The Reconstruction Of Parent-child Relationship In Children's Literature Translation

As a vital factor of interpersonal relationship affecting the growth and development of children,parent-child relationship is a research core in sociology,psychology,pedagogy and other fields,and is also an important narrative theme in children's literature.Successful construction of the parent-child relationship is a key factor that influences the popularity of children's literature translation.Parent-child dialogue is of great significance to the construction of the parent-child relationship.The Little House on the Prairie is the most famous and representative work of the American classic novel series Little House.In the parent-child dialogues,the work vividly depicts the communication and emotional expression between parents and children in daily life,showing the warmth and beauty between parents and children.This study takes the two Chinese versions of The Little House on the Prairie as research object and explores the reconstruction strategy of parent-child relationship in the two Chinese versions.In An Introduction to Functional Grammar,mood and modality are thought to be the main carries to realize the interpersonal function---one of the three metafunctions.First of all,the three main characters' mood types are compared to analyze the character difference brought by different mood choices in the two Chinese versions.Meanwhile,the two translations were compared to find the translation methods and strategies taken by the two translators for the parent-child mood and modality.Furthermore,on the basis of the results of a survey in the fourth-graders of a primary school,the applicability of different translation strategies in children's literature themed with parent-child relationship is obtained.Finally,Amazon and Dangdang readers' comments on the two Chinese versions are collected and analyzed for their popularity.Major findings are as follows:Firstly,in the source text,the mood and modality contained in the dialogues are a good display of the characteristics and attitude of the characters,shaping different images of the characters.The declarative mood in the father's words shows father'sconcern for children and shapes an image of a loving father.The imperative mood,which accounts for a large proportion of the mother's words,highlights mother's harshness.Secondly,the choice of translation strategy affects reader distribution across different age groups.Wu Houkai chose “foreignization” as the main strategy in his translation;meanwhile he adopted the literal translation method,as well as the omission and division translation technique.Wu's translation is not only suitable for children readers,but also more popular in adult readers(parents and adults who are not parents).In Fu Yanguo's translation,“domestication” is the main translation strategy,and free translation method is used to weaken the mood of the source text(especially when parents teach their children),which makes children the main readers of his Chinese version.In a nutshell,in children's literature themed with parent-child relationship,the choice of mood will directly affect the image shaping of father,mother and children.Therefore,in translation process,domestication-based translation strategies can weaken the harsh mood in parent-child communication and create a mild and equal parent-child relationship to better adapt to the children's expected parent-child relationship,while the foreignization-based translation strategies can keep the original mood and modality of characters,which allows adults and children know the characters as depicted in the source text.