The Translation Of Figures Of Speech In Popular Science Texts

This report takes the third and fourth chapters of The End of Everything——Astrophysically Speaking as the content of the translation exercise.This book is a popular science book that aims to increase people’s interest in astrophysics and make readers understand the five possibilities of the end of the universe.The language of popular science books is logical and interesting,and it is easy for readers to understand the hidden connotation and context of the article.The text is highly academic and rigorous in language,but the characteristics of popular science texts are literary,scientific,popular and interesting.The book is not only scientific,but also uses some rhetorical techniques to attract readers,which is lively.Ideas can be expressed more effectively and the attractiveness,interest and readability of the language can be improved.This report adopts the classification method of figures of speech into semantics,figures of structure and figures of speech proposed in the book Appreciation and Writing of English Rhetoric by Zeng Qingmao and Xu Changhe,and classifies the figures of speech that appear in the source text into three categories,the rhetoric of meaning includes simile,metaphor and personification,etc.;the rhetoric of structure includes parallel sentences,loose sentences and round sentences,etc.;and the rhetoric of phoneme includes alliteration and so on.In view of the above idioms,the writer mainly adopts two translation methods,literal translation and free translation,supplemented by translation techniques such as extended translation,omitted translation,conversion,and word order adjustment,and endeavours to pay attention to the truth of the content and the beauty of the form.In addition,the translator analyses the problems encountered in different classifications during the translation process,and uses translation techniques such as augmented translation,transliteration,literal translation and four-character patterns to achieve functional equivalence of idioms so as to maximise the characteristics of the original text.Through the analysis of typical cases,the author tries to select different translation strategies and methods for different figures of speech according to the context and logic of the original text,combined with the characteristics of the text,so as to reproduce the rhetoric of the original text as much as possible,while ensuring the accurate transmission of the information effects and expressive effects of the original text.I hope to provide some reference for the translation of figures of speech in popular science texts.