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Translation is by nature a communicative activity of culture.As a kind of activity,translation exchanges information both within and across cultural boundaries.This paper chooses the most popular children’s literature Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and the best version of Zhaoyuanren’s version in China to see how the version deals with the culture differences,aiming at the improvement of the approaches to the adequate translation of children’s literature,and thus generalizing some principles for future theoretical references.
1.Children’s Reception of Culture Differences
American developmental psychologist Barbara Rogoff (1990) believes that social interaction and culture play important roles in children’s cognitive development.She argues that children’s cognitive development should involve an “apprenticeship” with companions who will strengthen children’s written and oral language skills,math skills,and memory strategies to preserve information over time.In mastering these skills,children would use all sorts of tools—everything from notches on sticks to calculators and computers—that would be consistent with the culture in which the tools were developed and used.(Laura,1991:315)
Children can think logically because they can take multiple aspects of a situation into account.However,children are still limited in the area of thinking only about real situations in the here and now.(Papalia,2002:313) Obviously,foreign culture is abstract to children.They may fail to understand the essence of the culture,or they will throw over the book because the difficulty of comprehension exhausts them.Hence,Tiina Puurtinen observes that tolerance for strangeness is much lower in children’s literature than in books for adults,which makes readability as a whole a key issue within translation for children.(Oittinen,2000:33)
2.Transfer of Culture Difference
Translation isn’t just the transfer of the meaning from one language to another,but an area in which cultures meet.Translation activity,to some degree,is attributed to the translator whose decisions influence the way in which a culture responds to impulses and challenges from outside.Therefore translation is seen as social action in which different cultures have their places.
2.1 Transfer of Proper Names.Proper names have singular references.In theory,the name of single person or object is ‘outside’ language,belong,if not at all,to the encyclopedia not the dictionary,has no meaning or connotation,is,therefore,both untranslatable and not to be translated.(Newmark,2001a:70) However,Proper names in fairy stories,folk tales and children’s literature are often translated,on the ground that children and fairies are the same the world over.(ibid:71) As is well known,Lewis Carroll wrote the book for his little friend Alice Liddell,a ten-year-old girl,and her two sisters Lorina Charlotte and Edith Liddell.Some characters or figures of the book are explicitly or implicitly taken form the girls’ real situation,and we may assume that this must have amused them very much.When the story was published in 1865 it was directed at a broader audience,namely children and adults.The names related to Alice don’t contain the same amusements to them and to target readers of the translation.So it is assumed that the same names have different meanings to different audience.Most translations of these names into Chinese adopt transliteration method,but the foreignness of these sounds makes some of the names lose the original meanings to the target language readers.
“Alice” is not just the name of the protagonist,it is also the name of a real girl,Carroll’s little friend,for whom the story is composed.Therefore it is impossible to obtain the same amusement to the target readers as to Alice and her companions.However,Zhao transformed the name into a familiar Chinese name.Due to in Zhao’s day,Chinese people favored to call their friend “阿*”,e.g.“张霞”called into “阿霞”.Hence,here Zhao translated “Alice” into “阿丽思”,which sounds like a Chinese name.This kind of adaptation is more acceptable to Chinese children because as the above mention,children are less understandable to the foreignness.
Obviously,when names of the literature refer to the real world,the translation is hard to attain the same effects.But,the example of Zhao’s translation may give us some illumination how to translate names for children.Form his translational strategy,we can find his target readers do not anticipate difficulties or obscurities,and expect a generous transfer of foreign elements into their own culture.
2.2 Transfer of Cultural Specificity.A culture-specific phenomenon is thus one that is found to exist in a particular form or to function in only one of two cultures being compared.Some material culture is proper to a society,and may not have the counterpart in another society or at the translator’s period,the material still doesn’t appear.How to translate this type of material culture will be discussed in the following.
In the book of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland,there is a kind of food named “orange marmalade”.In the cultural term ‘orange marmalade’,marmalade means a type of jam made from citrus fruit,especially oranges.Zhao Yuanren has translated it into“橙子玛玛酱”,because at that time “marmalade” didn’t appear in Chinese family and Chinese children had no idea to this kind material.From this example,we can observe that frequently if there is a cultural focus,there would be a translation problem due to the culture ‘gaps’ or ‘distance’ between the source and the target language.When Zhao translates this word,he has presented the sound‘玛玛’of the word,who would be in the hope that Chinese readers who hadn’t been familiar with western culture yet could know the special food.At the same time,he supplements the essence of the food with character “酱”.Therefore,his transliteration makes readers in his time realize that orange marmalade is a kind of foreign food and have a general idea about this food.“Food is for many the most sensitive and important expression of national culture; food terms are subject to the widest variety of translation procedure.” (Newmark,2001b:97) From the above discussion,it can be seen that Zhao’s translation is successful to the target children readers. 3.Summary
The culture differences cause many problems for translators.The more in source text there are cultural factors,the more there would be translation problems.How to deal with these problems grounds on the purpose of the translator translating the text.In the above discussion,it’s clear that Zhao’s translation focus on the recipients’ ability,which represents the leitmotiv of CT theory.At the same time,through the analysis,we can get the idea that Zhao’s translation is suitable for children readers.Therefore,the conclusion can be drawn that CT theory is befitting to the translation of children literature on cultural difference.Then,in the future,CT theory can be considered as a guide theory for the translation of children literature on cultural difference.
References:
[1]Baugh,A.C.
1.Children’s Reception of Culture Differences
American developmental psychologist Barbara Rogoff (1990) believes that social interaction and culture play important roles in children’s cognitive development.She argues that children’s cognitive development should involve an “apprenticeship” with companions who will strengthen children’s written and oral language skills,math skills,and memory strategies to preserve information over time.In mastering these skills,children would use all sorts of tools—everything from notches on sticks to calculators and computers—that would be consistent with the culture in which the tools were developed and used.(Laura,1991:315)
Children can think logically because they can take multiple aspects of a situation into account.However,children are still limited in the area of thinking only about real situations in the here and now.(Papalia,2002:313) Obviously,foreign culture is abstract to children.They may fail to understand the essence of the culture,or they will throw over the book because the difficulty of comprehension exhausts them.Hence,Tiina Puurtinen observes that tolerance for strangeness is much lower in children’s literature than in books for adults,which makes readability as a whole a key issue within translation for children.(Oittinen,2000:33)
2.Transfer of Culture Difference
Translation isn’t just the transfer of the meaning from one language to another,but an area in which cultures meet.Translation activity,to some degree,is attributed to the translator whose decisions influence the way in which a culture responds to impulses and challenges from outside.Therefore translation is seen as social action in which different cultures have their places.
2.1 Transfer of Proper Names.Proper names have singular references.In theory,the name of single person or object is ‘outside’ language,belong,if not at all,to the encyclopedia not the dictionary,has no meaning or connotation,is,therefore,both untranslatable and not to be translated.(Newmark,2001a:70) However,Proper names in fairy stories,folk tales and children’s literature are often translated,on the ground that children and fairies are the same the world over.(ibid:71) As is well known,Lewis Carroll wrote the book for his little friend Alice Liddell,a ten-year-old girl,and her two sisters Lorina Charlotte and Edith Liddell.Some characters or figures of the book are explicitly or implicitly taken form the girls’ real situation,and we may assume that this must have amused them very much.When the story was published in 1865 it was directed at a broader audience,namely children and adults.The names related to Alice don’t contain the same amusements to them and to target readers of the translation.So it is assumed that the same names have different meanings to different audience.Most translations of these names into Chinese adopt transliteration method,but the foreignness of these sounds makes some of the names lose the original meanings to the target language readers.
“Alice” is not just the name of the protagonist,it is also the name of a real girl,Carroll’s little friend,for whom the story is composed.Therefore it is impossible to obtain the same amusement to the target readers as to Alice and her companions.However,Zhao transformed the name into a familiar Chinese name.Due to in Zhao’s day,Chinese people favored to call their friend “阿*”,e.g.“张霞”called into “阿霞”.Hence,here Zhao translated “Alice” into “阿丽思”,which sounds like a Chinese name.This kind of adaptation is more acceptable to Chinese children because as the above mention,children are less understandable to the foreignness.
Obviously,when names of the literature refer to the real world,the translation is hard to attain the same effects.But,the example of Zhao’s translation may give us some illumination how to translate names for children.Form his translational strategy,we can find his target readers do not anticipate difficulties or obscurities,and expect a generous transfer of foreign elements into their own culture.
2.2 Transfer of Cultural Specificity.A culture-specific phenomenon is thus one that is found to exist in a particular form or to function in only one of two cultures being compared.Some material culture is proper to a society,and may not have the counterpart in another society or at the translator’s period,the material still doesn’t appear.How to translate this type of material culture will be discussed in the following.
In the book of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland,there is a kind of food named “orange marmalade”.In the cultural term ‘orange marmalade’,marmalade means a type of jam made from citrus fruit,especially oranges.Zhao Yuanren has translated it into“橙子玛玛酱”,because at that time “marmalade” didn’t appear in Chinese family and Chinese children had no idea to this kind material.From this example,we can observe that frequently if there is a cultural focus,there would be a translation problem due to the culture ‘gaps’ or ‘distance’ between the source and the target language.When Zhao translates this word,he has presented the sound‘玛玛’of the word,who would be in the hope that Chinese readers who hadn’t been familiar with western culture yet could know the special food.At the same time,he supplements the essence of the food with character “酱”.Therefore,his transliteration makes readers in his time realize that orange marmalade is a kind of foreign food and have a general idea about this food.“Food is for many the most sensitive and important expression of national culture; food terms are subject to the widest variety of translation procedure.” (Newmark,2001b:97) From the above discussion,it can be seen that Zhao’s translation is successful to the target children readers. 3.Summary
The culture differences cause many problems for translators.The more in source text there are cultural factors,the more there would be translation problems.How to deal with these problems grounds on the purpose of the translator translating the text.In the above discussion,it’s clear that Zhao’s translation focus on the recipients’ ability,which represents the leitmotiv of CT theory.At the same time,through the analysis,we can get the idea that Zhao’s translation is suitable for children readers.Therefore,the conclusion can be drawn that CT theory is befitting to the translation of children literature on cultural difference.Then,in the future,CT theory can be considered as a guide theory for the translation of children literature on cultural difference.
References:
[1]Baugh,A.C.