Yujie Zhang 140016592

Further Reflections on Drama Translation

Through Drama Translation class, I have learnt theories of drama translation proposed by
actors, playwrights, translators and critics, which later served as the guideline of our
collaborative translation process. Though they have different stances and therefore different
criteria, by translating The Master, I could examine effects these criteria brought into the
production of a drama translation and make adjustments in order to find a subtle balanced
point between free and literal translation. Apart from translating skills, I also realised that
drama translators, as a key player in the translational action, have been required for certain
qualities and knowledge other than those of other literary genres. Speaking of literary
genres, as Jiri Veltrusky once pointed out (1977:108), drama is one of literary genres, which
uses language as its only material while theatre is not a literary genre but another art
because it adopts various materials including language. This creates a distinction between
translations produced for a reading public or for performance on the stage, which is also an
initial and fundamental question before I started translating The Master. In my opinion, the
source text (ST) is not only a literary translation but also an integral part of a theatrical
production, considering that it will be presented on stage along with lighting, sets and music,
special criteria and tactics should be adopted, which will be discussed together with
characteristics regarding language style of The Master.

Scripts, Verbalisation and Performability

Speaking of performability, Mr. Ruocheng Ying, a famous director, actor and also a
translator who had introduced many foreign plays into China and translated Chinese plays
into English, had offered a good example for our reference. Inspired by his own experience
of translating, drama acting and directing, Ying regarded the performability and speakability
as major concerns of theatrical translation. He attributed the lack of satisfied screenplay
translations of English-Chinese pair to translators who ignored the "direct stage effect" and
strived for explaining loads of author's quotes, imaginations and implications. "But what our
audience expect is 'crispy' lines", he argued in the preface of his translation of Lao She's
Teahouse (Lao, [1957] 1999: preface), "such as those neat and expertly composed
sentences in works of Wilde and Bernard, and it is translator's responsibility to introduce
them to the audience" On the other hand, there is a possibility that the ST itself is not
performable enough, such as Yuejin's part in The Master that he alone has to speak large
paragraphs of lines which as I see could bring challenges to both the actor and audiences
and in some degree impaired the aesthetics of the drama. Under this circumstance, the
translation should be even more concise and colloquial.

Moreover, different genres or language styles of the original theatrical texts also affect the
perfomability and can be adjusted through translation. When Zhu Shenghao, a famous
translator in modern China translating Shakespeare's works, found Shakespeare's works
unperformable because its form of poetry. In order to render it into more colloquial scripts, he
decided to rewrite it into prose, and everyday he sat near the stage to observe the rhythm
and overall effect of acting (Wang, 2008:116).

"Verbalisation", together with "performability" are utmost principals for Ying in theatrical
translation. However, what exactly is the standard of being "verbal" and how to apply it in
practice? Taking Chinese-speaking audience as an example, they come from different parts
of China and speak different dialects, so that "one accent/dialect cannot fit for all". Ying
himself also found it difficult to reconcile, but still, he suggested a unique style of
verbalisation in order to facilitate conveying the distinguishing features of times and regions
in the ST and even sociolects in the ST, just like what he did when translating Death of a
Salesman, in which he added Beijing vernacular slangs to simulate the way of talking of a
lower-class New Yorker in 1940s (Zhang, 2014:69). But replacing dialect A with B may not
work all the time, which may have risks of wiping out the uniqueness of the source language.

Scripts and Characterisation

Except stage acting and setting, the script is reckoned to be the most effective way to mould
and shape characters' personalities. As Ying Ruocheng once said, "The direct effect
produced by 'live' language" is the fundamental property of theatrical language which he has
always been pursuing (Lao, [1957] 1999: preface). By "live" he means the language should
not only be performable but also capable to reflect personalities of characters. For example,
Weidong and Fay's conversations suggest a love affair or ambiguity between them,
considering which the translation of their talk is supposed to convey the chemical and
passion rather than plain words. For example, "就算他妈再疼我也干了" was translated into
"Yes, yes, yes! No matter how much it hurts." For instance, Weidong's lines suggest that the
man is greedy and insidious, while Fay seems to be a superficial and beautiful woman who
only cares about money, beauty and men. Mr. Nobody, on the contrary, seems insane but
actually always hits the bull's eye. In the target text (TT), lines of the three should be
differentiated and consistent with the features of characterisation, mainly their identities,
ages, genders, vocations and experiences, as well as the relationships between the
characters, whether or not there is a background narration to introduce them.

Scripts, Sarcasm and Culture

Drama as one literary genre is rooted in culture, so is its sarcasm. Chekhov, the Russian
playwright and author, had ever complained that he would rather prevent his plays being
translated and performed outside Russia, because of those embedded Russian codes that
may not be fully understood by audiences (Bassnett, 1998:91). In few hours of performance,
theatre can reveal the surrounding society by mirroring history, politics, customs and so on.
As Susan Bassnett once said (2002:23), "Language is the heart within the body of culture…
like surgeon cannot neglect the body that surrounds the heart while operating on it, the
translator treats the text in isolation from the culture at his peril."

In order to maximize its sarcasm and black humour, the ST has managed to use various
basic techniques such as puns, malapropism, mock epics, and other inventive word games,
which are commonly seen in politics-themed plays. The humour needs to be conveyed
across the culture and social environment where it resides in, which means that not only
should the translator decode the sarcasm in ST but also re-encode it in TT. Plus, no footnote
or further explanation are allowed to insert after words or phrases containing rich cultural
implications, which imposes even more significant challenge in front of the translator.
Decisions should be made by the translator to choose an appropriate tactic, break the
barrier, and preserve "fresh sarcasm" for the target audience or at least enable them to
understand what is going on.

The Master has demonstrated a vivid picture of present Chinese society through its plot,
words and expressions that are popular among the general public. For instance, from the
overall story line of creating a master to the newly-invented Web Hyper company, from the
discussion about the criteria of master throughout the play to the depiction of "one day of the
master", all of them allude to hotly debated issues, social evils, customs and historical
events happened in last thirty years. Therefore, keeping abreast of both the latest news and
events from different aspects of the society helps a translator understand the author's
blueprint and thus decode acid sarcasm. The most challenging part during our collaborative
translation work proved to be the malapropism that uses an incorrect word in place of a word
with a similar sound, for example, "叫兽", "砖家", "老湿" and "大屎" in this text. These words
entail suggestions of either sex or immorality and thus create a strong sarcasm by
intensifying discrepancies between their previous and present meanings, which are very well
known among netizens and younger instead of older generation in China. Interestingly, since
the nature of malapropism, without further explanations even Chinese audience may not
identify the ironic mark immediately by merely listening without seeing the words, let alone
the audience from western culture. Considering this, our strategy is supplementation plus
adaptation. The literal meanings of original words, i.e., "professor", "expert", "teacher" and
"master" are still kept in the TT, but with a supplementation of "unless the guy really turns
you off" and an explanation of "because these days their reputation is stained by
sanctimonious and obscene rats". However, reviewing our version and I realized our version
is not "crispy" at all and the English sentence is too long to speak out on stage.

Taking Ying's translation of the Chinese play Uncle Doggie's Nirvana as an example, I would
explore how he dealt with words and expressions full of cultural implications and made them
fit for the stage (Zhu, 2007:56).

e.g. 1 比我大一轮
Twelve years order than me!
e.g. 2 咱这是“周瑜打黄盖”，两厢情愿的事——是两厢情愿吧？
Ours is a case of mutual agreement, no dispute -- it is mutual, isn’t it?
e.g. 3 吕布戏的那个貂蝉似的
"You remember the New Year print of Diao Chan that was on your wall, the legendary
beauty?"
e.g. 4 狗儿爷：（踌躇满志，哼着河北梆子《大登殿》）“十呀八年，才坐了西帝长安……”
e.g. 5 蛤蟆不长毛——天生的那道种儿！
You think you're any better?
e.g. 6 这会儿成落价的黄瓜啦！
And look at him now, a fried-shirmp!
e.g. 7 还是这些陈芝麻、烂谷子！
Still the same old hackneyed, boring story!
e.g. 8 风一阵，雨一阵，雷公电母耍一阵
Wind and rain, the gods in heaven are having fun again.
e.g. 9 喝，喝，可眼下这地
Sure, sure. But we have to decide about the land.
Uncle Doggie: (complacent, even swagerring, humming a tune from local opera)
"took me eighteen years to secure the throne in the capital"

The above examples are either proverbs or allusions that quote classic Chinese stories. The
author's strategies include omission, generalisation and supplementation. In e.g. 1 and 2, he
was not obsessed with the ST at all but explained the meaning straightforwardly. In e.g. 3
and 4 he generalised two specific names of person and place into "the legendary beauty"
and "the capital". In e.g. 5, he omitted the first half of the proverb but only explained the
essential meaning. In e.g. 6 and 7, in order to make the ST understandable for target
audience and save time for the stage, he summarised the main idea without mentioning
body of the metaphor at all. The most challenging in my opinion is as in the e.g. 8 and 9,
where there are lines in verse. Ying skilfully put TT in the rhyme as well that preserved the
original style at the largest extent, but this also belongs to the category of linguistic
requirements.

All in all, the decoded sarcasm from the ST should be re-encoded into the TT, though norms
and constraints of both cultures not only affect the production of original text and the
translation, but also obstruct the translator to transfer the total functions. Personally I doubt
the translator's competency of re-encoding, because to do so the translator not only has to
be a linguistic and theatrical expert, but also be familiar with or engaged in a career of acting
or directing. Interestingly, Ying Ruocheng himself is a live example with his rich experience
of being a director, actor and politician, which explains why he regarded the "performability"
as the utmost principal and managed to ensure it.

Another factor drawing my attention, as Baker argued, is that theatres originating in less
popular languages performed in English-speaking countries require a greater degree of
adjustment "because of English audiences' lack of familiarity with source cultures and
societies (Baker, 2009:94)". Adaptation is therefore inevitable and perhaps more visible than
with other types of text, which may be realized through rewriting. But translators always have
to face a dilemma that to what extent are they allowed to rewrite, since the final products
might be either too literal and unperformable or too free and deviant from the original. It
brings me to next topic: should the translator be given freedom to rewrite or not, and to what
extent?

Manipulation or Not?

Both of the Skopos theory and cultural translation school especially manipulation school -- its
most influential branch have emphasized the translator's dominant role and creativity, and
favoured the translator's intervention in the original text (Zeng, 2010:131). Manipulation
means the translator, limited by the target culture, intentionally or unintentionally rewrites,
deletes and edits in pursuit of the equivalence of ST's purpose. In a broader sense, this
manipulating activity refers to the limit and influence posed on the translation by target
cultures' poetics, customs, values, ideology, patronage, reader expectation and so on
(Hermans, 2014). However, I tend to find a middle ground between the manipulating activity
and traditional linguistic translation which based on the linguistic equivalence. I appreciate
that the manipulation theory ends the debate between foreignization and domestication by
claiming that either of them is simply a different strategy of rewriting and thus are both
acceptable. On the other hand, I disagree with its radical part that deletes and tampers the
ST to serve either moral, political or any other functions, just as some mainstream western
and Chinese news media did when translating news from either side. A latest controversial
case is the translation of Tagore's Stray Birds by Feng Tang (zhihu.com, 2015) whose
translation in my opinion has completely tampered the ST:

e.g. 10 ST: The great earth makes herself hospitable with the help of the grass
TT: 有了绿草 大地变得挺骚
e.g. 11 ST: The world puts off its mask of vastness to its lover. It becomes small as one song,
as one kiss of the eternal
TT: 大千世界在情人面前解开裤裆 绵长如舌吻 纤细如诗行

Conclusion

In my opinion, a good theatrical translation can highlight the main idea and personalities of
characters, depict a clearer relation of characters and arouse audiences' imagination.
However, there is another claim that it is not translators' responsibility to consider the stage
effect, because drama cannot be complete anyway until it is physically "translated" by
actors, especially those gestic texts that call for excavation (Bassnett & Lefevere, 1998:92).
Inspired by above two mainstream propositions, a compromised proposal suggested that
translations of different styles can be produced in order to meet different demands of
audiences (Li & Feng, 2004:165).

Translating a drama into English for the first time is definitely an intriguing and rewarding
experience, but sometimes its can be quite upsetting when I encounter untranslatable words,
or words stuck in the tip of my tongue which I attributed to my lack of proficiency in both
literary and real life English. To sum up, not only should the drama or theatre translator be
familiar with the customs, hot issues and overall social backdrop of both cultures, but also be
a master, at least an expert in language usage.

Reference List

Baker, M. (2011). In other words: A Coursebook on Translation. Routledge.

Bassnett, S. (2002). Translation Studies. Psychology Press, 2002.
Bassnett, S., & Lefevere, A. (1998). Constructing cultures: Essays on literary translation
(Vol. 11). Multilingual Matters.
Hermans, T. (Ed.). (2014). The Manipulation of Literature (Routledge Revivals): Studies in
Literary Translation. Routledge.
How to access Feng Tang's Translation of Stray Birds (2016) How to access Feng Tang's
Translation of Stray Birds? Available https://www.zhihu.com/question/33570599,
accessed at 13 January 2016.
Lao She [老舍], ed. and tr. (1999). 茶馆：汉英对照[Teahouse: Chinese-English
Comparison]. Beijing: 中国对外翻译出版有限公司[China Translation &
Publishing Corporation].
LI, J. Y., & FENG, W. N. (2004). On the Principle and Approach of Drama Translation.
Journal of Northwest University (Philosophy and Social Sciences Edition), 4, 034.
Veltrusky, J. (1977). Puppets for adults: the théâtre du Manitout. SubStance, 105-111.
Wang, Haiping (2008). Zhu Shenghao and His Translating of Shakespeare's Plays. Journal
of Tianshui Normal University, 4, 031.
Zhang, Wei (2014). Theory and Practice of Theatre Translation: A Review of Ying
Ruocheng's Theatre Translation. Journal of Guangdong University of Foreign
Studies, 2, 016.
Zeng, Xia (2010). Manipulation in Translating Actions——the Commonness Shared by
Functional Translation School and Cultural Translation School. Journal of Jixi
University, 6, 064.
Zhu Minsheng [朱明胜] (2007). 活的语言——英若诚翻译中外戏剧作品的特色 ["Live"
Language -- Characteristics of Ying's Drama Translation] Theatre 11:54-56

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