A Study Of The Guiding Role Of Skopostheorie In Children’s Literature Translation

As a special branch of general literature, children’s literature has its own specific target readers and distinctive characteristics of literature. However the research on the translation of children’s literature is still marginalized in the field of translation studies. It has not gained enough attention. The translation practice of children’s literature lacks important academic studies to direct, which leads to the decline of its quality.Skopostheorie, the basic theory of the thesis, is kernel of German functional approach in translation studies, which has posed a challenge to the traditional literal translation theories. Skopostheorie provides a brand new perspective for translation study and it maintains that translation strategies or methods should be determined by the intended function of the target text. It emphasizes the significant position of target readers and regards translation action as a kind of human action with special goals. There are three rules in Skopostheorie, namely the skopos rule, the coherence rule and the fidelity rule.This thesis is based on the three basic rules of Skopostheorie and analyses the application of the three basic rules on the Chinese version of Flipped with the characteristics of children’s literature. The author hopes that thesis itself can hit the target of serving children through the guidance of Skopostheorie in the translation practice of children’s literature. By taking the sentences in Flipped as examples, the author analyses the characteristics of the Chinese version of Flipped from the following three aspects:linguistic form, linguistic content and linguistic style, which is based on the three basic rules of Skopostheorie. Chen’s version of Flipped takes three aspects into consideration, including reading ability, linguistic features and understanding capability, which attains the aim of attracting children. Through analysing and studying the English novel and its Chinese version, the author explores the feasibility and validity of Skopostheorie used to lead the translation of children’s literature.