Translation Of Children’s Literature From The Perspective Of Reception Theory

Due to the particularity of children readers, translation of children’ s literature occupies a significant and special p osition both in the translation system and in the broad field of children’s literature. However, over the years, studies on children’ s literature translation have been experiencing an imbalance between the theory and the practice. Though masses of foreign children’ s literary works have been introduced into China through translation practice, the th eoretical researches in this field are far from sufficient and systematic. Therefore, more focus on this field is expected from scholars and researchers.As a relatively newly-born theory in the field of literature study, Reception Theory set forth a new th eoretical angle for translation research. It conveys translation research from text-centered to reader-centered, and holds the opinion that translators shoul d take readers’ accepting ability and horizon of expectation into consideration, and make translation fuse with read ers’ horizon of expectation to the greatest extent. The target readers of children’s literature are children who have great differences in age, psychology, social experiences, knowledge level as well as reading ability co mpared with adult read ers. Therefore, when translating for children, translators should take these characteristics into consideration so that their translation will be acceptable for children. Based on the ideas advocated by reception theory, respectively are Role of Readers, Horizon of Expectation as well as Textual Indeterminacy, this thesis conducts a research on child ren literature translation and then discusses the English-Chinese transla tion of children’s literary works, in hope of exploring the applicability of reception theory to children’ s literature translation, and providing a broader research persp ective and space for future researches in this field.By analyzing the two represen tative Chinese versions of Anne of Green Gables from language aspect and culture aspect under the guidance of Reception Theory, the thesis conduc ts a case study of them, and then comes to a conclusion that only wh en the translation conforms to children’s language features and fuses with their horizon of expectation can it be better accepted by children. Then the thesis proposes some suggested principles for children’ s literature translation, namely, conforming to children’ s horizon of expectation and representing children’s language which includes c oncrete and understandable words, colloquial and lifelike expressions, sim ple sentence structure, vivid and interesting rhetoric devices and ma intaining rhythm and rhym es. And then the thesis gives a suggested translation strategy for children’ s literature translation, which is a dopting domestication as the primary strategy and foreignization as the s upplementary strategy, accompanied with other translation techniques. Moreover, This thesis does not aim to judge which version of Anne of Green Gables is superior to the other, but to illustrate what kind of language can better conform to children’ s horizon of expectation so as to provi de a new per spective for the future translation studies, and serve as a reference for children’ s literature translators to translate more successful literary works for children. In the end, the thesis points out the lim itations and inadequacies in the research and provides some suggestions for fut ure research, hoping that m ore scholars will be dedicated to the study of children’s literature translation.