On the Formal Equivalence of Translating Classical Chinese Drama—Centered on the English translations of the Northern Drama Han gong qiu of the Yuan Dynasty

The Northern drama (zaju) of the Yuan Dynasty has distinct formal characteristics in terms of script structure, arias and speaking lines, musical modes and song suites, as well as the linguistic register and metrical requirements. By comparing the three English translations of the Northern drama (zaju) Han gong qiu with the original Chinese text, there appear several deficiencies in presenting the capacity of performability and readability of this text, which includes the misplacing of the literary status of the songs and dialogue, the omitting of the musical modes and metrics. The formal feature exemplifies the “significant form” and poses an indispensable part of the content of Yuan Zaju.


Introduction
The theory of equivalence in translation was proposed by the American linguist and translation theorist Eugene A. Nida (1914A. Nida ( -2011 during the 1960s and 1970s. The equivalence theory has experienced the development from dynamic equivalence to functional equivalence, but formal equivalence has always been the basic issue discussed by Nida. He emphasizes that the formal structure of the source language should be retained in the target language, regardless of whether this formal structure conforms to the expression norms of the target language (Guo, 1999). In other words, the translator should center on the source language text in the translation practice and achieve equivalence with the source language text as much as possible in terms of grammatical form, term, and meaning. However, as far as literary translation is concerned, literary genres, textual structure, and poetic style will also be included in the formal aspects of the text. Therefore, when focusing on the study of the English translations of the classical Chinese drama text, we find that the meet of formal equivalence of the genre style, textual structure, and poetic style of drama text in the rendered version is significant for conveying the aesthetic and cultural value of the classical Chinese drama.
As one of the subgenres of classical Chinese drama, the Northern drama (zaju) of the Yuan Dynasty (元雜劇) 1 has distinct formal characteristics in terms of script structure (劇本結構), arias and speaking lines (曲唱賓白), musical modes and song suites (宮調套數), as well as the linguistic register and metrical requirements (曲牌格律), etc. Meanwhile, these formal characteristics are essentially an important part of the "content" of zaju. In reading and translating zaju, the aesthetic and stylistic uniqueness will be lost if the formal features are discarded. As the representative piece of Yuan zaju, Han gong qiu has enjoyed high popularity among English translators ever since the nineteenth century. There are several English translations of Han gong qiu, including full translation and abridged translation. In 1829, John Francis Davis (1795Davis ( -1890 Keene (1922Keene ( -2019 (Keene, 1965), Autumn in Han Palace translated in 1972 by the translator Liu Jung-en (劉榮恩, 1908-2001), and Breaking a Troubling Dream: A Lone Goose in Autumn over the Palace of Han co-translated in 2010 by Sinologists of Stephen H. West (1944-)  As one of the classical plays of Yuan zaju, the text of Han gong qiu is endowed with both "readability" and "performability" and presents formal features of zaju as following: 1) the script structure is divided into four acts (zhe, 折) with one wedge (xiezi, 楔子, means interlude); 2) role types include Mo (lead male, 末), Dan (lead female, 旦), Wai (secondary male, 外), Jing (secondary male, 淨), Chou (comic, 丑), etc.; 3) the whole text is composed of songs and speaking lines. Usually the songs are lyrical and emotional, while the speaking lines promote the narration of the plot; 4) songs are usually sung by one role type. In Han gong qiu, it is "Zheng Mo" (lead male, 正末) who plays the Yuan Emperor of the Western Han Dynasty and sings although the drama. Other roles only undertake the dialogue parts without singing; 5) each act adopts an individual song suite and each song suite consists of a series of single-stanza songs regulated by the same musical modes; 6) each musical suite and song has their own suite title and song title, as well as specific metrical requirements, such as tone pattern (pingze, 平仄), antithesis (duizhang, 對仗), alliteration, etc.; and 7) songs under the same musical mode are written to the same rhyme. Reading only the narrative parts may not affect the reader's understanding of the whole plot. The formal features of the songs and the predetermined musical modes listed in 5), 6), and 7) are essential core features and challenges for the translation. Therefore, whether it is centered on the source text or the reader's response, the "form" of the zaju plays a higher priority than the plot in interlingual translation.
From the perspective of whether drama scripts are used for reading or performing, most of the scripts may fall into at least three categories, closet-drama, theatrical script, and scripts that are suitable for both reading and performing.
As a script of the third category, Han gong qiu is endowed with capacities of both performability and readability. Therefore, those seven formal features listed above can roughly be sorted by these two capacities, and there must be features that carry more than one capacity. For instance, features 1, 2, 3, and 4 are shared ones on page and on stage; while points 5, 6, and 7 are directly related to the aesthetic and poetic effects of the closet-drama. The classical Chinese drama review stresses songs and metrics most, which made the latter three features significant to closet-drama. However, feature 5 is also the essential factor of the theatricality of the performance onstage. It is closely related to how the leading singer and the orchestra interpret the lyrics and the music. Therefore, thought facing the complex situation where performability and readability are entangled in the same play, we have to adopt a simplified way to discuss how translators of Han gong qiu present the formal features based on the distinctions of performability and readability.

Formal Presentation of Performability
The English translations of Han gong qiu all retain the "four acts with one wedge" structure but show obvious differences in the presentation of the performability, which includes stylistic forms that differentiate songs and speaking lines, as well as stage directions of the play. Here, we take an excerpt from the first act of the original text as an example ( Figure 1). It happens when Yuan Emperor falls in love with his concubine Zhaojun at the first sight only to discover that Zhaojun's portrait was blemished intentionally by the imperial portraitist Mao Yanshou. the song title (qupai, 曲牌). The song contains six short sentences with six characters to the same rhyme (highlighted by the bold font), namely the rhyme of jia and ma, (佳麻韻, as jia and ma rhyme with the same vowel). If the padding words (chenzi, 襯字) are removed, the aria will show its neat form that the number of the characters of the six short sentences should be 5/5/7/5/6/5 as the underlining sentences show, and the tone pattern (pingze, 平仄) of the final sentence is set to be "| | --|" (仄仄平平仄) (Zhu, 1959). 2 Therefore, from the perspective of "performability", the text contains stage directions of singing, speaking, and prompt of actions for different roles; while from the perspective of "readability", musical and poetical forms and features are also presented.
Let's review how different translators deal with this excerpt.
Translation from Davis: EMP.-Keeper of the yellow gate, bring us that picture, that we may view it.
(Sees the Picture.) "Ah, how has he dimmed the purity of the gem, bright as the waves in autumn!" 3 (To the attendant). Transmit our pleasure to the officer of the guard to behead Maouyenshow, and report to us his execution (Davis, 1829).
Davis keeps the speaking lines and the stage directions, using the brackets and italics form to distinguish these lines. But the stanza of six short sentences has only one left as 點得這一寸秋波玉有暇. Davis abandons most of the arias, let alone the titles of the suites and songs. As to the few sentences of arias maintained in his translation, he tends to prosify the metrical sentence and keep the plot in a natural and coherent status. This is the main translation strategy presented from Davis' version.
Liu Jung-en's translation: EMPEROR YüAN: Boy, bring me the portrait and let me see.
The YOUNG EUNUCH shows the portrait.

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The translators also explain the rhetoric usage of "autumn waves" in the annotation, and adopt a stricter literal translation supplemented by "thick translation" in the annotation to achieve the formal equivalence with the original script.

By comparison, West & Idema's translation is the most complete translation
of Han gong qiu in the correspondence of the formal features. But it still gives up in presenting the metrics of the song, which shows a prosifying translation strategy in rendering the poetic forms. Davis' practice of abandoning arias and mixing speaking lines and stage directions has greatly weakened the presentation of the unique style and aesthetic form of Yuan zaju in his translation. As he states in the "Preface", "They (arias) are frequently, moreover, mere repetitions or amplifications of the prose parts; and being intended more for the ear than for the eye, are rather adapted to the stage than to the closet" (Davis, 1829 (Halde, 1739). Therefore, it is difficult to achieve formal equivalence in translation Yuan zaju. The reasons are related not only to whether the target language has an equivalent form but also to the high-cultural characteristics of the Yuan zaju script itself.

Formal Presentation of the Readability
The standardization process of the musical modes, rhymes, and metrics of Yuan zaju, which is the essential domain of the readability of a script, has been one of the core issues studies ever since the Yuan dynasties. We will take the first three stanzas of the musical modes in the second act of Han gong qiu as the case to evaluate the formal presentations by different translations (Figure 2).  liangzhou diqi (梁州第七), and gewei (隔尾), are all following the same musical mode nanlü (南呂). Belonged to the same musical mode, all the songs share the same rhyme with the vowel of youhou (尤候) regardless of tone pattern. Meanwhile, each song has its set metrics. For example, yizhihua, usually the first song of nanlü mode, consists of nine short sentences with the number of Chinese characters of 5/5/5/5/4/5/5/7/7 respectively without padding words. 5 The short sentences are reined by specific tone patterns. 6 Various formal regulations prevailed over all the musical modes and song stanzas as the example shows. We will take a view of the three translations of this song yizhihua and see how they present such a delicate form of the original script.

1) Davis' translation:
(Comes close behind, and looks over her.) "Reflected in that round mirror, she resembles the Lady in the Moon (Davis, 1829)." Davis only keeps the last short sentence of the song "原來廣寒殿嫦娥在這月 明裡有". He also adds a note to explain the allusion and metaphor employed in the script. "The passages marked with inverted commas are retained from the operatic portion of the drama, or that which is sung. Changngo, the goddess of the Moon, gives her name to the finely curved eye brows (Ngomei) of the Chi-5 Padding words are underlined in the Chinese text. The bold fonts, including xiu 秀, you 憂, mou 眸, hou 候, jiu 酒, are all rhyming characters.  (Liu, 1972  Li Yu (李漁, 1611-1680), a famous and productive playwright in the Qing Dynasty, emphasized that "the essence of poetry and songs in drama lies in the strict regulations, firstly of musical modes, secondly of tone patterns, and lastly of the number of characters" (Li, 1959). Without formal features, Yuan zaju will lose its characteristics as a style and subgenre of classical Chinese drama, as well as the distinctions with other styles, such as modern drama script. Taking Han gong qiu as a case, we have explored several deficiencies of the formal equivalence in translingual and transcultural translations. Such deficiencies, on the one hand, may be attributed to the lack of relevant formal features in the target language and culture; on the other hand, may be determined a priori by the inherent feature and structure of different languages. It seems obvious that interlin-

Conclusion
Based on the formal presentations of script structures, capacities of the performability and readability of the original Han gong qiu text, we have found that all translations reveal deficiencies of form equivalence, which directly affect the understanding of Yuan zaju and classical Chinese drama from readers' and researchers' side. These translations will also cause a completely different reception history of zaju out of China. Based on the weakened or even obscured presentation of the formal features of zaju, readers and scholars relying on the English translations in current days focus more on what the story zaju tells rather than in what form the story is told. Therefore, current researchers prefer to explore the content, plot of the drama, as well as its ideological aspect. Thanks to those diligent translators, Yuan zaju may travel to meet readers of remote territories and cultures. However, if the translator in the future only seeks to convey the content of the plot and continues to ignore the content of the form of Yuan zaju, then readers and scholars will hardly change their impression that Han gong qiu is a "tragedy full of literati sadness" (Maeno et al, 2012). In fact, the formal feature of Yuan zaju exemplifies the "significant form" (following the term of the English art critic Clive Bell (1881Bell ( -1964) (Bell, 1916). Such form also poses an indispensable part of the content of Yuan Zaju. The inseparable form and content are woven in the dual interpretation of reading and performing. It also demonstrates a universal feature of the scripts of classical Chinese drama. Therefore, to better convey the formal connotation and cultural significance of classical Chinese drama, translators need to pay more attention to the "significant form" of the specific genre.

Conflicts of Interest
The author declares no conflicts of interest regarding the publication of this paper.