An Analysis Of Performability In Drama Translation From The Perspective Of Skopos Theory

Since China is engaging in more cultural exchanges with other countries, there are increasing foreign theater companies coming to China to perform and many C hinese theater companies tend to adapt foreign plays. So many foreign plays need to be translated into Chinese. However, these translations have always been used as textbooks to study foreign literature and only a few of them are used as script for performance. Therefore, only a few translators take performability into consideration. But the essence of drama is being played in theaters. Therefore, the translation of dramas should concentrate more on the performability instead of readability.Due to the duel nature of dramas, the translation of drama can be especially complicated and the criterion for it is also flexible. This thesis aims to analyze the performability and the readability of drama translation from the perspective of skopos theory.This thesis analyzes the translation strategies and effects of two C hinese versions of Tom Stoppard’s The Real Thing by comparing the translations concerning cultural information, insertion and deletion and the action of language. It comes to the conclusion that the translation approaches are determined by the purpose. Performability should be taken into consideration if the translation is used as script for performance.