Formal shifts in English‐Chinese translation

Abstract

There are two types of formal shifts in English‐Chinese translation: (a) shifts within the same rank and (b) shifts across ranks. This study of translation shifts is based upon the scale of ranks in systemic‐functional grammar as expounded by Catford (1965). Its purpose is to find out major types of formal shifts in English‐Chinese translation. Attempts to set up governing principles on shifts in word classes at the rank of ‐word yield few convincing results, because Chinese words are less formally distinctive than English words. Accordingly, in this article, shifts in word classes are studied at a higher rank. The ranks of phrase and clause provide deeper insights into the mechanisms of English‐Chinese translation. In Chinese, subject‐predicate phrases and verb phrases are not formally distinctive rom clauses. The distinction between a phrase and a clause is only a matter of placement. This simple nature of Chinese determines the unique role of the phrase in the structuring process of the Chinese text When rendered into Chinese, an English phrase may have either a Chinese clause or a Chinese phrase as its counterpart. The English clause is subject‐prominent and the Chinese clause topic‐prominent So, translation at the rank of clause is the reconstruction of a formal structure into a semantic structure. In this article this is termed ‘deformalization’. Moreover, an English clause is also a potential Chinese phrase, depending on the placement of its Chinese counterpart The rank of sentence is actually a conglomeration of clauses in certain logical patterns. A reshuffling of logical relations and a deduction of the number of connectives are major trends in English‐Chinese translation. This is called ‘paratacti‐calization.’ In English‐Chinese translation, the phrase is the structuring unit and the clause and the phrase are the destructuring units.