A Contrastive Study Of The Two Chinese Versions Of Alice’s Adventures In Wonderland From The Perspective Of Skopos Theory

Being an essential component of literary genre,children’s literature,possessing both general characteristics in common literature and particular characteristics of its own,is a manifestation of children’s life and their mental development.As the earliest literary form that children have access to,children’s literature plays an important part in leading children to be positive,enlightening their imagination and enriching their spiritual world.The readership of a literary work is not always fixed.In the translation of children’s literature,due to different target readers,the same work will have different translations and these different versions will also be welcomed by their particular readers.German scholar Hans J.Vermeer advanced Skopos theory in the 1980 s.This theory holds that translation is a purposeful activity and the purpose is decisive in the whole translation process.It also puts emphasis on the role of target readers.Or,to put it another way,the translators have the right to make modifications to the source text to meet the target readers’ needs.For different translation purposes and different target readership,translators adopt varied translation strategies and methods,which results in widely divergent styles of their translated works.The author here believes that as one indispensable component of literary translation,the translation of children’s literature should also be conducted under explicit translation purpose.As an acknowledged children’s literature classic,Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland is continuously rendered by scholars from different nations since its publication.This thesis,exemplifying the two Chinese representative versions translated by Zhao Yuanren and Wu Juntao,compares four aspects in detail,namely diction,syntax,rhetorical device and cultural element under the guidance of the three principles of Skopos theory.Zhao Yuanren chooses children as his target readers,and aims at inspiring Chinese to learn a foreign language,and at amusing children readers.While the readership of Wu Juntao is all the potential readers,including adults and children.He intends to reproduce the content and charm of the original text.Thus,in order to achieve his purpose of pleasing children readers and stimulating their reading interests,Zhao Yuanren adopts domestication in translation and uses expressions which more conform with children’s linguistic preference.Besides,Zhao Yuanren also makes some creative modifications to the original text.Wu Juntao adopts foreignization and uses proper annotation in translation to explain.Relatively formal and fluent modern language is used in Wu Juntao’s translation.The foreign elements and the original content in the original text are fully presented and reproduced by Wu Juntao.Through a contrastive study,the author concludes that it is the translators’ different target readership and translation purposes that decide their adoption of different translation strategies.Meanwhile,the difference in social context and cultural background of the two translators,as well as their extent of the focus on the style of the source text exert certain effects on their translation.In light of Skopos theory,the Chinese versions of both Zhao Yuanren and Wu Juntao achieve their translational purposes,which justifies the applicability of Skopos theory in children’s literature translation.