A Report On Abstract Translation Of Academic Journals Under The Guidance Of Translation Shifts

This translation report selects 50 abstracts,the topics of which are related to emergency management,from Journal of Homeland Security and Emergency Management listed in SSCI.Guided by Catford's "translation shifts",the report analyzes the translation difficulties cased by the differences of lexis selections,sentence structures,expression ways and thinking patterns between English and Chinese and tries to summarize corresponding solutions in the translation process.Catford believes that there is no absolute equivalence between the source language and the target language,thus the target language would shift and diverge from the source language to some extent in form.He precisely concludes the types of shifts on the micro level,such as lexis,phrase and sentence,and pertinently narrates the applicability of "translation shifts" in the translation practice.The report applies three major shifts in the theory:class shifts,structural shifts,and unit shifts to discuss the following three problems:nonequivalences of parts of speech,differences of sentence structures and departures of units between the source language and the target language.Through classifying and analyzing the shifts on and below the sentence level in the translated text,the author believes that "translation shifts" do have applicability to the translation project.Class shifts can guide the nonequivalence problem of parts of speech between source words and target words.Structural shifts help to achieve the shifts from passive voices to active voices,from postpositive attributives to prepositive attributives.Unit shifts can guide the "leap" of units among different rank scales.All these shifts contribute to creating a reader-friendly and normative translation.