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ic structure in Chinese.So it is a challenge for translator to shift the syntacticstructures to conform to the convention of Chinese expression and transmitinformation precisely.Another translation difficulty is long sentence with severalclauses and modifiers.Several long sentences always constitute a paragraph in thesource text to make the text more concise,objective and elaborate.To conform toexpression habits of Chinese sentences,the translator need to reorganize the sentencestructures on the basis of fully understanding the source text.This is also a challengefor the bilingual competence of the translator.

Chapter Two Theoretical Basis

2.1 Introduction to Catford’s Translation Shifts Theory

Since the twentieth century,translation practices of various text emerged inwestern countries,which greatly promoted development of translation theories.Beinginfluenced by structural linguistics and transformational generative grammar,translation shifts theory has been focused and highlighted by western academia.

Translation shifts theory was formally put forward by British translation theoristand linguist John.C.Catford in his work A Linguistic Theory of Translation publishedin 1965.In this book,he pointed out translation refers to two different languages andany translation theory must be developed based on the theory of general linguistictheory.He defined translation as“the replacement of textual material in one language(SL)to by equivalent textual material in another language(TL)”(Catford,1965,p.24).In this process,he emphasized the core role of“equivalence”in translation.Thecentral issue of translation practice is to seek“TL translation equivalents”.Hedistinguished rank-bound translation and unbounded translation.Rank-boundtranslation means“TL translation equivalents”are confined to one rank or lower rank.Machine Translation is typical rank-bound translation,which usually translates atword or morpheme ranks.This kind of translation achieves equivalent only in theranks of word or morpheme while not include ranks of group,clause and sentence.Asa result,a bad translation was usually produced when using rank-bound translation.On the contrary,unbounded translation refers to total translation,of which TL equivalent could be found in the free ranks without be restricted by certain rank.In astandard total translation,the grammatical units to reach translation equivalence couldbe at any rank.Therefore,the shifts across different ranks are necessary in order tofind TL equivalent.

2.2 Studies on Translation Shifts Theory Abroad

Catford interpreted translation shifts occurred in the translation process from theperspective of general linguistics theory.He concluded the necessity of translationshifts by comparing linguistic differences between English and French and listed alarge number of translation cases.Since translation shifts theory was put forward byCatford,it was received extensive attention from other translation theorists.Foreignscholars studied it from theory itself.They mainly pointed some limitations ofCatford’s translation shifts theory and supplemented it from macro language levels.

Czech scholar Anton Popovic studied the application of translation shifts theoryin literary translation.Popovic believed Catford’s translation shifts theory fails toexplain shifts in all of linguistic aspects.He redefined“shift”as“all that did happenin the本论文由英语论文网提供整理，提供论文代写，英语论文代写，代写论文，代写英语论文，代写留学生论文，代写英文论文，留学生论文代写相关核心关键词搜索。