A Study Of Translation Strategies In Two Chinese Versions Of Peter Pan From The Perspective Of Skopostheorie

Due to the special nature of the subject, children‘s literature bears a separate position in the field of literature and has a role in entertaining and educating. However, for a long time, people did not realize that children are separate subjects, and children‘s literature received only little attention from scholars. It wasn‘t until the late 18 th century that children‘s literature assumed a distinct and independent literary form in the sight of the world. After two centuries of thought and exploration, researchers have gained some success in the fields of children‘s literature and research. In addition, the vigorous development of translation studies, and also the translation of children‘s literature, provides a good platform for development and the quality and quantity of children’s literature in translation works are increased year by year. The reality of this situation necessitates a more specialized and systematic research on the translation of children‘s literature for its further development in the future.The Skopostheorie is one of the fundamental theories in the German functional approach of translation studies. It was proposed by Hans J. Vermeer in the 1970 s, who was also the representative of the second generation of German functionalism. The core idea of the Skopostheorie indicates that the most important and decisive element of translation procedure is the purpose of the translation action. The translator should be the expert who knows the purpose of translating a selected text clearly before translation, and then resort to the appropriate methods to achieve the purpose. The Skopostheorie offers a new perspective for translation in practice and also provides sufficient theoretical guidance for children‘s literature translation.Peter Pan is the masterpiece novel of James M. Barrie, who is a Scottish fictionist and dramatist. This novel has been translated into different anguages and enjoyed great popularity among children all over the world. It is a classic of English children‘s literature full of risks and magic, and there are several Chinese versions of Peter Pan in China. This thesis plans to take Ren Rongrong‘s and Ma Ainong‘s version as research objects to compare the translation strategies employed in them respectively.With the Skopostheorie as theoretical foundation, the thesis makes a comparative study of translation strategies on the two Chinese versions of Peter Pan, including the same strategies applied by both translators and the different strategies applied by two translators. Under the instruction of the Skopostheorie, a translation that utilizes the appropriate translation strategies to affirm its purpose can be defined as successful translation. The thesis attempts to prove the necessity and feasibility of Skopostheorie in the translation of children‘s literature and hopefully provide useful and valid suggestions for further study and development.