Translation Strategy For Chinese Drama From The Perspective Of Performability

In the past three decades, the performability of drama translators has been fiercely debated. Some scholars, represented by Bassnett, believe that performability does not exist and should not be discussed; the others, represented by Pavis, think that performability is one of the criteria to evaluate drama translation. Chinese scholars have not conducted systematic study on performability, but most of them recognize performability as one of the goals of drama translation.The key of the contention is different understanding about the purpose of drama translation, so it is necessary to study performability from the angle of skopos theory. The fundamental difference between drama translation and literature translation is that the purpose of drama translation is stage performance, while that of literature translation is reading. In that sense, drama translators should pay special attention to the recreation of performability.Performability is reflected in speakability, actability and audience reception. Speakability can be understood from intelligibility and rhythm; actability refers to the ability of drama translation to reflect character’s physical and psychological activities; audience reception involves cultural allusion and idioms.By analyzing the English version of The Family by Ying Ruocheng from the above three perspectives, the author puts forward several strategies for drama translation. From the perspective of speakability. dramatic translation should be rhythmic and easy for audience’s understanding; from the perspective of actability, drama translation should directly reflect the character’s emotion and be in line with actor’s body language; from the perspective of audience reception, considering that Chinese drama is not quite commonplace in international community, drama translator should be audience-friendly and adopt domestication strategy.