【正文】 the most mon ones containing spoken drama (hua ju), opera, ballet, musical theater, puppet shows and so on. Drama is a kind of prehensive performing art by mean of literature, music, dance and art so as to create the artistic image of stage, disclosing social contradiction and reflecting real life. Drama is a special literary genre, which has its own language character and translation theory. Thus, differing from “play” and “theatre”, drama is a term generally used to refer to a literary form involving parts written for actors to perform. In our country, drama is generally including theater, spoken drama (hua ju) and opera. The term sometimes particularly refers to spoken drama. According to the type of works, drama can be divided into tragedy, edy and serious play and so on。因此，戲劇翻譯以舞臺表演為目的才能達到舞臺演出的最佳效果，并最大限度地滿足觀眾的需求。翻譯者可以選擇可行的翻譯策略來達到 其翻譯目的。 for another thing, the plot of stage performance has to be performed before the audiences. As we all know, drama translation mainly involves director, translator, actors and audience. The translator has an important mission to make the director easy to direct and actor easy to perform. What is more important, a drama performance cannot be called an excellent one without audience?s intense response and acceptance. In this case, translator should take drama language into consideration and adopt suitable translation method and strategy to make the drama fully understood by the audience. 10 Chapter Three Analysis of Ying Ruocheng’s translation method and strategy of Teahouse In the former chapter, the author introduces the usage of Skopos theory to drama translation in detail. To sum up, adopting correct translation theory will make the whole translation more successful. Based on Skopos theory, the skopos of translation determines the translation strategy and method. With different perspective, translators may adopt different translation strategy and method. In Ying Ruocheng?s English version of Teahouse, his translation aims to translate for stage performance. This chapter analyses liberal translation method and domestication strategy from linguistic and cultural aspects to verify Ying Ruocheng?s performanceorientation in drama translation. Liberal translation from the linguistic perspective Liberal translation and literal translation are two fundamental translation methods in literature translation. In the article “Preface to the Retranslation of Emma”, Liu Zhongde writes, “If literal translation will not do, you should master the true meaning and spirit of original and render it properly in accordance with the characteristics of the two languages concerned, namely adopting free translation.”(Liu Zhongde, 1994:156) Generally speaking, Ying Ruocheng?s translation for stage performance, so he may employ liberal translation to make the translated play intelligible and convey his meaning to the audience. In the following paragraph, the author will gives some examples to introduce the liberal translation on word and sentence level. On word level Example 1: 王淑芬 : (看李三的辮子礙事 )三爺，咱們的茶館改了良，你的小辮也該剪了吧？ 11 （英若誠， 1999:60） Wang Shufen: [not happy about Li San?s pigtail] with our “reformed” teahouse, don?t you think it?s time you got rid of that pigtail. (英若誠 , 1999:61) From above we can see that Ying Ruocheng translates the Chinese word 礙事 into “not happy”. “Not happy” generally is a sign of frowning or shaking head. From Wang Shufen?s words, she intended to express her dissatisfaction with Li San. Audiences can sense the psychological activity of the character from his subtle action. While John HowardGibbon translates it into “get in the way”, it is obvious that it cannot efficiently get to the stage effect. Ying Ruocheng?s translation is inclined to use liberal translation, which gives hints to actors about how to perform on stage so as to make audience understood easily. Example 2: 劉麻子：（侍立）鄉(xiāng)下人，可長得俊呀！ … (英若誠， 1999:44) PockMark Liu: [Standing in attendance] A country girl, true, but what a peach! ... (英若誠， 1999:45) “Peach” generally refers to an attractive and beautiful young woman. HowardGibbon translates “長得俊 ” into “handsome”, which is word to word translation. While Ying Ruocheng takes full advantage of the word “peach” to describe the beautiful country girl. Thus, it is vivid and full of humor. Example 3: 王利發(fā) : 您這么有學問，上知天文，下知地理，又做過國會議員。目的論指出翻譯是一種人類的行為活動，而且是有目的的行為活動。這種行為的結果則是譯文。 （英若誠， 1999:116） Wang Lifa: You?re a learned man. You know all about heaven and earth. You?re been a member of parliament. (英若誠， 1999:117) As an uneducated person, Wang Lifa is likely to express “上知天文，下知 12 地理” with the words “heaven and earth”. While Howard translates it “from astronomy to geography” which is literal translation. Though they are both convey the meaning to the audience, Ying?s version is colloquial and easy for the audience to understand. On sentence level Example 1: 常四爺：二哥，走！找個地方喝兩盅去 !一醉解千愁！ (英若誠， 1999： 86) Chang: Come, brother, let?s go and have a drink. Drown our sorrow in wine. (英若誠， 1999:87） FOURTH ELDER CHANG: Come on, Second Elder, let?s find a place where we can share a few cups of tea. One cup can drown a thousand sorrows. (HowardGibbon， 1980:32) Here“ 找個地方喝兩盅去 ”, Ying Ruocheng puts it into a sentence“ let?s go and have a drink” by liberal translation. It is clearly that his version is much more concise pare