A Report On The E-C Translation Of A People’s History Of Science--miners,midwives And "low Mechanicks"(Chapter 5)

A People’s History of Science--Miners,Midwives,and “Low Mechanicks” is an excellent English book written by Clifford D.Conner,an American scholar and a professor of history at the City University of New York.The book was published by Nation Books in 2005.The author dethrones great scientists,such as Galileo,Newton and Darwin,and regards ordinary people as the protagonists of scientific progress.In China today,high quality development is supported by scientific and technological innovation,so it is undoubtedly of practical significance to translate the book into Chinese and bring its ideological content to more Chinese readers.As part of group translation tasks,Chapter 5,“Who were the Revolutionaries in the Scientific Revolution?” was selected for this E-C translation practice,and on that basis,the translation report was written.This chapter,about 20,000 words,introduces the origin of the Scientific Revolution from the perspective of ordinary people,pointing out that those people such as merchants,sailors,miners,have promoted the development of many disciplines like mathematics,astronomy,etc.The report falls into six parts: introduction,analysis of source text,theoretical framework introduction,translation process description,case analysis and conclusion.Background information,objectives and significance of this translation practice are introduced in the first chapter.The second chapter summarizes the main content and analyzes the most prominent features of source text including lexical features and syntactic features.For lexical features,Latin words and Middle English words are often used in the source text,while for syntactic features,long and difficult sentences and passive voice sentences occur frequently.In the process of translation,some published books on the history of science were used for reference to improve the quality of the translation,such as A People’s History of the United States and A Little History of Science,and the team members also checked the translation for each other.To ensure the unity,the team built a shared terminology base on Memo Q software and updated it frequently.Three principles of communication theory were applied in case analysis.The translator found that as a whole,these three principles have their own applicability: when translating characteristic words such as polysemy,it is important to prioritize fidelity;when translating sentences,the principle of readability is crucial;and when translating cultural content,it is better to follow the principle of equivalence.The case analysis and conclusion of this report have certain value for applying the three principles of communicative translation theory to the translation of informative texts such as textbooks,reports,news,scientific and technological texts.