A Report On The Translation Of Future Minds:The Rise Of Intelligence From The Big Bang To The End Of The Universe(Excerpts)

The source text of this translation report was selected from the two chapters of Future Minds: The Rise of Intelligence from the Big Bang to the End of the Universe.The book,written by Richard Yonck,explores the topics of universe,life and intelligence from “deep past”,“twenty-first century” to “deep future”.“Deep past” mainly describes how the laws of the universe contribute to the development and evolution of complexity,life and intelligence.“Twenty-first century” explores the development of artificial intelligence and other related fields.“Deep future” predicts the development trend of intelligence.As a popular science text,the source text is an informative text with concise and accurate wording and compact structure,characterized by many professional terms,complex sentences and passive sentences.According to the main function of the informative text to accurately convey information,translators should pay more attention to the professional knowledge,the authenticity of information in the source text and fluency of translation so that the features of the target language should be consistent with the source language.In the process of translation,the translator found that the translation of complex sentences and passive sentences is difficult in the translation practice.In this report,under the guidance of Hans Vermeer’s Skopos theory,the translator focused on the translation techniques of complex sentences and passive sentences.For complex sentences,the translator adopted the techniques of synchronizing,restructuring and splitting for translation;for passive sentences,the translator translated them into Chinese passive sentences and active sentences.This report is composed of five chapters.Chapter one is introduction.Chapter two describes the translation task which includes reasons for the task,content of the source text,and properties of the source text.Chapter three introduces the translation process,including preparations before translation,process of translation,proofreading and revision.Chapter four is case analysis,the translator mainly discusses the translation of complex and passive sentences.Chapter five is conclusion,including the gains and limitations in the translation process.Through this translation practice,the translator had a deeper understanding of informative texts,and paid more attention to accurately convey the information of the target text.Besides,the translator could flexibly use Skopos theory to guide translation practice.In addition,the translator had a deeper understanding of the translation of complex sentences and passive sentences,and hoped to provide some reference for future translation practice.