Translation Of English Abstract Nouns From The Perspective Of Translation Shift Theory

In recent years,the concept of green development has gained popular support,and every country tries to find out a way that suits their national conditions.The second and third chapters are selected from Loving and Studying Nature: Celebrating the Earth through History,Culture and Education.The book focuses on the advantages and disadvantages of mining mineral resources in Broken Hill,Australia,and discusses the importance of environmental protection behind the exploitation and utilization of mineral resources.The source text is rich in abstract nouns which result in a large number of long and difficult sentences.Meanwhile,there are great differences between English and Chinese.English often goes with an impersonal style and prefers nouns,especially abstract nouns,while Chinese often prefer personal subjects and uses verbs.Therefore,it is very important to study how to transform abstract nouns into proper Chinese structures,which is also helpful for us to better analyze and understand the source text.Catford’s translation shift theory borrowed Halliday’s systematic grammar and its classification of language “levels” to illustrate the phenomenon of translation shifts,and systematically summarized the types of translation shifts at the level of sentence,phrase and vocabulary.Moreover,this theory emphasizes information transmission and concerns the level below the sentence,not involving the level of paragraph and text.So,it is particularly suitable for the translation of English abstract nouns at the lexical level.The specific operations are as follows:(1)In terms of level shifts,lexical means(adding quantifiers or specific words)are used to achieve the grammatical plurals of the source language.(2)As for class shifts,English abstract nouns can be converted into verbs,adjectives and adverbs according to their characteristics and the sentence meaning.(3)Unit shifts mean English abstract nouns can be translated into phrases and sentences depending on the degree of lexicalization.(4)Intra-system shifts mainly involve the translation of English abstract nouns into Chinese concrete ones.Translating English abstract nouns under the guidance of translation shift theory can make the whole text more fluent.This report is divided into five chapters.The first chapter is the introduction,which briefly describes the source text and the significance of the task.The second chapter contains three steps of translation practice,namely pre-translation,while-translation and post-translation(or proofreading).The third chapter elaborates on translation shift theory,presents the definition,classification and differences of English and Chinese abstract nouns and points out the feasibility and guiding significance of applying translation shift theory to this report.The fourth chapter is the core chapter of the translation report,which illustrates the translation methods with relevant case studies under the guidance of translation shift theory.The fifth chapter concludes this report with findings and limitations.