"Design With Heart: User-Based Product Design" (Chapter 1) Translation Report

This thesis is a report on the translation of a selection from a theoretical design book named Mindful Design: How and Why to Make Design Decisions for the Good of Those Using Your Product.It was written by Scott Riley,a user interface(UI)designer,and published by Apress in 2019.The book discusses the knowledge of interface design from the perspective of human brain science and psychology,and offers practical suggestions.Chapter 1,“Attention and Distraction”,is selected as the source text of the translation report.This chapter focuses on human’s attentional system.It discusses several modes of attention and distraction,cost of distractions,attentional economics,the importance of categorization and how to make user-oriented design decisions etc.Humans can screen out surrounding subtle voices or smells to focus on a single task.But this focus can also be interrupted by certain environmental stimuli such as a loud crash,which reflects the relationship between attention and distraction.The translation was guided by Hans Vermeer’s skopos theory and supported by some common translation methods.The skopos of the translation is to produce a target text with plain and simple Chinese expressions while ensuring loyalty to the source text.The report consists of five chapters.Chapter 1 introduces the background and significance of the translation project,and the structure of the report.Chapter 2 presents an introduction to the source text,and analyses of text type and linguistic features.Chapter 3 is an introduction to skopos theory and its guidance on the translation,Chapter 4 provides analyses of how the translator accomplished the skopos through translation methods based on representative examples taken from the translated text.In the last chapter,the translator concludes the experience and gains acquired during the whole project.