A Report On Translation Of Nuclear Weapons-A Very Short Introduction(excerpt)

On the basis of Skopos theory and functional equivalence theory, the paper mainly discusses the translation of the first and second chapters of Nuclear Weapons--- one of the A Very Short Introduction book series. The first chapter is mainly about atomic physics and fundamental knowledge of nuclear weapons; the second chapter mostly talks about how to build an atom bomb and the barely known stories behind it during World War II. The source text is from a popular science book, the text of which is accurate and brief. Therefore, with the guidance of the theories mentioned above, the translation aims at conveying accurate and profound knowledge of nuclear weapons to readers.For the translation of this sort of text, one important standard is that the target text should have scientific accuracy meanwhile keeping its content interesting and easily understood to readers. Apart from the above translation theories, to make the target text more readable and understandable, the theory of ten pairs of features of English and Chinese is used during the translation process, which are synthetic and analytic, rigid and supple, hypotactic and paratactic, complex and simplex, impersonal and personal, abstract and concrete, static and dynamic, passive and active, indirect and direct, and substitutive and repetitive. The report consists of four parts, which are introduction to the project, analysis of the source text, difficulties in translation and solutions, and conclusion.