Translating Popular Science Writings In The Light Of The Skopos Theory

Skopos theory emphasizes target culture, and suggests translation strategies that are not restrained by the traditional translation standards, which normally pay more attention to fidelity to the source text. Due to this special perspective, the Skopos theory is frequently used to analyze texts which contain a lot of "un-translatable" cultural elements. Popular science writing, however, is another text type to be analyzed from this perspective. It not only has the most representative features of science writing, such as objectiveness, accuracy and abundant terminologies, but also has its distinctive language style and culture-loaded items. Therefore, apart from discussing its translation from a linguistic perspective, which is what most of the scholars have studied and discussed, it can also be analyzed from the angel of the Skopos theory. Therefore, this report aims to discuss the translation of popular science writing on the levels of lexicon, syntax and paragraph using the "three principles" of the Skopos theory.The analysis is based on the translation from English into Chinese of A Star in a Bottle, a long journal report introducing International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER) project, published by New Yorker. The report picks out the terminologies in the source text as well as the sections which can best represent the language feature of popular science writing, and analyzes under the guidance of the Skopos theory. Based on the examples, this report comes to the following tentative conclusion:when translating popular science articles, the translator should keep both the accuracy of science writing and the popular features which can appeal to the general public, so that the translation can maintain its original function of disseminating knowledge to the public.