Translational Features of Aesthetic Information in Popular Science Texts (on the Material of Richard Dawkins' books)

Aesthetic information poses a challenge to translators due to its implicit nature and, in some cases, nonequivalence (nonequivalent allusions). That is why the present paper explores translational features of aesthetic information in Richard Dawkins’ book “The Selfish Gene”. The thesis consists of two parts: theoretical part and research part. In the theoretical part we discuss the central problem of translation theory, elaborate on its historical aspect and define the term “translation”. Then we focus on notions relevant to the second part of this research: pre-translation analysis, representativeness criteria, translatological classification of texts, translational strategies, types of information in the text and translational characteristics of the popular-science genre. As a final note, we briefly speak about the author of the book. In the second part means of aesthetic information expression are extracted from the text and a table, based on comparative analysis of the English and Russian versions of the book, is formed. In this table the translated version of the book is compared to the original; the translation is assessed based on the information, which was gathered in the theoretical part. On the basis of this table, three main functions of aesthetic information are distinguished and a list of recommendations, devised to supplement the translation theory, is formed. Keywords: translation, technical translation, Richard Dawkins, popular science, aesthetic information