A Report On The Translation Of An Excerpt From Casual Expressions Of Idle Feeling

Traditional Chinese theater is a resplendent treasure in the long-standing Chinese culture.The translation of classical theatrical works has attracted great attention while the classical theatrical theories have not been satisfactorily exported.Casual Expressions of Idle Feeling,a magnum opus of famed playwright and theatrical theorist Li Yu,gives a comprehensive and systematic account of classical Chinese theatrical theory.It is highly acclaimed by contemporary scholars and solidifies the author’s esteemed position in this domain.Nevertheless,there has been no complete published translation of Casual Expressions of Idle Feeling and its theatrical sections are rarely translated,which is incommensurate with its significance as a Chinese cultural work.The preface by the author himself and the "Playwriting Section" of Casual Expressions of Idle Feeling are selected as the source text.Notwithstanding its esthetic effects,the book is still a predominantly informative text as it attempts to convey professional knowledge and the author’s propositions on play writing.This translation is oriented towards international publicity to promulgate Chinese theatrical culture to occidental audiences.As such,it relies on the widely accepted principles of international publicity translation,i.e.,the three closeness principles and the economical-conciseness principle.Three specific guidelines are then advanced by the report to guide the translation of the informative source text,namely,achieving comprehensibility of theatrical cultural elements,logical acceptability and conciseness.Corresponding translation techniques are summed up in the report:firstly,to achieve comprehensibility,translators can adopt amplification,in-text notes and footnotes to tackle theatrical cultural factors in the source text,including character names,historical figures,dynasties,role types,theatrical works and forms.Secondly,to achieve logical acceptability,addition of connectives and paragraphing are feasible methods for suiting the thinking habits of the intended audience.Thirdly,to achieve conciseness,repetitive expressions are omitted to reduce verbiage and images in flowery and abstract expressions are discarded to avoid a long-winded translated text.This report intends to explore viable translation techniques for international publicity,which can better deliver the information in the source text to the target readership.It is hoped that contributions can be made to the studies on the translation of Casual Expressions of Idle Feeling and the promotion of Chinese theatrical culture.