On The Untranslatability Of Foreign Children's Literature

Children's literature has always been on the edge of the literary system,and the marginal status of children's literature translation is even worse.However,research on the translation of children's literary works has important theoretical and practical value.This thesis takes the magical children's literary work Harry Potter written by British writer J.K.Rowling as the language research corpus.The Harry Potter series of novels has been translated into nearly seventy languages since its inception,with cumulative sales of more than 350 million copies in more than 200 countries around the world.It has also won the popularity of readers of all sizes in China.However,due to the differences between Chinese and English language systems,we found that it is difficult for the translated text to have the same readability as the original one,which even affects the reading of children readers.In 1965,John Cunnison Catford,a well-known linguist and translator raised the issue of “untranslatability” in his masterpiece: A Linguistic Theory of Translation.In this book,he divided untranslatability into two parts: “linguistic untranslatability” and “cultural untranslatability”.Based on the theory of Catford's untranslatability,this thesis explores the untranslatable phenomena in Harry Potter.Due to the differences between Chinese and English,the untranslatability of the language in Harry Potter is very obvious,which is mainly reflected in word games.Cultural untranslatable phenomena mainly stems from the English background of the novel.For example,“Hogwarts” was born in British boarding schools;the important character in the novel,Hagrid,said southwestern English dialects;those fantastic beasts originate from European culture.These phenomena cannot find correspondences in Chinese culture,so their untranslatability is very obvious.Through the study of the untranslatable phenomena in children's literature,this thesis aims to arouse the attention to the study of children's literature translation,on the other hand,help translators to understand the limitations of their translations,so they can adjust the translation strategies accordingly to fully restore the original style and content.