An Analysis Of Translation Shifts In The English Translations Of Chinese Legislative Texts

Translation shift is a common phenomenon in translation of various genres, such as in the English translation of Chinese legislative texts. However, there has been hardly an analysis done in translation between English and Chinese, let alone in the field of legal translation. Therefore, the present study attempts to make a descriptive analysis of the translation shifts in the English translations of Chinese legislative texts and explore into the manifestations and revelations of the translation shifts. To achieve the research objective, the present study raises three research questions: 1. What types of translation shifts are present in the Translations? 2. What kinds of criteria are needed in order to determine the appropriateness of translation shifts? 3. Do the translation shifts comply with the criteria proposed?The present study defines translation shift to be all that appears as new with respect to the original, or fails to appear where it might have been expected and explicates that translation shift analysis should be descriptive rather than prescriptive. Translation shifts in the English translations of Chinese legislative texts should be analyzed from micro and macro perspectives. Level shifts, unit shifts, structure shifts, class shifts and system shifts are supposed to be present at micro level, and at macro level semantic shifts and pragmatic shifts can be identified. The present study further attempts to propose two criteria that can be used to measure the appropriateness of the translation shifts: linguistic and legal criteria are norms that govern the acceptability of the translation shifts.A number of instances are extracted from several Chinese laws and regulations, and the framework proposed together with the format designed by Munday is used to analyze the translation shifts by type. On the basis of these examples, the present study acknowledges the feasibility of the framework proposed, by successfully verifying the existence of the seven types of translation shifts and determining the acceptability thereof.The present study makes a brand-new attempt by incorporating translation shift analysis with legal translation. It is hoped that the framework proposed here can serve, on further modification and optimization, as a model of translation quality assessment in the Translations and provide helpful inspiration to the legal translators.