A Practice Report On The English-Chinese Translation Of History Of The Harvard College Observatory During The Period 1840-1890 Under The Guidance Of Catford's Translation Shifts Theory

This report mainly analyzes the problems and their solutions in the translation of History of the Harvard College Observatory during the Period 1840-1890.The source text mainly introduces the experiences of William Bond,the first director of the Harvard College Observatory,and the establishment and development of the observatory.The author chose this translation material for the following reasons:first,the author hopes to show this precious history of the establishment of the Observatory to more people,draw their attention to astronomy,and contribute as much as possible to the development of the related fields in our country;second,this material is a type of biographical text related to science and technology.Its style and language are worthy of appreciation and reference.It is an excellent learning material for language learners and translators;third,the author has a deep understanding of astronomy,and also has a considerable interest in biographical texts.During the translation practice,this type of text was found to have both the scientific nature of scientific texts and the literary nature of biographical texts.Some sentences are long and may include many a few clauses.In order to solve these problems,Catford's Translation Shifts theory has been adopted.This thesis selects and analyzes many cases from the translation material.It is found that translation shifts are frequently used in the whole translation practice.Among them,structure shifts and unit shifts are mostly used in translating clauses and long sentences.Class shifts are mostly used in lower-level ranks,such as words.Unit shifts are mostly used in translating sentences that contain many complicated long clauses.Usually these clauses need to be translated into shorter ones.Unit shifts can also be applied to sentences with noun clauses as the subjects.Structure shifts appear mostly in sentences using passive voice.Subjects of these sentences are usually turned into objects in the target sentences.Structure shifts can also be adopted to translate sentences with non-animate subjects.Class shifts mostly appear in translating individual words.Shifts may occur between nouns and verbs or between nouns and adjectives.The idea of "shifts" enables translators to discard the form of the source text and convey the meaning of the text in new forms which are better received in the target text.