Reflections On The Translation Of Don’t Know Much About History From The Perspective Of Adaptation Theory

Don’t Know Much about History is a popular history book that enjoyed 35 weeks on New York Times bestseller list.Likewise,the Chinese version may also exert a great cultural influence on Chinese readers,which has inspired the present translation practice report.Verschueren’s pragmatics theory of Adaptation borrowed from Darwin’s Theory of Evolution has been adopted as the theoretical foundation for this paper;and Newmark’s Text Typology and translation strategies have been taken as the methodological guidance.First of all,five chapters of Don ’t Know Much about History are translated from English to Chinese by the author.The entire translation process,including problems encountered,reflected on and solved,is used as the research content.A thorough analysis is then carried out on how to take into consideration the social and cultural context of both the source and target texts,and their retrospective influence on translation.The report consists of five chapters.The first chapter introduces the purpose and significance of the translation task,as well as the material to be translated.Chapter Two explains the relevant translation theories and strategies,namely,Newmark’s Text Typology Theory and Verschueren’s Adaptation Theory.In the third chapter,the author elaborates on the research methods.After an analysis of the features of the source text and the characteristics of the target readers is conducted,the author then explains the guiding power of Text Typology Theory and Adaptation Theory over the specific translation of this popular history book.In the end,the author concludes that after classifying the texts to be translated according to Text Typology Theory,translators should adopt proper translation strategies and techniques in accordance with the linguistic context and communicative context.In the process of translation,the translator should strive to be faithful to the information and style of the source language and meanwhile adapt to the cultural context and language norms of the target readers.It is also pointed out that annotations and notes are especially useful for translating culture-loaded words and expressions in that they adapt well to target readers’cultural context and knowledge background.