A Report On The Translation Of Wonder(Excerpts)

This report is a translation report based on the present author's translation of a children's book-Wonder,by the American writer R.J.Palacio.The text analyzed in this report is Palacio's debut novel published by Knopf Books for Young Readers Publisher,on February 14,2012.Now only one Chinese version has been published in China which is translated by Lei Shurong and Yi Chennan.Wonder has been acclaimed for its unique language features.In this book many onomatopoeia,interjections,spoken languages etc.are used which are suit for children's reading habits.How to adapt to the targeted readers' reading habits,and make the Chinese version be popular with children readers becomes a great challenge to the translator.In this paper,Adaptation Theory is employed as the theoretical guidance to help the translation.Adaptation Theory was put forward by the Belgium linguist Jef Verschueren in 1987.He regards language use as a continuous process of making choices.Negotiability,variability and adaptability,the three properties of language,make it possible for language users to make choices and adaptations.Translation is also a continuous process of making choices.Choice-making is the means and adaptation is the purpose and results of making linguistic choices.This thesis analyzes different translation methods applied in the translation of Wonder.At the phonetic level,onomatopoeia words,reduplicated words and interjections are used to make the translation more attractive.At the lexical level,children's reading ability is taking into consideration.Simple words and spoken words are adopted to translate.At the syntactic level,short sentences are chosen to translate.Through the analysis,the translator has found that when translating a children's book,the translator should take children readers' requirements into consideration and try to adapt to the children readers' linguistic features.It is hoped that the paper will provide some reference to later translation practice.