A Report On The Translation Of The Fourth Age:Smart Robot,Conscious Computers,and The Future Of Humanity (Chapters 18-19)

This is a report on the translation of The Fourth Age: Smart Robots,Conscious Computers,and the Future of Humanity written by Byron Reese.The whole book has five parts.The first part includes five chapters.The author discusses four eras which make up the development course of human society,from the perspectives of the universe,human beings,and ourselves.The second part introduces narrow AI and robots.The third part describes some information related to AGI(artificial general intelligence),including human brains and AGI,which is an upgrade of the second part.The following part analyses sentience,free will,computer consciousness,and the possibility to modify human beings by conscious computer.He also talks about the possibility of conscious computer and its influence on human development.The last part depicts the future of our world and the influence by AGI.Chapter 18 and 19 are the source text of the translation report.Chapter 18 discusses the questions of consciousness that who have the consciousness and whether conscious computers have their rights like human beings.The author gives a brief introduction of consciousness,making a comparison among consciousness,sentience,and free will,which made readers clear about the characteristics of consciousness.Then the author raises the question who have consciousness and how to prove it.Whether the conscious computer like human beings should have rights or not,which is a moral question.Chapter 19 gives eight theories which cover areas of physics,chemistry,biology,philosophy,etc.,demonstrating whether the computer can achieve consciousness.These two chapters have a large number of professional and formal terms and sentences which are very difficult to translate.The translator decides to employ skopos theory to guide the translation practice with the skills of conversion,addition,omission,repetition,inversion,division,etc.Through this translation practice,the translator has not only improved the translation performance,but also enhanced the understanding of the skopos theory of functionalism.The practice also has helped the translator enhance the ability of translation under the guidance of the theory.At the same time,this translation process has helped the translator recognize his shortcomings,so that he has had a deeper understanding of the quality of a good translator,which lays a good foundation for him to be a qualified translator in the future.