E-C Translation Of Economic Texts Under The Guidance Of Catford’s Translation Shift Theory

Shift is common to see in English-Chinese translation.The smooth communication between different languages is often accompanied by many types of shifts,such as tense shift,personal shift,grammar shift and structure shift and the like.Catford(1965)defined the concept of “shift” as “deviation from formal equivalence in the process from the source language to the target language”,which include level shift and category shift,to facilitate the study of the communicative function between different languages.This theory has great reference and guiding significance for translation practice.The translated text selected in this thesis is from Part Four “The Sharing Economy as an Entrepreneurial Evolution of Electronic Commerce” and Part Seven “Fostering Open Innovation in Digital Startups: An Explorative Study of Norwegian Coworking Spaces” of the book Digital Entrepreneurship and the Sharing Economy.The subject matter is the economic report,which is a type of information-based text,with abstract language and technical terms.Under the guidance of Catford’s translation shift theory,this thesis evaluates and applies the level shift and category shift at the levels of vocabulary,syntax and text,and explores the feasibility of translating economic texts.The thesis comprises five parts.First,the thesis illustrates the background and purpose of the study.Next,it summarizes the achievements of translation shift theory research conducted by domestic and foreign scholars.And then the thesis introduces the framework of translation shift theory.The main body is case studies with theoretical guidance to explore various shifts in English-Chinese translation.Last is the conclusion.Research has found that Catford’s theory has guiding significance for the translation of economic report texts,which can maximize the content equivalence between Chinese and English.The translation of Digital entrepreneurship and Sharing Economy will assist domestic scholars to master the most cutting-edge foreign research on digital entrepreneurship and sharing economy,as well as provide a reference for the development of domestic start-ups.This thesis probes into the application of various types of shifts to maximize the retention of the original information,so as to provide some reference for scholars committed to the translation of texts related to sharing economy and digital economy.