Abstract | This empirical research seeks to study the strategies used in translating cultural contents of scientific and technical texts. Taking a social-cultural approach, the study applies and develops the cultural categories and sub-categories of Newmark, which are widely drawn upon by translation scholars, and examines 40 English texts along with their Mandarin Chinese translation texts in order to identify the source cultural contents and their corresponding translation strategies. Among these, 20 English texts were selected from the website of Financial Times, and 20 English texts were selected from the website of Shell, a global group of energy and petrochemicals companies, both having a large readership. It is found that cultural contents happen both in texts that report science and technology and in texts that are aimed at the end users of technological products. It is also found that FT translators and Shell translators have some in common in their strategies used to translate relevant cultural contents, but at the same time also show differences. The implications of these findings are then discussed in specific relation to the training of scientific and technical translators, and in general relation to the field of scientific and technical translation. |
---|