A Report On The Translation Of A Brief History Of The Earth’s Climate:Everyone’s Guide To The Science Of Climate Change (Chapters One And Two)

The discussion on climate change has lasted for years.A series of natural processes and human activities are influencing the earth’s climate,and how to address the challenge that climate changes bring to us has become a major issue for human beings.Therefore,it is essential to master relevant knowledge of climate change.In this translation practice,the translator selects Chapter One and Chapter Two of Steven Earl’s A Brief History of the Earth’s Climate:Everyone’s Guide to the Science of Climate Change as the translation material.The selected chapters introduce some natural drivers and mechanisms affecting climate change on the earth,and describe how the earth maintains a habitable climate for life during the evolution of sun.This translation practice aims to publicize the knowledge of climate change science to readers and then arouse public’s attention to climate changes.The selected material is from a popular science text with concise content and rigorous logic,including long sentences and short sentences.Considering these features,the translator takes Eugene Nida’s functional equivalence theory as translation principle to achieve the dynamic equivalence and accurate expression between original and targeted text.And then the translator utilizes both literal translation and free translation to handle vocabulary,sentence and discourse of the original text respectively.In order to achieve natural cohesion and semantic coherence,the translator adopts the following translation techniques to reconstruct the information:transforming the part of speech,extending and selecting word meaning,adjusting the order of words and sentences,converting the voice,splitting long sentences,etc.,which will promote the exchange and dissemination of information.This translation practice report finished on the above basis includes four parts:the description of translation task,the introduction of translation process,the study of translation cases,and the summary of translation practice.Thanks to this practice,the translator has known more about earth science,consolidated the ability of translating and analyzing,and further mastered the application of Nida’s functional equivalence theory in the translation.Meanwhile,the translator has also accumulated some translation experience of popular science texts,and hopes it will be conducive to the translation of relevant texts in the field of climate change.