English Translation Of Modern Chinese Dramas: A Multidimensional Approach

Currently, the circles of translation studies both in China and the world at large are putting increasing emphasis on drama translation. However, the recent years has not witnessed the advent of a drama translation theory with a style of its own.This thesis takes some typical English translations of modern Chinese dramas for case studies, aiming at a multidimensional approach to drama translation. Firstly, it gives a survey of the core theories in such fields of study as the German School of Functionalist Translation Studies, Intercultural Communication, Theatrical Performance, Gestalt Psychology, Discourse and Register Analyses, etc. Afterwards, the thesis makes clear the concepts of drama and theater, based on which it differentiates these two key concepts and redefines drama and its text type herein. Then, it reexamines the status quo of drama translation studies and explores the various dimensions of drama translation. It also researches the applicability of Skopostheorie representative of German Functionalism to literary translation and to drama translation in particular, and argues that Functionalism is applicable to drama translation through the specific case studies. Finally, mainly based on the Skopostheorie this thesis takes advantage of the other theories surveyed above with a view to constructing a macro-framework of drama translation and summarizing some fundamentals for the practice and research of drama translation. The macro-framework of drama translation together with these fundamentals therefore finalizes the multidimensional approach to drama translation studies.Since this thesis is just a tentative study into English translation of modern Chinese dramas, faults and weaknesses can by no means be avoided, which hopefully could be remedied and corrected in future researches.