Application Of Catford’s Theory Of Shifts In Translating The City Of Springs(Excerpts)

The City of Springs is a comic book.Different from other humorous comic books,this book is a serious comic book with text.The cartoons in the book depict the social life of Jinan during the Republic of China.And the text in the book is the interpretation and description of cartoons.For the purpose of publicity of Jinan city,the Chinese text in the book is translated into English.Based on the excerpt of the book,The City of Springs,this report discusses how Catford’s Translation Shifts Theory guides the practice of Chinese-English translation,with attention being mainly focused on the structure of sentences.There are two main types of translation shifts theory proposed by Catford: level shifts and category shifts.Category shifts are divided into structure-shifts,class-shifts and unit-shifts etc.Structure shifts include the shifts between subject-prominent sentences and topic-prominence,the shifts between positive sentences and negative sentences,the shifts between active voice and passive voice,and the shifts between pre-modifiers and post-modifiers.The report mainly analyzes the English translation from these perspectives and demonstrates how the Chinese text was translated into English under the guidance of the translation theory of Catford.His translation theory is from the perspective of comparatively simple linguistics,which,by comparing the characteristics of Chinese and English languages,especially their sentence structures,explores how the Chinese text is converted into English in line with the English expressions.In the translation practice of the two languages,we can get some basic translation skills and have a macro-control for the translation of sentences.Meanwhile,it also helps translators to continuously improve their ability so that the translation quality can be also improved.Finally,the report introduces the limitations and disadvantages of Catford’s Translation Shifts Theory in the translation.