| Cao Wenxuan was awarded the 2016 Hans Christian Andersen Award and became the first Chinese writer to win this glory.The copyrights of his works have been exported into many countries and his works have been translated into more than ten different languages and collected by a large number of libraries around the world.Among these works,Qingtong Kuihua has been translated into several languages,such as English,Korean,German,French,Italian,Slovenian and Turkish.It can be said that it is a successful example of translating and introducing Chinese children’s literature to the outside world.Translated by Helen Wang,first published by Walker Books and then by the Candlewick Press,Bronze and Sunflower won the 2017 Marsh Award for Children Literature in Translation.Under the guidance of Toury’s norms theory,this thesis explores the translation norms abided by the English version of Qingtong Kuihua and attempts to find out the factors that affect the translator’s decision.Then,it analyzes the main reasons contributing to the success of Qingtong Kuihua in the English-speaking world,hoping to serve as an effective guide for the “going out” of Chinese children’s literature.To begin with,this thesis sorts out the current domestic and foreign studies on Qingtong Kuihua and its English version.Then,it provides an overview of Toury’s norms theory.From this perspective,this thesis mainly probes into three norms reflected in Bronze and Sunflower,namely initial norms,preliminary norms and operational norms.Through comparing the original text with the TT,this thesis finds out that the TT conforms to the norms of target language as well as the target culture.In respect of preliminary norms,on one hand,this thesis analyzes the reasons for selecting Qingtong Kuihua from the social and cultural environment,the original book’s values and reputations and copyright agents’ promotion.On the other hand,target readers’ intolerance for indirect translation and Helen Wang’s excellent bilingual competence are the keys to the translation directness of Qingtong Kuihua.Operational norms affect the overall structure and the translator’s decisions over specific vocabulary of the TT.On macro level,the translator adopts omission,addition and reorganization to deal with text structure.The reorganization translation strategy is specifically reflected by change of word order,paragraph segmentation,combination of paragraphs and so on.On micro level,this thesis mainly explores the translation strategies of reduplicative words,onomatopoetic words and color words.In order to present a TT that both retains the original childlike and poetic features and is highly readable,the translator employs liberal translation,corresponding translation and literal translation to translate the above three kinds of words.From the perspective of Toury’s translation norms,the translator’s choice of translation strategy conforms to target norms both on macro and micro level,which lays a solid foundation for the TT’s dissemination and reception in the English-speaking world.Through a systematic analysis of WorldCat collections,professional reviews and comments from general readers on Amazon and Goodreads,we find out that Bronze and Sunflower has aroused wide attention and won great acclaim in the English-speaking world.This thesis contends that there are three factors contributing to the success of Qingtong Kuihua: high-quality original work and the translated work,international award-winning and the publishers’ and the distributors’ promotion.The successful experience of Qingtong Kuihua’s dissemination and reception outside China can provide practical solutions to the endeavour of the “goingout” of Chinese children’s literature. |
