The Role of Shifts in Translation: The Case of English Language vs. Persian Language

Abstract

The aim of this paper was to investigate the application of different types of shifts and their influence in translation in various languages, especially English and Persian Languages. To this purpose, the researcher attempted to benefit from various approaches of shift analysis such as grammar, style, and pragmatics relevant to the proposed study, based on the translation strategies proposed by Vinay and Darbelnet (1995), that is, direct translation, oblique translation strategies and their subgroups at the three levels of lexicon, structure, and message. The researcher also conducted a detailed linguistic analysis of the structure in both English and Persian Languages commonly referred to as the analysis of micro-structure and the analysis of macro- structure. The obtained results revealed that the occurrence of shifts in translation reflects the translator’s awareness of the linguistic and the non-linguistic discrepancies between SL and TL. In fact, shifts turn out to be as problem-solving strategies to minimize the inevitable loss of meaning when rendering a text from one language into another, and preference between different types of shifts at different levels requires various types of equivalence in translation.