On The E-C Translation Of Children’s Literature From The Perspective Of Adaptation Theory

Children’s literature is a kind of literary genre which is created specially forchildren and accords with their psychological expectance. It plays an importantguiding role in children’s physical and mental development and growth. Translatingexcellent foreign children’s literature has long been a Chinese tradition. However, thetranslation quality of these works is something of a disappointment, which can notcompare with the originals. To change the situation and promote the prosperity ofChinese children’s literature, the translation studies on it are of great importance. Dueto the domestic scholars’ ignorance of the field and the lack of systemic theoryguidance, the translation studies of children’s literature are still in the fledging period,falling far behind the western countries. Making a comprehensive survey of previousresearches, the overwhelming majority of the studies conducted on children’sliterature translation are from the perspective of Reception Theory, ReceptionAesthetic Theory, Skopos Theory and so on. Studies on the genre based on AdaptationTheory are quite few.In order to broaden the research perspective of children’s literature, the thesisattempts to make a comprehensive study of children’s literature translation from anew theoretical perspective—Adaptation Theory, which is put forward, enriched andconsummated by the international pragmatic expert—Verschueren. The theory takes abrand-new perspective to investigate and interpret pragmatics, that is to say, it studiesthe use of language and its comprehension process from linguistic, cognitive, social,cultural elements as well as many other complex factors. Adaptation Theory holdsthat language has three basic properties, namely, variability, negotiability andadaptability. Of which, adaptability is the most important one. Making it as a startingpoint, the description and interpretation of language can be made from the fourdimensions—contextual correlates of adaptability, structural objects of adaptability,dynamics of adaptability, salience of the adaptation process which involve all theaspects of language use. Likewise, translation, as a special language use, must alsotake social, cultural, cognitive factors into consideration and must dynamically adaptto original and target language’s contexts and linguistic structures. At the same time, the reading psychology of target readers should be paid special attention to. The paperis going to explore the adaptable phenomena of the two Chinese translated versions ofThe Wind in the Willows from the four angles of investigation on the basis ofAdaptation Theory so as to prove the applicability and explanatory power of thetheory to children’s literature.The Wind in the Willows, a wonderful works in the world children’s literature,does not receive worldwide popularity after its first publication. As time goes by, itsliterary value and artistic charm increase with each passing day and graduallybecomes a classic. Researches on it thus emerge in an endless stream. However, fewpeople conduct the translation studies of the works. In view of that, the paper makes acomparative study of two translated versions of The Wind in the Willows from theperspective of Adaptation Theory. The author selects the version of Yao Jia and LiuQi published in2007and the version of Yang Jingyuan published in2010. The twoare among its best and are widely admired. Through the contrast analysis of these twoversions, it comes to the following conclusions. First, the paper is not meant to workout which version is better and which is worse, but to reveal the degree of adaptabilitywhich the translators has made to the original and the translation, to the author and thetarget readers. In fact, each translation has its existing value. Second, the translator ofchildren’s literature, the special literary genre, must give continual attention to itsintended readers—children’s psychological expectance and linguistic level. Whetherthey can understand the translation or even love it is the key principle to influence thetranslator’s choice and adaptability. Third, according to Adaptation Theory, when intranslating children’s literature works, the translators should try their best to maketheir translations adapt to the correlates of context, to the linguistic structures, to thedynamics in the translation process, to their degrees of consciousness.