A Study On Cultural Translation In Children's Literature--From The Perspective Of Reception Theory

Since the shift of emphasis"the cultural turn"in translation studies, many researchers have done a great deal of work and written large number of articles in this field. Compared with other fields, the cultural translation study in children's literature (CL for short) should be paid more attention to. Talking about translation, we often ignore the translation of CL. Even when the translation of CL is mentioned, it is believed easy enough for translators to translate the meaning of the original work in simple words. As a matter of fact, CL is different from that of adults'in many aspects, such as subject matter, theme, and structure of the story and so on. The thesis points out the current problems existing in CL translation study,and discusses the necessity of cultural translation study in CL.Reception theory (RT for short) emphasizes reader's status and considers that the reader's reception plays decisive role in the realization of the literary work's meaning. Applying RT to translation of CL can instruct translators to pay more attention to children's specificity in the process of reception, so that the acceptability of the translated works of CL can be improved. Employing RT, the thesis uncovers the enlightenment on cultural translation study in CL: for cultural translation in CL, translators should always bear in mind that they are translating for children; the role and status of the readers'reception is an important factor that should not be neglected in the process of cultural translation. Both domestication and foreignization pay attention to children's reception. Which one is preferred is decided by children's culture backgrounds. Foreignization is preferred to retain the cultural elements in the source text as much as possible to expand children's horizon of expectation and promote culture exchange as long as the translation does not go beyond children's reception.The comparative study on the two Chinese versions of Charlotte's Web helps to uncover the reader-centered translating awareness as well as how to take children's horizon of expectation into consideration so as to give children the best version.