Report On C-E Translation From The Perspective Of Catford’s Translation Shifts Theory

Against the backdrop of the Information Age,the social media industry has seen a strong growth both at home and abroad over the past few years.Compared with traditional news media like newspapers and magazines,social media has broken the limit of time and space through the Internet.By using social networking platforms,most of the domestic well-known news agencies are able to provide latest news around the world for mobile device users,making it far easier and more convenient to get information.In this translation practice,the translator mainly compiles hot news from the official social media accounts of domestic news agencies including Xin Hua Net,The Paper,and The People’s Daily,revises first drafts reviewed by the editing department and posts the final versions on the backstage of the We Chat official account of China Daily.Apart from the three factors including patronage,traditional values and audience expectations,news published via official accounts will be influenced by requirements of typesetting,page views,and word count.Therefore,instead of simply following the faithfulness principle,translators need to adopt a translation strategy that fits those features.Besides,in news translation,it is often necessary to rewrite the news headline or change the sentence and paragraph order of the original text,aiming to enhancing the readability of the translated text.On account of the above characteristics,the author chooses J.C.Catford’s translation shifts theory as the theoretical basis,and take some typical text materials as examples to analyze the strategies and methods in ChineseEnglish news translation from the perspectives of level shifts and category shifts put forward by Catford.This thesis aims to explore how to make news translation as much as possible to confirm to the reading habits of the original audience.It is hoped that this paper will provide some references for other scholars in news translation study.This report consists of four parts: first,the description of the translation task: this chapter introduces the background and the content of the translation task.At the same time,it describes the specific requirements of the intern translator of China Daily;second,the description of the translation process: it describes the author’s preparation,translation,review and adjustment of the English translated texts;third,the analysis of the translation cases: this chapter summarizes the development of Catford’s translation shifts theory,analyzes its applicability in news compiling process and introduces suitable translation methods and techniques adopted in the cases,such as comprehensive translation,omission,long sentence splitting as well as word order adjustment;fourth,the summary of the translation practice: it consists of the translator’s understanding and the harvest of the translation project,the problems faced in the practice,the limitations in the translation process and the prospect for relevant research as well as personal future career.