A Report On Translation Of The Excerpts From Powerful Attitudes In The Light Of Translation Shifts Theory

This thesis is an E-C translation report with its source texts consisting of Chapter Three and Chapter Six from Powerful Attitudes.It is an inspirational self-help book written by Michael Murphy and is expected to serve as a consoling comfort for those in a complete loss and generates in them a soul searching urge.Systematic researches on the translation of inspirational self-help books are quite limited,both in terms of quantity and quality.In the light of Catford's Translation Shifts Theory,the author of the thesis explores the application of this theory to self-help text translation on the basis of the translation of the excerpts from Powerful Attitudes.In this report,linguistic features of Powerful Attitudes are discussed and specific examples are analyzed to illustrate the application of level shifts and category shifts in the translation practice.In the report,level shifts are analyzed in terms of tense,aspect,voice and number,and category shifts are illustrated in the order of structure shifts,class shifts,unit shifts and intra-system shifts.The present research shows that Catford's Translation Shifts Theory is applicable and feasible in guiding the E-C rendering of Powerful Attitudes.However,Catford's theory is not impeccable.He proposes a shift model that takes effect only on or below the sentence level,neglecting the non-linguistic level,namely,cultural elements.Therefore,the report provides a tentative alternative as culture shifts to remedy this deficiency so that the target readers can enjoy a more readable and idiomatic translation.