An Adaptation Theory Based Comparative Study Of Childlikeness In Two Chinese Versions Of Winnie-The-Pooh

Based on the adaptation theory of Jef. Verschueren(1999), this thesis analyzes how two Chinese versions of Winnie-the-Pooh adapt their translations to the childlikeness of the original text.Winnie-the-Pooh(1926) written by A.A. Milne is extremely famous in children’s literature which narrates a series of interesting and lovely stories happening in Hundred Acre Wood to Winnie and his friends. This book has been popular for a long time because of its humorous language and special use of rhetorical devices and interjections,etc. How to adapt to the linguistic features of the source language becomes a great challenge for translators of Winnie-the-Pooh.Verschueren(1999) regards language use as a continuous process of making choices. Negotiability, variability and adaptability, three features of language, make it possible for language users to make choices and adaptations. Using the framework of adaptation theory, this thesis analyzes different strategies applied in two Chinese versions of Winnie-the-Pooh from four aspects: contextual correlates of adaptability,structural objects of adaptability, dynamics of adaptability and salience of the adaptation processes. From the aspect of contextual correlates of adaptability, different choices between two translations of Winnie-the-Pooh are analyzed from three perspectives: social norms, culture, and reference. From the aspect of structural objects of adaptability, the two translators’ linguistic adaptations are compared from phonetic,lexical and syntactic level by quantitative methods with the assistance of corpus statistics. From the aspect of dynamics of adaptability, the translators’ selection and adaptation are compared from different social backgrounds and personal psychology.From the aspect of salience of the adaptation processes, the thesis analyzes the extent to which the translators change the meaning of the source text.Through a comparative analysis, it was found that: in terms of contextual correlates of adaptability, Lu’s translation tends to adapt to linguistic structures of thesource text, while Li’s version emphasizes on the reproduction of childlikeness to satisfy the taste of target readers. In terms of structural objects of adaptability, in order to adapt to the linguistic context of the source text, Lu’s translation applies abundant conjunctions which can be used to show the sequence of actions clearly to help children comprehend the story, though these kinds of words are rarely used in Chinese.Comparatively speaking, Li’s version caters more to the communicative context of the target reader and adjusts the original work to meet the aesthetic taste of Chinese children, such as the use of four-character idioms and proverbs, reproducing childlikeness in a familiar way to Chinese readers. In terms of the dynamics of adaptability, because interactions between western and Chinese people are increasing and children’s eyes become more open, Lu’s version employs the foreignization strategy to maintain original flavor of the source text, and which in turn promotes a cultural exchange. However, Li’s version is somewhat out-dated because some of its words do not adapt to modern style of language use. In terms of salience of the adaptation processes, Li’s version adapts to target readers’ aesthetics and transforms childlikeness in a way that Chinese children are familiar with. In contrary to Li, Lu translates the text literally and caters to the linguistic structures of the source text better.Some conclusions are reached from the comparative analysis: children’s literature translators should adapt to linguistic features of target readers by altering the source text slightly, applying luminous words and taking advantage of musical words such as reduplication, repetition and rhyme. Avoiding long sentences is also a significant strategy that can be used to create a text that children are willing to accept.