A Study Of English-to-Chinese Translation Of Children's Science Fiction From The Perspective Of The Tenor

This report discusses the translation methods and strategies of children's science fiction from the perspective of register in Systemic Functional Linguistics,especially the concept of tenor.The text used in this study is excerpted from the American children's science fiction Tom Swift and His G-Force Inverter,which is written by Thomas Mulvey.With the aim of arousing children's interest in science,the novel narrates a fantastic story of how the young scientist Tom Swift invented the gravity inverter by using Serptilium on the moon to help the train of Swift Enterprises win the railway bidding.Classified as an expressive text,the novel is featured with humorous and easy-to-understand language,vivid diction and concise sentences.With the translation practice of the novel(from Chapters X to XVI)as the research text,this report firstly analyzes the tenor of source text under the framework of tenor.Then it has an in-depth analysis of the English to Chinese translation of children's science fiction at the lexical and syntactic levels,in an attempt to explore the appropriate translation strategies for tenor adaptation by citing specific examples.This report mainly draws three findings.First of all,in light of tenor,the translation of English children's science fiction mainly involves the relationship between the novelist and the English young readers,the novelist and Chinese young readers,and the translator and Chinese young readers.In view of the particularity of Chinese young readers,great attention must be paid by the translator to diction and sentence processing while translating so as to achieve tenor adaptation.Secondly,in terms of diction,the translator should make full use of words that are in line with children language style,e.g.colloquial words,reduplicated words,modal particles and onomatopoetic words,thus making the translated text be more intelligible and acceptable to young readers.Thirdly,in terms of sentence processing,the translator need to transform sentence patterns,adjust word order and change voice properly in consideration of linguistic difference between English and Chinese.By doing so,a better translation version can be worked out that reproduces the text style and language features of the source text and caters to children readers' comprehension capacity and receptivity.This report studies the translation of children's science fiction literature from the two aspects of words and sentences on the basis of tenor,which not only broadens the research idea and perspective of the translation of children's literature,but also provides guidance and reference for the future translation practice of children's science fiction.