Translation Of Stage Lines In Modern Chinese Drama: A Perspective Of Speech Act Theory

As a special branch of Chinese theater art, Modern Chinese Drama was formed in the early 20th century. It refers to a theatrical style that relies mainly on dialogue of characters, or rather, stage lines to shape the characters and develop the plot. It has the dual characteristics of literary art and stage performance art. This thesis perceives drama dialogues or stage lines as a special type of speech acts. On the one hand, the drama creation is indirect"illocutionary acts"of the playwright, who attempts to realize his/her intention of reflecting the reality, praising the goodness, revealing the evil, or instructing the general public by portraying the characters, developing the plot and presenting the story through a series of dialogues. On the other hand, the characters created by the playwright in the drama scenario are mostly from real life and are given the ability to think, speak and act, but each of them is still a brain child of the playwright. The dialogues or stage lines designed for drama characters, although vivid and characterized from life, are actually virtual language above life. To put it another way, drama dialogues or stage lines are quasi-speech acts of characters to realize their specific intentions or to bring a perlocutinary effect on the other characters.Modern Chinese Drama, with dialogues between characters as a main means of presentation, is a special form of literature. Therefore, in addition to the general features of literary works, Modern Chinese Drama still possesses its own unique properties (such as the characteristics of a stage performance art). To a certain extent, the realization of the intention contained in the characters'speech in a drama creation is constrained by the linguistic convention, cultural convention, the convention of the dramatic art, etc. It is also subject to the intention of the playwright's creating such characters. When translating Modern Chinese Drama into English, the translator, as a cross-language as well as cross-cultural speech transmitter, needs to not only follow the convention of the Chinese language at the structural and cultural level and the convention at the level of the Chinese dramatic art, but also conform to the corresponding conventions of the English language and the English dramatic art. And at the same time, s/he needs to distinguish the intentions of characters behind the dialogues based on the extremely limited context and framework set by the playwright and strive to reproduce the same illocutionary force of the utterances so as to pave way for the smooth understanding of the recipients.Up till now, quite a few researches have been conducted on the translation of drama dialogues or stage lines from wide theoretical perspectives. But most of them are centered on the discussion of whether drama translation should be reader-oriented or performance-oriented. The special characteristics of drama dialogues as speech acts, however, are neglected both theoretically and practically, thus leaving much room for the present study. This thesis, with the speech act theory as the theoretical basis, some stage lines in Chaguan and a contrastive analysis of its two English versions as examples, attempts to analyze dialogues in Modern Chinese Drama as special speech acts by taking convention and intention as the starting points. It is also an attempt to explore effective ways for Modern Chinese Drama translation. At the end of this thesis, it is pointed out that, only when conventional forces and intentional forces of drama dialogues as special speech acts are fully comprehended and appropriately transmitted in the target text can an optimal translation be obtained. It is hoped that this research can provide certain practical reference to those who are engaged in Modern Chinese Drama translation.