The Relation Of Critical Thinking To The Translation Quality Of Children’s Literature

With the development of information technology and international exchange,the number of children’s literature translation has increased dramatically.Through statistical analysis,the author finds that children’s literature translations cover a large proportion on the 2018 TOP 100 best-seller list of children’s literature in Dangdang and Amazon.“There are almost 300 million children readers in China,however,they are faced with low-quality children’s literature translations on the market”(Xu Derong,2004: 33).Children,as readers of children’s literature translation,are in an important period of language learning,value building and literary taste development.Poor translation and terrible expression often cause children’s imitation,which will have a bad impact on the growth of children.As a result,it is necessary to take some steps to improve this situation.As a relatively unique branch of literary translation,Children’s literature possesses its unique stylistic features and special target readers.The translator must find an appropriate way to talk with children from children’s perspective.As a consequence,children’s literature translation is often more difficult than other literature translation.“Children’s literature translators should learn some strategies and theories but apart from them,the other way has an effective impact on children’s translation that is critical thinking,moreover critical thinking is a process which solves problems”(Fahimeh and Mohammad,2017).As the training base for translators,colleges and universities play a key role in the cultivation of critical thinking.Every MTI student is a potential children’s literature translator.Therefore,each MTI student should grasp the significance of critical thinking and master critical thinking.However,“domestic translation teaching has long adopted the “teaching-acceptance” teaching model.The disadvantages are: there are many translation techniques and simple sentence translations while few text translations,which result in little training on students’ logical thinking and neglect of the cultivation of independent thinking,critical consciousness and innovation ability”(Ouyang Lifeng,2009: 51).Therefore,this study investigates 35 MTI(Master of Translation and Interpreting)students who are from college of foreign languages and cultures in grade 2017 of Chongqing University.In order to attain the goal of this study,the author chooses the Chinese version of Watson-Glaser Critical Thinking Appraisal(WGCTA)to test participants’ critical thinking and two children’s literature translation tests to measure participants’ translation quality of children’s literature;Excel is used in order to describe the characteristics of participants’ critical thinking and translation quality of children’s literature.What’s more,to investigate the relation of critical thinking to the translation quality of children’s literature,SPSS 22.0 and Pearson Product-Moment Correlation are employed.Based on the results,the major findings are as follows: first,critical thinking of most MTI students in grade 2017 from Chongqing University is considered to be moderate and weak;second,the translation quality of children’s literature of most MTI students in grade 2017 from Chongqing University is at a passable level;third,there is an extremely strong positive relation between critical thinking and the translation quality of children’s literature.In the end,according to the research results,the author puts forward some practical suggestions and methods in order to improve the poor translation quality of children’s literature.