Ideological Manipulation In The Translation Of Children's Literature In The "May Fourth" Period

Translation of children's literature is an indispensable part of literary translation. Translation plays a significant role in the development of Chinese modern children's literature, especially in its birth stage of the "May Fourth" period.The theories of Manipulation School, esp. Lefevere's rewriting theory, provide new perspectives into the studies on translation of children's literature—the combination of translation study with ideology. Under different social contexts, ideology will manipulate children's literature translation in its whole process from the selection of source texts to the decision-making in strategies, methods, etc.This thesis provides a descriptive study of the ideological constraints in the "May Fourth" period with a comparative study of the original English text of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland with Zhao Yuanren's translation. The present study demonstrates that the translation of children's literature in this period is mainly constrained by socio-political ideology and people's new concepts toward children.