A Study On Prefaces And Postscripts Of The Chinese Versions Of Shakespeare’s Plays

Prefaces and postscripts are the integral part of Shakespeare’s translated texts.They usually introduce the historical background of the work,the life of Shakespeare,the outline of the stories,and contain literary and translation criticism of great insights and academic value.However,this field is rarely involved in the research at home and abroad.On this very note,this paper makes a comprehensive and systematic study of the prefaces and postscripts of Chinese versions of Shakespeare’s plays,and investigates 356 selected prefaces and postscripts.From the perspective of translation research,this paper uses the methods of literature research,comparative research and case study to explore the specific manifestation of the translator’s subjectivity,and explores the translation value of the prefaces and postscripts.This paper is composed of five chapters.The first chapter introduces the background and significance of this topic,the research object and the definition of the concept which offers the detailed standards of selecting materials in this paper,and methodology of the thesis.The second chapter is literature review which investigates the research on the paratext,prefaces and postscripts,prefaces and postscripts of the translation versions at home and abroad.It combs and summarizes the relevant literatures from abroad to home and from ancient times to the present,and points out the value and innovations of this study.The third chapter is an overview of the prefaces and postscripts summarized in the form of tables,and emphatically analyzes their characteristic — the embodiment of the translator’s subjectivity,including the translator’s annotation of the original work,the cause and purpose of translation,the difficulty and hardship of translation as well as the principle and method of translation.The prefaces and postscripts are the field of translators to show themselves.The fourth chapter discusses the translation strategies and thoughts referred in prefaces and postscripts.The translation strategies are divided into three parts: the translation of style,the translation of personal names,places,plays’ titles and the handling of stage instructions.This part summarizes the content of prefaces and postscripts,reviews the historical evolution of translation strategies,and analyzes the applicability of these strategies to today’s translation.In terms of the translators’ thoughts of Shakespeare’s plays,this paper first reviews the evolution of the thoughts,and then extracts valuable ones as the reference for future translation.The fifth chapter is a summary of the whole paper,pointing out its shortcomings and future research ideas.It is found that the prefaces and postscripts are in the large amount and“more than one preface or postscript in a book”prevails in those Chinese versions.Besides,the prefaces and postscripts are rich in content,fully reflecting the subjectivity of the translators,gathering the translators’insights of translation strategies including debate,reflection and improvement,having the unique translation methods to discuss practical problems.The translation thoughts presented in the prefaces and postscripts are deeply influenced by the part of Chinese translation theoretical systems“seeking for faithfulness—spirit likeness—transmigration”(求信——神似——化境),and some prefaces and postscripts have the value of complementing Chinese translation theoretical works.In this study,prefaces and postscripts are discussed in the macro background of Chinese translation theory system,breaking through the limitation that predecessors only focus on prefaces and postscripts themselves.And this systematic study is of great significance to the research on text and paratext of Shakespeare’s plays,the practice of drama translation and the translation study.