A Report On The Translation Of Scientific Papers From The Perspective Of Catford’s Translation Shift Theory

This report is based on the translation of scientific papers from three scientific fields including artificial intelligence,digital image processing and petroleum exploration and development.Based on the translation shift theory of Catford,the source text and target text are compared,and it is found that level shifts and all four kinds of category shifts happen in the C-E translation of scientific papers studied in this report.Then,28 examples are selected from the source text,and the translation shifts in each example were identified.The causes of these shifts were also explored from the perspective of differences between Chinese and English.In the translation of scientific papers,translation shifts are caused by the differences between Chinese and English.Level shifts are mostly caused by the covertness of Chinese and the overtness of English,and category shifts are caused by differences in word building,syntax,collocations,etc.The translation shift theory provides an approach to analyze the differences between the source language and the target language and points out methods to deal with these differences,i.e.,translation shifts.Therefore,with the help of translation shifts,the translator can overcome the problems caused by the differences of two languages,making the target text more authentic.Finally,the translator discussed the guidance of translation shift theory on the translation of scientific papers.This report is expected to provide a reference for the translation of other scientific papers.