A Report On E-C Translation Of Guilt,Forgiveness,and Moral Repair(Excerpts)Under The Guidance Of Translation Shifts Theory

This is an E-C translation report on the Guilt,Forgiveness,and Moral Repair(Excerpts),a collection of academic papers edited by Professor Maria-Sibylla Lotter and Professor Saskia Fischer.This is a social science work written by different German scholars,which focuses on the cross-cultural comparison of moral and ethical concepts such as “forgiveness”.The work is rich in linguistic phenomena,with various long and complex sentences.The excerpted chapters are informative text,which requires the translator to adopt necessary shifts in the translation to produce a more faithful and idiomatic translation.In writing this report,the translator accomplished the translation practice under the guidance of Catford’s Translation Shifts Theory.Translation Shifts Theory,initially proposed by J.C.Catford,which addresses micro-level language issues from a linguistic perspective,and focuses on dynamic equivalence rather than formal equivalence between languages.This report aims to solve difficulties such as the shifts of passive voice,inanimate subjects and nominalization,by the application of two major types of shifts,namely,level shifts and category shifts,on informative text translation through case studies.Through the analysis and research,the author believes that Translation Shifts has strong guiding and practical significance for the translation of social science texts,especially in the sense of translation techniques.Since the largest linguistic unit to which the original Translation Shifts Theory is applicable is the sentence,it could be tricky finding the logics between sentences and the connections or the background origins within the context.In order to strengthen the logics between sentences,paragraphs or texts,the author explores the translation of culture-loaded words like idioms and phrases from the macroscopical perspective as the context.Through the study of a series of concrete examples,this report demonstrates the guidance and value of Translation Shifts Theory in the practice of E-C translation regarding informative texts,which provides certain reference for translation studies of related types.