Abstract: With the increasing demand of reading foreign children’s literature, the research of translation of Children’s literature has become prominent. As one of the most classical children’s literature in the world, The Wind in the Willows has been translated into many languages since the date of publication. The horizon of expectations is a crucial concept of reception theory, which provides a new theoretical perspective for children’s literature translation studies. Therefore, this thesis adopts the case study method and chooses Ren’s versions as the research object to discuss the children’s literature translation from the perspective of the horizon of expectations in the hope of offering useful suggestions for the translation of children’s literature in China.

  Key words: children’s literature; translation of children’s literature; The Wind in the Willows; the horizon of expectations

Contents

Abstract

摘要

1. Introduction-1

2. Children’s Literature and Children’s Literature Translation-2

2.1 Definition of Children’s Literature and Its Stylistic Features-3

2.2 Translation of Children’s Literature-4

3.Theoretical Basis: The Horizon of Expectations-5

3.1 Definition of the Horizon of Expectations -5

3.2 The Relevance of the Horizon of Expectation to Literary Translation-5

3.-Analysis of Ren’s Version of The Wind in the Willows from the Horizon of Expectations-6

4.1 On the Lexical Level-7

4.2 On the Syntactic Level-10

4.3 On the Contextual Level-14

4.4 On the Cultural Level-14

5. Conclusion-17

References-19