An English-Chinese Translation Report On Under A White Sky:The Nature Of The Future(Excerpts)

This paper is a translation practice report.Sections 1-2 of chapter 2 of Elizabeth Kolbert’s book Under a White Sky: The Nature of the Future was selected as translation materials.The text,with the theme of man and nature,belongs to the category of popular science texts.It is characterized by its professionalism,concise language and adequate examples.By describing the current situation of natural creatures,the author shows the adverse effects of human activities on the survival of natural creatures,which can help readers understand the current situation of the environment more deeply and enhance their awareness of environmental protection,while calling on people to respect and protect nature.The purpose of translating this text is to let more readers understand nature and reproduce the original author’s purpose,so this translation practice has certain practical significance.After reading the text and consulting related materials,translator found that Newmark’s communicative translation theory is suitable for guiding the translation of the original text.According to Newmark,in terms of communicative effect,the translation should pay attention to the expression habits of the target language country.At the same time,Newmark’s text typology believes that translated texts have both informative and vocative functions.This thesis takes the theory of communicative translation as the theoretical basis,and uses translation methods such as omission,amplification and conversion to conduct translation case analysis and reproduce the purpose of the original author’s writing,the language and stylistic characteristics of the original text.This report firstly elaborates on this translation task,preparation work before translation,while-translation,post-translation matters,translation tools,then translates the text using different translation techniques,selects typical cases in the text for case analysis,and finally summarizes this thesis in order to provide reference for future translations of popular science texts.