Level Shifts And Category Shifts

Published in 1934,Work of Art is the novel of Sinclair Lewis,the first American who won the Nobel Prize in Literature.Lewis is good at restoring the lifestyle of American towns to readers through the detailed description,and criticizing the life of American Philistines in an ironic tone.His works are humorous and follow the trend of the times.In different periods,Lewis’ works reflect people’s thoughts and pursuits at that time which have higher literary value.In this paper,the author chooses the first three chapters of this novel as the practical text of this translation practice report.As a novel with rich plots,the language of Works of Art is free,flexible and diverse,which greatly increases the difficulty of translation.Therefore,in the process of translation,translators need to flexibly use translation methods to reproduce the style of the original text on the basis of being faithful to the original text.Furthermore,translators should also pay attention to every detail,even the translation of simple words.Good translation requires proper theoretical guidance.Catford’s translation shifts theory is mainly divided into two parts: level shifts and category shifts.Level shifts mainly refer to the shifts between grammar and lexis,while category shifts include structure shifts,class shifts,unit shifts,intra-system shifts.This theory applies linguistics to the research of translation theory,forms a set of scientific translation shift methods and analyzes the translation from many details,such as voice,sentence structure,changes of suffix and so on,which can effectively guide literary translation and make the translation more acceptable.Based on Catford’s translation shifts theory,this paper discusses the practical translation from level shifts and category shifts.Through the analysis and research,it can be concluded that Catford’s translation shifts theory has a certain guiding significance for literary translation.The author hopes that this report can provide some help and reference for future scholars who study Catford’s translation shifts theory and those who are interested in applying translation shifts theory in literary translation in the future.