A Study On The Translation Of Children’s Literature From The Perspective Of Adaptation Theory

Children’s literature plays a considerably important role in one’s childhood.It exerts a profound influence on children’s language competence,imagination,cognitive ability,aesthetic ability and personality shaping.In recent years,the translation of children’s literature in China has continuously developed along with the prosperity of children’s literary works,but it has not received enough attention in the field of translation and children’s literature.The translation of children’s literature has an unbalanced development in terms of theoretical study and translation practice,which mainly manifests the phenomenon that there are a large number of translated texts of children’s literature,but the relevant studies on their translation are extremely rare,resulting the situation that translation of children’s literature is still at the margin of translation studies.Additionally,the features of children’s psychological states and thinking modes also determine the peculiarity of translation of children’s literature.It is the major challenge for translators to present children with successful translations which are endowed with educational and entertaining purposes in the process of adapting to the original text.This thesis mainly adopts descriptive research method to make a comparative study of two Chinese versions of The Wind in the Willows translated by Ren Rongrong and Yang Jingyuan respectively based on the four dimensions of Verschueren’s Adaptation Theory,namely,contextual correlates of adaptability,structural objects of adaptability,the dynamics of adaptability and the salience of adaptation.The study is intended to analyze which aspects the translators need to make adaptations in the process of translating children’s literature.The other purpose is to explore what kind of translation strategies the translators are supposed to use in order to adapt to the characteristics of children’s literature in light of Adaptation Theory.Meanwhile,by analyzing the examples selected from two different versions,the author hopes to provide suggestions for the translation of children’s literature from four aspects of Adaptation Theory.Through comparative analysis,the study concludes that the choice and adaptation would occur either on the linguistic level or the extra-linguistic level in the process of translation.On the linguistic level,translators should dynamically select phonology,vocabulary,and syntactic expressions which cater to children’s language and cognitive characteristics;On the extra-linguistic level,translators should have strong sense of cross-cultural communication and fully consider the cultural differences between the source language and the target language in order to conform to children’s cognitive and comprehensive ability.To achieve this goal,translators are supposed to adapt their thinking modes and translation process to the cognitive environment of both the source language culture and the target language culture so that children readers can thoroughly comprehend and appreciate the original work.The dynamic adaptation in the process of translation is affected by both the contextual factors and the linguistic structures.Therefore,the children’s literature translators are required to continuously choose the appropriate linguistic forms and translation strategies which adapt to children’s language and psychological characteristics with a high degree of consciousness.