A Corpus-based Research On Novelized And Musical Narration Of Tao Hua Shan And Its Translated Versions

Ming and Qing Legends are representatives of Chinese traditional drama of which Tao Hua Shan is one of the greatest masterpieces.It has been translated into other languages.Therefore,such a famous drama is of great research value.However,neither the drama itself nor the translated versions have drawn enough attention among scholars.For the purpose of carrying forward Chinese traditional culture and promoting steps on translation of Chinese traditional drama,this study attempts to implement an empirical and systematic comparative study on the translation of Tao Hua Shan and its two translated versions from perspectives of novelized and musical narration based on stage-performance.Performability and speakability are two major components of theatrical works and the reservation and reproduction of the original performability and speakability largely determine the success of stage-performance of translated texts.Nevertheless,these two elements are often neglected in previous studies.Taking this undue ignorance into account,we focus on the performability and speakability of novelized narration and musical narration in Ma Yan of Tao Hua Shan.To ensure the objectivity and accuracy of this research,we implement a corpus-based investigation on Tao Hua Shan,written by Kong Shangren and its two English versions translated by Chen shi-hsiang,Harold Acton &Cyril Birch and Xu Yuanchong & Xu Ming.Ma Yan is a climax scene of Tao Hua Shan,so we take it as a case to study the narration.While studying the musical narration,we focus on the beauty in sounds of Qu.A prosodic phonological system is established with rhyme,duration and pitch as three parameters.In the research,softwares such as UltraEdit,ABBYY Finereader,TTS,Cooledit Pro,Praat are utilized.All comparison between the source text and the target texts are researched not only by qualitative methods,but also by quantitative methods.The research results are as follows.First of all,in terms of novelized narration,Xu's version grasps the key point---omniscient perspective in Chinese Ming and Qingdynasties better than Chen's version.He can accurately grasp who is the addressee and reveal the identity of author when necessary.When translating mental activities of the narrator,the narrator directly narrates his or her mental activity to the audience in Xu's version,so the audience will better understand narrator's psychology.His version is also more concise and intelligible to the audience which better meets the requirement of performability.In addition,in terms of musical narration,narrators express their feelings by telling stories especially by singing.Three aspects of rhyme,duration and pitch on sentence or clause level are carried out.As for rhyme,there is no hint of rhyme in Chen's version.Although Xu doesn't follow the rule of ST,the form of rhyme is“AABBA” which embodies the connotative meaning of self-irony in the ST.As for the duration,Chen's version is quite longer than the ST but Xu's version is quite similar to its counterpart in ST.Xu pays attention to the variation of duration and tries to realize the equivalence of duration with the ST.As for the pitch,since English and Chinese belong to different families of language,it is rather difficult to ensure the similar feature of pitch in translations.Xu's version presents a lower pitch contour than Chen's and reveals a rather steady tendency.Above all,Xu pays more attention to the beauty of form and sounds.His version establishes the emotional tone of the whole scene and promotes the development of narrative plot better than Chen's.What is more,Xu understands the psychology of the narrator and pays attention to this detail in translation better than Chen.Therefore,Xu does better in the speakability of Tao Hua Shan.With the framework of narration and prosodic phonology,the study is based on corpus and it investigates the translation norms on stage-performance of Tao Hua Shan,one of the greatest masterpieces of Chinese Ming and Qing Legends.This research is not only of great value in promoting translation studies on Chinese traditional drama,but also in carrying forward Chinese traditional culture.