A Report On The Translation Of The Climate Demon(Chapter 7)

The source text of this translation report is Chapter 7 of The Climate Demon.This book,as an informative text,combines plain,accurate expressions with literature genre in a harmonious way.It presents a frank assessment of the strengths and weaknesses of climate models used to make predictions and covers historical developments,current challenges,and future trends in the field.The report takes Chapter 7 in which the author focuses on the history of climate prediction as a case study to explore English-Chinese translation of informative texts,Catford’s theory of translation shifts was adopted.Under the guidance of Catford’s theory,this report analyzes translation practice from the perspective of level shifts and category shifts.The author adjusted words sequence,parts of speech,language levels and ranks between the SL and TL in order to achieve a more accurate and expressive translation and avoid “translationese”.The application of level shifts and category shifts were exemplified in detail and the differences between English and Chinese were further explored.Through strategies such as adjustments in tenses,modifiers and shifts of active and passive voices and changes of parts of speech,translation shifts were adopted flexibly instead of word-for-word translation so as to obtain the translation equivalence without losing readability.The gains and limitations of the translation project are also summarized with suggestions and expectations for future research put forward.