On Translation Of Children’s Literature From The Perspective Of Skopos Theory

As a unique branch of literature, children’s literature is often easy to be ignored.The translation of children’s literature is even in a worse situation. Children’sliterature is distinctive for its special readers, so much more attention should be paid tochildren’s interest and preference. That is to say, translation of children’s literatureshould be children-oriented.As the core approach of German functionalism, Skopos Theory emphasizes onthe purpose of translation. According to Skopos Theory, translators are required toknow the purpose of the translation clear before they translate, and they have to workunder the purpose in the whole translating process, with the purpose as a guidance tomake a translation strategy. Skopos Theory is a universal theory which works foralmost all kinds of translation, which include translation for children’s literature as abranch of literary translation, so Skopos Theory can be employed as the theoreticalframework of translation for children’s literature.The present study tries to prove the application of Skopos Theory for children’sliterature through a comparative analysis of three Chinese versions of Peter Pan,which is one of the most classic and influential children’s literatures in the world.With the Skopos Theory as the theoretical framework, this thesis makes somecomparison and analysis about the different translation strategies in dealing with thelanguage of the three versions at diction, syntax, rhetoric, and rhyme levels. Thus thethesis probes into finding the more appropriate translation and gives some advicesabout the problems in the translation in order to advance the development oftranslation for children’s literature.