A Report On E-C Translation Of Popular Science Text From The Perspective Of Adaptation Theory

This report summarizes the E-C translation practice of the popular science How We Learn:Why Brains Learn Better Than Any Machine...for Now by the French cognitive neuroscientist Stanislas Dehaene,guided by Jef Verschueren’s adaptation theory.As one of the scientific and technical genres,the translation of popular science literature is an essential phenomenon in China’s fourth wave of translation.And different from scientific literature,the objective of popular science is to popularize scientific knowledge in the scientific,popular,attractive,and literary style;therefore,in order to maintain its unique style,the translation principles and strategies of scientific papers or technical materials should not be mindlessly adopted to popular science literature.According to the adaptation theory,language use is a series of selection processes carried out through the dynamic adaptation to the language’s context and structure.Translation,as one of its forms,is a process in which translators constantly adapt the language,context,and culture to synthesize surface meaning and deep meaning,which is highly congruent with the core of the adaptation theory.On this basis,the report analyzes the translation methods that translators should adopt to achieve dynamic adaptation from three levels:lexical,syntactic,and discourse level,so that the target text is readable while retaining the objective,accurate,and logical characteristics of the source text,thereby achieving the goal of popularizing scientific knowledge.At the lexical level,the translator primarily translates terms via literal translation and a combination of literal translation and transliteration,and non-specialized vocabulary via literal translation and free translation while employing idioms and aesthetic rhetoric to adapt to the linguistic and cultural contexts.At the syntactic level,the information structure of sentences such as passive voice,long and complex sentences,and non-finite verbs is adjusted through sequential translation,inverse translation,and splitting translation to make the version fluent and authentic;at the discourse level,the cohesion of the translation is processed through repetition,omission,and conjunctions,thus conforming to the inter-sentential relations of the original text and constructing a coherent body of semantics.