A Report On The E-C Translation Of Popular Science Reader In Psychology—Hatred: Understanding Our Most Dangerous Emotion (Excerpt)

Under growing social pressure,psychological health has emerged into our horizons.Reading psychological works offers assistance to readers in finding and solving problems,so the translation of popular science texts on psychology is of paramount importance.This report is based on the English-Chinese translation of an excerpt from Chapter One in Hatred: Understanding Our Most Dangerous Emotion written by Berit Brogaard,an American expert in neurology.Its author uses vivid examples from sociology,arts,literature,and popular culture to invite target readers to understand this emotion in both rational and common language,and to popularize the knowledge to the general public.Considering its genre and function,the top priority of the translation should be given to disseminating the original information accurately;moreover,fluency,readability,and literariness should also be taken into consideration.Therefore,the author intends to conform to three rules of Vermeer’s Skopos Theory—skopos rule,coherence rule,and fidelity rule to present the three main features of popular science readers,i.e.scientificity,popularity,and literariness.Based on the translation practice,this report puts forward relevant strategies and methods in response to the problems encountered in the translation.Hopefully,it will offer effective suggestions to other translators working on popular science texts of psychology.The author found that it is imperative for translators of popular science not only to spread scientific information accurately but also to guarantee the popularity as well as affective power of the translated text.As for its scientificity,the translator should choose the contextual meaning of terms or other scientific expressions to reproduce the scientific information by following skopos and fidelity rules.As for its popularity,the translator should use translation methods of restructuring,splitting,and additions of complex sentences to produce popular and explicit translation by following the coherence rule.As for its literariness,the translator should maintain the original rhetoric devices and add four-character structures to build up an aesthetically enjoyable atmosphere for target readers by following skopos and fidelity rules.