Skopos Theory And Translation Of Children’s Literature

Based on the Skopos Theory,this thesis compares the Chinese and French versions of Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone,the first book of the Harry Potter series.Rowling never specifies that the series is written for children,yet it is generally categorized as children’s literature.Based on previous studies,this paper compares the Chinese and French versions of Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone in terms of readability,vividness and musicality.More specifically,readability will be measured in terms of oral expressions and rendering of long sentence;vividness will be measured in terms of figures of speech,onomatopoeic words and rendering of character names;and musicality will be measured in terms of rhymes.Each version has its unique characteristics.This thesis compares the readability of both versions based on oral expressions and rendering of long sentence,and concludes that the Chinese version is better in this regard.And based on figures of speech,onomatopoeic words and rendering of character names,this paper compares the vividness of both versions and finds that the French version attaches more attention to the figures of speech and rendering of character names,and the Chinese one to the onomatopoeic words.Regarding the musicality,the paper compares the rhymes of certain extracts and concludes that the French version is significantly better in this regard,and the traditional Chinese version is usually better than the simplified one.Unlike most similar theses which only focus on the Chinese version(s)of the Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone,this thesis compares both the Chinese and French versions.Based on the comparison,it is clear that the Chinese version cannot express the hidden message as good as the French one,yet the Chinese translators make good use of the characteristics of the Chinese language and do their best to be faithful to the ST.And since English and French are very similar to each other in terms of vocabulary and grammar,the French translator is able to preserve to a very large extent the ST’s message between the lines,yet he makes many modifications to the ST.