Strategies For Improving Readability Of Museum Texts

Chinese Agricultural Civilization Museum is China’s first special museum where civilization,history and culture of Chinese agriculture are fully displayed.The museum has kept many agricultural artifacts of thousands of years ago,which reflects the glorious achievements of Chinese agriculture and attracts a large number of foreign visitors.Therefore,it is beneficial to translate the introduction to the agricultural artifacts into English.The original texts of the museum are from the section of "Agricultural Artifacts" in the WeChat official account of Chinese Agricultural Civilization Museum.Several translation cases are analyzed to discuss the strategies for improving readability of museum texts.Translation readability refers to whether the translation is smooth,clear and readable.It is the most common and basic requirement for translators.If wording is obscure and sentences are redundant and confusing in the translation of museum texts,the translation will act as a disincentive to readers’interest and translation’s communicative function.Hence,efforts to improve readability play an important part in the practice of translation of museum texts.This report consists of five chapters.Chapter one introduces the background,significance and structure of this translation project.Chapter two records in detail the whole process of translation practice from three aspects:pre-translation,while-translation and postediting.Chapter three summarizes the relevant research on translation of museum texts and readability.In the fourth chapter,the author discusses the strategies to improve readability.These strategies are to adopt concise vocabulary,add background knowledge properly,merge and delete the original text reasonably,use short sentences and adjust sentence structures.Chapter five is the summary of this translation practice.In this chapter,three typical readability formulas are used to calculate the readability of this translation.The results show that these five strategies can improve the readability of the translation and make the conclusion more reliable and convincing.At last,the author lists the gains and shortcomings in the practice,and hopes that this translation practice report can provide some reference for the translation of museum texts.