A Translation Report On Zero To Birth:How The Human Brain Is Built (Chapters 6-7)

The source text of this translation program is selected from William Harris’ s Zero to Birth: How the Human Brain is Built.This book was published by Princeton University Press in June 7,2022 and focuses on the development process of the human brain.The chapters six and seven translated by the translator mainly introduce the formation process of neurons in the brain,revealing the mysteries of the brain’ s operating mechanism for the reader.The source text is an informative text that focuses on expressing objective facts,and the language is objective and direct.The book includes a large amount of experimental data,and contains many professional terms,with strong professionalism,discipline,and logic.The main task of the translator in translating such texts is to reproduce the original content and achieve faithfulness and objectivity.Based on the characteristics and difficulties of the source text,the translator chose Verschueren’ s Adaptation Theory as the guiding theory to solve the difficulties encountered in the translation process.Verschueren’ s Adaptation Theory holds that in the process of language use,language selection is mainly based on three characteristics of language: variability,negotiability,and adaptability.Based on this,Verschueren specifically analyzes contextual correlates of adaptability,adaptability of structural objects,salience of adaptability and dynamics of adaptation in language selection.It was from these four perspectives that the translator adopted literal translation for the terms encountered in the translation process.In the face of logical problems in translation,the translator analyzed the source text,combines cultural differences between Chinese and English,and adjusted the expression structure of sentences based on Verschueren’ s structural adaptation,adopting omission,addition,and combination to meet the needs of Chinese readers.In addition,the phenomenon of nominalization is also numerous in English texts,and it is often a difficult problem for translators in the process of translation.The translator used translation techniques such as transformation and splitting to adapt to the structure of the Chinese texts.In a word,the translator hopes that the several translation methods and techniques discussed in this translation practice report can provide some reference for the translation of this type of text in the future.