On Prose Translation From The Perspective Of Catford's Theory Of Translation Shifts

This paper is a C-E translation report on seven articles selected from the collection of essays Another Cool Day of Floating Life written by Chen Weiwen,a famous novelist and essayist.The themes of the excerpts cover various aspects of life,including the feelings about life and death,quietness,self-communion,attitude toward love,family affection,understanding others,and simple life.As a literary genre,prose is concise in language,rich in idea,free in sentence structure and flexible in function.They can be lyric,narrative or persuasive.One of the important literary styles of Chinese traditional culture and classics,Chinese prose is rich in humanistic feelings and cultural thoughts.It reveals the outlook of the Chinese people and life values cherished throughout Chinese history.Therefore,the English translation of Chinese modern prose is of profound significance to the promotion of Chinese culture.The culture of a nation should also be the culture of the world.It is a duty as well as an honor of every translator to bring Chinese culture to the world.Drawing on Catford's theory of translation shifts and considering the characteristics of Chinese and English,the report mainly explores the level shifts and category shifts occurring in this translation project and discusses the flexible transitions between the grammatical level and the sentence level in the process of C-E translation with specific examples from the translation project.The report is made up of five chapters: Chapter One is the description of the translation task,which mainly includes the author,the source text,and the excerpt contents.It also analyzes the features of the source text and explains the significance of the translation project.Chapter Two briefly describes the process of translation task,including pre-translation preparations,translation process and proofreading.Chapter Three elaborates the theoretical framework applied in this translation project,including an introduction to Catford and his theory of translation shifts.It also explains the applicability of the translation theory in this translation project.Chapter Four is case study,which discusses how the translator adopts specific translation strategies and techniques to solve translation difficulties under the guidance of translation shifts.In the last chapter,the translator points out the effectiveness and limitations of the theory of translation shifts,which may be of some value for future translation practice.