The Application Of Catford’s Translation Shift Theory In The Chinese Translation Of English Sci-tech Papers

English sci-tech papers are the important sources for people to acquire new knowledge and information;and excellent translations of these papers are conductive to the exchange and promotion of science and technology.This paper selects“Antibiotic Stewardship and Its Implications for Agricultural Animal-Human Relationships: Insights from an Intensive Dairy Farm in England” as the source text,which focuses on the antibiotic stewardship for farm animals,highlights the well-being and health of these animals and takes human-animal relationships into consideration.Its theme coincides with the current topic of people’s attention.Additionally,it entails the same features as the English sci-tech papers,like the extensive use of complex long sentences,passive sentences,nominalized structure and post-attributives,etc.In the process of translation,if the form of grammar in the original text is completely copied,the words in the target texts will be unintelligible;the sentences will be verbose;the target language text will be poorly-organized;there is no logic in sentences and it is hard for readers to understand the main ideas.Therefore,appropriate translation methods are applied in the process of translation,which can help to solve the problems mentioned above.Catford’s translation shift theory attaches importance to text equivalence rather than formal equivalence,which is in line with the requirements of accuracy and expressiveness for Chinese translation of English sci-tech papers.Level shift(including grammar shift and vocabulary shift)and category shift(including structure shift,class shift and unit shift)have provided translation methods for this practice.In the process of Chinese translation of English sci-tech papers,the problem that the content that can be expressed in English grammar but has no corresponding grammatical expression in Chinese can be solved by grammar shift,that is,the grammatical expression is expressed by words;the problem that there is no lexical equivalent of words and vocabularies in English and Chinese can be solved by vocabulary shift,that is,the lexical meaning of some words will be shifted;the problem of unclear translation can be solved by structure shift through shifting the internal structure of the unit of the original language;the problem of retaining the parts of speech of the original language that makes the translation difficult to understand can be solved by class shift,that is,solve the problem by means of shift of the parts of speech of the original vocabulary;the problem of complicated and lengthy translation from long English sentences into Chinese can be solved by unit shift,that is,long sentences can be shifted to Chinese short sentences and its order can be adjusted.Then it can be concluded that translation shift theory can be well applied for solving the problems in the Chinese translation of English sci-tech papers.With level and category shifts,translation will be accurate and expressive;concise,clear,and smooth;objective and well-organized.With logic and coherence in the whole text,the translation can well achieve the function of rendering knowledge and information in English sci-tech papers.