On Translating The Characteristics Of Children's Literature

Children's literature, including foreign classical children's literature, has important effects on the growth of children. Translated children's books built bridges among children of different cultures. As the time advances, many first-class works of foreign children's literature have been introduced into China and have been translated and re-translated by different translators. The market of the translation of children's literature is flourishing. But people show little interest in the theory of the translation of children's literature. Critiques and evaluative articles on translations of children's literature are seldom seen. There lies a serious contradiction between the practice and the theoretical study. A foreign classic may have five or six, sometimes over ten translations. The quality of those translations will unavoidably be on various levels. Actually, without standard criteria and evaluation mechanisms, it is difficult for parents and teachers to choose a better version from so many translations, let alone children themselves.Children's literature is children's literature. Inspired by the reception theory and Nida's views on the reader's reception, the author of the thesis thinks the translation of children's literature should be reader-oriented. The reception of children can be a standard for evaluating the quality of the translations of children's literature. When translating for children, the translator must bear in mind that the readers are children. Only when taking into consideration the children's cognitive ability, knowledge & experience, psychological characteristics and aesthetic interest, can the translator make a good translation. The discussion will be done from two aspects: the comprehensibility of children and the appeal to children.At the same time, children's literature is literary work, which means it will have all the features of literature. The translator can use all the literary means to realize the educational, cognitive, inspiring and edifying functions. The author borrowed the proposal of Professor Xu Yuanzhong—"beauty in the sound, beauty in the form, and beauty in the meaning" to make an analysis on the literary characteristics.From the aspects of children's characteristics and literary characteristics, the author tries to make a comparative study of the three versions of The Adventure of Tom Sawyer. According to the features and requirements of children's literature and its translation, the author probes into the different strategies taken by the three translators. Taking children's psychological and aesthetic characteristics into consideration, the author also makes evaluation on the quality of the three translations by two standards: Whether the reader will understand the translated text? Whether the translated text will make an aesthetic impression to its reader? From all the discussions, the author wants to make some tentative conclusions on the strategies and techniques on the translation of children's literature, which is hoped to bring a new thoughtway for the evaluation of different translations. Only if the translator analyzes the source text from the children's point of view and builds the target text from the interest of children, can he make a receptible and good translation.