An E-C Translation Report On A Medical Consensus Statement Under The Guidance Of Translation Shift Theory

This is an E-C translation practice report,where the English source text is an expert consensus statement on the pacemaker devices and mode selection jointly released by the American Heart Association and the American College of Cardiology Foundation in 2012.This consensus statement provides the latest reviews in the treatment of heart disease and reports the recommendations of the consensus writing group on pacemaker device and mode selection.This consensus statement belongs to the medical text of the scientific text,so it is characterized by rigorous and objective expressions.At the lexical level,it has many professional terms and abstract nouns.At the syntactic level,it uses more passive structures and attributive clauses.Therefore,the translation difficulties largely come from the differences in level and category between Chinese and English expressions.Under such circumstances,the translator chose Catford’s translation shift theory to guide the translation practice.In the translation process,the translator first used the methods like intra-system shifts and class shifts to deal with the translation of amphibian medical terms and abstract nouns at the lexical level.At the syntactic level,the translator used the methods like combination and splitting to translate the passive voice and long attributive clauses,so as to improve the accuracy of the translation.Through a large number of case studies,this paper proves the necessity and importance of shifts in medical translation and the feasibility of translation shift theory in the E-C translation of the medical text.It is hoped that this translation practice report can provide a reference for the translation of similar medical texts in the future.