关键词: 儿童绘本; 翻译; 符际翻译; 图文关系

Abstract: Picture book, originated and developed in Europe and America, was introduced to China Mainland in the 1990s, and its surging introduction. In the recent 10 years solicited much attention from the academia of translation studies. However, when it comes to the translation of children’s picture books, most researches confine their analyses and discussion within the perspective of interlingual translation which merely focuses on the transfer of meaning across two different linguistic signs and takes no consideration of the feature of picture book. Picture book is essentially a kind of text with the combination of pictorial signs and verbal signs as the way of expression and narration. And in most cases, it is picture that plays a significant role in facilitating the text narration and interpretation of picture books. Hence, the current research view seems inadequate and needs to incorporate new perspectives such as intersemiotic translation which places the equal importance onto the pictorial and verbal signs. This paper based on Jacobson’s translation trichotomy attempts to explore the issues of the translation ontology of children’s picture books and discuss the fidelity and cultural issues in their translation process especially from the perspective of intersemiotic translation, which in author’s opinion should be reintroduced into translation studies as a means for achieving a better understanding of translator’s decision-making, and if possible, as a new angle necessarily adopted for the future translation studies.

Keywords: children’s picture books; translation; intersemiotic translation; the relationship between pictorial and verbal signs