A Report On Chinese-English Translation Of A Brief History Of Ozone Technology In China From The Perspective Of Catford’s Translation Shifts Theory

With the continuous development of ozone industry in China,the competitiveness of ozone equipment in the international market has been further enhanced,and the relevant manufacturing technology in China has been widely recognized at home and abroad.To further popularize the application of ozone technology and products in China,it is necessary to introduce the development course of ozone technology in China.This translation task is to introduce the development course of ozone generation technology and ozone application technology in China.Translation shift theory,proposed by J.C.Catford in 1965,features level shifts and category shifts.It is believed that translation shifts happen while departing from formal correspondence in the process of translating the source language into the target language.Taking the Chinese-English text of A Brief History of Ozone Technology in China as the research object,this report mainly elaborates the applicability of Catford’s translation shifts theory to the narrative texts of science and technology from four perspectives including level shifts,structure shifts,class shifts and unit shifts.Combining the features of the text and the differences between Chinese and English,the author selects typical examples in every perspective and analyzes these examples from the micro level including words,phrases and sentences.After analysis,the report testifies that level shifts can express the meaning of specific words in Chinese with grammatical inflection in English in terms of tenses and numbers;structure shifts can adjust the order of sentence components by transforming Chinese active voice into English passive voice,animate subjects into inanimate subjects,and prepositive attributives into postpositive attributives,which is more in line with English expression habits;class shifts can realize the transformation from Chinese dynamic language to English static language by transforming Chinese verbs into English nouns,prepositions and adjectives;and unit shifts can integrate scattered sentences in Chinese and transform them into English phrases or English single sentences,which is more in line with the rigor of the scientific and technological text expressions.In general,Catford’s shifts theory can help translators surpass obstacles between Chinese and English and focus on interpreting contents of the technical texts at the micro-perspective level.