A Functional Approach To Drama Translation

When it comes to literary translation, drama has lamentably been the most neglected area among the three major types of literature. Bulk of genre-focused translation study books involving the problems of poetry and fiction translation can be easily found in the library while materials related to drama translation are scarce. It is usually held that the lack of theory and the difficulties in translating arise from the dualistic nature of drama as both a literary art and a theatrical art. That is to say, drama is both readable and performable and a good theatrical translated version should fulfill these two functions. So here lies the complexity and difficulty of theatrical translation.Another characteristic of drama is the combination of performability and culturally-loadedness, which is another difficulty for drama translation. Drama is a special linguistic art targeting the stage and imbedded with cultural peculiarity. Consequently drama translation is supposed to take both aspects into consideration: ensuring the performability in target culture and transmitting properties of source culture. To fulfill these two functions, there appears a contradiction between adaptation and transmission.This thesis aims at examining drama translation from a functional perspective, which puts emphasis on functions of texts and purposes of translation. Only by determining the skopos (purpose) of translation can translators of drama skillfully solve the contradiction and adopt appropriate strategies in their translations. As far as drama creation is concerned, most dramatic texts are produced for the stage. Correspondingly, translation of dramatic texts is mostly stage-oriented. In this case, either it is the creation of a drama by the playwright or the rendering of a dramatic text by the translator, the primary purpose is to accomplish success on the stage. That is the translation of drama is targeted at achieving equivalent theatrical effects in the target culture. So when dealing with the cultural obstacles in drama translation, translators should take into account the target audience, the cultural norms and traditions of the target language. But when it is possible, translators should also try their best to transmitthe original culture to the target audience.In light of the functionalist approach, the author makes a comparative study of the two English versions of a Chinese play---Teahouse, translated by Ying Ruocheng and John Howard Gibbon respectively. 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 translators to put it into English. Both translators try to keep a balance between performability and transmission of culture. The author hopes, through the comparison between the two English versions, to gain some insights into the laws and principles governing drama translation.