Yuen Ren Chao’s Translation Of Alice’s Adventures In Wonderland And Translation Norms Of Children’s Literature In The May Fourth

The May Fourth Period is the most glorious time in modern Chinese Literaturehistory, and it is always regarded as the Renaissance of China. This period lastedfrom1917, two years before the famous “May4th Movement”, to1927. This decadesaw a tremendous import of children’s literature from abroad and it is in this decadethat modern Chinese children’s literature was born and attained its great development.During this period of time, some translation norms are commonly shared by differentliterary groups, while some are unique in specific groups, with different translationnorms being in competition with each other. Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland whichwas written by Lewis Carroll was translated and introduced to China in this period oftime. It describes Alice’s adventures in the Rabbit hole in her dream. This book is fullof child interest, and delicately depicts children’s psychological world. Thosenumbers of word plays, logic play, humor, satire, etc. complicates its translation a lot.Yuen Ren Chao’s translation of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland fully considerschildren readers’ reading ability, reserving the flavor of the original book, making thetranslation version vivid and understandable, thus readers can gain almost the sameartistic charm of the original, making the translated work one of the most populartranslated works among the young audiences in the May Fourth Period.Translation norms theory is a major breakthrough as to traditional prescriptivetranslation theory and a significant complement to translation theories. Puttingtranslation practice in a historical contextualized situation, it adopts a descriptive andtarget-oriented perspective to study translation. In light of translation norms, thepresent thesis adopts descriptive translation studies method and discusses thetranslation norms of children’s literature in the May Fourth Period from theperspective of translation norms, on basis of previous researches. Basing on tidyingand analysis of lots of materials, it points out that, the mainstream of translationnorms of children’s literature in the May Fourth are manifested in the following four aspects: norm of child-orientation, vernacular norm, norm of being faithful and normof literariness. Basing on a close reading of Yuen Ren Chao’s translation version, thisthesis finds that: In consideration of children’s understanding ability and culturalbackground, Chao tries his best to make his version understood, appreciated andloved by Chinese children. Adopting Vernacular Chinese as its translation language,he learns from some expressions of English to enrich that of Vernacular Chinese, andcreates coinages to make his version better understood. Translating with a faithfulmanner, he use creative translation strategies to translate puns, making them faithfulas well as natural. Emphasizing the literariness of translation, he enriches styles ofChinese verses and emphasizes rhythm and rhyme in translation of verses. Inaddition, as Chao’s version has exerted such a great influence, many translators areimpacted by his translation to some extend when translating children’s literature.Through comparative analysis, finally, it points out that Chao’s translation is not onlyin line with the mainstream of translation norms in the May Fourth Period, but alsoplays an important role in shaping translation norms of children’s literature in theMay Fourth Period.