A Study On Children’s Literature Translation From The Perspective Of Relevance Translation Theory-

This paper attempts to adopt Gutt’s relevance translation theory to analyze children’s literature translation by conducting a study on three Chinese versions of The Wind in the Willows. Two objectives are going to be achieved.1.Children’s literature translation should have intensive studies under the guidance of relevance translation theory.2.Relevance translation theory, a new attempt in the realm of translation, has forceful interpretive capacity to provide a new perspective of research.Children’s literature has important influence on children as it guarantees the mental health, sound growth and study interests. The domestic children’s literature cannot keep abreast of children’s varied tastes in this rapidly changing period.They need foreign literature to widen their vision and enrich their knowledge. Children’s literature is a special literary form which has both aural and visual differences from literature for adults.The particularity of target readers’ cognitive process and linguistic ability will pose more difficulties for translators to translate children’s literature. The author wishes that this thesis could arouse the attention from scholars and professionals for the in-depth study of children’s literature translation.Inspired from relevance theory, an important concept in linguistic field, Gutt initiated relevance translation theory which treated translation as dual ostensive-inferential process and interlingual interpretive use. Two translation strategies were put forward by Gutt. Direct translation tends to achieve the optimal interpretive resemblance of the original by communicative clues from which the author’s intention could be represented in relevant aspects. Indirect translation is equal to indirect quotation which aims at achieving the resemblance in cognitive effects with the original.The two translating strategies essentially take into consideration the translating of both the lexical meaning and contextual implications of the original.The Wind in the Willows contains a lot of lyrical descriptions and vivid images of the English countryside which is said to exhibit a "density of style".A case study of three Chinese versions of the text is presented to illustrate children’s literature translation under the guidance of relevance translation theory. The analysis is divided into three sections:culture-loaded words,stylistic value and rhetorical devices.The paper does not aim at making a judgment among the three versions, but to explain how relevance translation theory leads children’s literature translation by comparing the three versions. The three translators have shown their consideration for young readers and adopted different translation strategies according to relevance translation theory.The author draws the conclusion that translation strategies translators adopted seems flexible, but they can be explained by Gutt’s direct translation and indirect translation, which is to say, relevance translation theory provides a theoretical framework for translators to translate children’s literature. With this guideline, the translator should not only pay attention to the content of the original text, but also take the target young readers’cognitive environment and acceptance into full consideration in the translation process in order to achieve the optimal relevance.