2. Literature Review

  In the history of world literature classification, magic literature can be regarded as a new form of literature. As the representative work of fantasy literature, Harry Potter series was born in the end of 20th century. Indeed, it is really a very young work. So the history of world literature is easy to be induced briefly. When it comes to the translation strategy, there’s no doubt that everyone can list several translation strategies immediately. But in this article, we will focus on the studies of foreignizing translation and domesticating translation. Since this two can be said to be the most widely used translation strategies. Meanwhile, we will also make some discussion about literal translation and free translation.

2.1 Origin of fantasy literature

Despite there still remains pergent views on the definition of fantasy literature and it is difficult to form a unified view. But on the origin of fantasy literature, many scholars have put forward the views that are really acceptable. Let’s start from the formation time of this type of literary , in Guo Xing’s article (2009)《Beyond “ Reality” : The Epistemological Meaning of Contemporary Fantasy》，it is generally believed that the 20th century, especially after World War II was the time that fantasy literature became a separate literary genre. And I believe that knight literature and romantic literature contribute to the composition of fantasy literature. At the same time, with the development of technology, many previously impossible things become a reality, this also play an important role in the origin of fantasy literature.来!自-优.尔,论:文+网www.chuibin.com

“Art comes from social life, it is a reflection of social life.”（Wang P38) As an understanding of the world, art is both subjective and objective. When people try to conduct artistic creation, they will take the initiative to re-create the objective things inevitably. Thus, people process the world in an artistic way while they are creating a literary work, especially when creating a fantasy literary work. Famous philosopher Goethe also believes that "Art can not be the same as reality, and it can not be expressed if there is no difference between art and nature." Therefore, it is necessary to learn what is fictional. Since then, we can easily define fantasy literature as: Use an amazing story to describe a world and figures which are beyond or different from a human reality or common sense.

Ancient Western mythology is an important material for fantasy literature. Fantasy is a basic element that is rooted in human gene. Italian esthetician Vico once used western mythology as an example, he believes that the ancient humans in the wild could not understand and are fear of the thunder and lightning and other natural phenomena, these phenomena become a much more powerful presence than the human which appeared to Raytheon, Vulcan, Neptune and other primitive worship of gods( Zhu P356). God and god’s life experiences tell itself is fictional, but the fictional is a main way to develop literature at the initial stage of human civilization. We can say that fantasy as a basic creative approach were existed in literary creation for a long time. When we are reading fantasy literature, we should try our best to place ourselves into the magic world, since all the fantastic magic world come from our real life at all.