On Habitus Of Translators And Register In Children’s Literature Translation

From the perspective of Pierre Bourdieu’s practical socialism theory, this paper studies and analyzes impacts of translators’ habitus on their translation of children’s literature, concerning register in particular.According to Bourdieu, agents living in a society have a series of habitus, which is a steady system of dispositions and impacts practices of the agents and social construction. Habitus explain why people make choices as they always do without thinking, and stress interaction between human and society. The concept of habitus and Bourdieu’s theory are revelatory to translation studies. Translators’ habitus play a big role in their translation activity.This paper compares two Chinese versions of Alice’s Adventure in Wonderland and finds out differences between them on lexicology, syntax, phonology and rhythm, and rhetoric level. Then habitus of the two translators are analyzed as the reasons for those differences. When translating in a children-orientated way, adult translators make choices as driven by their habitus subconsciously. The hysteresis of habitus baffles the approach of adult translators to children readers, and therefore makes the register of the translated versions pro-adult. On the contrary, opportune habitus facilitate pro-children register.This paper, from a sociological angle, highlights the role of translators’ habitus in children-oriented translation of children’s literature, which is a new way of insight into the type of translation under discussion.