The Skopos Theory And Drama Translation

Drama is generally regarded as a mixed art, with its dramatic text being literature and its production being a performing art. The duality of drama directly results in a conflict in drama translation: to faithfully transmit the cultural specificity, or to adapt to stage performance with some cultural information unavoidably lost? To study and solve this conflict turns out to be the most significant issue in drama translation study. However, viewing the translation history home and abroad, the study of drama translation is lagging behind because of a serious lack of systematical guiding theories and the inadequacy of academic attention. In order to compensate for this limitation, the present thesis aims at examining this point from a functional perspective. The skopos theory is adopted as the theoretical foundation on which the study is based, and a skopos-oriented approach is highly advocated in dealing with the conflict in drama translation.As both a literary art and theatrical art, drama is a literary text with cultural peculiarity to be performed on stage. Due to the dualistic nature of drama, drama translation can hardly be guided or evaluated by traditional translation theory which emphasizes linguistic equivalence. The skopos theory, with purpose (skopos) as the determining principle in any translation, provides a new perspective for translation studies, especially for drama translation. Thus as long as a translation fulfills its skopos (purposes), it is considered as a successful one. To illustrate the validity of the skopos theory in drama translation, under the guidance of the skopos theory, a detailed sample analysis of the three Chinese versions of Shakespeare's Measure for Measure is provided in this paper, in the hope of achieving some insights into the practice and the study of drama translation.Structurally the paper consists of five chapters. Chapter one gives a general introduction to drama translation, including a definition of drama, the peculiarity of drama language, the contradiction in drama translation and a literature review of drama translation study at home and abroad. Chapter two introduces the main concepts of the skopos theory and discusses the significance that the skopos theory may have in drama translation. Chapter three provides background information about the source text producer Shakespeare and the three translators, namely Liang Shiqiu, Zhu Shenghao and Ying Ruocheng, focusing on the factors that influence translators' strategies according to the skopos theory. Chapter four is a sample analysis of the three Chinese versions of Measure for Measure under the guidance of the skopos theory. Chapter five draws a conclusion about the significance of the skopos theory in the field of drama translation.