| The three fairy tales created by E.B. White are well known, among which Charlottes’Web is even more popular with the readers. According to the statistics, the circulation of the book has amounted to more than50,000,000till now. What’s more, it ranks the first among "The Ten Best American Children’s Literatures". Loved by the readers, Charlotte’s Web has attracted many translators’attention. It has already been translated into twenty languages. There are also four versions of translation in China among which Kang Xin’s version and Ren Rongrong’s version are the most successful, impressive and influential ones. Because of the translators’successful work, the translation of Charlotte’s Web attracts not only children but also many adults. There is a hot discussion online about the superiority of the two versions. Based on the discussions on the internet and the surveys done before, adults generally prefer Kang’s version and children like Ren’s version more.With the idea of a return to the ethics in translation put forward, translation ethics has attracted more and more attention and has been a hot topic in the field of translation research. In recent years, there have been more and more researches on translation ethics both at home and abroad. The five models of translation ethics put forward by the Finnish scholar, Chesterman, have been applied even more widely in the translation research, providing a new scope for it and making new contributions to it. Based on the five models of translation ethics, a comparison between Kang Xin’s translation and Ren Rongrong’s translation of Charlotte’s Web from the perspective of translation ethics is made in the thesis to explore the ethical reasons for their success but being popular with different age groups.This thesis contains six parts. The first chapter briefly introduces the research origin, research significance, research methodology and the basic structure of the thesis. Chapter two is the literature review which summarizes the previous studies on the translation of Charlottes Web and the current researches of translation ethics at home and abroad. Chapter three explains what translation ethics is and respectively introduces Andrew Chesterman’s five models of translation ethics. Chapter four involves the introductions of Charlotte’s Web, its author, its two Chinese versions, and the two translators. In chapter five, a case study of two Chinese versions of Charlotte’s Web is made to figure out which model or models the translators present in the translation and explore the effects on the translation exerted by the choice of models. Besides, the conflict between models as well as the solution to it is discussed. Chapter six is the conclusion of the thesis, including the summary of the research content, the findings and limitation of the research.The study finds that the two translators stress on different models in the translation process. They both represent the preference for nouns and verbs, the parallel structures and similes in the translation, presenting the model of representation ethics. However, dealing with the culture-loaded elements in different ways and the atmosphere of Kang Xin’s tending to choose formal words and Ren Rongrong’s tending to choose colloquial words as well as Kang Xin’s preference for the rhetorical device of idioms and Ren Rongrong’s preference for the rhetorical device of onomatopoeia and reduplicated words show that Kang tends to follow the model of norm-based ethics and Ren tends to follow the model of representation ethics and the model of service ethics. Thus, the author puts forward that the choice of models affects the translation and conforming to all the models is just an ideal state. Choices on models have to be made in practical translation, as a result of which, translations with different effects occur. |
