English-Chinese Translation Of Children's Literature

Translation of children's literature (CL) is an important part of literary translation, yet it has long been neglected. As a matter of fact, CL translation is as difficult as, if not more difficult than, that for adults. Therefore, this thesis puts forward the significance of theoretical study on CL translation on the very beginning page. It points out the imbalanced development between CL translation practice and theories, hoping that translators and researchers can make efforts to enrich theories specific for CL translation so as to provide more practical guidance to CL translation.In order to deal with the problem of CL translation, the first step must be to understand CL. CL is the literature written for children. It has very different values and criteria from literature for adults in terms of subject, theme, plot, language style and rhetoric devices and etc.In China, CL and CL translation have always influenced mutually that they have very close relation and share similar developmental history. The budding of CL occurred in the upsurge of literary translation during late Qing period. Many men of letters, represented by Lu Xun, learned from western theories and called on "Child Orientation" for CL writing. However, CL of that time was only an undercurrent, which still served adult readers. CL translation, accordingly, drew very little attention. The second period of CL development is from 1930s to 1970s, when the literary works of Soviet Union became the model for CL and CL translation, and war and peace was the major theme of CL. Since 1980s, due to the increasingly frequent cultural exchanges between China and foreign countries, the modernization of CL has been realized and CL translation also has experienced historic breakthrough both in quantity and in quality.In this thesis, three Chinese versions of The Happy Prince by Oscar Wilde are selected to complete a comparative study. The three versions belong to different periods of CL developmental history in China. Thus, the study is firstly a cross-epoch study on CL translation, with the purpose to analyze the distinctive features of CL translation in different times, to reveal the strong influence of socio-cultural background on translators' motivationsand intentions, so as to further elaborate the general trend of CL translation in China—the translators have gradually realized the importance of the target readers and hence begun to translate for children intentionally;and CL translations become more and more child-oriented.Moreover, the comparative study focuses on the sound level, lexical level and rhetoric level of each version, giving a conclusion that although Zhou Zuoren's version has refined language, concise structure and archaic style, it is not a suitable translation for children because it doesn't take the target readers' reception and understanding abilities into consideration;Ba Jin's version is very faithful to the original, with natural and colloquial language, but it is neither good enough in some aspects to meet children readers' need. Comparatively, Su Fuzhong & Zhang Min's translation is the best one which is more child-oriented. Its vivid and natural language, childlike expressions are very likely to be appealing to children.Finally, based on the comparative study, some suggestions are proposed for CL translation. CL translators should always remember that their target readers are children, whose reception ability and reading experience are limited. They have to understand the children's disposition, to read the original text from the children's prospective, to appreciate it with childlike innocence. Then they could really settle down to translating the work with simple and vivid language that children can read and like.Therefore, translators should try to be invisible and adopt domestication as the primary strategy and foreignization as the supplementary in translation practice, so as to guarantee children readers' smooth and pleasant reading and understanding.