ABSTRACT
This chapter further pins down the relationship among Liang’s literary poetics, translation poetics and his Shakespeare translation project when he was both a literary critic and a translator at the same time, through an analysis of the non-performability of his Chinese translation of Shakespeare. Without the intention of using his translation for stage performances, Liang tried to retain what he believed to be the original flavour of Shakespeare and used translation methods (such as providing footnotes and retaining the original punctuation) which are not conducive to producing translations suitable for performance. Liang’s dealing with the performability of the Shakespearean translation can be traced to his literary poetics, particularly his critical understanding of drama and its relationship with the stage, which is based on his acceptance and interpretation of Aristotle’s idea on drama. This also demonstrates the close connection between Liang’s dispositions as a critic and his dispositions as a translator.
