The Translation Of Children Literature From The Perspective Of Skopos Theory

This is a translation project report of Paper Boy, which is the Newbery Medal work. Paper Boy is a motivational novel about the paperboy stuttering. Nowadays people pay more attention to the education of children. Children’s literature is emerging endlessly. However, children stutter realistic literary works is not common. It can not only educate the readers, but also makes the readers experience the warmth of family love and friendship.In this thesis, I study the translation difficulties and translation strategies or methods of Paper Boy with the characteristics of children’s literature from the perspective of Skopos theory. According to Skopos theory, any translation behavior has a specific purpose, and the purpose determines the translation strategies or methods used in the target text. Meanwhile, Skopos theory puts the target language receptor in the first place. There are three principles of Skopos theory:the skopos rule,coherance rule and fidelity rule,which has guidance for children’s literature.During the process of analyzing, I closely combined the three principles of Skopos theory with the book that I translated. By taking the sentences in Paper Boy as examples, I elaborate the translation strategies and methods for translating the children’s language, children stuttering language and person names, place names and baseball terminology to hit the target of serving children.Through the translation of paper boy from the perspective of Skopos theory, I can conclude that Skopos theory has a guiding significance to the translation of children’s literature. The translation activity the translator did is constrained by the purpose of translation. At the same time, the coherence and the fidelity of target text will be affected by the differences of children’s language and thinking, particularity in children’s stuttering. Therefore, the solid professional knowledge and extensive knowledge like encyclopedia are essential to a prominent translator. Also the translator should reflect the meaning of source text, and the reaction of the target language receiver cannot be ignored by the translator.