On C-E Translation Strategies For Historical Narrative Text Based On Catford’s Translation Shift Theory

Historical narrative text,as a carrier of historical events,has both objectivity and narrativity,and its translation from Chinese into English increasingly serves as a bridge between China and Western countries in culture exchange.The Red Army Passes Through My Hometown records the historical events of the Long March of the Chinese Red Army.With precious and detailed materials,the book not only records the whole process of Long March comprehensively,systematically and accurately,but also is interspersed with some moving stories emerging during the Long March.The part of the book from Chapter 9 to Chapter 12 mainly relates the hardships endured by the Red Army for survival and in politics when they crossed over snowy mountains and went through grasslands in the Long March;the words and sentences are distinctively concise,accurate and vivid.Taking the translation of 10,000 words from Chapter 9 to Chapter 12,the author of this thesis adopts Catford’s translation shift theory to explore the strategies for translating such historical narrative texts.Catford puts forward the theory of “translation shift” to solve the problem of translation equivalence.Due to the huge difference between English and Chinese languages,the translator has to overcome immense difficulties to achieve translation equivalence.Translation shift theory is especially convenient for tackling the problem of equivalence when the translator turns the historical narrative texts into target texts,which will thus be made more acceptable for target readers as well as faithful to the original language;therefore,the quality of translator will be improved.The thesis illustrates some relevant theories of translation shift,including the background,nature and classification of Catford’s translation shift theory,introduces the characteristics of historical narrative texts,and by way of concrete examples analyzes their language features and translation difficulties.Taking Chapter 9 to Chapter 12 of The Red Army Passes Though My Hometown as an example,this thesis maps out four strategies for translating historical narrative text based on Catford’s level shift,structure shift,class shift and unit shift: shift of level from Chinese to English;shift of structure from Chinese into English;shift of class from Chinese toEnglish;and shift of unit from Chinese to English.Finally,it concludes the research in hope of offering strategies for the practice of C-E translation.