On Translation Strategies Of Chinese Children’s Literature From The Perspective Of Reception Theory

Children’s literature mainly refers to the works that are created by writers according to children’s psychological features, aesthetic requirement and reception, etc. As an important branch of literature, children’s literature much influences children’s cognition of exotic culture. At present, the global cultural exchanges among countries are getting more and frequent and literature translation becomes one of the most important ways of communication.Throughout the whole children’s literary works in China, the overwhelming majority are translated from foreign writings. While Chinese children’s literary works are rarely published in other countries and popular ones are even harder to find. What’s the reason? Partly because a minority of translators engages in C-E translation of children’s literature, but fewer can do an excellent job in the field.Recent years, Chinese government has attached more and more importance to introduce its culture to the outside world. Many measures have been taken to introduce cultural products with Chinese characteristic overseas including promoting some excellent literature works,through which we have got a furor over Chinese literature abroad. Chinese Fairy Tales is a classic children’s literature work of great research value for its representative folk language and cultural image. The author selects it as the original version and translates the seventh volume offering a detailed analysis of the translation under the guide of reception theory.Through the translation and analysis, the thesis intends to guide the researches on children’s literature translation.Reception aesthetics is one of the branches of the western theories of literature and art originating from Europe in 1960 s. Its outstanding character differing from others is that it is reader-oriented. Reception theory holds that writings can only be regarded as semi-finished products before they are read by readers and only if the read happens, the works can be called real and complete works. According to reception theory, readers play a leading role in the triangle of writer, work and reader. Readers’ reading process is a process of creation, because the works are recreated by readers during reading. What decides the recreation is reader’s horizon of expectation which includes the reader’s former reading and life experience,cognition and taste, etc. Indeterminacy which is proposed by reception theory offers infinitepossibilities for readers to supplement the original text, so during the writing the author should take “leaving a blank” into consideration so that the readers can have a room to recreate. Children are special readers for their weak receptivity of abstract things and their lower level of aesthetics and cognition, thus it is necessary to stand in children’s shoes while children’s literary works are translated. To do translation under the guidance of reception theory, translators can take the subjectivity of children into consideration from the perspective of children and produce translations that meet children’s taste conveying the verve of the original text faithfully and efficiently to litter readers.The original text is translated earnestly and the translation strategies are studied and analyzed under the guidance of reception theory. At the beginning of the thesis, a brief introduction of the thesis is made, the reason why this book is chosen is illustrated, and the significance of the research and the methodology of the thesis is stated; then the related literature including domestic researches and oversea researches is analyzed; later the origin and content of reception theory is introduced. Chapter Four analyzes the specific translation methods of Chinese Fair Tales in accordance with traditional Chinese expression and western children readers’ characteristics and researches on the strategies of translating Chinese children literature. In the meantime, some proper translation strategies of children’s literature are proposed in terms of word selection, sentence structure and text arrangement.The last part goes to a conclusion consisting of major findings, limitations and further studies. There is no omnipotent theory in the world, thus reception theory is not an exception and it cannot solve all the problems emerging in children literature translation, such as problems on pun remain still.All in all, the study of the thesis shows that Children literature translation should center on the readers---the children, focusing on their psychological features, aesthetic need and reception. It is the author’s heartfelt wish that the thesis would provide some references for the afterward translators.