| Based on The Scandal of Susan Sontag co-edited by Barbara Ching,Chair of the Department of English at the University of Iowa,and Jennifer Wagner-Lawlor,an associate professor at the Pennsylvania State University,this thesis applies Catford’s translation shifts theory to analyze specific examples existed in the level shifts and category shifts between English and Chinese,with an aim of exploring the application value of the theory in academic translation.The Scandal of Susan Sontag,consisting of 12 academic essays,thoroughly explores Sontag herself and her works from new perspectives.The source text is selected from the second and third chapters of the collection of academic articles,in which the author focuses on the relationship between Sontag’s intellects identity and American popular culture as well as the American Ideal in Sontag’s works respectively.As an academic text,the collection carries its own unique language characteristics: nominalized expressions,complex sentences,long and difficult sentences as well as frequently used passive voices.The writer of the thesis is easily affected by the structure of the source language during translation.In order to solve the above-mentioned difficulties,the writer intends to adopt Catford’s translation shifts theory.Translation shifts theory is divided into level shifts and category shifts.According to the theory,the thesis will settle the difficulties in the sentence level and the level below by methods of level shifts and three aspects of category shifts,namely,class shifts,unit shifts and structure shifts.Through this translation practice,the writer believes that “translation shifts” run through the entire translation process,and translation shifts theory can provide a higher theoretical guidance for academic translation. |
