An Ethical Insight Into The Translation Of Chinese Classical Drama

With the globalization and growing worldwide exchanges in economy, politics, culture, translation, as a cross-culture communication activity, has become an often occurrence which involves source text, source text writer, translator, translated text and translation reader. Where there are human beings and human activities, there is ethics; and similarly, where there is translation, there is translation ethics for translation practice is, by nature, an ethical activity which involves extremely complicated interpersonal relationships. So it is of great significance to approach Chinese classical drama translation from ethical perspective.Translation studies have undergone three periods, and translation theories vary from period to period, but none was more scientific. The world of translation theories was once trapped in chaos. Translation practice has been under the severe test of ethics. The bases of equal dialogues were undermined and cultural diffusion was hindered, which objectively makes the study on ethical norms in translation practice particularly significant. So, in the Constructivism Period, translation ethics was brought back under discussion by western scholars in the late20th century, among which Chesterman, a Finnish scholar, systematically advanced five models of translation ethics which caused a great sensation in the field of translation theory and produced positive and profound influence over translation practice.Previously, many researchers discussed the theory of translation ethics only theoretically, but very few tried to put the theory into practice and to apply translation ethics into analyzing, measuring and evaluating a translated text, and even fewer tried to analyze a Chinese classical drama text translation from an ethical perspective.Drama has much in common with novel, poetry and prose. Besides, it is unique in having lines, which requires drama text to be readable and performable and makes drama translation more complex and challenging for the translated text has to represent the meaning of the source text and deliver the culture in it with accuracy. Meanwhile, translated lines should be easy for performers to utter and be accepted by translation users or audience and represent the charm of the source text to the utmost. Rendering classical Chinese dramas into English is a worthy cause for spreading Chinese culture to the outside world, which makes necessary drama translation study.So, by reading and collecting much information related to the theory and the translated texts of The Peony Pavilion, the author of this thesis tries to adopt Chesterman’s five models of translation ethics to conduct a comparative analysis on the two English versions of a famous Chinese classical drama The Peony Pavilion, the dramatist, Tang Xianzu’s masterpiece in the Ming Dynasty with the following goals:to test the feasibility and rationality of the theory as a yardstick in evaluating translated works; to find out possible limitations of the theory; and if possible to figure out some strategies to guide the dramatic text translation so that it is will be more excellent and be more acceptable.The study proves that despite limitations of the theory, Chesterman’s norms of translation ethics are to some degree feasible and rational and can be used as one of the standards to evaluate the translation quality and guide and regulate translators’ translation acts; works out a few corresponding strategies for translating Chinese classical dramas into English according to each model of Chesterman’s five models so as to achieve a higher quality and a greater acceptance of a translated text in such literary genres as poetry, novel, prose and especially, drama. The novelty and originality of the thesis lies in the facts that the author tries to put Chesterman’s five models of translation ethics into practice to measure and evaluate a translated works and translators’translation act in translating Chinese classical dramas, to test its rationality and feasibility and find out some limitations about the theory, and works out a few strategies for translating Chinese classical dramas.This thesis consists of five chapters. The first chapter makes an introduction to the inspiration, the necessity and objective of the study and the organization of the paper, and the second chapter briefly discusses translation ethics and then focuses on the elaboration on Chesterman’s five models of translation ethics and finally deals with the development of the research on the English versions The Peony Pavilion both at home and abroad.The third chapter puts drama translation in the spotlight and goes on to make a brief introduction to Tang Xianzu’s The Peony Pavilion and its existing English versions with special attention to translators, Professor Xu Yuanchong and Professor Wang Rongpei. The fourth chapter conducts comparative analyses on the ethical problems in drama translation present in the two English versions of The Peony Pavilion by applying Chesterman’s norms of translation ethics. The fifth chapter draws conclusions that the theory has its limitations to some degree but still provides systematic and comprehensive principles in translating. They can be employed as relatively scientific, rational and feasible criteria to judge whether a translated version is good enough and further help to improve the quality of Chinese classical drama translation and figure out a few strategies for guiding translation practice and regulating the translation acts from Chinese classical dramas into English and then deal with the implications of the study, and finally the paper moves on to the limitations of the study and the suggestions for the future research.