On English-Chinese Translation Of Children's Literature

Translation of children's literature is a peripheral field within the literary polysystem in China as well as in the West. But it should be paid enough attention in China because translations of foreign children's literature have great meaning to the birth and growth of Chinese children's literature. Children's literature is intended for children who are very different from other ordinary readers because of their particular age, psychology, personality and reading ability. Translation of children's literature is also aimed at an audience of children. The translator faces the challenge of preserving their child-appeal and transmitting it to the child readers of another culture. Because of the particularity of the target readers, reception theory is introduced to study translation of children's literature. Reception theory emphasizes the active participation and creation of translators and target language readers, whose status and roles are greatly promoted in the process of translating and reading. Translators should aim at producing suitable target text which could conform to target language readers' horizon of expectation. To speak specifically, translators should give special attention to linguistic style of children's literature, children's psycho-emotional development, and cultural differences in the two languages when they try to achieve better versions for their intended audience. There are several ways for translators to adopt to deal with problems especially cultural problems occurred in translation. A conclusion is made at the end of this paper that reception theory is reasonable in explaining translation of children's literature, but it also has limitations which lead to a result that there is no objective criteria to judge good or bad versions. This paper is composed of three parts which will be explained as follows:...