A Report On Translation Of The Changing Mind:A Neuroscientist’s Guide To Ageing Well (Chapter 3)

The source text of this translation project is taken from the book The Changing Mind: A Neuroscientist’s Guide to Ageing Well,written by Daniel Joseph Levitin and published in 2020 by Penguin Random House.The translator has chosen Chapter 3 as the source text for this translation project,which focuses on the role of the brain in human perception and how perceptive function changes with age.The source text is a medical popular science text.Communicative translation and semantic translation were used to guide the translation,and the translator discussed difficulties and challenges in the translation from lexical,syntactic and textual levels through specific cases.Communicative translation emphasizes the consistency between the effect produced for the target reader and that of the original reader,which is suitable for the translation of popular science text.Semantic translation focuses on the conveying of the exact contextual meaning of the original,which is crucial for the translation of the terminology and some long and complex sentences in the text.At the lexical level,the translation of terminologies and abstract nouns were explored.The translator searched information through some online tools and corpus,such as UNTERM,term online,etc.,and mainly adopts transliteration,literal translation as well as conversion.At the sentence level,the translation of passive voice and long and complex sentences were explored,mainly by means of literal translation,voice transformation,and inversion.At the textual level,the translation of colloquial texts and written texts were explored,with the aim of achieving a communicative effect while accurately retaining the content of the original text.In the process of translation,the translator can adopt different translation methods according to the content and language characteristics of the original text so as to achieve accurate semantic transmission and fluent expression of the target language.Through this translation project,the translator hopes to disseminate knowledge about the brain and ageing to the general public,and to provide a reference for the translation of related medical popular science texts.