• ISSN: 2382-6282 (Print); 2972-3108 (Online)
    • Abbreviated Title: Int. J. Lang. Lit. Linguist.
    • Frequency: Bimonthly
    • DOI: 10.18178/IJLLL
    • APC: 500 USD
    • Editor-in-Chief: Dr. Jason Miin-Hwa Lim
    • Managing Editor:  Shira.W.Lu
    • Indexed by:   CNKI, Google Scholar, Crossref,
    • E-mail: ijlll_Editor@126.com
HOME > Archives > 2025 > Volume 11 Number 5 (2025) >
IJLLL 2025 Vol.11(5): 233-237
DOI: 10.18178/IJLLL.2025.11.5.607

A Report on the Translation of Smiling in the Thorn Bush (Excerpt)

Yue Duan
Faculty of Foreign Languages and Cultures, Kunming University of Science and Technology, Kunming, China
Email: 1797240482@qq.com (Y.D.)

Manuscript received July 24, 2025; accepted September 7, 2025; published October 29, 2025.

Abstract—Children’s literature includes a variety of literary works that are understood and loved by children and are conducive to their healthy physical and mental development. Along with the development of the times, the translation of children’s literature has been given more and more attention by mainstream academia. The source text of the translation practice report is taken from Section 1 to 5 of Chapter 2 of Smiling in the Thorn Bush written by children’s writer Yang Xiaoyan. The book was published in March, 2020, and there is currently no English version for the book. Based on real history and combined historical sources, the author reproduces the Nanjing Massacre and the Chongqing Bombing from the perspective of children. The translator is guided by Eugene Nida’s theory of functional equivalence to translate selected texts. This theory requires the translator to convey the meaning of the original text according to the four aspects of functional equivalence theory, namely lexical equivalence, syntactic equivalence, textual equivalence, and cultural equivalence, followed by form. This report analyses translations at both lexical and syntactic levels. Functional equivalence at the lexical level is achieved through the use of class conversion, free translation and annotation, while at the syntactic level, functional equivalence between the original text and the target text is achieved through the use of voice conversion, sorting method, fractional translation and reverse translation. The purpose of this paper is to probe into the role of functional equivalence in the translation of children’s literature in terms of vocabulary and syntax.

Keywords—children’s literature, functional equivalence theory, Smiling in the Thorn Bush, translation strategies

Cite: Yue Duan, "A Report on the Translation of Smiling in the Thorn Bush (Excerpt)," International Journal of Languages, Literature and Linguistics, vol. 11, no. 5, pp. 233-237, 2025.

Copyright © 2025 by the authors. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited (CC BY 4.0).

 

PREVIOUS PAPER
A Comparative Study on L2 Teaching in Engineering Universities from the Perspective of CLIL: A Practical Exploration Based on College Physics
NEXT PAPER
Corpus-based Translation of Internet Buzzwords: With Guyongzhe as an Example
Copyright © 2015-2025. International Journal of Languages, Literature and Linguistics. Unless otherwise stated.
E-mail: ijlll_Editor@126.com