A Comparative Study Of Metaphor Translation In Children’s Literature From Reception Aesthetics

In recent years, the children’s literature from foreign countries has been largely introduced to China and many scholars began to study on the translation of children’s literature. Compared with other types of literature, children’s literature is more instructive and interesting. Metaphor, as a kind of rhetorical device, is frequently used in the children’s literary works. Apart from many translation theories, the theory of literature like Reception Aesthetics is also applied for the study of translation in children’s literature.Reception Aesthetics was put forward by Hans Robert Jauss and Walfgang Iser in 1960 s. This theory established the dominant role of the reader and caused a conversion from author-centered and text-centered to reader-centered. Because the reader of children’s literature is children, so the Reception Aesthetics provides a new theoretical foundation for the study of translation of children’s literature.In this thesis, under the guidance of Reception Aesthetics, the author has chosen metaphor translations from the two versions of the famous foreign children’s literature The Wizard of Oz, one of which is Ma Ainong’s version and the other is Zhang Jianping’s version. Then, the author makes a comparative study on the methods of the metaphor translation in the two versions from the following three aspects: the role of reader, the horizon of expectations and the indeterminacy and vacancy of text.Finally, the study has shown that Ma Ainong’s version paid much attention to the children’s role and better conformed to the children’s horizon of expectations. Besides, translator should deeply explore the meaning of original work and the children’s horizon of expectation in order to choose the most appropriate methods dealing with the metaphor translation.