On Childrer’s Literature Translation From The Perspective Of Functionalist Approaches

Children’s literature is a type of literature which is popular in children. It not only brings the cheer and interest to children, but influences children’s growth with its language, content and value in an invisible way. And the main functions of children’s literature are entertainment and education. As an intercultural and communicative action, translation of children’s literature serves the goal of introducing more literary works in contents and forms to Chinese readers while promoting cultural exchange between different countries.In recent years, a number of foreign children’s literature works have been introduced into China. However, problems concerning the competence in language and translation skills and the transition of cultural information, etc. can be easily found in translation works. The overall quality of the Chinese versions is not optimistic. The reason for this situation is that children’s literature is marginalized in the whole literature system and its translation practice still lacks the guidance and support of proper theories.Functionalism or Functionalist Approaches is a relatively young, yet influential translation theory. It breaks the shackles of linguistics and turns its study focus from the source text to the target text and acquires a remarkable achievement. The theory consists of four perspectives:text typology, skopostheorie, translation action and function plus loyalty. And the four perspectives link closely and form an evolving and developing translation theory system.Based on Functionalist Approaches, the author of this thesis combines the four perspectives with the translation of children’s literature by comparing some Chinese versions of the classical children’s literature work Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. At the same time, three translation principles-conciseness, vividness and musicality and some translation strategies such as substitution, free translation, domesticating are summarized in the case study. The author aims at proving that Functionalist Approaches are proper theoretical basis for the translation of children’s literature.