A Report On The Translation Of We Are The Weather: Saving The Planet Begins At Breakfast(Chapter 1)

This thesis is a report on the translation of Chapter 1 Unbelievable from the popular science book We Are the Weather: Saving the Planet Begins at Breakfast authored by Jonathan Safran Foer.The author explains the close relationship between global warming and human activities,as well as the reasons why it is difficult for human beings to take action in the face of climate crisis through the telling of true stories and supported by scientific research.The translation of this text is conducive to enhancing readers’ awareness of environmental protection and alerting people to the necessity of collective action.The translation of this book,which is not yet available in Chinese,can expand the information of relevant materials in the field of climate research in China.As an informative text of popular science,the source text aims to popularize and disseminate scientific knowledge to the public.Based on its writing purpose as well as the content and characteristics of it,the translation should be presented in plain language for the public to understand,accept and participate in.Therefore,the translation should take the language level of the target language reader as the standard,and strive to be smooth and easy to understand.In view of this,this translation activity will be guided by Newmark’s communicative translation strategy.According to the communicative translation strategy,the translator should pay attention to the response of the target readers,and the effect of the translated text should be as close as possible to the original text.The translator should fully consider the communicative purpose of the translation so as to choose reasonable and effective translation methods or skills.This report mainly discusses the translation difficulties in three aspects:terminology and proper nouns,passive voice and parentheses.In response to the above translation difficulties,the translator adopted the following solutions.As for terminology and proper nouns,the method is literal translation,free translation or annotation;As for passive voice,the method is to convert it into the active voice by changing the sentence components,to translate it into active sentence that is active in form but passive in meaning,or to translate it into the sentence with the maker word“被”;As for parentheses,the method is keeping the original sentence order,putting parenthesis in the front and putting the parenthesis in a bracket.Translation practice has proved that communicative translation strategy has practical guiding significance.