Children's Literature Translation From The Perspective Of Reception Aesthetics: A Comparison Of Two Chinese Versions Of Charlotte's Web

This paper intends to discuss how Reception Aesthetics theory could be applied to children's literature translation through the comparative study of two Chinese versions of Charlotte's Web. Reception Aesthetics theory emphasizes the dominating role of readers in literary works,where writers or translators are required to consider readers' horizon of expectation. Therefore, translators of children's literary works should create works which could be easily accepted by children.The two translation versions selected are of quite different styles. Ren Rongrong's version is colloquial, concise and vivid, while Kang Xin's version is elegant but sometimes hard to understand. Based on the Reception Aesthetics theory, this paper has made a comparative study both on linguistic level and cultural level, and concludes that Ren's version is more acceptable to children.Apart from theoretical analysis, a survey has been conducted on 100 elementary and middle school students to examine how they like these two versions. The survey indicates that:first, Ren's version is more popular; second, some expressions in Kang's version are also favored; third, results are a little bit different between elementary and middle school students, so it is suggested that further surveys could be carried out based on more age groups, or different genders or regions.