Report On C-E Translation Of The Aura Of Children's Literature:Difficulties And Strategies Of Translating Onomatopoeic Words And Sentence-final Particles In Fine Rice (Excerpts)

This simulative C-E translation report is based on the translation of the first forty pages of the children's novel Fine Rice by Cao Wenxuan.Fine Rice tells the story of a rural boy Fine Rice,who is mischievous but shy,thin but bold and an urban educated girl called Mei Wen,who is pretty and attractive.In the novel,Cao uses reduplicated words,onomatopoeic words,modal particles and nursery rhymes to make it appeal to children.The translation of numerous onomatopoeic words and sentence-final particles,which poses a challenge to the author,is that the chief concern of this report.This project is a personal practice aimed to improve her translation skills.The difficulties in translating onomatopoeic words and sentence-final particles stem from the differences in culture and language between Chinese and English.Firstly,Cao uses onomatopoeic words to appeal to children's auditory sensation since children tend to explore the world through sounds.But Chinese and English onomatopoeic words are sometimes lacking in correspondence,rendering it difficult to reproduce the beauty of sounds in the target text.The second difficulty is that Chinese sentence-final particles popular with children are absent in English.Therefore,it is difficult to deliver children's moods embodied in the use of sentence-final particles to the target readers.The Theory of Reception Aesthetics with its core concepts audience reception,horizon of expectations and fusion of horizons sheds light on the solution to the afore-mentioned problems.A fusion of horizons between the target text and the target children readers is formed through paying attention to children readers' role,status and horizon of expectations.Specifically,the following strategies are utilized:firstly,according to the given circumstances and the using habits of English onomatopoeia,Chinese onomatopoeic words are translated into onomatopoeic nouns and onomatopoeic verbs to reproduce the beauty of sounds.Secondly,Chinese sentence-final particles are compensated with interrogative sentences,tenses and other techniques according to the contexts and their functions to deliver children's moods to achieve a fusion of horizons between the target text and its readers.Under the guidance of the Theory of Reception Aesthetics,the strategies adopted,which respect children readers,effectively coped with the difficulties of translating onomatopoeic words and sentence-final particles.This translation project achieves the goal of improving translation skills and provides reference for dealing with such translation problems to other translators.