A Report On The E-C Translation Of Atlas Of A Lost World:Travels In Ice Age America (Excerpts)

The material for this translation practice is selected from the preface and Chapter One of the popular science text Atlas of a Lost World: Travels in Ice Age America,written by Craig Childs,an American writer.The book depicts the environment of the cold geological age of the Pleistocene by combining scientific facts with literary descriptions.It also describes how the first Homo sapiens lived in North America and the activities of megafauna.Lots of technical terms in the field of archaeology,geology and biology are employed to show the scientificity of the source text.In addition,the writer skillfully adopts diverse sentence patterns such as sentences with rhetorical devices and with inanimate subjects to underscore the literariness of the popular science text.It is obvious that the text makes it possible to connect literature with science through the writer’s masterful writing skills.Based on the characteristics of the source text,this report analyzes the translation difficulties and solutions by exploring the principle of the adaptation theory of Jef Verschueren,who believes that language is a process of continuous selection.It is possible to apply appropriate translation strategies to tackle the translation difficulties while discussing the two aspects of adaptability of the theory: contextual correlates and structural objects.For contextual adaptation in translation,nine cases are analyzed from communicative context and linguistic context.Through the assessment of different mental,physical and social worlds,translation methods such as free translation and techniques including amplification and annotation are adopted to reveal the physical appearance of rare mammals and the unique natural phenomenon during the Pleistocene Epoch.Linguistic context emphasizes cohesion,intertextuality and sequencing,and translation techniques including repetition,omission and inversion are borrowed to translate the anaphora and linear orders of a sentence.At the level of structural object adaptation,the translator uses techniques such as transliteration and division to analyze the solutions to difficulties concerning proper nouns,descriptive words,and figurative sentences.All in all,this report discusses the feasibility of the adaptation theory to the translation of the popular science text,hoping to provide suggestions with regard to the guidance of the theory.