A Report On The C-E Translation Of Rail Construction Text From The Perspective Of Catford’s Translation Shifts Theory

In recent years,with the rapid economic development,the acceleration of globalization,and the proposal of China’s the Belt and Road Initiative,transnational cooperation has gradually penetrated into every aspect of our lives.As the "infrastructure giant" in the world,China has been unanimously recognized and praised for its strength and technology in the aspect of infrastructure construction at home and abroad.Therefore,China’s infrastructure enterprises have also received a large number of construction orders from home and abroad,including but not limited to rail construction,hospital construction,airport construction,etc.,among which the rail construction orders are the most numerous.Therefore,this report selects some rail construction texts as translation materials for translation practice and analysis.The rail construction text is a kind of scientific and technological text,covering a wide range of areas,such as subgrade works,communication works,power works,signal works,track works,culvert works,road works,oil unloading equipment works,house-building works,and other professional fields,with a considerable number of professional terms.There is a relatively high requirement for the accuracy of terms,clarity of logic,and conciseness of expression.Moreover,the texts of rail construction are informational texts with rigorous wording,objective expression,straightforward and concise language,and strong logic.It pays more attention to the transmission of the text’s meaning rather than the formal consistency,which happens to coincide with Catford’s translation theory of focusing on textual equivalence rather than formal correspondence.The Translation Shifts Theory proposed by Catford in 1965 defines the concept of "shifts",gives two major types of shifts:level shifts and category shifts,and divides category shifts into four types:structural shifts,class shifts,unit shifts,and intra-system shifts.The report uses Catford’s Translation Shifts Theory as a guide to translate and analyze the source text at the lexical and syntactic levels.Through this translation practice,the translator has a deeper understanding of the Translation Shifts Theory,and a more systematic understanding of the differences between Chinese and English,which is of great significance to the translator’s own future growth and development.Through this translation practice and theoretical application,the translator found that Catford’s Translation Shifts Theory can well guide the translation practice of rail construction texts with trivial information and straightforward language.The level shifts can basically solve the translation shifts in quantity and tense caused by the difference between Chinese and English;the category shifts focus on solving the difference in sentence structure at the sentence level,the different parts of speech at the lexical level,the problem of different units between words,phrases and sentences,and different expressions due to differences in Chinese and English language systems.However,Catford’s Translation Shifts Theory pays more attention to the shifts at the sentence level and below,and neglects the shifts at the paragraph level and discourse level.Therefore,the translator has also made some practices and studies on the shifts at paragraph level and discourse level in the process of translation and has made certain efforts in the integrity and coherence of the translation.