Relevance And Cultural Factors In Drama Translatio

Each text-type has its own characteristic that distinguishes it from the other texts. Different text-types should be treated separately when translated. There is no universally appropriate translation theory that is proper for all types of text. Therefore, a translator should choose translation principles and theories those are the most relevant in translating drama which has its own uniqueness. Drama is different from other genres in literary because drama is more of a performing art but a mere linguistic art. By utilizing relevance theory in drama translation, the writer tries to make some contributions to this less exploratory area.Only limited scholarly attention has been heretofore paid to the translation of drama, possibly owing to the special problems that encounter the translator for the stage. In this thesis, the predominant views on drama translation both at home and abroad are briefly reviewed and the dialectical relationship between theoretical performance and dramatic text is illustrated. A brief review of relevance theory is firstly made which contains the nature of relevance theory and its basic ideas and concepts. Then the six factors concerning the adoption of translation and the cultural elements in drama translation are also adverted. It is regarded that the lack of theoretical principles and the difficulties in translating drama results from the dualistic nature of drama as both a theatrical art and a literary art. This complex nature of drama raises the translators with a central question:whether to translate the text in its function as one element in the theatre discourse, or to try to translate it within the literary system for a reading public as a whole? To ask the question in a different way: should drama translation be reader-oriented or performance-oriented. Relevance theory, which was first put forward by Sperber and Wilson in their co-authored work: Relevance:Communication and Cognition, is a pragmatic approach for a practical theory on communication from the cognitive view. Its main idea is relevance. Relevance theory suggests that optimal relevance is the standard people unconsciously keep in communication. Not only for translation, relevance theory is also powerful as for "the most complex thing in the cosmos." In this paper, the writer aims at applying the relevance theory into the translation of drama and set optimal relevance as the ultimate goal of translating drama. With the theory of relevance backing up as theoretical principle and also in line with the dialectical relationship between the theatrical performance and the play text, the conclusion of this thesis arrives at that either reader-oriented translation or performance-oriented tends to be ex parte. That is to say, a well-translated drama should be readable as well as performable.