A Report On The English-Chinesc Translation Of Multimodality And Identity(Excerpt) From The Perspective Of Translation Shifts Theory

This report is based on the English-Chinese translation of the first two chapters of Multimodality and Identity,a newly published academic book.There is no Chinese edition of this work at present.The source text has a strong academic atmosphere,with the characteristics of wide coverage,many terms,complicated sentences,strong logic,etc,and has high academic value.With the Translation Shifts Theory proposed by John Cunnison Catford,the famous British translation theorist,this report provides a summary of the translation practice.Major translation strategies are summarized by drawing attention to the analysis of lexical and syntactic and discourse characteristics of the source text.For lexical translation,consulting professional dictionaries and etymologies are ways of term translation to determine the exact meanings of polysemy.The existing expressions and transliteration are frequently applied for the translation of prop nouns.At the syntactic level,structure shifts and category shifts are adopted to disentangle complicated relationships between sentences with the reference of the context.As for textual level,addition and omission are applied for a more smooth translation in order to achieve close natural equivalence.This translation task could help more Chinese people who are interested in multimodal study and media to have a good knowledge of multimodality and provide more convenience for the scholars in this field.Furthermore,it is hoped that the fulfillment of the report could further enrich the practical application of Catford’s Translation Shifts Theory,and put forward several translation strategies that are feasible in academic translation.