Translation Strategies For Prepositions And Prepositional Phrases In Social Science Texts From The Perspective Of Category Shifts

With the in-depth development of social science,there is a growing demand for terminology management knowledge.Two chapters(i.e.Managing Terminology Projects Concepts,Tools and Methods and Terminology Work and Crowdsourcing from Handbook of Terminology(Volume 1)were selected as the source text for the English-Chinese translation practice.The source text contains many long and difficult sentences,involving numerous prepositions and prepositional phrases,some of which have no Chinese equivalent forms.English prepositions are indispensable to structuring sentences as they are functional words that connect sentences and texts.However,Chinese prepositions are relatively infrequent partly because in Chinese verbs are often used instead of prepositions.Therefore,the differences between English and Chinese prepositions make it necessary to study the translation of English prepositions and prepositional phrases.Catford’s theory of “Category Shifts” systematically characterizes the types of Translation Shift at the levels of sentences,phrases and vocabulary,which is of great significance to guiding prepositions and prepositional phrases translation practice.This project report,based on Catford’s Category Shifts,discusses structure-shifts,class-shifts and unit-shifts in the target text from the perspective of the differences in syntactic structure,vocabulary application and expression.In some specific sentence structures,the shifts between subject-prominence and topic-prominence,and the shifts between affirmative and negative sentences can be carried out.English prepositions and prepositional phrases can also be translated into Chinese verbs or conjunctions in some cases.In order to express the meaning of a sentence more clearly,unit-shifts can also be carried out,i.e.the preposition or prepositional phrase can be downgraded to a word or upgraded to a clause.By analyzing the translation practice and translation methods of this project,the translator found that Catford’s Category Shifts theory is quite applicable in the translation of English prepositions and prepositional phrases.Therefore,this report could provide a new perspective for other translators,making the translator’s own contributions to improving the quality of translation.This translation practice report is divided into five chapters.The first chapter is the introduction,which briefly describes the translation task and the source text.The second chapter describes the whole process from preparations to proofreading.The third chapter establishes the theoretical framework and introduces the Category Shifts theory.Next,this chapter describes the research on prepositions and prepositional phrases at home.Finally,the translator explains the feasibility and guiding significance of Category Shifts in this translation report.The fourth chapter is the core chapter of the thesis,which illustrates the translation methods with case studies from the perspective of Catford’s Translation Shift and relevant case studies.The fifth chapter summarizes the research results,existing problems and deficiencies.