From Aesthetic Representation

Children's literature is a glamorous flower in the colorful literary world. It plays the very important role in the growth of children. Like all the literary works, children's literature bears great aesthetic value. Due to this, the translation of children's literature must be paid great attention to, especially whether or not it represents the aesthetic information of the source text. Therefore, the present thesis will attempt to study the translation of children's literature from the perspective of translation aesthetics.The author of this thesis selects Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, an international classic children's literature imbued with high aesthetic value, as a case study to discuss the translation aesthetic representation through its three relatively successful versions translated by Zhao Yuanren, Chen Fu'an and Jia Wenhao and Jia Wenyuan respectively.Translation aesthetic theory is perfectly suitable for the study on the translation of children's literature for it is endowed with great aesthetic value. This thesis makes an analysis on the translation aesthetic representation in the three versions of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland on the basis of translation aesthetic theory of Liu Miqing and Fu Zhongxuan from four aspects: aesthetic representation of sound, lexis, syntax and rhetoric, and examines whether or not the translators realize the harmony between the aesthetic object and aesthetic subject in translating process. Through the discussions of lots of examples, the author analyzes the merits and demerits in them, and concludes that on the whole, the translators of these three versions are skillful in representing the aesthetic information of the source text. Of course, sometimes, they do not translate perfectly, so there is still some room to improvement.This thesis is composed of five main chapters, and adopts qualitative and descriptive approaches. The first chapter is an introduction that presents the research background, the significance of the study and the structure of the thesis. Chapter two introduces the theoretical basis of the study, dealing with the definition and characteristics of children's literature, concluding that the translation of children's literature is an activity of aesthetic representation, and reviewing the traditional and modern translation aesthetics home and aboard. Chapter three discusses the general principles of the translation aesthetic constituents, namely translation aesthetic object and translation aesthetic subject, and aesthetic activity in the literary translation. Chapter four is the analysis of the Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and its three relatively successful versions. In this chapter, efforts are made to discuss the representation of the aesthetic constituents in the translation of children's literature. Do translators represent the beauty of the source text? Do these three versions agree with children's taste? Chapter five arrives at the conclusion that the application of translation aesthetics to children's literature is constructive and meaningful. It could become a criterion to measure whether a version is satisfactory or not.The author of this thesis tries to use the theory of translation aesthetics to guide the translation of children's literature, hoping to make some contribution to the study of the translation of children's literature, and proves that translation aesthetics is feasible to assess the versions of children's literature.