Children’s Literature Translation From The Perspective Of Schema Theory

At present, there are various Chinese versions of children’s literature appearing.However, they are not very high-qualified. In fact, compared with adults’ literaturetranslation, children’s literature translation is not so easy and should be paid more attention.However, the theoretic research by the scholars and translators both at home and abroad isobviously not enough. What is worse, the research perspectives are mainly limited to suchwestern translation theories as skopos theory, functional equivalence theory and receptiontheory rather than cognition. In translating the modern British children’s fiction seriesFootball Detective, the author was fully aware of the importance of the translator’scognition in the process of children’s literature translation, therefore, this thesis attempts toapply the cognitive schema theory into the whole process of children’s literature translation,attempting to seek a new theoretic perspective and a new translation way for the researchon children’s literature translation.The whole thesis can be divided into five chapters. Chapter One mainly introduces theresearch objective, significance and method as well as the structure of the thesis. ChapterTwo overviews previous research on children’s literature translation and schema translationboth at home and abroad. Chapter Three briefly describes the definition, characteristics andclassification of schema as well as its application in translation. Chapter Four comparesand analyzes the author’s own draft and final version of Football Detective as well asdifferent translators’ translated versions in terms of linguistic schema, formal schema andcontent schema, revealing the application of schema theory in children’s literaturetranslation and putting forward the corresponding translation strategies and techniques.Chapter Five is the conclusion.Through analysis and study, we can draw the following conclusions from the thesis. First, schema theory is contributive to reveal the translator’s cognitive activity in theprocess of decoding and encoding process, offering the translating process more reasonableand improved interpretation. Second, in decoding, the translator should not only enrich hisor her relative background knowledge under the guidance of schema theory, but alsoactivate the original author’s cognitive schema resorting to the register unique to children’sliterature. As a result, the translator can understand the original text’s literal meaning andmeanwhile better appreciate the childlike innocence and interest the original authorexpresses to the original reader. Third, in encoding, according to Chinese children’scognitive characteristics, the translator puts forward the translation strategy ofdomestication supplied by foreignization as well as varies translation techniques which onone hand activate and renew the cognitive schema existing in Chinese children’s minds, onthe other hand help them not only understand foreign literary works but also feel the exoticatmosphere and culture. Fourth, this thesis puts forward that the highly qualified children’sliterature translation can be created only by maximally matching the original author’sschema to the target reader’s. Thus, a translator should not only recognize both the originalauthor’s schema and the target reader’s, but also constantly renew and improve his or herown schema.