【正文】 y works. Each work has a prototype in life and breath life into character. The shift of Lao She?s literature standpoint presents firstly in the choice of literary genres. After new China was founded, he began with drama creation. Owing to the creation of the excellent stage play “Longxu Ditch”, he was ever given to “People?s Artist” title. As the most remarkable work by Lao She, the drama Teahouse remains a reserved play prestigiously in contemporary drama stage in China. Lao She?s drama art has achieved a great breakthrough in this play. It is clearly that Lao She?s writing style is unique. What stands out the most is that Teahouse is only a threeact play and each act has a certain period. That is, from “after the Reform Movement of 1989 had been crushed” to “Bei Yang warlords set up their separatist regimes by force in Early Republic” and then ends in “the eve of regime collapse of Kuomingtang (KMT)”. It is not so much a time change as historical change. Lao She represents life scenes and 5 historical tendency of these three times which point out that old China has been on the decline and people should seek for another way. As to the structure, many small dramatic conflicts are put together inside each act and so push forward the development of story plot. “The main characters from young to old, run through the whole play”, “the minor characters, succession of father and son”, “the insignificant characters are on call at any time”. Meanwhile, the fate and story of character are closely associated with era development at that time. In the drama he cleverly exploited life change of figures those who have different social ranks or jobs to expose a great social change. Ruocheng and his translation of Teahouse Ying RuoCheng is not only a wellknown performing artist, but also a distinguished theatre director. After graduating from foreign language department of Tsinghua University, he enrolled in the Beijing People?s Art Theatre. He has portrayed a series of artistic images which win highly praise in several decades of his stage career. Being an actor, he has starred in some classical plays, some of which are Teahouse, LongXu Ditch, Camel Xiangzi and so on. In 1980, he translated Lao She?s masterpiece Teahouse into English which was also published in foreign country, paving the way for its later visit to Europe. In 1983, he also translated Death of Salesman into Chinese which was written by Arthur Miller, a renowned contemporary American writer, and played a major role in it. In the preface to his translated play Teahouse, the son of Lao She, Shu Yi mentioned that “Ying Ruocheng?s Y axis is excellent national tradition. Ying Ruocheng?s X axis is abundant world civilization.” (Shu Yi, qtd in Ying Ruocheng 1999:3) Obviously, he thinks highly of this knowledgeable writer. In order to attain a high degree of stage effect and get a better understanding and acceptance of foreign audience, therefore, Ying Ruocheng applies colloquial, concise, and humorous language in his translated work. 6 Chapter Two An Overview of Skopos Theory Being a “German School” of functionalist translation theory, Skopos theory plays an important role in the process of translation. Meanwhile, it also has an effective guidance to drama translation. In the following part, there is a brief introduction of Skopos theory and its usage in drama translation. Vermeer’s Skopos theory The word “skopos” originates from Greek, to put it simply, it means “intention” or “purpose”. “In Greek, skopos means aim, purpose, goal, objective, and intention. It is a technical term used by Hans Vermeer (1996) to refer to the purpose of a translation, which determines the strategy to be used during the translation process.” (Munday 2020:79) Skopos Theory was put forward by the German linguist Hans Vermeer and then developed in Germany in the late 1970s. Skopos theory focuses on translation as a human activity with an intention or purpose, and on the intended addressee or audience of the translation. To translate means to produce a target text in a target setting for a target purpose and target addresses in target circumstances. Vermeer ever mentioned Skopos theory as follows: Each text is produced for a given purpose and should serve this purpose. The Skopos theory thus reads as follow: translate/ interpret/ speak/ write in a way that enables your text/ translation to function in the situation, in which it is used and with the people who want to use and precisely in the way they want it to function. (Vermeer, qtd. in Nord Christiane 1997:29) According to Skopos theory, translation is an action, and any action has its own purpose. The purpose of translation determines the trans lation method and strategy. Literature creation is also an action, so the translation of literature works is an action with a specific purpose. 7 Skopos Theory in drama translation ever mentioned in his book Translation and Technology that Skopos theory also allows a sourcelanguage text to be translated into a number of different targetlanguage texts depending on the purpose specified in the socalled ?translation mission? or belief. (, 2020:25) As mentioned above, According to Skopos Theory, translation is a human action with specific purpose. In addition to its purpose, any action has an oute. The oute of translational action is a translatum (Vermeer, qtd. in Mona Baker 2020:235) Moreover, the purpose of translatum plays an essential role among the whole translation process. That is to say, the purpose which the translatum intends to achieve is just the purpose of the whole translation. One of the most important factors that determine the purpose of translation is the audiencethe receiver of translated work. As Lin Kehuan ever mentioned that “The prime purpose