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Article published In:
Babel
Vol. 60:4 (2014) ► pp.425–444

Corpus stylistics of drama in drama translation studies

(Im)politeness in two Chinese versions of Miller’s Death of a Salesman

| Jiangsu University
| Jiangsu University
| Jiangsu University
| Jiangsu University
| Jiangsu University

Drama translation studies used to be the most neglected area in translation studies due to its prescriptive approaches and reductionist illusion of polarization of performability and readability. Corpus stylistics of drama, with the aid of computer technology as well as the understanding of the true nature of drama as the dialectical combination of both literary and theatrical characteristics, appears to be a remarkable theoretical framework and methodology for drama translation studies. The study of (im)politeness in Death of a Salesman and its two Chinese versions is undertaken as a case study. ICTCLAS and Concordance 3.0 were used to calculate the high frequent expressions concerning (im)politeness in both the original text and the Chinese versions, followed by the analysis of their stylistic function. It is found that modal particles and slang expressions in Chinese are useful to reconstruct the characterization, plot as well as performability of the translated drama. In conclusion, corpus stylistics of drama is of high feasibility in drama translation studies.

Keywords: (im)politeness, modal particles, page translation, stage translation, corpus stylistics, drama translation, Death of a Salesman
Published online: 22 June 2015
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/babel.60.4.02xia
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Xiao, Rui & Huan Yu
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洪, 小婷
2021. A Visualized Bibliometric Analysis of Abroad Studies on Translator’s Style Based on Biblioshiny (2003~2018). Modern Linguistics 09:01 ► pp. 157 ff. DOI logo
袁, 青
2017. Politeness in Japanese-Chinese Translation. Modern Linguistics 05:02 ► pp. 175 ff. DOI logo

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