A Translation Report On European Culture:Identity And Diversity Under The Guidance Of Catford’s Translation Shifts

The source text European culture:Identity and Diversity is the conference proceedings of the 50th Anniversary of the European Cultural Convention.The conference explores the fundamental challenges of cultural cooperation,covering contents of education,culture,economy and other fields.Because English and Chinese belong to different language families,it is impossible to completely correspond in form in translation practice.Therefore,to a certain extent,the author should throw off the formal limitation of the source text and make some shifts.The author adopts Catford’s translation shifts to analyze the introduction and theme parts of the source text,that is,The Role of Culture and Dialogue,Diversity and Cohesion.The source text follows formal and relatively objective writing style.After specific analysis,the author believes that Catford’s translation shifts can guide the text translation to make words,sentences and grammatical shifts.Catford’s translation shifts include two major types,namely:level shifts and category shifts.These two kinds of shifts allow the author to throw off the formal limitation in the process of translating the source text into the target text.Furthermore,they provide a perspective for sentences analysis and translation techniques choice.Category shifts contain four types of shifts:structure shifts,class shifts,unit shifts,and intra-system shifts.More specifically,the author divides the translation report into five parts.Chapter Ⅰ describes the task background,task significance,the introduction to source text,and report structure.Chapter Ⅱ introduces the task process.Chapter Ⅲexplains the Catford’s translation shifts and the adaptability of Catford’s translation shifts.Chapter Ⅳ illustrates that in light of Catford’s translation shifts,the author adopts the level shifts of tenses and aspects,and the shifts of plural forms.In addition,the author adopts the structure shifts from passive voice to active voice,from hypotaxis to parataxis,from affirmative structure to negative structure,and from postpositive attributive to prepositive attributive;class shifts among nouns,prepositions,adjectives,and verbs;and unit shifts among words,clauses,and sentences.Chapter V makes a summary of the whole translation practice.In conclusion,translation practice needs to be guided by translation strategies.Adoption of Catford’s translation shifts in translation helps author understand the text better in different levels.Therefore,it is of significance to study the translation strategies and apply them in practice.