A Study On Chinese Translation Of Death Of A Salesman From The Perspective Of The Series Of Concretizations Of Drama Texts

Drama is a comprehensive art that combines text and stage,which means that it not only has characteristics of literature,but also characteristics of stage performance.Because of that,drama translation is more complicated than other literary translation,which makes it neglected in translation studies.It wasn’t until the 1980 s that it gradually entered the field of view of researchers.In the past ten years,it has set off a new momentum of translation studies,pushing studies of drama translation from the“textual faithfulness” debate,that is,whether drama translation should be faith to the original or serve the target text,to a new stage,that is,drama translation need to take into account the needs of stage performance.After that “performability” in drama translation has been put forward.However behind the progress still exist some unanswered questions,such as,what is performability? How to deal with its relationship with literariness? And what is the connection between the two and theatricality? Drama relies on both text and performance,indicating a fact that the study on the subject should be based on both of the two.But most of the previous studies tend to be text-guided.Actually,staging a dramatic text also include the script design,directing,and performing.And each step that the text has to undergo will pose an influence to the final reception of the play.Therefore,in order to study in depth how drama translations get onto the stage and finally be accepted by the audience,French drama translation theorist Patrice Pavis proposed a theoretical model of the series of concretizations of drama texts.Based on the theoretical model of “the series of concretizations” coined by Pavis,and supported by the case of Ying Ruocheng’s translation and the premier performance of Death of a Salesman by BEI JING People’s Art Theater on 7th May1983,the thesis explored the journey of a drama translation from text through stage to reception,aiming to reveal the process of staging a translated dramatic text,its ultimate image showing to the audience,as well as potential changes and phenomena that would happen in the journey.Through the research,findings showed that,firstly,a gap between the initial translation and stage was noticed,as the initial translation was adjusted after script and performance design.In other words,it did not go to the stage in its original look.Secondly,stage-orientation of the translation was showed.Particularly,the characteristic of colloquialism,which was seen as the priority of serving the acting,was quite enhanced to serve the performance.Thirdly,about the dispute over literariness,performability and theatricality,in this process,theatricality was strengthened step by step,and so did performability that serves theatricality.However,literariness that the translator tried to preserve remained open,and faced many uncertainties and even misunderstandings.Lastly,what a theater needs is a translation fitting for performance,which could be fulfilled by translators with knowledge of language and acting.Thus,on the technical difficulty that translators barely understand acting and actors do not know translation,the perspective of multiple participants’ cooperation was introduced,aiming to improve drama translation practically.And also,in the thesis,an effort to expound definition and relation of performability,literariness and theatricality was made,and it might help to solve the long-lasting debate of the three notions from a new perspective,possibly contributing to theoretic development in the field.