On Children's Literature Translation From The Perspective Of Skopos Theory

This thesis aims at applying Skopos Theory to the translation of children's literary works. Children's literature is a special branch of general literature because of the features of its target readers; however its translation practice lacks adequate academic studies to support, which leads to the decline of its quality. Skopos Theory played an important part in the development of functionalist approaches to translation, which was formed when some translators became dissatisfied with the relationship between traditional translation theories and practice. Skopos Theory regards translation as a kind of human action with specific goal and it emphasizes the important position of target readers. It holds that the way the target text eventually shapes up is determined to a great extent by the function, or skopos, intended for it in the target context. There are three rules in Skopos Theory: the Skopos Rule, the Coherence Rule and the Fidelity Rule.After the brief introduction of its development and translation belief, the three rules will be explained respectively. Then this thesis chooses two Chinese versions of the popular children's literary works—Alice's Adventures in Wonderland as an example to conduct a case study under the guidance of Skopos Theory. This analysis is divided into three parts in accordance with the three rules of Skopos Theory. The case study tries to illustrate that Skopos Theory is a proper theoretical basis to guide children's literature translation and prove its superiority over some traditional translation theories. In the end of the study, some rules and strategies in children's literature translation will be summarized.