A Report On E-C Translation Of Chapter One Of Under A White Sky:The Nature Of The Future(Excerpt)

Popular science works are an important way to popularize scientific knowledge to the public,but there are few practical achievements in translating environmental popular science works.The report is based on the author’s English-to-Chinese translation experience in Chapter One of "Down the River" of Under a White Sky:The Nature of the Future.This text takes man and nature as the theme and belongs to the popular science text.It is a comprehensive exposition of the impact on human activities in the environment and can stimulate readers to think about environmental issues.Much of this chapter is devoted to reversal of river and measures to deal with Asian carp.Due to the specialized nature of the popular science text,it is necessary to carefully analyze the sentence components and make clear the exact meaning of words in translation to convey knowledge with simple words.Based on Skopos Theory,this translation practice report strives to effectively convey the scientificity and accuracy of popular science texts and achieve the purpose of cross-cultural communication.Skopos Theory is suitable for guiding the translation of the original text after studying the original text and consulting relevant materials.Vermeer held that translation is a purposeful intercultural communication behavior,emphasized the decisive role of purpose in the whole translation behavior,and maintained that the translation method is determined by the purpose of translation.According to the Skopos Theory and the author’s translation practice,the author will analyze and summarize the text from two aspects.At the lexical level,professional terms and proper nouns are translated accurately taking the translation methods such as part of speech conversion and omission translation to convey popular science knowledge.At the syntactic level,the translation methods such as the adaptation of dash sentences can achieve semantic coherence and convey popular science knowledge.The author hopes to reflect the purpose of cross-cultural communication to the greatest extent under the guidance of Skopos Theory through the discussion of typical cases and translation methods and appeal to people to protect the environment and jointly create a blue sky.Meanwhile,the author hopes to provide some reference value for translators to translate environmental popular science texts through this report.