A Report On English-Chinese Translation Of Academic Texts On Climate From The Perspective Of Catford’s Translation Shift Theory

Climate change is one of the most severe challenges faced by humanity,and dealing with the impacts of climate change is a significant task for people all over the world.In order to learn from other countries’ advanced experience to tackle its negative impacts,the demand for the translation of climate-related texts is on the rise.This translation practice report is based on the English-Chinese translation of a 10000-word excerpt from two climate-related academic articles published on SSRN(Social Science Research Network): Preparing for Climate Change in Illinois: An Overview of Anticipated Impacts and Recent Developments in International Climate Change Law.The purpose of this report is to discuss the problems and difficulties encountered in the translation process and to propose appropriate translation methods to tackle these difficulties.In view that the source text belongs to the academic text involving a large number of technical terms and proper nouns in the field of climate change,and sentence structures are mainly sentences of passive voice and long and compound sentences,the author argues that providing translation strategies based on Catford’s translation shift theory can promote the application of this theory in translation practices and can also provide practical examples and feasible suggestions for the translation of academic texts on climate.Based on Catford’s translation shift theory,this report discusses level shifts and category shifts in the translation process in conjunction with the text type analysis of the source text.This report concludes that although Catford’s translation shift theory has limitations,it is instructive for translating academic texts on climate because of its emphasis on meaning expression rather than formal equivalence is exactly in line with the characteristics of academic texts that attach importance to the content.In addition,this report can also contribute to helping Chinese scholars and the general public understand the efforts made by other countries to tackle the challenges of climate change.In this way,it can also promote communication and development among climate-related disciplines.