Changes Of Children’s Images&the Spirit Of Game In Translations Of Children’s Literature

<Peter Pan>, which was published in1911, is one of the most influential works inthe history of British children’s literature. It is also the most successful work of J.M.Barrie. It tells an adventure story of Peter Pan—the boy who refuses to grow up andthe three Darling kids on Neverland. There are38translations in all from1929, whenthe first Chinese version translated by Liang Shih-chiu published, to2011. Afterreading some of the translations, the author found that children’s images vary in thetranslations. Thus, the thesis focuses on comparison of the changes of children’simages in different Chinese versions by using the Theory of Manipulation of Lefevereand the reasons of the changes.First of all, the thesis gives a brief introduction of the Theory of Manipulation,including the main three factors affecting the acceptance of translations and therelationships among them. In the second part of the chapter, a review on theapplication of the theory in translation of children’s literature will be included.Secondly, the thesis reviews the researches on <Peter Pan>. To sum up,researches in China can be divided into two categories: the analysis from the literatureaspect and comments on the translations under different theoretical frameworks.Meanwhile, researches abroad relate to various fields. After reviewing the existingresearches, the author noticed that few discussions are about the effects of thetranslations in China. In the hope of enriching researches on <Peter Pan>, the themeof the paper is about changes in Children’s images of different versions and thereasons.Thirdly, the thesis analyzes changes of children’s images from two aspects. One isthe translators’ manipulation. After comparing translators’ ideology, translationstrategies and words choices, the author found that in children’s ages seem to bebigger in Liang’s version than they are in other versions. The other is patronage’smanipulation. It turns out that patronage’s manipulation causes the image of Peter Panto be different from the original text.It can be seen that the main reason of images’ changes in <Peter Pan> is translators’ manipulation after a comprehensive analysis of four versions. From1919,when the view of “discover children” was put forward to1989when ‘Convention onthe Rights of the Child’ was passed, children’s consciousness in China changed fromdiscovering and understanding children to protecting and respecting children.Translators were manipulated by trendy ideology and varied in their translationstrategies and styles which finally lead to different effects of four versions.