A Report On Translating Climate Confusion

This is a report on the translation of the book Climate Confusion: How Global Warming Hysteria Leads to Bad Science, Pandering Politicians and Misguided Policies That Hurt the Poor. This book, written by Dr. Roy Spencer, discloses the hidden motives behind the global warming threat hysteria and the natural operating mechanism for global warming, through which the author calls for the public to hold a rational and balanced view on this serious issue. The translation project of this book is divided and finished by a group of five students, and the author of this report was responsible for Chapters 9, 10 and the prologue.Positioned as a popular science book from the subject matter, the translated text can be classified as an informative and vocative(operational) text in the light of Reiss’ s text typology and Newmark’s text-types. The focus of these two text types are factual information and the readership respectively, which require communicative translation as suggested by Newmark. Accordingly, the translation should follow the principles of accuracy and naturalness, in a way that both the content and style of the language are readily acceptable and comprehensible to the readership. To ensure the accuracy of the target text, the translator has paid much attention to the translation of proper nouns, terms, and idioms; while for the naturalness of sentences, such specific techniques as addition, splitting and recasting, shift, and inversion have been adopted flexibly.This report is composed of five chapters. Chapter 1 is an introduction of the book, the author, the chosen chapters and the significance. Chapter 2 is a description of the translation process including preparations, working schedule and proofreading of the translation. Chapter 3 is an analysis of the text types, principles and strategies as well as the focus and difficulties in the translation. In Chapter 4, the specific translation techniques used for different difficulties are presented with examples at the level of words and sentences. Finally, Chapter 5 makes a conclusion for the whole translation project and some perceptions for future practices.