A Report On The Translation Of Secrets Of Infinity(Chapter One)

The strategy of explicitation is commonly applied in translation,referring to the attempt to state the obscure information of the source text to the target language readers in a clearer and more straightforward way.According to Reiss' s Text Typology,popular science texts are typical informative texts,and the primary requirement for their translation is to accurately and explicitly convey the original information to readers of the target language.Thus,it is obvious that the strategy of explicitation echoes Reiss' s Text Typology to a great extent,and the strategy of explicitation can be well applied in the translation of popular science texts.This report is based on the translation of the first chapter of a popular science text entitled Secrets of Infinity,which presents abundant connotations as well as diverse forms of “infinity” from the perspective of science.During the translation process,under the guidance of Text Typology,the translator highly emphasized the expectation of the target language readers and attached great importance to the explicitness of the translated text.In view of the extensive existence of polysemous words,pronouns,abstract words and nominalized structures at the lexical level as well as the frequent use of parentheses,complex sentences,passive voices and dashes at the syntactic level in the source text,the translator applied the strategy of explicitation and employed different translation techniques which could help to realize explicitation.Specifically,specification and conversion of part of speech are employed to solve the difficulties at the lexical level;addition,division,combination,adjustment of word order,conversion of voice and conversion of punctuation are adopted to deal with the difficulties at the syntactic level.