E-C Translation Of The Non-Literary Text The Generation Myth (Excerpt) Under The Guidance Of Catford’s Translation Shifts

The main purpose of non-literary translation is to convey the true message of the original text to readers,whose grasp of the original text can also be influenced by the readability of the translation.Therefore,whether non-literary translation achieves accuracy and the readability can be regarded as the main criterion for measuring its quality.The text for this translation practice is selected from the academic monograph The Generation Myth by British scholar Bobby Duffy,which is a typical non-literary text written in an objective narrative tone,with wide range of terminologies,nominalization and complex sentences,providing various examples for studying the strategies of non-literary translation.In the process of translation,due to the inherent differences between English and Chinese,it is impossible to achieve complete formal equivalence between the two languages,and translation shifts are necessary in the accurate understanding and smooth expression of nonliterary texts.Catford’s translation shifts theory summarizes various types of translation shifts in detail and provides a practical method from the micro level.Guided by this theory,this thesis conducts a study on the text,taking the differences in grammar,vocabulary and syntax between English and Chinese as the starting point,and discusses the level shifts,structural shifts,class shifts,unit shifts and intra-system shifts phenomenon in the translation and their corresponding strategies.After analyzing specific examples,this thesis testifies that the Catford translation shifts theory can help translators have a better understanding of the differences between English and Chinese and adopt flexible shift strategies in order to create translations that can keep the information of the original text without loss of acceptability.Therefore,the theory is highly practicable in improving the accuracy and readability of non-literary translation.