Arts Studies and Criticism

This paper conducts a comparative analysis of two English translations of Lao She's play Teahouse — by Ying Ruocheng (1999) and John Howard-Gibbon (1980) — employing Lawrence Venuti's theories of domestication and foreignization [1]. The study examines their respective approaches to rendering Beijing dialect and culture-loaded items, exploring the translators' strategic choices between "cultural adaptation" and "cultural transmission." The findings indicate that Ying Ruocheng's translation exhibits a distinct tendency towards domestication. He utilizes strategies such as idiomatic substitution and figurative adaptation to facilitate smooth comprehension for the target audience, thereby effectively conveying the play's dramatic effect and socio-critical themes. In contrast, Howard's version adopts a foreignization strategy [2], primarily through literal translation, image retention, and intra-textual explanation. This approach aims to preserve the cultural authenticity of the original work, presenting readers with a portrayal that closely mirrors the source context. The differing degrees of domestication and foreignization in the two translations stem from the translators' distinct identities, target objectives, and their respective socio-historical contexts. Neither strategy is inherently superior; both represent legitimate methodological choices dictated by different communicative needs. The interplay of these strategies endows the English versions of Teahouse with enduring artistic vitality and broader communicative influence. This study concludes that literary translation should seek a balance between domestication and foreignization, leveraging culture as a bridge for meaningful cross-cultural dialogue.