The Application Of Catford’s Category Shifts Theory In The Translation Of Prepositions And Prepositional Phrases In Popular Science Texts

With the deepening of exchanges between China and other countries in the world,the development and dissemination of new technologies has become increasingly rapid.Along with the development mentioned above,the publication of popular science has mushroomed,making the translation of popular science texts a hot research field.Choosing A Concise History of Computers,Smartphones and the Internet as the material,this report focuses on the application of Catford’s category shifts theory in the translation of prepositions and prepositional phrases in popular science texts.Moreover,this book is meticulous in logic and simple in words,which is conducive to the readers’ understanding.It popularizes basic computer and software knowledge to the public in a fashion friendly enough to the public,which is fairly valuable for promoting computer knowledge.Therefore,it is of profound practical significance to take this book as the material of this practice report.The material of this report is a popular science text,which is not only abundant in complex sentences,but also,in prepositions and prepositional phrases.In view of the inherent distinctions between Chinese and English,it is challenging to translate them into prepositions and prepositional phrases in Chinese without shifts.Generally,English prepositions are translated into verbs in Chinese.Therefore,it is rather necessary to systematically explore the translation strategies of English prepositions and prepositional phrases.Catford’s translation shifts theory is divided into two parts: level shifts and category shifts.The latter,however,can be further divided into structure shifts,class shifts,unit shifts and intra-system shifts.Adopting the category shifts,this report analyzes a large number of cases and proposes that when translating prepositions,class shifts can be carried out and translate the prepositions into verbs,conjunctions or adjectives.When translating prepositional phrases,we can apply unit shifts,which are able to translate prepositional phrases into words or sentences.Moreover,we can also draw upon structural shifts,which are capable of converting postpositive attributive into prepositive attributive and affirmative structures into negative structures and so on.This report is mainly composed of five parts.The first introduces the source text and the importance of this translation report.The second,however,summarizes the three steps of the translation process,which are pre-translation,translating and posttranslation.The third part explains the translation shifts theory and prepositions,discusses their research status and the possibility of applying the theory to the translation of prepositions.The fourth part discusses the practical application of translation shifts theory in the translation of prepositions.The last part serves as a summary of the whole report,including the findings and limitations.