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Article published In:
Babel
Vol. 62:2 (2016) ► pp.278–299

Faithfulness in translation of children’s literature

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn in Chinese

Faithfulness as a principle of translation has been upheld for a long time despite many debates among scholars in the field. In the context of translating children’s literature, this poses further challenges and recent studies have yet to reach a conclusion (Epstein 2012; Nikolajeva 2011; Henitiuk 2011; Kruger 2011; Emery 2004; Dai 2001; Hervey 1997). In this article, from the sociological perspective, I shall discuss this issue by examining Klingberg (1986)’s approach of being faithful to the source text and Oittinen (1993)’s strategy of being faithful to the readers respectively. A study of Chinese translations of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn for children readers will be looked at. Methods of dialogical approach: purification, simplification, rewording and modernization will be compared with equivalence method to find out which one offers a better reader reception. I argued that having an orientation and purpose of translation with a dialogical view will benefit readers more than simply adhering to the original without deviation at linguistic level. The reasons are that the target text will be more comprehensible for children readers’ stage of cognitive and psychological development, life experience, knowledge, cultural tolerance and linguistic development in reading gems of foreign literature in translation.

Keywords: The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, children's literature, dialogical approach, English-Chinese, faithfulness
Published online: 10 August 2016
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https://doi.org/10.1075/babel.62.2.06kwo
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