A Translation Practice Report Of General History Of Science And Technology In China: The Exchange Between China And The World’s Ancient Civilizations(Excerpt)

The source text of this translation report is selected from the General History of Science and Technology in China: The Exchange between China and the World’s Ancient Civilizations edited by Jiang Xiaoyuan.There is no officially published English version of this book.This report mainly analyzed the first two chapters of the book “The Controversy Caused by the Birth of Modern Science” and “Where did Ancient Chinese Cosmology Come from”.In order to make the translated text adapt to the reading habit of foreign young readers,the translation focuses on the reading experience of target language readers,and aims to obtain a higher acceptance of the translated text among target language young readers.The translator try to reappear the points and language characteristics of the original text.Under the guidance of communicative translation theory,this translation practice makes a specific analysis of the tendentious translation choices from lexical,syntactic and discourse levels.Firstly,from culture-loaded words and four-character word,the translator chooses free translation to express the original text semantic connotation.Secondly,through the analysis of long and difficult sentences,subject-less sentences and classical Chinese sentences,the translator focuses on inherent logical relationship and meaning of the original sentence.Last,from discourse level,considering the differences between Chinese and English and the different ways of thinking in Chinese and Western,the translator deals with discourse from cohesion and coherence.Under the guidance of communicative translation theory,this report makes the translated text more readable and acceptable to foreign young readers,and allows English readers to clearly understand the history of Chinese scientific and technological development,especially the historical facts of scientific and technological exchanges between China and foreigner countries for several thousand years.