Translation Of Scientific Texts Under The Guidance Of Translation Shifts Theory

Under the background of the scientific and technological development and global economic integration,the translation of scientific texts becomes more and more significant.This source text used in the report is an excerpt from the American town hall meeting-AI for Science,which is a typical scientific report,and also an informative text with the following characteristics: strong professionalism,many terms,variable sentence structures and tight language logic.The translation of such scientific texts aims to transmit accurate and true information and achieve equivalence in content with the source text.Based on Catford’s Translation Shifts Theory,the paper explores how to properly use category shifts to transform the original awkward translation into smooth and natural one,achieve equivalent translation and improve the translation quality in the translation of scientific texts.It is found that first,unit shifts,structural shifts and class shifts are used most frequently in the translation of scientific texts,with unit shifts being the most common.Second,class shifts are often used to achieve functional equivalence between nouns,verbs and prepositions in the source text and the target text.Third,unit shifts can be used to break down complex English long sentences into multiple shorter Chinese sentences,which can be reorganized according to the logic of Chinese,thus creating a more natural and smoother translation.The report further confirms that Catford’s Translation Shifts Theory is an effective way to guide the translation of scientific reports,providing suggestions for the translation of scientific texts and promoting the cause of scientific translation.