Verbalization Strategy In The Translation Of Medical Texts Under The Guidance Of Translation Shift Theory

This translation practice report is based on an excerpt(chapter one and chapter ten)from the medical book Overview of Medically Unexplained Symptoms,written by Dr.Robert W.Baloh.The book not only documents several common types of symptoms whose causes are medically difficult to explain and analyse,but also offers symptoms management programs and argues that stress management should be at the center of treatment programs.The selection of this text is helpful to popularize the relevant knowledge of medically unexplained symptoms in China,and provide references for domestic analysis,research,prevention and treatment in this aspect.In the process of translation,the translator found that many professional terms were used in this medical text and the tone of the article is formal and objective,the language of the article is standard and logical.In addition,the translator also found that the English original text,with many nouns and prepositions,has the advantage of nouns;while the Chinese text,with many verbalization phenomena,has the advantage of verbs.Start with the static tendency of English and the dynamic tendency of Chinese,Sun Zhili,a famous Chinese translator,pointed out that without the necessary conversion of parts of speech,it is bound to lead to a hard and unreadable translation(Sun,2003).Therefore,in order to solve the different word habits between English and Chinese and make the translation more acceptable to Chinese readers,the translator put the research object on the verbalization.Secondly,Catford’s translation shift theory,which was widely used in the whole translation process,provided much guidance for the translator to deal with the differences between Chinese and English languages so as to achieve text equivalence.Catford divided translation shifts into two types: level shifts and category shifts,and then further divided category shifts into four types: structural shifts,class shifts,unit shifts and intra-system shifts.Verbalization,the research object of this report,belongs to the class shifts in category shifts and was completed under the guidance of class shifts.Class shifts can solve the problem of different word habits in Chinese and English medical texts,and translate nouns and nominalization structures that exist in the source language into commonly used verbs in Chinese.This report adopted the method of case study.Through translation practice and case study,the translator concluded the verbalization in the English-Chinese translation into three categories: the verbalization of nouns,the verbalization of adjectives and the verbalization of prepositions.The report was divided into five chapters.Chapter one firstly introduces the original text and then demonstrates the value of this report;The second chapter describes the translation process,which was divided into three stages: pre-translation,while-translation and post-translation;The third chapter is the theoretical framework.This part first introduces the basic content of translation shift theory,which was divided into level shifts and category shifts,and then verbalization and the guiding significance of translation shift theory to the translation;The fourth chapter is case analysis,which is also the core part of this report.The translator discussed the verbalization of three types of words,namely,the verbalization of nouns,the verbalization of adjectives and the verbalization of prepositions;Chapter five is the conclusion,which summarizes the findings and limitations of this report.