Unequal Linguistic Units In Translation Of American Culture In The 1980s:from English To Chinese

American culture in the 1980 s was edited by Graham Thompson and published by Edinburgh University Press in 2007.This translation practice report is based on the first four sections of chapter three “film and television”,which mainly introduces the Hollywood Synergised,the video revolution,blockbusters and nightmare visions in the 1980 s.The sentence structure of the original text is rigorous and the language is objective and standard.However,because English and Chinese belong to different languages,their usage of words,phrases and sentences is also different.Therefore,there will be a large number of unequal linguistic units between English and Chinese.The translation of unequal linguistic units between English and Chinese is the focus of this practice report.Catford’s translation shift theory can be divided into level shifts and category shifts,and the latter is subdivided into part of class shifts,unit shifts,structural shifts and intra-system shifts.Since the typical problem encountered by the author in translation practice is the translation of unequal linguistic units between English and Chinese,this report only makes an in-depth discussion from the perspective of unit shifts in category shifts.It is found that unit shifts can help the translator to choose the appropriate language units in the target language according to the context and semantics,thus forming a correspondence with the original text,and solving the translation problem of unequal linguistic units between English and Chinese.This report is divided into five chapters.The first chapter is the introduction,which includes the research content,research background and research significance of this report.The second chapter is the task process,including the preparation before translation,the implementation of translation and the review after translation.The third chapter introduces Catford’s translation shift theory and its research trends.The fourth chapter is a case study,which analyzes the process of solving translation difficulties.The fifth chapter is the conclusion,summarizing the author’s reflection and harvest in the process of translation practice.