Research On E-C Translation Of Children’s Literature From The Perspective Of Reception Theory

Children’s literature is for children, in which the themes and the content arefamiliar to children in their social life. Such works are suitable for children andpsychologically accepted by them. It is said that Chinese children’s literature began atthe May Fourth Movement when a large number of children’s literary works havebeen translated into Chinese, which gradually promote the development of children’sliterature in China. As for the research of children’s literature translation, westerncountries have done it much earlier than in China. However, in a few decades, studieson children’s literature translation have also made considerable development due tothe attention of some scholars.For the studies on the children’s literature translation, many scholars havediscussed it from different perspectives. The author has made research onEnglish-Chinese Translation of children’s literature from the perspective of ReceptionTheory with the hope of acquiring a new approach for researches on children’sliterature translation. Reception Theory, a literary criticism theory, was born in theUniversity of Constance in the south of Germany in the middle of the1960s. Itprovides a good theoretical basis for the translation of children’s literature. Differentfrom traditional theories, Reception Theory is reader-centered. It puts the emphasis onreaders’“horizon of expectations”, and hopes to achieve the “fusion of horizons”.Therefore, readers can really accept the literature.Literature review of children’s literature translation and the theoreticalframework of Reception Theory have been presented. And then there is theintroduction of children’s literature, which contains the characteristics of children indifferent periods. From some important concepts of Reception Theory, such as“horizon of expectations”,“fusion of expectations” and “readers’ reception andresponse”, the author made the analysis of children’s literature translation, givingsome examples of the translation of children ballads and fairy tales, which belong tochildren’s literature. Children’s horizon of expectation is not static, but varies with thedifferent ages of children.The research aims to sum up translation strategies of children’s literature by analyzing and studying the translation of children’s literature in terms of twoperiods-early period and later period-and two genres, including children ballad andfairy tales. The strategies are discussed individually in linguistic aspect and culturalaspect. In linguistic aspect, rhythmic beauty and vividly expressed language arenecessary, while in cultural aspect, foreignization and domestication are the methods.The corpus or data the author has chosen include a children ballad in earlychildhood—Best Goose Mother Ever and a fairy tale—Stuart Little. The analysis ofexamples in data tells that: Children in early childhood develop rapidly, and are easyto influence. They lack of concentration, while they are biologically qualified for thedevelopment of language. According to Reception Theory, the translation of childrenballads should use rhythmic and readable language. Children in later childhood havephysiologically developed and become mature. The rapid development of theirpsychology and socialization has experienced changes distinctly different from thelife of children in early childhood. In spite of that, translation with vividly expressedlanguage is necessary.The whole research arrives at the conclusion that Reception Theory is applicableto the translation of children literature, to which the theory offers a new perspective.Reception Theory enlightens the translation of children’s literature in terms oftranslators, the original works, dynamic features of child readers and the translations,which leads to the selection of translation strategies from language and culturalaspects.