A Report On E-C Translation Of The Invisible Universe (Excerpts) Under The Guidance Of Communicative Translation Theory

This translation practice report is based on the book The Invisible Universe by Matthew Bothwell,which provides a detailed account of the history and development of cosmology and astronomy.The translator chooses the third and fourth chapters as translation materials,which contains more than 20,000 English words totally.The source text describes the magical cosmic phenomena.It aims to help readers understand the universe to stimulate their interests in astronomy.This text belongs to the informative text of popular science field,which emphasizes the accuracy of objective information,but also calls on people to understand astronomy knowledge,so as to facilitate to produce popular science effect among the target language readers.In the process of translation practice,based on the text features,under the guidance of Newmark’s communicative translation theory,translator strives to make the target language readers have the same reading experience as the original readers,while making the Chinese translation smooth and authentic,easy for readers to understand.This translation report first introduces the background of the task,the characteristics of the source text,the translation process,the communicative translation theory and its theoretical applicability in translating texts in the field of astronomy.Then,through case studies,translator summarizes difficulties in translation,analyzes the application of communicative translation theory in translation practice from the lexical,syntactic and textual level,and discusses the corresponding translation methods and skills.At the lexical level,when translating terms,the translator mostly uses literal translation method to translate astronomical terms,to ensure the accuracy,and by the word-conversion method,the smooth translation can be provided to readers.At the syntactic level,the passive voice and long and complex sentences are mostly translated by the methods of inversion and division,so as to ensure the readability of the translation.At the textual level,the translation can achieve logical cohesion and semantic coherence consistent with the source text by the addition and reiteration methods.Under the guidance of communicative translation theory,through the usage of these translation skills and methods,the target text can not only accurately convey the information of the source text,but also adapt to the linguistic expression and reading habits of the target readers,so as to achieve communicative effects.