From The New Yorker to Quest: The Translation of a Popular Science Text for a More Diverse Target Audience

Abstract

This paper aims to explore the best method for translating texts meant for a publication with a more diverse target audience. The case study used for this paper is an article named: "The Day the Dinosaurs Died". It is written by Douglas Preston for American magazine The New Yorker. The article, as well as the magazine, has a specific target audience: highly educated adults. As such, the language used by Preston is not suitable for certain audiences, for example young readers or people who have been less educated. The target publication for the translation is the popular Dutch magazine Quest. This magazine has a much more diverse target audience than The New Yorker in terms of age and level of education, and thus the language use as well as the terminology in the article will have to be taken into consideration while translating.