A Practice Report Of C-E Translation On The Annals Of Yushan County (Excerpt) From The Perspective Of Catford’s Translation Shifts Theory

The translation shift theory,first proposed in 1965 by J.C.Catford,the famous British linguist and translation theorist,in his book A Linguistic Theory of Translation,concisely and systematically discusses the changes or “shifts” that happens during translation.“Shifts” means “departures from formal equivalent in the process of translating from the source language to the target language”(1965:73).They fall into two categories: level shifts and category shifts.Examples taken from the English version of Annals of Yushan County translated by the author herself are used in this thesis to describe both level shift and category shifts and discuss how the translation shift theory guides the translation practice.The book Annals of Yushan County was compiled by the Yushan Local Chronicles Compilation Committee,and published by Local Records Publishing in2005.Consisting of 27 volumes,this book amounts to 1,450,000 words.Written in a literary style and containing detailed materials and fine examples,the book describes everything about the county,such as information about Yushan’s famous mountains and rivers,rich resources,local customs and the contemporary social situation.Information about the county’s current social state,politics,economy and other aspects are recorded in detail.Readers can acquire lots of information from this book,which chronicles the history of Yushan County,while also explaining the features of the county’s modern age and describing its unique local characteristics.Through the analysis of the application of Catford’ translation shift theory to the translation of Annals of Yushan County,the author hopes to enhance the concern toward the translation shift theory in translation circles,especially in the practice domain.It has been proved successful and effective by theoretic research and translation practice over the past half century that translation shift theory has explanatory power and instructiveness and helps contribute to fluency,clarity as well as idiomatic usage in the target text.What’s more,through the translation of Annals of Yushan County,contributions can be made in strengthening culture exchange,spreading Chinese unique folk customs to more people,and facilitating Chineseculture going global.By combining theory with case analysis,this research deduced several methods for translators to effectively apply translation shift theory:(1)when a lexical item does not exist in another language,it can be translated through grammatical item;(2)when dealing with unique Chinese phonology and graphology,if it is impossible to translate them into its English equivalent,the translator can also adopt level shifts approach;(3)when dealing with Chinese fragmented sentences,structure shifts could be employed to rearrange the sentences and clarify the subject-predicate,thus translating them into cohesive idiomatic English sentences;(4)when translating a Chinese serial verb construction sentence,the translator can consider class shift,choosing one key verb which indicates the subordination as the predicate verb in English,and translate other verbs into infinitives,participles,prepositions,or preposition phrases;(5)class shifts approach can also be utilized to deal with Chinese telescopic form sentences.To conform with the SVOC structure(subject + verb +object + complement)in English,translators can transform the second verb into object complement,specifically,into infinitives,preposition phrases,adjectives,adverbs,participles,or nouns;(6)when it is impossible to find the same translation unit,the translator can apply a unit shift approach,to translate the SL with a morpheme,a lexis,a phrase,a clause,even a discourse.