A Report On E-C Translation Of The Circus Boys Across The Continent(Excerpt)

This is a report on the E-C translation practice of children’s literature.According to the age of the readers,literature can be divided into children’s literature and adult literature.Cultural globalization has promoted China’s prosperity in the fields of translation of foreign children’s literature.However,it is generally believed that children’s literature is simpler in terms of words,sentence patterns and easier to understand,thus literature researchers often overlook its importance.Children’s literature,with the characteristics of instructiveness and interestingness,is literature facilitating children’s healthy growth,which can lead children to correctly understand the world and is of great influence on their values,so as to enrich their spiritual world.Currently,to improve the quality of translation version and avoid problems such as translationese in the process of translation,it is necessary to research into the translation strategies and methods that adopted in the translation process of children’s literature.This translation report is based on the children’s literature The Circus Boys Across the Continent,written by an American writer Edgar B.P.Darlington.From the perspective of Skopos Theory,the translation report discusses some typical cases from Chapter One to Chapter Seven,and analyzes the difficulties the translator encountered in the process of translation.Skopos Theory was first proposed in 1978 by German translation theorist Hans J.Vermeer(1930-2010)in his paper Ein Rahmen für eine allgemeine Translationstheorie.The theory holds that translation is dominated by the purpose,and different translation versions have different target audiences.The target readers of children’s literature translation have their uniqueness in language understanding,thinking ability,psychology and aesthetic ability.Therefore,it is reasonable to choose this theory to analyze this translation process.First of all,under the guidance of skopos rule,the use of four-character structures,reduplicated words,and interjection make the text more in line with the cognition and expectation of target readers.Secondly,under the guidance of coherence rule,concerning the differences between Chinese and English in terms of logical structure,the translator mainly adopts the methods of recasting,voice conversion,to ensure the fluency and coherence of the text.Thirdly,it mainly deals with the problem of referential and rhetoric translation under the guidance of fidelity rule.Based on the three rules of Skopos Theory,this practical report analyzes the translation process of the text,then summarizes the particularity of children’s literature,translation strategies and methods.In other words,fully considering children’s receptivity,the translator used the translation strategy of domestication to enhance the readability of the text,and reduce the reading obstacles caused by the lack of cultural background of target readers.Through this translation practice,the target text should be faithful to the original text to the greatest extent to ensure the interest of children readers in reading,which will provide a reference for the English-Chinese translation of children’s literature.