Table 1_Navigating performativity via stage directions expressing emotion: a case study of the English-Chinese drama translation of Lady Windermere’s Fan.xlsx

This study integrates corpus-based quantitative analysis with affective pragmatic interpretation to examine Hong’s translation in comparison with two other representative Chinese versions by Shen Xingren and Yu Guangzhong.

The findings reveal that Hong’s translation systematically reconfigures emotion in stage directions through addition, omission and adaptation (including typological shift and content change). These strategies collectively produce increased emotional density, intensified conflict with a shift toward neutrality, polarized emotional intensity, and amplified emotional fluctuations. Underpinning this reconfiguration are three communicative moves derived from affective pragmatics: declaratives make characters’ psychology explicit, imperatives embody verbal orders into gestic cues, and commissives drive the plot by anchoring characters’ future actions.