A Practice Report On The Chinese Translation Of History Of Life,5^th Edition（Chapters 1-2）

In recent years,a large number of foreign popular science readings have flooded the domestic book market,and the translation of popular science texts has gradually attracted the translator’s attention.However,the research on popular science translation is not deep,especially in the field of paleontology.The source text of the English-Chinese translation practice report is the first two chapters of History of Life,5^thEdition,by Richard Cowen,a paleontologist.This book mainly introduces the evolution of life on the earth,especially the human’s reconstructed evolutionary history of life based on the records of rocks and fossils.This translation practice report aims to help the Chinese readers understand the evolution of the earth and promote the popularization of paleontology.Therefore,this report has a certain practical significance.The source text is an informative text specializing in general scientific popularization,in which there contains a large number of technical terms,so that it is very scientific in content,professional in style and logical in discourse.The authorship of this book tells the history of the earth’s evolution in a simple way,which helps to convey scientific information accurately,arouse the reader’s curiosity,and inspire people to devote themselves to the scientific field of paleontology.Guided by Newmark’s Communicative Translation Theory,this translation practice report focuses on the expressions of content,the reading method and the reading experience of the target readers.Starting from the standardization of lexicon,the logicality of syntax and the cohesion and coherence of the textual,the translator considers the translation techniques of lexicon by means of conversions and extensions,and standardizes the translation techniques of syntax by means of combination and restructuring.The flexibility of translation is explored from the perspective of cohesion and coherence for the improvement of the logical relationship between sentences and paragraphs,so as to accurately convey the connotation of the source language and ensure the correctness and readability of the translation.Different strategies should be adopted at lexical level,syntactical level,and textual level,so as to attain the same reading experience between the target text readers and the source text readers.In addition,the translation of popular science should center upon conveying scientific messages correctly.All of these are useful to help the translation achieve the communicative effect in the end.After consulting major academic databases,the translator found that a few scholars have yet used Communicative Translation Theory to guide the translation of popular science texts in paleontology,and the translator has made a preliminary attempt to do so,which is somewhat innovative.This translation practice report aims to help the Chinese readers understand more about the evolution of the earth,promote the popularization of paleontology,and provide useful references for translation practice and scientific research in this field.