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Translation shifts
the best known taxonomy of translation shifts,
devised by Vinay and Darbelnet
E.g. Keep right = az samt rast beranid
Catford: TRANSLATION SHIFTS
• The small linguistic changes that occur
between ST and TT are known as translation
shifts.
• John Catford was the first scholar to use the
term in his A Linguistic Theory of Translation
(1965, see Section B Text B4.1).His definition of
shifts is ‘departures from formal
correspondence in the process of going from
the SL to the TL’ .
Formal correspondence
A formal correspondent is defined by Catford as
‘any TL category (unit, class, structure,
element of structure, etc.) which can be said
to occupy, as nearly as possible, the “same”
place in the “economy” of the TL as the given
SL category occupies in the SL’ (Catford
1965:27). In simplified terms, this means a TL
piece of language which plays the same role in
the TL system as an SL piece of language plays
in the SL system.
Catford: Two Kinds of Translation Shifts