THEATRE TRANSLATION AND LANGUAGE POLITICS: Lin Yutang’s translation of Pygmalion

This chapter explores Lin Yutang’s creative translation of George Bernard Shaw’s Pygmalion within the Chinese context of 1930s. It begins by contextualising the language politics of 1920s Chinese society and examines the rationale behind Lin’s selection of Shaw’s play. It demonstrates that Lin considered that translation could provide an opportunity for cultural self-examination for Chinese audiences. At a time when the language debate about the usage of classical Chinese versus vernacular Chinese was a topic of heated discussion in China, Lin intended to bring his ideal of the compatibility and unity of vernacular and classical Chinese in his translation of this play, a creative drive for theatre translation. The chapter argues that the act of creative translation is not only something that makes this play available to modern Chinese audiences, but that would also speak to them in terms of a linguistic, cultural, and political bias.