Pragmatic Features and E-C Translation Strategies of English Children’s Popular Science Reading The Way Things Work Now

Abstract

In recent years, children’s popular science reading is booming in the market of China, but its E-C translation still lacks insufficient attention. Since children have limited scientific knowledge and cognitive capacities, the language of children’s popular science reading needs to be vivid, interesting, popular, and logical. To improve the quality of translation, it is necessary to consider the target children readers’ acceptance and adopt appropriate translation strategies and methods, to present pragmatic features and achieve pragmatic effects of the original in the translation. Regarding language behavior as communicative behavior, text pragmatics proposes three pragmatic features of textuality, including intentionality, acceptability and situationality, which help the translator effectively decode the original and take the target readers’ orientation in delivering the original pragmatic meaning, and thus become the three translation principles that the translator needs to follow. Therefore, based on text pragmatics, this thesis selects David Macaulay’s English children's popular science reading The Way Things Work Now and the only Chinese translation published by Publishing House of Electronics Industry, endeavoring to analyze pragmatic features and effects, as well as target readers’ acceptance, of the three sub-texts: narration sub-text, knowledge-introduction sub-text and historical-cultural sub-text, by comparing the original and the target texts at the levels of lexis, syntax, structure, etc; and also this thesis analyzes its translation strategies and techniques, and explores translation gains and losses, with the purpose to clarify the theoretical significance of text pragmatics in translating children’s popular science reading, and provide reference for similar translation.  

This thesis consists of four chapters: the first chapter introduces the author, background, main contents, text classification, genre and style, as well as its sole Chinese version; chapter two introduces relevant principles of text pragmatics and its role in text interpretation, as well as applying it into the translation of children’s popular science reading. It proposes the three translation criterion of intentionality, acceptability and situationality, and the reader-oriented translation strategies; chapter three conducts a comparative analysis of pragmatic features and effects between the original and translation from lexical, syntactic, structural and rhetorical aspects: since narration sub-text prepares for explaining principles through vivid and interesting stories to attract readers, division and amplification are properly used in translation to preserve the interest of the original; as knowledge-introduction sub-text, explaining scientific principles, is accurate and precise, literal translation is applied to preserve the accuracy of the original; introducing historical and cultural background information, historical-cultural sub-text uses active and short sentences to enhance the readability of the target text, and also adopts literal translation to preserve the objectivity of the original; chapter four briefly evaluates the translation effects according to the target readers’ acceptance. In conclusion, the translation follows the principles of intentionality, acceptability and situationality and adopts the reader-oriented translation strategy, with domestication as major translation strategy; through foreignization leads to formal translation and difficult abstract terms, it helps introduce scientific knowledge and foreign cultural information.

Key words:  text pragmatics; pragmatic features; translation of children’s popular science reading; The Way Things Work Now