The Application Of Catford's Theory Of Translation Shift In English For Science And Technology

Since each language has its own cultural characteristics and unique expressions,it is impossible to achieve both the formal correspondence and the equivalent of the text in translation.In 1965,Catford first proposed the concept of "translation shift" in his book A Linguistic Theory of Translation.In the book,he distinguishes the differences between"textual equivalents”and "formal correspondences." Based on this,Catford defines translation shift as "deviating from correspondence from original text to translation text."Thus,the translation shift will happen.With the rapid development of science and technology,English for science and technology plays an important role in knowledge dissemination and scientific and technological exchanges,and it has put forward a higher request in translation.EST is a kind of informative text,which has the characteristics of strong professionalism,strong logic and complicated sentences.It requires translators to express the original content in the most faithfully and accurately way.The Catford's translation shift theory focuses on textual equivalence rather than formal correspondence,that is,the purpose is to achieve semantic equivalence,which is in accordance with the translation requirements for scientific and technical English texts.This paper uses the literature Recent advances in natural product discovery as translated texts to explore the application of Catford's theory of translation shift in the EC translation of scientific and technological English.To achieve a more accurate translation,cases are analyzed from the aspects of level shift and category shift(structural shift,category shift,unit shift).