Application Of Shift Modes In Construction Project Translation

The development of China’s international construction project since decades agohas increased the demand of authentic and official translation of documents.Construction project translation is a branch of technological translation. Thesedocuments are full of specialized terms and idioms related to construction project.The quality and speediness of construction project translation have a direct and greatimpact on the understanding and implementation of specific concrete projects.The difficulties of construction project translation lie in understanding andtranslating professional construction terms and sentences. The author finds out thatconstruction documents in Chinese and English are similar to each other stylisticallyand syntactically under certain circumstance, which makes it possible to usetranslation shift modes to deal with these difficulties.As a translation project report, this paper takes the translation of Proposal forAngola State Administration Center Project (hereinafter referred to as the Proposal)as an example to analyze the features and contents of the original text in aspects ofterms, sentences and styles, and to illustrate the application of structural shift andclass shift in the translation of plans, measures and descriptions of construction worksrespectively, so as to demonstrate the strategies and results of these shifts. The resultof the translation of Proposal shows that the selected shift modes are very useful intackling most difficulties in translating terms and sentences in construction documents.Furthermore, this paper reveals the applicability and availability of Catford’stranslation shift modes in the Chinese-to-English translation of specific constructiondocuments through the specific application and analysis of two kinds of shift modes.The conclusion part of this paper presents the summarized experience of thetranslation of the Proposal, finds out that proper analysis of styles of original textsand appropriate translation strategies are important parts for construction projecttranslation, and then analyzes the application of structural shift and class shift in texts of different styles with examples and comparisons.In the end, about the problems that could not be solved with the approach oftranslation shift modes during the translation process, this paper provides inspiration,solutions and suggestions to the limitation of Catford’s modes. It attempts to get afurther research upon the Chinese-to-English translation of the project proposals, andto explore more practical and flexible translation strategies in order to strengthen theexpressiveness of construction translation.