The aim of this paper is to trace a general outline of the theoretical development
of drama translation. First, the early linguistic approaches to the translation of dramatic texts
will be considered. Second, the major semiotic analyses will be taken into account. They,
in fact, provide the audience, reader and theatre translator with a method of identifying
the signs within the sign systems of the play and explain the inter-dependence of subsystems
and their role in theatre communication. Moreover, in a semiotic perspective, the
multilevelled and multilayered reading of the theatre text has allowed some scholars to
evolve models of descriptive analyses of drama translation which enable comparison of
the source text and the target text both at a micro- and macrostructural level. Third, the
emergence of drama translation strategies attributed to the wider ideological and cultural
discourse of intertextuality will be illustrated by notions such as “productive-reception” and
“acculturation”.
