A Study On Era Style Translation Of Drama Language In Chinese Literature (1951-1966)

Chinese Literature,an official publication which timely conducted the systematic translation and introduction of Chinese literature and art to western readers,plays an important role in the process of the dissemination of Chinese traditional culture and modern literature.There are more than twenty dramas in Chinese Literature(1951-1966),while the existing translation studies on drama especially on those in Chinese Literature(1951-1966)are mainly concentrated on translation strategies and medio-translatology and the translation study on language style is relatively poor.Therefore,it is necessary to explore the language style in drama translation studies and the research scope is quite large.In addition,most of the language style studies explore the language style of a certain writer or a certain work,some of them analyze the reproduction of language style of a certain work in translation.As for translation study on language style of a large number of dramas which are created in the same period,we haven't seen so far.So,this thesis chooses the contemporary dramas in Chinese Literature(1951-1966)as the research object,aiming to answer the following three questions.What is the language Era Style of dramas in Chinese Literature(1951-1966)in source language? What is the reproduction situation of language Era Style of dramas in Chinese Literature(1951-1966)in English translations? What is the reason for this? Answering the research questions mentioned above could deepen the translation study on dramas in Chinese Literature(1951-1966)and help people understand the translation features of the literary works in Chinese Literature(1951-1966),which exactly reflect the translation features in "Seventeen Years" because the production and circulation of the official publication Chinese Literature proceeded systematically under the organization of the government.Based on the Chinese Stylistics of Li Yunhan and the Word-Color-Theory of Yang Zhenlan,this thesis analyzes the themes and subjects of the source texts of the dramas in Chinese Literature(1951-1966),finding that the Era Style of dramas in Chinese Literature(1951-1966)in source language is unrestraint.Then,this thesis studies the translation of the markers of unrestrained Era Style including magnificent nouns,powerful verbs,exaggerated adjectives,range enlarged quantifiers as well as era-colorloaded words in vocabulary aspect,the distribution of sentence length in sentence aspect and parallelism,hyperbole as well as repetition in rhetoric aspect in order to delineate the changes of them in translation process,which actually reflect the reproduction situation of language Era Style of dramas in Chinese Literature(1951-1966)in target texts and finally interprets the reproduction from the aspects of language differences,cultural context as well as readers' reception.It is found that the significant change exists in all the three aspects mentioned above.In vocabulary aspect,55.5% of the markers are not equivalently translated in target texts,among which Plot Omission accounts the highest proportion of 48.1% followed with Meaning Weakening 37.5%,Paraphrasing 11.8% and Integrate Omission 2.7%.In sentence aspect,the proportion of short sentence is 96.9% in source texts while 85.6% in target texts and it is clear that some short sentences in source texts are integrated as long sentences in translation process,losing the brevity and lucidity.As for rhetoric,including parallelisms,hyperboles as well as repetitions,59.9% of them are not equivalently translated.As a result,all the un-equivalently translated markers lead to the weakening of the unrestrained Era Style of dramas in Chinese Literature(1951-1966).The reasons of the weakening include the following two aspects.In the objective aspect,owing to the linguistic differences between Chinese and English and the different cultural contexts between China and western countries,the unrestrained Era Style of source texts is difficult to reproduce perfectly in target texts.In the subjective aspect,in order to achieve good external publicity effect,the translators weaken the language style of the source texts proactively.