A Comparative Study Of Performability In The English Translations Of The Peony Pavilion

Drama translation has not received much attention until Susan Bassnett published two articles on the performability of it in the 1980 s.In recent years,many scholars have discussed the performability of drama translation from the perspective of audience acceptance,but few scholars have studied the drama translation,especially traditional Chinese opera translation from the perspective of practitioners.The term performability means that the ultimate purpose of drama translation is for stage performance,and its target audience is the audience,so it is far from enough to merely study from the perspective of text or audience.Therefore,this article conducts a comparative study on the performability of traditional Chinese opera translations from the perspective of practitioners.As for the selection of English versions,the author draws on her own performing experience and selects the most typical and representative script of The Peony Pavilion in Kunqu opera.Combined with the availability and diversity of translations,the author further selects out the most frequently performed scene of The Interrupted Dream,in which the character image and the theme are the most prominent.At the same time,according to the principle of original consistency,the works translated by four translators,Cyril Birch(1980),Zhang Guangqian(1994),Stephen Owen(1996)and Wang Rongpei(2000),are finally selected.The theoretical framework in this thesis mainly includes two models: the model of speakability and singability.The formation of the speakability model is mainly based on the integration and induction of existing academic viewpoints.After that,it is screened with the combination of performance characteristics of traditional Chinese opera itself.The prototype of the singability model derives from the two most commonly used models for analyzing the singability of song translation proposed by Peter Low and Franzon.The relationship between the new and old model is foundation and development.The thesis applies the above models to analyze the translations of The Peony Pavilion around the following three issues——1)How to measure performability of the English translations of The Peony Pavilion? 2)What are the differences between and among the four English versions of The Peony Pavilion in performability? 3)What kind of translation methods is beneficial for successful English performance?It is found that except that some translator performs relatively outstandingly on some certain standard compared to other translators,whereas in other standards their performance level is unstable.1)Speakability:(1)Stephen Owen’s and Cyril Birch’s translations prove to be less colloquial.Stephen Owen tends to use descriptive translation methods with complex sentence patterns,most of them being translated into English poetry.The words used by Cyril Birch and Stephen Owen are more formal,and French words sometimes appear in Cyril Birch’s translation.(2)The degree of coherence in Stephen Owen’s translation is relatively low.Direct and blunt responses often appear.(3)Rhyme is most frequently used in Wang Rongpei’s translation.2)Singability:(1)Wang Rongpei’s translation uses the lowest number of consonant groups at the beginning and end of the words.(2)The number of syllables in rhythms is also the lowest in Wang Rongpei’s translation,and his translation has higher chances of singability.However,in many cases,there are also some issues where the number of syllables is so low that it affects auditory perception of the audience.(3)Wang Rongpei excels in rhyming.(4)Cyril Birch performs relatively better in maintaining parallel structures in the lines.Based on the above findings,we propose the following suggestions to improve performability of drama translation:1)In the speakability of traditional Chinese opera translation,using spoken language(avoiding unusual vocabulary and using as many simple sentences as possible),personalized and coherent language(paying attention to coherence of lines,lexical markers,sentence repetition,etc.),while attaching importance to rhyming as well as matching lines with actions will be conducive to the final performance.2)In terms of singability,the characteristic of “fewer characters and more tunes”in Chinese opera itself plays a crucial role in the establishment of the final singability model.We cannot treat Chinese opera in a general way of music composition,as there are significant differences in rhythm and singing speed between the two.In order to improve performability,translators should try to reduce consonant groups at the beginning and end of the words(mainly affected by the third person singular,past participle,plural form,genitive form,etc.);They should also keep the number of English syllables between the number of Chinese characters in the original text and the total beats of the music as far as possible in rhythm.In addition,they are expected to pay due attention to the semantic field(mainly cultural context and situational context),rhyming(refer to POINT-SCORING SCHEMA proposed by Peter Low as the measurement standard),structures(parallelism and contrast)and expressions(metaphor).The thesis is innovative in that it is an action research conducted by the practitioner herself.It develops a new evaluation method for the translation of traditional Chinese opera,especially Kun opera,with performance as its ultimate goal.It is hoped that the performance of Chinese operas for foreigners can change from singing in Chinese with English subtitles to singing in English,so as to better showcase charm of Chinese operas.Nevertheless,The Peony Pavilion cannot encompass all the characteristics of Chinese opera,and different types of opera have their own performance characteristics.Moreover,the author is not a professional composer,and the lack of expertise in music may also have an impact on the final results.