A Report On The Translation Of Re-Thinking Science-Knowledge And The Public In An Age Of Uncertainty

The report results from the EC translation of Chapter 12 of Re-Thinking Science—Knowledge and the Public in an Age of Uncertainty co-authored by Michael Gibbons,Peter Scott and Helga Nowotny.The book details the process of social and scientific co-evolution driven by social and economic development,leading to the emergence of contextualized science.The reasons and conclusions of the transformation of the epistemology core are discussed in chapter 12,including the ambivalence of novelty,the decline of cognitive authority,image of knowledge and the body of knowledge and the conclusion.Dealing with philosophy and social science,this book features strong argumentation,meticulous expression,close connection and strong logicality.In translation,guided by the theory of functional equivalence,the author uses translation methods such as “conversion of parts of speech”,“extension of meaning”,“splitting”,“Sequential”,“recasting”,“reference”and “conjunction” in the process of realizing the equivalence of vocabulary,syntax and text,so as to make the expression of the translation natural and conform to the original.This report is divided into five chapters.The first chapter is the task description,which mainly describes the task background,and its significance.The second chapter is the task process,including the pre-translation preparation,the translation process and the post translation proofreading.It details the material preparation,theory selection before translation,the guidance of functional equivalence in translation,and the process of proofreading after translation.The third chapter introduces the text characteristics and theoretical application,selects translation principles and methods according to the language characteristics and translation difficulties,summarizes functional equivalence theory,and uses it to guide the translation.The fourth chapter is case analysis,which is also the main part of this report.It illustrates how to remove translation barriers and achieve functional equivalence between the original text and the target text at lexical,syntacticand textual levels under the guidance of functional equivalence theory.In translation,for some words,we cannot find out the exact meaning in the dictionary.We often need to extend the word meaning to express the original meaning accurately.For others,we need to consider the differences between English and Chinese languages and words' functions in sentences,then appropriately change the part of speech to achieve lexical equivalence.In the realization of syntactic equivalence,different translation methods are selected for different syntax based on back-transformation.Some sentences are logical and suitable for sequential translation,while others have complex structure and need to be split and recast to achieve syntactic equivalence.But to make the translation more natural,the close text connection and careful semantic discussion must be taken seriously,which also has a lot to do with the language characteristics of the text.Special attention should be paid to the principle of content first and form second,and to the equivalence of the response of the target readers and the original readers.The fifth chapter is the conclusion of this translation.