This paper will make a comparative analysis of two translations of Peter Pan and find out how translation affects the humor or the interest of the book。 This paper might give a sign to those translators that they have to translate and correct their works for times and work out a better version。
1。3 Two translation versions
This paper will choose Yang Jingyuan’s translation and Guo Mingli’s as the research objects。
1。3。1 Yang's version
Yang Jingyuan (1923。2—2015。6), a famous translator in China, translated Peter Pan with Gu Geng in 1991, but she re-translated it by herself 20 years later at her 86。 The re-translated version has been printed in 2010。 Yang & Gu’s work is worthy of collection but Yang’s new version is more readable。 Because the 2010 version is easier for children to understand it by using less dialects and ancient Chinese prose。 Readers can barely find a wrongly written character or a sentence mistake。 And the translation is generally equal to the original text。 Yang’s 2010 translation is an authoritative translation version of Peter Pan and that’s why I choose it for my paper。
1。3。2 Guo's version
Guo Mingli(1979—now), an English teacher in Zhejiang University of Technology, translated Peter Pan and her translation has been published in 2014。 Her translation of Peter Pan is regarded as the version that is most related to the original text。 Her language is smooth and simple but not childish, children can understand it clearly。 She didn’t have many translation works and Peter Pan is her only one published work。
The British publishers had deleted many parts of Peter Pan。 Because in the first version, Peter is a hatred, cruel boy who killed people and the deleted these parts to make Peter Pan a real children’s literature that is clean, innocent and interesting。 Both of the two translators translation are based on the clean version。 Guo’s style of translation is similar to Yang’s, readers can find many similarities in those two translations。 So what I have to do is to find out the different in the two translations, such as the “Neverland” is called “永无乡” in Yang’s version and “梦幻岛” in Guo’s。
1。4 Thesis structure
This study will introduce how translation affects the interest of the book。 It will introduce the trend and present station at first。 And then introduce the significance of this topic。 The second part will introduce the previous study about children’s literature and study about Peter Pan。 The next part will give some examples about the topic。 Finally, there will be a conclusion。
2Literature Review
2。1 Children’s literature translation theories
Many scholars research the children’s literature translation by different translating theories。 The most popular theories among scholars are skopostheory, equivalence theory, and the theory of domesticating translation and foreignizing translation。 As well, some scholars also study the children’s translation with aesthetic, receptive or other perspectives。
2。1。1 Skopestheory文献综述
Many scholars study the translating of children’s literature by Skopestheory。 The purpose of the children’s literature should be educational, cognitive and beautiful。 So translators should try to keep these elements in their translation, as well they should abbey the rule of translating: “attraction for children, in accordance with the target language, loyalty to the style of the original” (Lou & Zheng, 2015)。 The target reader of children’s literature translation is children, which makes skopestheory popular。
2。1。2 Equivalence theory