A Report On The Translation Of Quantum Mechanics For Children (Excerpts)

With the rapid development of globalization,science and technology,popular science literature for children has been paid much attention to by publishers for it is one of the most useful tools to popularize scientific knowledge and arouse children’s interest in science.Under the circumstances,the translator translated Quantum Mechanics for Children.This is a report on the translation.In the report,the translator takes skopos rules as the theoretical framework,discussing how translation problems can be solved in the theoretical framework and how relevant theory translation as adaptation and selection can be applied to translation.Here lies the value of the report.On the one hand,the translator can improve translation skills during the process.On the other hand,these methods may provide a reference for the translation of popular science books for children.The report consists of five parts.Part 1 introduces the project,including the source text,the author,and the reasons for choosing the book.Part 2 is the introduction of the translation process,including the pre-translation preparation,the project schedule,the glossary building and the quality control.Part 3 states that the translation is led by two main theories,translation as adaptation and selection and skopos theory.Part 4 is the case analysis,which is also the main part of this paper.In this part,the translator analyzes these examples leading by skopos theory and the theory of translation as adaptation and selection respectively at the lexical and syntactic level from nine aspects: technical terms,onomatopoeia,annotation,Chinese four-character idioms and personal pronoun as well as long sentences,rhetorical sentences,colloquial expressions and definition.In the last part,the translator concludes and reflects upon the translation.She found that only when the target text combines the features of childlikeness and objectiveness can it be readable.To achieve that,the translator conducted thorough research on ways of translating words and sentences from linguistic dimension,culture dimension and communicative dimension,pointing out that the skopos theory and relevant methods such as adaptation and selection are of great help to the translation of children’s popular science literature.