Translating Popular Astronomy and Astrophysics. A chapter from Astrophysics: A Very Short Introduction

This thesis aims at providing a translation from English into Italian of Chapter 3: Stars of James Binney’s popular science book entitled "Astrophysics: A Very Short Introduction", published on March 24, 2016 by Oxford University Press. Before presenting the final translation, some theoretical background with a view towards some concepts, such as languages for specific purposes, controlled natural languages, scientific popularisation and specialised translation are provided to better outline the source text. The work is structured into three chapters, each one being divided into three sections. Chapter 1 provides a definition of special languages, as well as an analysis of their main lexical, morphosyntactic and textual features, with a special focus on the language of science, along with a presentation of the two domains involved, namely astronomy and astrophysics. Lastly, the ASD Simplified Technical English (ASD-STE100) and two controlled vocabularies, i.e. the NASA Thesaurus and the Unified Astronomical Thesaurus, are presented as an attempt of linguistic standardisation, being the concept of controlled natural languages strongly interrelated with the concept of special language. Chapter 2 focuses on the importance of communicating science, and, more specifically, astronomy and astrophysics, in today’s hyper-technological society. The main features of scientific popularisation and technical and scientific translation, as well as the translation of popular science articles and papers, are discussed, outlining the main analogies and differences between English and Italian texts of the same genre. Finally, last chapter includes the analysis of the source text with some information about the author and the Oxford’s Very Short Introductions book series, the final translation, and the translation process with a detailed commentary of the difficulties encountered and the strategies adopted to face them.