| This report is based on the English-Chinese translation of the children’s novel A Snake Falls to Earth by Darcie Little Badge.Darcie Little Badge employs subtle notions and vivid imagination to depict a fantasy world brimming with fanciful ideas.Such a style can vastly stimulate children’s reading interest.There has been growing attention to translating children’s literature from various research perspectives.However,insufficient attention has been given to the unique characteristics of children as a reading group.This situation has resulted in obscure and challenging translations for children to read.Therefore,translators should make the translated text conform to children’s psychological characteristics and aesthetic tastes.The translator has focused on children readers,taking into account their psychological characteristics and language features during the translation process.Under the guidance of reception aesthetics,the novel A Snake Falls to Earth has been analyzed from three levels:lexical,syntactical,and rhetorical.At the lexical level,the translator makes use of onomatopoeia,reduplicated words,and modal particles to align with children’s language features and give readers a visual sense of the text for greater understanding.At the syntactic level,long and complicated sentences are translated into short sentences.Lastly,at the rhetorical level,stylistic devices such as metaphor and personification enhance the readability of the text,thus satisfying the aesthetic expectations of readers.This report demonstrates the feasibility of using reception aesthetics to guide the translation of children’s literature.The translation methods applied under the guidance of reception aesthetics can substantially resolve the problems encountered in previous translations,which were often unclear and difficult to comprehend because of oversight of children’s psychological and linguistic traits.Moreover,this report advances the study of translating children’s literature and serves as a reference for translating other literary works for children. |
