A case study of Bronze and Sunflower from the perspective of translation-oriented text analysis model

• Main Author: Wang, Meng
• Other Authors: Wang Shengyu
• Format: Theses and Dissertations
• Language: English
• Published: 2019
• Subjects: Humanities::Language
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/10356/78893
• Institution: Nanyang Technological University

Children’s literature has long been in a peripheral status in the academic world, so has its translation. In recent years, researchers have shown a greater interest in this field and paid more attention to children’s literature translation. Due to different social, political and economic factors, predominantly there has been children’s literature translated from foreign languages into Chinese. With increasing awareness of the Chinese cultural identity, exporting Chinese literary works to the world has witnessed a stable growth. Qingtong Kuihua is a masterpiece written by Cao Wenxuan. The English version Bronze and Sunflower produced by Helen Wang has won international recognition and gained wide popularity in the western world. A wide range of factors contribute to the success of Bronze and Sunflower. This thesis utilizes the translation-oriented text analysis model of Christiane Nord to compare Qingtong Kuihua and Bronze and Sunflower through conducting a thorough evaluation on the English version. It tries to understand how extratextual factors affect Wang’s translation and what intratextual features she needs to consider in the hope of providing suggestions for future study on Chinese children’s literature translation. Helen Wang has duly considered the extratextual factors and successfully met the requirements of the target market and readers. Bronze and Sunflower is consistent with the original intratextual features and retains the linguistic and cultural characteristics of the Chinese language. However, due to translator subjectivity, some ways of her rendition need further discussion. Moreover, some misunderstandings have led to a certain number of inaccurate translations. Nevertheless, the said flaws have not affected the quality of Wang’s English translation.