C-E Translation Of Business Reports From Catford’s Theory Of Translation Shift

Translation is a kind of profound art. In terms of linguistic features, there are various differences between Chinese and English due to different language families so that they are paid widely attention to by a large number of translation researchers. As is known that it is almost impossible to achieve absolute equivalence in form in translation process, John C. Catford formally put forward the "Translation Shift Theory" for the first time in A Linguistic Theory of Translation:An Essay in Applied Linguistics and had a research on two kinds of shifts, namely level shifts and category shifts. Level shifts are mainly about the flexion of vocabulary and the grammar, while the category shifts include class shifts, unit shifts, structure shifts and intra-system shifts in terms of the property of words, class, syntactic structure, etc. To some extent, Catford’s translation shift theory exerts a significant influence on translation practice for its clear conceptual framework and objective classification. Now it is common to adopt "translation shifts" on and below the level of sentence in non-literary translation process, such as textual materials about agriculture, aerospace and automobile.With a case study of The Special Report on Real Estate Market by Centaline in the First Half of 2015 in English translation and a theoretical foundation of Catford’s translation shift theory, this paper presents the text features of business reports from three different aspects, including the lexical level, syntactic level and language features. And it analyzes specific examples of level shifts and category shifts from perspectives of lexicon, rank and grammar. There are two main reasons for this thesis. Firstly, Catford’s translation shift theory should be applied to the translation process of The Special Report on Real Estate Market by Centaline in the First Half of 2015 for guidance. Secondly, translation methods and skills should be summarized after the case study for assisting business personnel and researchers in the translation of business reports in the future. The original text is a kind of business report with great specialty. After this research, it can be found that Catford’s translation shift theory plays a significant role in non-literary translation, especially in the translation process of business reports in micro level. However, Catford’s translation shift theory only emphasizes the language itself and never involves other factors, such as the living environment, historical background and translator’s subjectivity, which will lead to its limitations and deficiencies in translation study. Therefore, according to the actual situation, translators should adopt proper translation shifts so as to meet language requirements in various areas.