Abstract:

Children’s Popular Science Picturebooks(CPSPs) are important sources for imparting scientific knowledge to children. They also help in enlightening their minds, stimulating imagination, and enhancing the overall humanistic literacy of children. Taking The Magic School Bus and the Climate Challenge as an example, this study, from the perspective of knowledge recognition, makes a comparative analysis of its English and Chinese texts, exploring the translation of CPSPs in terms of multimodal narration and the transmission of knowledge. It is found that a successful translation of CPSPs not only accurately disseminates scientific knowledge but also makes necessary supplements, modifications or adjustments to ensure that the humanistic and social knowledge conveyed in the text fits the target cultural context and the target young readership. A wise combination of popular scientific knowledge with vivid and interesting stories via delicately-designed multimodal narration is an effective way to create and produce excellent CPSPs and their translations. Through knowledge recognition of children, CPSPs and their translations may serve as promoters for the communication and cultural exchanges between different knowledge communities.

Key words: children’s popular science picturebook, knowledge recognition, multimodality, narration, translation