Readability And Performability In Drama Translation

There is a rising number of prestigious translators who are proficient in both English and Chinese with a deep knowledge of literature to fuel the promotion of Chinese modern drama.However,there are only a handful of translators who have experience in stage performances or understand the art of drama performance.Most of the translated Chinese modern drama can be read as literary works but do not meet the requirements of stage performance.That has become one of the main reasons hinders the step of its global communication.As a genre of literature,drama shares some common features of literary works.At the same time,the script also needs to be suitable for theatrical performances as it takes roots in stage performance.Therefore,this thesis claims that drama translation should take both the readability and performability into account in this respect.The translated script should not only be faithful,expressive to reach the goal of readability,but also catchy for performance.With regard to contemporary drama,which is more suitable for performing,what kind of translation strategy can be adopted to make the translation more readable and actable so as to get out of the maze of drama translation?C.C.Jane Lai is an influential figure in the translation discipline and the drama field.Over the years,Lai has also translated a host of poems,essays and Zen writings as well as stage plays,for which she is particularly noted.Pretense debuted in the Black Box Theatre of Kwai Tsing Theatre on March 4,2011,performed in Cantonese and mandarin with English surtitles.The Chinese script and the English translation are published by the Hong Kong Arts Festival Association Limited in the same month for the promotion and adaption use.This script boasts the characteristics of readability and performability.This thesis uses functional equivalence as the research methodology to analyzethe drama text Pretense translated by Lai from the view of readability and performability with a measurable qualitative perspective.The translation will be studied in detail under the framework of stylistic equivalence,lexical equivalence,syntactic equivalence and passage equivalence to find out the effective translation strategies for drama translating practitioners.