Translation Strategies For Nominalization In Meteorological Science And Technology Texts From The Perspective Of Adaptation Theory

For more than a decade,climate change has attracted wide attention from people all over the world.Against this backdrop,the introduction of works in Meteorological Science and Technology from abroad will raise awareness of the adverse effects of climate change.Excerpted from Climate Change and Sea Level Rise in South Florida,written by Toby Bolsen,chapters one to four are selected as the translation material for this report.This section introduces the effects of climate change on South Florida and the factors that influence South Florida residents’ different views on climate change.The source text belongs to the category of English for Science and Technology(EST).Nominalizations are frequently used in EST for their accurateness and objectiveness.The appearance of large numbers of nominalizations increases the information capacity of sentence and the difficulty of translation.How to translate the nominalizations into Chinese smoothly and accurately is crucial to the quality of the translation.In view of the various understanding of nominalization by different scholars,the translation report presents a clear definition and classification of nominalization.The translator finds that many discussions on translation strategies of nominalization are based on translation practice and lack theoretical guidance.Therefore,this translation report takes Adaptation Theory as a guide to study strategies of nominalization from levels of lexicon,phrase,and sentence.According to the target reader’s receptivity and the author’s intentions,the translator adopts appropriate translation strategies flexibly including literal translation,conversion,extension,amplification,linear translation,division and synthesis so as to make the target text more idiomatic and improve the quality of translation.This translation report attempts to provide a new perspective for the study of nominalization in texts of similar genres.This report is composed of five chapters.Chapter One gives an introduction to project background,significance and purpose of the project as well as layout of the report.Chapter Two describes the procedures of translation,namely,preparations before translation,translation process and proofreading after translation.Chapter Three is the theoretical framework,which explains three key notions(variability,negotiability and adaptability)and four angles(contextual correlates of adaptability,structural objects of adaptability,dynamics of adaptability and salience of the adaptation processes)of Adaptation Theory and introduces the definition,classification and functions of nominalization.Chapter Four is a case study on the translation strategies of nominalization at lexical level(literal translation,conversion,extension,amplification),phrase level(conversion,linear translation)and sentence level(division,synthesis).Chapter Five is the conclusion of the whole report,pointing out the findings and limitations of this translation report.