Child-Orientation:On The Translation Of Children’s Literature From The Perspective Of The Adaptation Theory

Children’s literature is a special kind of literature that aims to make children enjoy reading and cultivate their skills and values.Due to the peculiarity of its target readers,children’s literature and translations should meet children’s expectation by focusing on their readers.Besides,as children are quite young,their visual thinking pattern and low cognitive level are not enough to accept complex information.Therefore,this paper focuses on how to translate children’s literature by adapting to children’s reading habits and cognition,thus achieving the function of entertainment and education.The translated material is the first two chapters of the children’s novel What the Fireflies Knew by educator Kai Harris,telling the story of a young black girl whose relationship with her family goes frosty and then warm again because of a family change.According to the Adaptation Theory,language use is the choice of language,which is influenced by language structure and communicative intent.Dynamic adaptability is the core of this theory,referring to the conformity to each linguistic level in the target language when the context changes.With the help of the theory,this paper discusses translation strategies and translation methods that are applicable to children’s literature in the light of language structure and context,as well as the characteristics of children’s literature and its main readers.The paper finds that in order to achieve the value of the translation,translators should choose domestication as the main translation method in terms of language structure to make it easier for children to understand.On this basis,foreignization can be adopted in the translation to present the linguistic feature of the original text and arouse children’s reading interest.As for the context,domestication should be adopted by describing the natural scene in a certain order,and foreignization should be adopted in communicative situation to present characters’ feelings.In adapting culture,the first thing to consider is whether there is equivalence in another culture.If there is,the original culture can be adapted directly.If not,foreignization should be adopted to make a clear explanation.