With the rapid development of science and technology, the exchange of information inscience and technology between China and other countries has been increasingly frequent.The E-C popular science translation therefore becomes an important part in the field oftranslation studies. However, the research work carried out is not enough at this stage, and thetraditional translation theory developed from the theory in literary translation focuses only onthe translation skills at lexical level, ignoring the demand of the pragmatic levels. Accordingly,he traditional source-text oriented translation methods result in translations with a largeamount of obscurity, which does not meet the standards of accuracy and popularity in popularscience translation. What’s worse, they hinder the effectiveness of scientific informationcommunication. In consideration of that fact, this report intends to discuss the translationstrategies of science texts with Nida’s functional equivalence theory as the theoretical basisand the practice of translation of Mummy as the case study so as to improve the translationquality of science texts.This paper takes the form of translation practice report on the basis of a real sciencetranslation project entitled Mummy. When translating this book, the author is confronted withcertain problems regarding vocabulary, sentence structure and context. Under the guidance ofthe functional equivalence theory raised by Eugene A. Nida, most of the typical problemshave been solved by means of analyzing the content, the purpose and features of the text indetails. The research findings are as follows:Firstly, it is highly advisable that a translator should endeavor to achieve lexical, syntacticaland textual equivalence in popular science translation. In terms of lexical equivalence,contextual and compromising strategies are helpful to locate or compensate for the propermeaning in the translation. In terms of syntactical equivalence, nominalization and sentencesequence are two prominent phenomena which require skillful techniques to cope with. Interms of textual equivalence, stylistic features and coherence should be conveyed orreconstructed.Secondly, the feasibility of functional equivalence theory in science translation mainly liesin three aspects. First, Nida’s functional equivalence theory requires that the text reproduced should be the closest natural equivalence of the source language message in the receptorlanguage, first in terms of meaning and second in terms of style. Therefore, it can beappropriately applied to the science translation which focuses on conveying information.Second, the functional equivalence theory offers certain freedom and flexibility for thetranslators in translation. Third, this theoy takes the readership into consideration. However,as Chinese and English belong to two different language systems, there are great differencesin expression. The greater differences between the source and target languages, the greaterneed for adjustments there will be. In a word,“equivalence” of the functional equivalencetheory does not mean equality, but means “to produce a considerable expression of theintensity with the original in the translation”.This report has generalized some translation strategies from analyzing the process oftranslating Mummy based on functional equivalence theory and proved the positive guidanceof functional equivalence theory in science texts translation. At the same time, this researchwill hopefully shed lights on the practice and research of non-literary translation. |