Drama Translation From The Perspective Of Skopos Theory: A Case Study

The novel The Family, the masterpiece of Ba Jin, is the milestone in the history of Chinese literature. And in1942, Cao Yu, a famous playwright, adapted it into drama. Then in1983when Ying Ruocheng, a well-known actor as well as translator who was serving as the guest professor in America, translated Cao Yu’s adapted version of The Family into English and aimed to have it put onto stage in American by his students. So to a great extent, Ying’s translated version of The Family was endowed with a specific translation purpose, which is an important factor contributing to the successful performance, however, the related research has not drawn enough attention.As the core of German Functionalism, Skopos Theory, which was put forward by Hans Vermeer in1970s, could be used to guide any translation actions. According to Skopos Theory, it is the skopos that determines the translation methods and strategies, and in order to achieve particular translation skopos, the translator can use any kinds of translation approaches. That is why Skopos Theory has received a lot of criticisms since its emergence. Many scholars hold the idea that Skopos Theory is not a universally applicable translation theory, it can only be used to guide non-literary text translation practice and could not be applied to literary text translation. Therefore, this thesis takes Ying’s translated English version of the drama The Family as an example, and attempts to discuss the applicability of Skopos Theory in drama translation.The qualitative analysis method is adopted in this thesis. On the basis of analyzing the purpose of Ying’s translation of The Family, the thesis has discussed the relationship between the translation approaches and Skopos Theory from the perspective of the three rules of Skopos Theory.It is found that, in order to achieve the specific translation purpose, Ying Ruocheng has chosen a variety of translation approaches in the translation of The Family, which has made Ying’s translated version of The Family achieve a unique dramatic effect, that is, the performability and intelligibility of the dramatic text as well as individuality of dramatic language. The findings of the thesis have proved that Skopos Theory can be applied to guide the translation of literary texts, especially dramatic texts. Furthermore, the application of Skopos Theory in literary texts can guarantee the flexible selection of translation approaches, the fulfillment of translation purposes, and the achievement of unique dramatic effects in the translated text.