Corpus stylistics of drama in drama translation studies: (Im)politeness in two Chinese versions of Miller’s Death of a Salesman

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.