A Study On The Translation Of Children’s Literature From The Perspective Of Gadamer’s Hermeneutics

Hermeneutics is a branch of philosophy which is both ancient and burgeoning. It was used to explain the Holy Bible, ancient literature and legal provision. Hermeneutics originated from C lassic Hermeneutics and gradually developed into p hilosophical hermeneutics. Gadamer proposed three terms namely “historicity of understanding”, “fusion of horizon” and “effective history”. In the process of translation, translator inevitably puts his “prejudice” of the source text. The process of translation is the encounter of two horizons namely the translator’s horizon and the source text’s horizon together. It is nature that one text has various translated version because people can not totally dig out the true value of one text overnight. Therefore, hermeneutics provides a new perspective for translation study.Children’s literature refers to literature works that suitable for children’s psychosomatic development, aesthetic value and reading ability. It benefits children’s healthy growth and helps to cultivate healthy adults. Anne of Green Gables is a notable children’s literature which has been favored by both children and adults. The huge differences in linguistic style, linguistic content and linguistic form between the two Chinese versions of Anne of Green Gables provide a typical sample for translation criticism. Therefore, this study conducts a study of two Chinese versions of Anne of Green Gables from the perspective of Gadamer’s Hermeneutics Theories. This study choose two C hinese versions that were transla ted by Ma Ainong and Guo Pingping, and conduct the comparative study from three aspects. They are historicity of understanding, fusion of horizon and effective history. Historicity of understanding can be divided into conscious misreading and unconscious misreading. Fusion of horizon mainly analyzed at lexical level and syntax level. At lexical level the author mainly analyzed idioms, culture- loaded words, interjections, reduplicated words and onomatopoeia. At syntax level the author mainly analyzed simile, metaphor, personification, hyperbole, alliteration, attributive clause and long sentence. Effective history will be analyzed by specific examples to illustrate the relationship between translation and translator ’s historical, cultural and social background.After a detailed analysis, the author draws following conclusions. First, in translation process, translators can never go through the history and objectively comprehend the source text. Therefore, misreading is unavoidable. In order to make less misreading, translators need to master both language and culture of source language and target language. Second, the process of translation is that of fusion of horizons, which lays in three levels namely the source text, translator and target language readers. Translation is a p rocess and translator is in charge of interpreting and explaining the source text. At the same time, translator also needs to keep an eye on target readers. The source text, translator and the target readers’ horizon can be fused at the same time; third, the text is open to interpretation, and is interpreted differently by different people living at different ages. So the meaning of the text can never be fixed. Therefore, the translator’s historical, cultural and social background should be taken into consideration when people evaluate a translated text.This thesis illustrates the importance of applying Hermeneutics in children’s literary translation field, so as to furnish a practicable avenue to the further study and serve as a reference to the translation of children’s literature.