Ting Pan
Writing 2 / MW 3PM
05/10/2015
PB3A
In recent years, climate change has became one of the most important environmental issues. We can see the news and reports about it everywhere and there are many different theories and research about this environmental crisis. The scholarly publication that I choose to work with is “The Real Case against Activist Global Warming Policy,” which is an academic journal. The author expresses his thoughts against activist global warming policy. Topics mentioned include the overview of the beliefs of global warming activists, the extensive chain of assumptions used to justify carbon-dioxide-limiting policies among climate alarmists, and the government efficacy proposition, and views among skeptics of the global warming theory on other anthropocentric warming agents apart from carbon dioxide.
For a younger audience, this scholarly text can be transformed to an encyclopedia article. First, this is a type of reference work, so the title should be clear and direct, which is convenient for the audience to access by it. For this article, the name can be “Activist Global Warming Policy” or “Global Warming Activist”. Secondly, encyclopedia entries are detailed but not wordy. In the academic piece, we can find that the author explains every point repeatedly and uses many examples to illustrate his points of view. However, for encyclopedia articles, each point must be stated concisely, and the use of examples is restricted strictly - they should be familiar to everyone or from credible sources. For example, the author of the scholarly article states that “It may be, for example, that the cost of sending the fire crew - including possible loss of life - exceeds the value of the timber that might be saved from fire,” but such uncertain example is not qualified for encyclopedia. Thirdly, there are lots of personal opinions in this academic piece, but some of them are not allowed to appear in encyclopedia articles. For instance, the author writes that “Once we overcome the static fallacy, we see that this image is quite ridiculous,” such opinions is subjective and not suitable for encyclopedia articles. Last but not least, in encyclopedia articles, the words are simple and there must be explanation for topic-specific terms. Because of different target audience, scholarly articles are complex and contains words which are not commonly used. It is significant to add explanations of some terms or change them to simple ones.
To reach an older audience, I think translating this piece to a newspaper article is an good choice. Newspaper article are much shorter than these academic pieces, so I need to use word economy. For example, the sentence “As the global warming debate is carried on today, almost all the attention goes to the first three propositions” can be transform to “Nowadays, almost attention to this debate goes to the first three propositions.” Then, I have to think about the structure of the article. At the beginning of the article, I need to use one or two sentences to briefly summarize the article, which answers the basic questions of "who, what, when, where, how and why." In addition, a key point is of vital importance in newspaper articles. We notice that the author of the academic article writes every point detailedly, but when changing to a newspaper article, I have to write the most important information firstly, and then mention the less important ones later in the article, which is as the inverted pyramid format. Lastly, write a conclusion to re-summarize the most important information of the article. In this academic text, there is no conclusion. However, adding it to my newspaper article is crucial.
This is how I plan to translate the scholarly piece to the other two genres of works.
