A Practice Report On The Translation Of Popular Science Texts Under The Guidance Of Communicative Translation Theory

Recently,people’s need for scientific knowledge is increasing along with the passing day and then popular science writings,as one of media for the dissemination of scientific knowledge,are playing an incredibly crucial role.In this context,the translation of popular science writings is of much importance.The original text The Psychology of Procrastination:Understand Your Habits,Find Motivations And Get Things Done is a self-help psychological popular science book.It narrates the psychological causes of procrastination in detail and proposes a series of suggestions on overcoming it for readers helping more procrastinators take actions to overcome it.It can be seen that the research on the E-C translation of this book has profound practical significance.Based on the translation of the first three chapters of The Psychology of Procrastination,this translation practice report,combined with the characteristics of popular science texts,analyses and discusses some typical cases respectively from lexical,syntactic and textual aspects under the guidance of Newmark’s communicative translation theory,summarizing and concluding various translation methods and techniques applicable to solve all problems appeared in the process of translating this popular science book.At the lexical level,translation methods such as annotation,word choosing,conversion and addition are proposed for the translation of proper nouns,polysemous words and words with rhetoric devices;at the syntactic level,translation techniques such as division and structural adjustment are adopted to ensure that the translation is reader-centred and conforms to the rules and language habits of the target language,based on the significant differences between the English and Chinese languages;at the textual level,translation methods such as omission and combination are adopted to make the translation cohesive,clear and concise.Through this practice,the author finds the great guiding of the communicative translation theory on the translation of popular science texts and hopes that all accumulated experience and translation methods in this process can provide some references for other translators studying Chinese translation of similar popular science writings.