A Report On The Translation Of Popular Science Books From The Perspective Of The Information Theory

With the deepening of China’s foreign exchange,the need for translation of popular science books has been gaining importance with each passing day.However,the translation of some current popular science books are of rather unsatisfactory quality,which are oftentimes reflected by heavy translationese or obscure expression that would impede readers’ understanding and absorption of the content.Besides,some scholars and translators have held much misunderstandings towards the translation of popular science books.The research thereof has failed to keep up in a timely manner.Such a situation is reflected by the status of being neglected for a long time and absence of a complete theoretical system.For the reasons above,the translation of popular science books should receive more attention from the academic circle of translation.In the year 1948,Shannon created the Information Theory,which revealed the law of information transmission.Besides,he also put forward the communication system model.As per the theory,information can be smoothly transferred when the information load conforms to the channel capacity of the receiver.Eugene Nida creatively introduced the Information Theory into the research of translation in 1984,by holding that translation activities agree with the models of communication system proposed by Shannon as well.On such a basis,he reinterpreted some key connotations of Information Theory,such as communication load,channel capacity,redundancy,among others,within the field of translation.Redundancy and Discrete Information Theory provide a new perspective for translation study.Popular science books are written by professionals to the public for popularization of science,whose translation faces an audience with rather small channel capacity.To put it in another way,communication load could surpass reader’s channel capacity and thus channel overload could easily happen.Therefore,translators shall "harbor in mind the readers" during translation and properly adjust the redundancy of the source text so that readers can have a better understanding of the source text.Information can be discrete in the process of transmission,thusinformation loss and deviation will inevitably occur.Consequently,translators also need to use adaptive strategies and change the expression in the source text that does not conform to the expression habits of the target language readers,ensuring the smoothness of the information transmission.In that way,the goal of communication load conforming to channel capacity is finally achieved,and the effect of scientific popularization is truly achieved.This report is divided into five chapters.In chapter one,the author introduces the content of the translation project and the process of translation.In chapter two,the author looks into the present situation in the research of popular science translation at home and abroad.In chapter three,the author describes the Information Theory and its application in the field of translation.After that,the author proposes the goal for translation of popular science books,namely,the agreement of communication load and channel capacity.In chapter four,the author analyzes how to translate some sentences in The Art of Invisibility by means of addition,deletion,change and reservation,and discusses how to realize communication load matching channel capacity.Chapter five is the summary of this report.