Rethinking Teahouse: A Reflection On The Translation Of Geographical Dialects

Within the framework of language variation by Halliday, Mclntosh and Strevens and adopting an analytical and systemic approach to the study of translation, this thesis aims at raising reflections on the translation of geographical dialect by examining correlations between geographical dialect and other types of language varieties.Case studies will be done on two English translations of Teahouse, a brilliant drama script, from the perspective of theories of language variation and discourse. I will specify the inefficiencies and impossibilities of English dialectal equivalent and make an in-depth analysis of the rendition of varieties overlapping with geographical dialect in Teahouse. By identifying those strategies actually adopted by the translators, I attempt to make a contrastive study of these strategies in specific translations and figure out what is preserved and what is lost by these strategies. Instead of laboring on the linguistic properties of geographical dialect and thus making judgment as one version is better than the other, the major concern of this study is to draw attention to what has been neglected in geographical dialect translation, namely, the social and cultural connotations of geographical dialects which affect the stylistic effect of the text. Based on the evidence found, I will then argue that geographical dialect translation is far more than a linguistic activity but a cultural and contextual one too.Based on the above analysis, the thesis then attempts to put forward a new criterion for the evaluation of dialect translations, underlining dialect in use. From the discourse theory, this thesis would propose that the analysis of the register of a dialectal text and the pragmatic dimension of context are necessary measures for evaluating a dialect translation.