The Application Of Catford’s Theory Of Translation Shifts In English For Agricultural Science And Technology

The purpose of translation is to achieve the closest correspondence between the source language (SL) and the target language (TL) on the semantic, syntactic and pragmatic levels. Among them, equivalence on the semantic level is the basic required to be actualized. However, due to various interruptions in the process of translation, it is hard to achieve complete equivalence on all three levels simultaneously. In1965, Catford first proposed the theory of "translation shift" in his book-A Linguistic Theory of Translation. As he said, translation shift means departures from formal correspondence in the process of going from the SL to TL for the purpose of equivalence on the semantic level, which means the translator, in the process of translation, should try their best to pursue textual equivalence not formal correspondence and the departures from formal correspondence is inevitable while approaching to textual equivalence.With the rapid development of agricultural science and technology, English for Agricultural Science and Technology translation requires much higher quality and more urgent demand. Agricultural science and technology text is a technical text, a kind of expository information text, lays more emphasis on the expression of meaning and does require one-to-one correspondence between SL and TL. That content is more important than the form is the basic principle of English for Science and Technology translation. Catford’s Translation Shifts are grounded on the sacrifice of "formal correspondence", which attaches more importance to "semantic equivalence" and accords with the emphasis on content against form.In the case of part of the translation of Cornell-Nanking Story, this article mainly discusses the application of Catford’s translation shifts to Agricultural science and technology translation from the aspects of level shifts, structure-shifts, class-shifts, unit-shifts, intra-system shifts, in order to offer a brand-new perspective for Agricultural science and technology translation.