The Pragmatic Adaptation Perspective Of Drama Translation

Drama constitutes an important part of world literature and art. The translation of drama between countries has been going on for many centuries. Yet only a few scholarly attentions have been devoted to drama translation. The principal difficulty resides in the dual nature of the dramatic text itself, for drama is both regarded as a literary art and a performance art. Both of them are coexistent and inseparable. Therefore, drama translation not only involves the transfer of a certain text from source language to target language, but also involves many extra-linguistic elements.Firstly, through the analysis of different drama versions, this thesis reveals the four characteristics of drama language, namely brevity, colloquialism, characterization and action. Secondly, after reviewing some theoretical discussions involved in drama translation in China and abroad, the author tries to discuss the features of drama translation, namely the target reader, communicative circuit, real time performance and performability. Thirdly, based on the pragmatic dynamic adaptation theory put forward by Verschueren, the thesis tries to examine the way that Ying Ruocheng and other translators make language choices in their drama translations from the adaptation for the actor and for the audience. On the one hand, for the actor's performance, the thesis explores Ying Ruocheng and other translators' translation strategies and discusses the reasons for their choices of language in the translation process from the perspectives of stage directions, characterization, dramatic speech action and musicality. On the other hand, for the audience's comprehension, the thesis explores their translations from the perspectives of colloquialism, cultural-loaded information, common sayings and appellation.The author expects, through the contrastive analysis of different drama versions, to gain some insight into the principles governing the drama translation practice. The present study offers a pragmatic adaptation perspective of drama translation, aiming to shed some light on drama translation and the author hopes that future drama translators will benefit from it.