A Comparative Study Of The Two English Versions Of Teahouse

As an important translation criterion, the conception of equivalence has a long history and significant influence on the practice of translation. Many translators and translation theorists have contributed to its evolution and perfection. The basic tenet of this theory lies in that a translation should reproduce in the receptor language the closest natural equivalent of the source-language message, both in terms of meaning and in terms of style.On the other hand, as language and culture are interwoven with and interactive on each other, there has been a cultural turn in translation studies since the 1980s. More and more translators and translation theorists have begun to realize that translation involves the understanding and representation, not only of the linguistic aspects, but also of the cultural aspects of the original. Translation, especially literature translation, cannot achieve a satisfactory result without a careful consideration of the cultural elements of the original language.In light of the above-mentioned equivalence-oriented approach and culture-translation study, the author of this paper makes a comparative study of the two English versions of a Chinese play-Teahouse. Written by Lao She, a famous novelist and playwright, Teahouse covers three periods of the Chinese history, the period after Wuxu Reform, the warlord war period after the death of Yuan Shikai, and the period after the victory over the Japanese invasion. With the three periods as background, the playwright describes the vicissitude of the teahouse, the varied experience of the manager of the teahouse, and the different fates of more than seventy characters, so it is indeed a reflection of then Chinese history and culture and, at the same time, it is also a real challenge to the translators to put it into the English language, which is poles apart from Chinese language, linguistically and culturally. Teahouse now has two English versions, translated by Howard Gibbon and Ying Ruocheng respectively. The author hopes, through the comparisonbetween the two English versions, to gain some insight into the laws and principles governing literary translation, especially play translation.The study is conducted from three different angles. Firstly, a comparison is made between the different approaches of translating culturally loaded words, since Teahouse is so representative of the Chinese culture. Secondly, the author compares the different representation of the colloquial style of the original, because colloquialism is typical of dramatic language and a very prominent feature of Teahouse. Lastly, a comparison is made between the different translation of interjections since interjections play such an important role in the successful description of characters and different approaches have been adopted in the two versions.Besides the comparative study, the author also touches upon some demerits of the two English versions and analyses the possible causes of those demerits in the hope of perfecting them in future editions.