On The Translator's Subjectivity In The Translation Of Children's Literature

This thesis is a study of the translator's subjectivity in the translation of children's literature. In addressing the theoretical foundations for the translator's subjectivity and the practical issues in the translation of children's literature, this thesis tries to illustrate how translators manipulate the translation of children's literature and why is the manipulation necessary. It attempts to place the translation of children's literature within literary translation studies, and suggests that the translation of children's literature has its unique features due to its peripheral position within literary polysystem. The translation of children's literature is influenced by factors within and outside the literary system and the relation between the source system and the target system in the whole world system as well. Compared with the translation of canon literary works, translation manipulation and translator's subjectivity are more clearly manifested in the translation of children's literature.Since children are the main target reader of children's literature, the language of children's literature is usually characterized by simplicity, both in sentence structures and lexical choices. Besides keeping the original language features of children's literature, translation of children's literature is constrained by translator's translation poetics and ideology as well.Zohar-Even's polysystem theory and Lefevere's rewriting theory serve as the main theoretical foundation for the study of this thesis. By applying Lambert and Van Gorp's translation scheme, this thesis analyzes English to Chinese translations of three classical children's literature in three stages, the preliminary data, macro-level analysis and micro-level analysis. The three books in discussion are: Peter Pan, Charlotte's Web and The Wind in the Willows.