On The Reproduction Of The Gestic Language In Drama Translation From The Perspective Of Cognitive Linguistics

Drama, as an ancient art, is one of the most important parts of civilization. It is acomprehensive art integrating literature, painting, dancing, music and performance.Given the unique features of drama, drama language should not only be fluent andunderstandable, but also be convenient for actors to perform. Since drama is an art forperformance, drama language should be colloquial, poetic, character-reflecting,implicit and gestic. However, drama, different from novels, cannot convey thepersonality and mental activity of characters through specific and delicate descriptionof environment. It can just achieve this goal through gestic language. Therefore, fordrama researchers, the gestic language which means whether the language of dramacan reflect the attitude of characters and drive actors to perform is always animportant issue. On one hand, gestic language is an important factor to judge whethera drama is successful, while on the other hand it poses great challenge on dramatranslation. Since gestic language is one of the core foundations of drama, translatorsnot only need to figure out gestic language, but also need to reproduce it in the targetlanguage texts, which means translators need to convey the meaning and content ofthe original, as well as the mental activity and emotion under words. Under thiscircumstance, it is important to do research on the reproduction of the gestic languagein the target texts.Taking the two English versions of Chaguan as a case, this thesis aims to analyzehow translators decode the gestic language of the original and reproduce it in thetarget texts. From the perspective of cognitive linguistics, this thesis will combineschema theory with prominence theory to interpret the cognitive process of translationand offer a way to evaluate the reproduction of the gestic language. Under theguidence of schema theory and prominence theory, this thesis will be conducted from five levels: lexical level, syntactic level, rhetorical level, cultural level and semanticlevel. Under each level, this thesis will make detailed classification according to thedemand of research. It is hoped that through the combination of analysis on gesticlanguage and external action, an effective way can be offered to appreciate drama andimprove drama translation.