Translation Shifts in the Persian Translation of a Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens

Abstract

Translators use different strategies and approaches in the process of translation. One of these approaches is shift in translation. This study intends to find the realization of Catford’s shifts in the Persiantranslation of Charles Dickens’ “A Tale of Two Cities” by Ebrahim Younesi. The aim of this study is to find which types of shifts the translator uses, to compare the SL and the TL versions, and to investigate how faithful the translator is to the original text. Furthermore, it intends to find the problems translators face during the translation process. This paper analyses different kinds of category shifts which Catford divides into four subgroups: structure shifts, class shifts, unit shifts and intra-system shifts in translation. To this end, forty sentences ofthe first six chapters of the novel were selected randomly and compared with their corresponding parts in the Persian translation. This study shows that among forty sentences that include forty-three shifts, unit shift is the most frequent type of shift. 37.5% of shifts are unit shifts, 30% class shifts, 12.5% structure shifts and 27.5% intra system shifts. It also shows that shifts are inevitable in some places in the translation process and this is because ofdifferent natures of languages and variations that exist among them, so the translator is forced to deviate from the source text. DOI: 10.5901/ajis.2013.2n1p391