A Report On E-C Translation Of Technology In America(Excerpts) From The Perspective Of The Functional Equivalence Theory

Chapters 1 to 4 of Carroll Pursell’s popular science book Technology in America are chosen as the text for this translation project.In addition to the introduction of certain well-known American folk heroes who supported technological advancement,it primarily exposes the scientific knowledge,scientific thinking,scientific method,and scientific spirit that arose during the process of discovery and practice.The following are the primary justifications for choosing this material: The chapters are relevant to people’s daily lives and will attract people’s attention;moreover,the content of the chosen portion differs from that of academic papers,making it easy for the translator to begin.The text is characterized by extensive use of technical terms,polysemy,and nominalization at the lexical level,frequent use of passive voice sentences and many long and complex sentences at the syntactic level,and the presence of a large number of references and conjunctions to ensure textual cohesion.Based on the characteristics of the source material,Nida’s functional equivalence theory is selected as the guiding principle and the translator adopts different translation skills to solve the lexical,syntactic,and textual problems in translating with the guidance of the functional equivalence theory.Functional equivalence highlights that translation consists of reproducing the closest natural equivalent of the source language message in the target language,first in terms of meaning and then in terms of style.Through the translation practice,it is found that a natural translation must be compatible with the receptor language and culture,the message’s context,and the receptor-language audience and the notion of functional equivalence could serves well as a guide for translating popular science books.