An E-C Translation Report On Smart Machines And Service Work (Excerpts) Guided By Translation Shifts Theory

This is an English-to-Chinese translation practice report on the Smart Machines and Service Work,and the translation materials are selected from chapter two and chapter three of this book.In this book,the author critically examines the rhetoric on automation,robots taking over jobs and a future without work in the context of a stagnating global economy.The source text is a typical informative text.When translating this kind of text,it is necessary to be faithful to the original text and pay attention to the accurate communication of meaning.The viewpoint of translation shifts theory sacrificing formal equivalence to pursue textual equivalence fits this point precisely.Guided by Catford’s translation shifts theory,the translator selects real cases in the translation practice,analyzes and summarizes the guiding role of this theory in informative text translation from two levels of level shifts and category shifts,and discusses the applicability of this theory in translation practice.Based on the differences between English and Chinese in habits of thinking,ways of expression,vocabulary usage and syntactic structure,the translator mainly discusses the phenomenons of level shifts,structure shifts,class shifts,and unit shifts in terms of vocabulary,syntax and grammar levels.In lexical translation,the translator deals with plural nouns and parts of speech by using the methods of level shifts and class shifts,and analyzes the translation cases of shifting nouns,adjectives and prepositions into verbs,thus realizing the shift from static English to dynamic Chinese.In syntactic translation,the translator employs structure shifts and unit shifts to shift passive voice into active voice,shift postpositive attributives into prepositive attributives,and shift complex phrases and long difficult sentences into Chinese short sentences,thus improving the readability of the target text on the basis of maintaining content equivalence.Under the guidance of Catford’s translation shifts theory,the translator realizes a dual conversion of semantics and context,so as to make the translation conform to the reading habits of target readers while keeping the content equivalent to the source text.Through the translation and case analysis,it can be seen that this theory can be a good guide for informative text translation and is much practical and operable.Through the analysis and summary of translation shifts methods in the translation of informative texts in this report,the translator hopes that this translation practice project can provide more references for the translation of such texts.