On Translation Of Children's Literature From The Perspective Of Skopostheorie--a Case Study Of Two Chinese Versions Of The Secret Garden

Children's literature, boasting a special readership, demands a dual-role status of the translator. In other words, the translator has to efface himself in the course of translation, by making good use of his imagination and sympathizing with the characters in the story with the eyes of children, rather than with the eyes of adults, and by applying children's language so as to retain the childlike innocence characteristic of children's literature. The double role of the translator is explained as follows: on one hand, the adult translator is the receiver of the source text who puts himself into the shoes of children, especially those speaking target language. On the other, he is the transmitter of information from the source text into the target text. As a translator, he unavoidably meets with the arduous task of rendering what he has comprehended from the source text into the target which resembles, to the most extent, the source text in reader response.The skopos theory, put forward by Hans Vermeer, provides a theoretical foundation for the translation of children's literature. The kernel of the theory resides in the'skopos'or'purpose'. Broadly speaking, the skopos refers to a whole lot of aspects such as the writing motive of the original author, the purposeful action of the translator and the way he accomplishes the translational action. With this in consideration, guided by the skopos theory, through analysis of the two Chinese versions of The Secret Garden authored by Frances Hodgson Burnett, the thesis is aimed at exploring the influence of the translational purpose that the translators have in mind before they set out to work, on their choice of translational strategies which consequently lead to a target text.