source text.Moreover,Yu Guangzhong thinks that the drama is a performing art,so the performability in the drama should also be taken as a priority.In his view,whether the source text should be rendered in a vulgar way or a humorous way is determined by the characters’ personalities and conflicts in a drama.Hence,characters in a drama need to speak in a suitable way to attract the target audiences.In this way,translators should consider not only the “eyes” of the target readers,but also the “ears” of the audiences and the “mouths” of the actors.In order to reproduce the literariness and performability in the source text,Yu Guangzhong employs diverse translation strategies in the translation of four dramas written by Wilde—The Importance of Being Earnest,An Ideal Husband,A Woman of No Importance and Lady Windermere’s Fan and his versions consequently have become comparatively significant in literature.Some scholars believe that some dialogues translated by Yu Guangzhong are superior to those in the source text.However,most scholars focus on Yu Guangzhong’s poem translation and only one or two of his drama translations are taken as the research subjects rather than the translations of the complete four dramas.From the perspective of the dualistic nature of the drama(literariness and performability),this thesis attempts to study the translation strategies employed by Yu Guangzhong represented in the translations of Wilde’s four dramas.Besides the analysis of rhetorical devices including rhythm scheme,repetition,antithesis and puns,and explicitness,this thesis also researches the speakability and actability in the drama translation so that we can explore further into the translation of dramas.