On Drama Translation From The Perspective Of Pragmatic Adaptation

Verschueren put forward the theory of adaptation in 1999. Adaptation theory regards language use as a continuous making of language choices, and the reason why people can make various choices properly lies in that language has variability, negotiability and adaptability. Its four research perspectives: context, structure, dynamism and salience are closely related: dynamism is the unfolding of interaction of context and structure, with different degrees of salience. Linguistic choices must adapt to various contextual factors and influence the generation of context. Linguistic adaptation reflects communicators'different degrees of salience, which is determined by each other's familiarity, task's difficulty, interaction's frequency, etc.Teahouse is the pinnacle of Lao She's drama achievement. It depicts a scroll of an epic picture covering the period from the end of Qing dynasty to the surrender of the Japanese army, showing different fates of various social layers against a grotesque social tableau of old Beijing. Humorous, wisdom-tainted and Beijing dialect-flavored language make it a"gorgeous play": characteristic of one sentence delineates the profile of one protagonist. Its distinct language features (individuation, colloquialism, figurativeness and rich subtext) make it worth studying from adaptive perspective.This thesis chooses two typical English versions: Ying Ruocheng's and Howard-Gibbon's, to discuss how adaptation theory is used to study drama translation theoretically and practically, providing a new perspective to translation study of Teahouse, thus testifying that adaptation theory can function both as epistemology and methodology to drama translation study.As to methodology, the methods applied in this thesis fall into following kinds. First, the combination of qualitative analysis and quantitative analysis runs through the whole thesis, and method of word frequency and length distribution is used to get a clear perception of how lexical adaptation is achieved. Second, contrastive method is applied in the main body. Ying's familiarity to performance and Howard-Gibbon's to receptors make two translated works worth comparing. Third, the theory of stylistic markers from Prof. Liu Miqing, presupposition theory and theme-rheme patterns are also used to make stylistic and pragmatic analysis respectively.The present thesis falls into seven parts.The introduction makes a brief account of research background, significance, methodology, and structure of this thesis respectively.Chapter One presents a literary review of adaptation theory and translation, drama translation, and translation of Teahouse.Chapter Two touches upon adaptation theory and its enlightenment on translation. Adaptive translation deems translation as a continuous process of linguistic choice of translating object, cultural stance, and textual meanings etc. and a balancing activity between strategies and standards.Chapter Three expounds on Teahouse and its two English versions, and later two translators'lifetimes and the background of each version are introduced.Chapter Four covers features of drama language, and criteria of drama translation.Chapter Five is the main body about a contrastive analysis of two English versions from four angles of adaptation: context, structure, dynamism, and salience. Contextual adaptation chooses words related to religion, food and social and historical background. Structural adaptation is talked at phonological, morphological and lexical, syntactic and discourse levels. Dynamic adaptation is based on interjection words and colloquialism. Salience starts from personalized language and honorific appellation.In the conclusion part, the author holds that adaptation theory coincides with the peculiar features of drama such as dynamic performing ability. Theoretically, adaptation theory helps describe the translation process, discusses the translation standard, and chooses translation strategies. Practically, it meets the criteria of drama translation. Methodologically, its comprehensiveness permits more freedom.