A Report On English-chinese Translation Of The Routledge Handbook Of Audio Description(Excerpts)based On Catford’s Translation Shifts Theory

As the audiovisual sector and new media technology grow quickly,audiovisual translation(AVT)has become one of the hot issues in translation studies,deriving nutrition from many disciplines such as translation studies and communication studies.China has developed more slowly than the West in audiovisual translation,and there are not many works within the discipline in China.However,translating Western classics of audiovisual translation can promote academic exchanges between China and foreign countries and learn about the current research in AVT.Therefore,this report selects two papers from The Routledge Handbook of Audio Description(2022)as the source text,which is edited by Christopher Taylor and Elisa Perego.By applying Catford’s translation shifts theory,the translator tries to analyze the translation of the source text from the following three aspects: structure shifts,class shifts and unit shifts.Two AD-related papers that the translator selects are“Research in Audio Description” and “Video Games and Audio Description”,which belong to informative text.In the source text,there are a large number of technical terms,nominal structures,passive sentences,and long and complex sentences.The translator tries to improve the readability of the translation by applying translation shifts while remaining faithful to the source text.This report concludes that translation shifts theory is well applicable in academic paper translation.Different translation shifts can be used to deliver the information of the source text in an accurate way.For passive sentences and attributives,the translator can adopt structure shifts;for long and complex sentences,the translator can use unit shifts and structure shifts;for nominal structures,the translator can employ class shifts.Based on translation shifts theory,the translator analyzes various translation shifts used in the translation of AD-related papers with some typical examples and hopes to provide some guidance and reference for future studies on such informative text translation.