| Drama is a performing art of high literary and artistic values.Drama translation is broadly divided into text translation and stage translation.The former does not differentiate drama from other literary genres in translation,while the latter takes theatre elements into consideration and lays emphasis on the stage performance needs of the translated drama.When dramatic translators and researchers shift their attention from the text to the whole performance system,they mainly focus on two aspects—performability of actors and acceptability of audience.That is,the translated drama should enable actors to perform naturally and genuinely on the stage,and adapts to the culture and psychology of the target audience to make them enjoy the drama performance.The text being translated in the practice is the drama Ye Feng Fei Wu(or Flight of the Bumblebee).Setting in the Anti-Japanese War period and revolving around the Huang family,the drama depicts the cohesiveness and patriotism of common people on the home front in the wartime.The drama,first staged by Jiangsu Center for the Performing Arts,is adapted from a novel of the same name by Huang Beijia with stage performance as the purpose.In translating the drama,with stage translation as the orientation,the translator aims to produce a translated drama qualified for stage performance.To achieve this purpose,the translator makes sure the translated drama is suitable for actors to perform on the stage and can be accepted by the target audience.Therefore,difficulties encountered in the translation practice fall into two categories: performability of actors and acceptability of audience.Difficulties regarding to performability include colloquialism of dialogues,musicality of lines and individualization of characters,and those related to acceptability cover understandability of lines and closeness to audience.Based on the above difficulties,this report discusses their respective solutions.To ensure performability of the translated drama for actors,idiomatic English is used in translating dialogues to achieve colloquialism,rhythm and rhyme are retained in the translated text to realize musicality of lines,and characters’ personalities are represented to fulfill the requirement of individualization.To improve the acceptability of the translated drama for the target audience,many culture-loaded expressions are domesticated to make the drama understandable for the audience,and Sichuan dialect is translated into western American dialect to achieve closeness to the audience.Drama can be translated as a reading text or as a script for a drama performance.When translating a drama for the purpose of stage performance,the translator must consider the performability of actors and acceptability of audience,and decide translation strategies accordingly. |
