A Report On The Chinese-English Translation Of XX Passenger Car Maintenance Manual(Excerpt) From The Perspective Of Translation Shifts Theory

Chinese automobiles are increasingly sold abroad,and there is a growing need for after-sales service and maintenance as well.The output of various supporting repair and maintenance manuals,as well as local auto specialists to overseas,is a key link if we are to better expand the international market.XX Passenger Car Maintenance Manual contains the source text of this translation practice.The purpose of its translation is to give foreign car maintenance personnel an understandable way to carry out maintenance,and the translation of such manuals also plays a small but significant part in fostering the globalization of Chinese cars.The primary characteristics of this translation practice’s source text,which is a technological text,are a high proportion of verbs,subject-free sentences,professional terms,and complex front modifiers.The translation difficulties addressed in this report have been discussed,guiding by translation shifts theory.Structure shifts,class shifts,and unit shifts are the three types of shifts used in this report.The active sentences in the original text can be handled by structure shifts by switching them out for passive ones.The complex modifiers in the original text can also be solved through prepositional phrases.Class shifts are achieved by converting nouns into pronouns and verbs into nouns,adjectives,and prepositions,making the translation more in line with English expression and presenting it in a static form.In order to distinguish the primary and secondary relationships of actions and make the translation more logical,unit shifts are used to convert more verbs in the original text into prepositional phrases and convert verb phrases into verbs.Five chapters constitute the major part of the translation report.Chapter 1 mainly introduces the translation task,its theoretical and practical significance,and the structure of the translation report.Chapter 2 divides the process of translation practice into three stages.The process before translation mainly includes the analysis of the source text,the selection of the theory and translation tools.The main task while translation is the difficulties encountered in the source text and the solutions to them.After translation,the process is mainly divided into revising and typesetting.In Chapter 3,the translator mainly demonstrates Catford’s translation shifts theory and its practicality in sci-tech text.In Chapter 4,the translator applies unit shifts,class shifts,and structure shifts in the translation shifts theory,and selects 23 examples for analysis.In Chapter 5,the translator summarizes the above content,mainly introducing the findings in the translation process and some suggestions for further research and practice.The translator translates XX Passenger Car Maintenance Manual(excerpt)guided by Catford’s translation shifts theory.The main conclusions of this practice are as follows:1)Through structure shifts,the translator enables the translation to be more consistent with English language conventions through the change of sentence structures in Chinese and English;2)Through class shifts,the translator can reduce the repetition of nouns in the translation and use more static expressions in it;3)Through unit shifts,the translator can convert the verbs in the original text into the prepositional phrases,distinguishing the main verbs and making the logic of the translation clearer.