The E-C Translation Strategies Of Children’s Literature Under The Guidance Of Reception Theory

As a unique genre, children’s literature deserves special attention from translators. And translations of children’s literature from foreign countries have significant influence upon the development of Chinese children’ literature. This report is based on the translation of the American short story The Flag-raising. Through translating this story, the author finds out that the major difficulty of translating children’s literature lies not in understanding meanings of sentences, but in meeting the needs of children for language and the reproduction of interests and delights for children in translation.The reception theory centers on the reader and suggests that the reader is not a passive acceptor, but has his or her own subjectivity. Since children are the target readers of translation of children’s literature, translators should appreciate the original works from the perspective of children’s minds, and then choose the proper translation strategies by taking children’s psychological and aesthetic characteristics as well as their expectations into consideration. The reception theory can shed some light on the translation of children’s literature.Under the guidance of reception theory, six translation strategies including: life-oriented translation; background-oriented translation; explication and implication; long and short sentences transformation; rhetoric are proposed here based on specific examples from the translation of The Flag-raising. The author hopes that the strategies discussed in this report will be helpful for translators to deal with relevant problems in the translation of children’s literature.