The Enlightenment Of Adaptation Theory To English-Chinese Translation Of Children’s Literature

Children’s literature translation, an integrated and inseparable part of literaturetranslation, has not received its due attention. Children are special with their ownpersonalities and characteristics. Above all, they are the future of society. Good children’sliterature is precious resource to kids by cultivating their linguistic competence, sense ofbeauty and teaching them moral standards. Thus researches of the further improvement forproviding more qualified children’s literature translation are necessary. Translators arefacing tremendous challenges of preserving the original childlikeness, rhythm and otherelements and transmitting them to the children readers of the other culture. Therefore, it isa must to probe into the translation of children’s literature.From the perspective of adaptation theory, an important theory in pragmatics putforward by Jef Verschueren, this paper is focused on four aspects of the adaptation theoryand applies the major aspects to the research of children’s literature translation byanalyzing two different translation versions of a famous children’s literature The Wind inthe Willows. Contextual correlates of adaptability, structural objects of adaptability,dynamics of adaptability and salience of the adaptation process will be probed in thecomparison of the two different translation versions.The paper analyzes and describes children’s literature translation under the guidanceof adaptation theory. Meanwhile, by conducting the case study, it provides suggestions forchildren’s literature translation under the guidance of adaptation theory which iscomprehensive. A good children’s literature translation, according to the theory, should beone that can be adaptable to children’s expectations and requirements such asentertainment, fascination, conciseness and so on. Thus, translators have to makecontinuous choices concerning discourse construction, sentence structure and choice ofwords, etc.