The Principles Of Performance-oriented Drama Translation From The Perspective Of Skopos Theory

Most playwrights write their plays for stage performance, not only for reading on the page. So does the drama translation. The performance-oriented drama translation not only determines the theatrical effect of perforamnce on the stage but also exerts great influence on the communication between western and eastern culture.The present thesis adopts Skopos theory to explore the principles of performance-oriented drama translation. According to the Skopos theory, the ultimate skopos of the translation is based on the expectations and needs of the target audience. The recerivers of performance-oriented drama translation include those actors and audience. For one thing, in order to fulfill its skopos—the effect of performance on the stage, we must consider the needs of those actors, such as how to make them pronounce easily. For another thing, we also have to take the audience's acceptability and intelligibility into consideration, that is, how to make the play easy to be understood.This thesis proposes some principles that must be taken into consideration by the translator to achieve this goal. They are speakability, actability and intelligibility. In this thesis, we take Ying Ruocheng's translation of Teahouse as an example to demonstrate that the three principles play an important role in achieving the dramatic effect on the stage by analyzing the expectations and needs of both the actors and the target audience from the linguistic and performative perspectives.Firstly, drama translation should follow the principle of speakability. Drama language should be colloquial and natural because it is refined from our daily conversation. So the actors'lines should be speakable on the stage, which means the words should lie fluently on their tongues. This thesis probes the speakability of the target play script from the perspectives of colloquial words, simple sentences and rhythmic expressions.Secondly, drama translation should follow the principle of actability. The target play script should not only provide accurate acting notes for the actors to get the clues of how to perform, but also should concretize their mental activities through lines. Under the guidance of actability, the strategy of concretization of physical activities and mental activities can be adopted.Thirdly, drama translation should follow the principle of intelligibility. The audience's response determines whether the performance is successful or not. It also plays a decisive role in achieving the ultimate goal of the translation. So the audience's expectations and needs should be taken into consideration. In bridging the cultural gap and making the performance intelligible and acceptable, the strategies of domestication and the brevity of language will help a lot.