Strategies Of Children’s Literature Translation From The Perspective Of Genre Knowledge

The source text of the translation is The Castle of Dark by Tanith Lee,a British writer of children’s literature.The story is about Lir and witch Lilune’s journey after he helped her escape the Castle of Dark.The commentary part discusses the translation strategies of children’s literature from the perspective of genre knowledge.Guided by Tardy’s(2009)theory of genre knowledge,the paper takes examples from the translation practice of The Castle of Dark and analyzes from perspectives of formal knowledge,rhetorical knowledge and subject-matter knowledge according to the framework of genre knowledge.Formal knowledge refers to the linguistic characteristics including aspects of words,sentences and discourse.Rhetorical knowledge refers to the rhetorical strategies adopted to achieve the genre’s purpose.Subject-matter knowledge refers to the background knowledge of a certain subject involved in the discourse.By comparing the translations in the examples,it is concluded that the fun of children’s literature translation can be better achieved by establishing the framework of genre knowledge and taking relevant translation strategies accordingly.When doing the translation,the translator should take children’s capacity and personalities into account.The source text should be translated in a way that children can understand and like it.Under this premise,reduplicated words,mimetic words and colloquial words are favored;rhetorical devices can be used to make the translation vivid and appealing;in addition,translators should expand their background knowledge of the source text in order to give a more accurate and diversified translation of the subject words,which is helpful to the cultural education of the target children readers.However,there has not yet formed a unified theory of using genre knowledge framework to guide the translation of children’s literature or other forms of literature.Therefore,translation strategies to children’s literature on each dimension of the genre knowledge framework require further research.