A Study On The International Publicity Translation From The Perspective Of Catford’s Translation Shifts Theory

With the continuous advancement of globalization and the improvement of China’s comprehensive national strength,China is playing an increasingly important role in the international community,and the translation of Chinese publicity texts often arouses widespread concern and heated discussion in the global community.International publicity texts,especially Report on the Work of the Government,have brought together important theoretical and practical issues concerning the development of the Communist Party of China and the state under the new historical conditions.Accurate translation of such texts will provide a comprehensive and objective way for the international community to better understand China’s development patterns,concepts and paths,and create a good international profile of China abroad so as to promote communications among countries.Guided by Catford’s translation shifts theory,this thesis analyzes the Chinese-English version of Report on the Work of the Government 2020 and conducts a case study from two aspects:level shifts and category shifts.From the aspect of level shifts,the thesis analyzes the simple and plural shifts as well as the tense shifts between Chinese and English.In terms of category shifts,the thesis explores the translation from four perspectives,namely,structure shifts,class shifts,unit shifts and intra-system shifts.Through the analysis of specific examples,the author finds that the essence of translation shifts is caused by the inherent differences between the source text and the target text,which can only achieve relative semantic equivalence,and that structure shifts,class shifts,unit shifts are common in international publicity translation.Catford’s translation shifts theory mainly analyzes from the lexical and syntactic levels,which is conducive to improving the accuracy of international publicity translation.Therefore,this theory plays a certain guiding role in the study of international publicity translation.However,there are also some limitations,since Catford’s translation shifts theory lacks the research on the macro level such as culture,psychology and subject consciousness.In translation practice,translators should take various aspects into consideration in order to create excellent translation which is easy to be accepted by readers.