Translator's Subjectivity In Drama Translation Under Eco-environment Of Translation

Translator's subjective intervention into translation and its significance have been widely accepted in translation field. It is commonly accepted that translator's subjectivity is the dialectical unity of activeness, passiveness and purposiveness. Since Translation Studies took its"culture turn", the focus of Translation Studies has been gradually shifted to translators. Then, translation has been put under a large eco-environment by the latest Translation Ecology; thus Translation Studies has been integrated with ecological studies. Apart from an account on Translation Ecology as the theoretical framework of the thesis, this article puts its emphasis on the descriptive exploration of drama translation under this theory.Drama can be regarded as both literary art and stage art. Due to such dualistic nature, drama translation becomes"the most problematic and neglected area of translation studies research"(Bassnett, 2004, p.119), and drama translator always faces the dilemma of reader orientation or performance orientation. Besides, this dualistic nature provides more space for translator's subjectivity. Therefore, the study on translator's subjectivity during drama translation will be more persuasive and typical. Since drama translation takes place under its own eco-environment, like any other human activities, the translator's selection of translation methods and strategies is absolutely constraint by various eco-factors such as nature, society, norm and translator's psychology. Translation Ecology agrees with the definition of translation as"a translator's adaptation and selection activities in a translational eco-environment"(Hu, 2004, p.39). Thus, it is quite necessary and important to study translator's subjectivity during drama translation from the perspective of Translation Ecology. .Considering that practice is the sole criteria for judging truth, this thesis takes as example for deep exploration Yang Xianyi's Chinese version of Pygmalion, a well-known five-act play of George Bernard Shaw. It explores how translator's subjectivity is properly exerted during the drama translation and how it influences the whole translation processIt can be mainly drawn from the study that, like any other literary translation, drama translation is also under the impact of the translational eco-environment. However, since drama is characteristic of both"literary art"and"stage art", the translator has a much stronger subjectivity during drama translation than during any other literary translation. Through adaptive selection and selective adaptation, the drama translator realizes linguistic and extra-linguistic transference of the original and enables the translated play readable and performable. Therefore, the highest translation standard of"loyalty in meaning, similarity in form and identity in style"of the original can be actually realized. Besides, it also can be drawn that Translation Ecology offers a new and effective perspective for study on translator's subjectivity during drama translation, and offers a new criteria for drama translation practice. It can be applied to guide the drama translation activity, especially the English-Chinese translation of play texts.