A Study Of English-Chinese Drama Translation From The Perspective Of Hatim And Mason’s Context Theory

Drama is a specific category of literature meant to be performed on stage.A typical play is Pygmalion,characterized by enthralling stage directions and boasting vivid characters from different social classes and with distinctive personalities,featured dialogues and special dialects.How to render these in translation is a big task for translators.A top-notch drama translation requires translators to weigh and consider multi-faceted factors,including the cultural and social background of the original play,the dramatist’s intention of the source text,and the speakability,performability,and acceptability of the target text.A good example is Yang Xianyi’s translation of Pygmalion.This thesis draws on Hatim and Mason’s context theory to conduct a multi-dimensional analysis of Yang Xianyi’s translation of Pygmalion in the hope of discovering Yang’s translation techniques.This thesis first introduces Hatim and Mason’s context theory and discusses the features of drama translation,arguing for the applicability of the context theory to the analysis of drama translation.Then,the thesis selects three typical paragraphs from the play Pygmalion,among which two reflect the different speech styles of Eliza,the heroine of the play,and one is about other main characters,for a detailed analysis within the frame of the three dimensions of context.Last but not least,the findings,significance and limitations of the present study are all summarized in the conclusion.From the above-mentioned analysis,the author of the thesis finds that Hatim and Mason’s context theory is effective for the analysis of drama translation and discovers that Yang Xianyi’s translation is faithful to the dramatist’s intention and is speakable,performable and acceptable to the Chinese readers,so that each character comes to life under his translation.Finally,the author of the thesis summarizes some of Yang Xianyi’s translation techniques which are of some significance to the future study and practice of English-Chinese drama translation.