A Study Of The Translation Of Academic Text Under The Guidance Of Catford’s Translation Theory

Under the guidance of Catford’s Translation Theory,this report tries to discuss translation shifts,a common but significant translation method,with the translation practice of Beliefs about Impacts Matter Little for A ttitudes on Shale Gas Development,a social psychology paper revealing the direction of the causal relationship between beliefs and attitudes about shale gas development impacts,which can promote policies and public communications about energy developments.The translation shifts are necessary in the translation of academic texts like this translation practice because the abundance of terminologies,long and complex sentences and logical relations without conjunctions leads to the difficulty in understanding and translating.Catford’s Translation Shifts Theory includes level shift and category shift,the latter one consisting of four aspects of category shift,namely,class shift,unit shift,structure shift and intra-system shift.The category shift is used in the analysis of specific examples in this report to illustrate the flexible shifts between the ranks of words,phrases,clauses and sentences.Rather,the guidance of Catford’s Translation Theory only focuses on the elements in one sentence.So this report also tries to improve the translation equivalence from context perspective by using the explicitation of logic in context and supplement of information.The translation practice proves the significance and applicability of the Catford’s Translation Shifts Theory in the translation of academic texts.What’s more,the flexibility of translation shifts between words,phrases,clauses and sentences is a way to achieve accuracy and readability of the translation,instead of committing to the form equivalence.