On Chinese-English Drama Translation

Compared with the translation of novels and poetry, the translation of drama receives much less attention. This less explored area is characterized by a serious lack of guiding theory. This is especially the case in China, where researches in drama translation mainly focus on translating dramas as literary works. In practice, there are more English-Chinese drama translations than Chinese-English ones. So, taking equivalence theory and the theory of equivalent effect as its bases, this paper aims to make some contribution to this neglected area by analyzing the language features of Chinese drama and their expressions and by summarizing the strategies that are used in the excellent English versions of Chinese dramas.Structurally, this paper consists of five chapters. Chapter One gives an overview of drama translation. Drama is carefully defined and classified, and is followed by a brief review of the studies of drama translation in the West and in China. Also, the characteristics of drama translation are discussed in this chapter. In Chapter Two, the equivalence theory and the theory of equivalent effect are reviewed as the writer believes that they can be viewed as guiding principles of drama translation. Besides, since most dramatic texts are produced for the stage, correspondingly, the effect of stage performance should be taken into consideration in the process of drama translation. In order to make the stage performances successful, playwrights usually deploy language in certain ways so that dramatic language often display typical features like colloquialism, personalization, conciseness and beauty. These features are analyzed in detail in Chapter Three, which, the writer believes, is helpful for the drama translators to make well-informed decisions about the strategies to be adopted in drama translation. After that, in Chapter Five, the expressions of the language features in Chinese drama will be examined in terms of word level, sentence level, rhetorical devices, style of language and text level. Also, examples of good Chinese-English drama translation will be taken from excellent works like Thunderstorm, Sunrise and Teahouse and will be appreciated. In this way, the writer tentatively sums up some strategies for the translation of Chinese drama. Moreover, the writer also proves that the equivalence theory and the theory of equivalent effect are suitable principles for drama translation and that stage performance should be taken into consideration in the process of drama translation.