The Translation Of Children’s Literature The Borrowers

This report is based on translation practice of the excerpted parts from TheBorrowers written by Kathleen Mary Norton, who is a celebrated writer concentratingon Children’s Literature.Translation of Children’s Literature plays an irreplaceable role in creatingchildren’s fantastic spiritual world. However, translation practice in Children’sLiterature (CL) and the theoretical study is of improper imbalance. In the case of thepractice, large numbers of works have been introduced to China, yet the quality is nota satisfactory on the whole. Problems like adult language, over-simplification andadaptation are easily seen. However, when it comes to the theoretical study of CL, itis far backward. Despite several articles based on the authors’ personal experience orstudy of certain aspects, there’s even no single book on CL translation with thoughtfulopinions and systematic advice, which is available in the market till now.Based on the functional equivalence theory put forward by Eugene A. Nida, theauthor would like to explore translation strategies for CL through translation practiceand a comparative study of the version by Xiong Yu. The whole report falls into fiveparts. The first part gives a brief introduction of the translation project, including thestudy and preparation before translation, the translation process and later amendment.The second part is an introduction of the book and its author. Also, the stylisticfeatures of the excerpted part are discussed in this part. The third part mainlydiscusses the functional equivalence theory expressed by Eugene Nida as well as theapplication of the theory in the translation project. The fourth part focuses on thetranslating strategies used in the practice under the guideline of the functionalequivalence approach. The last part reaches a conclusion for the translation practiceand the report.The report is meaningful both theoretically and practically. Theoreticallyspeaking, with the help of the relevant theories, the report analyzes and determines theinstructional functions of the theories towards CL; practically speaking, this reportprovides some worthwhile references and suggestions for the translation practice ofchildren’s literature.