卡特福德翻译理论是在改革开放初期与奈达翻译理论几乎同时引进中国的.docVIP

Nanjing University of Finance and Economy School of Foreign Language 英语语言文学 MG09010004 籍赟寅About JCCatfords Translation Theories.Abstract: The paper aims to introduce JK Catford and his translation theories. In the first part, the paper briefly stated Catford personal experience, educational background and careers. In The following part, the paper turned to introduce Catofords translation theories which mainly cover several questions like translation definition, translation shift and so on. Based on the second part, the paper gives comments on the contributions and the limitations of Catfords theory. In the final part, the paper came into conclusion. Introduction: Catford and his translation theory have been introduced into our nation barely at the same time when Nidas translation enters into China in 1981. In the following year, theres domestic scholar who published an article Exploiting New Access to Translation Theory with a subtitle of Introducing Catfords Master Piece of A Linguistic Theory of Translation. Thereafter, Catford became well-known by Chinese scholars. However, compared with the great popularity enjoyed by Nida, Catford is not a hotspot in academic research. In the following part, the paper dedicates to introduce Catford the scholar and his translation theories. About JKCatford Catford is known as a famous English linguist and translation theorist. He was born in Edinburgh, Scotland, on March 26, 1917. He finished his education successively in Edinburgh Royal Senior High Scholl, Edinburgh University (1935-39) and majored in French linguistic and literature. After World War II, he sought for Masters degree in the University of London and his major domain is on the Russian language and other Slavic language as well as oriental language and African language. In 1952, he has obtained the Masters degree. Besides developing his career in English and America, he also works for Universities in Middle East and Southeast Asia. For a long time, hes been dealing with the linguistic education and research works. He has a good command of French and is proficient in Russian and Modern Greek and dabbles in Germany, Sanskrit, Latin, Arabic, Turkish and Indonesian language and so on. His academic achievement focuses on the phonetics and also involves in General Linguist, Applied Linguist, grammar, dialect and other fields. Among catfords important academic works, A linguistic Theory of Translation exerts the greatest influence. In this work, Catford integrates the descriptive linguistics into the translation analysis and he becomes one of representatives of linguistic approach to translation studies in 1960s. Major Translation Contentions of JKCatfords In his masterpiece of A linguistic Theory of Translation, Catford puts great efforts on the discussion of translation definition, translation equivalence and translation shift. In the following part, the paper is going to give description from these three aspects. In defining translation, Catford gives his version, that is, the replacement of textual material in one language by equivalent textual material in another language. Based on the definition, he further raised the theory of translation equivalence. According to him, the core problem in translation practice is to find equivalent factors. The so-called equivalence can be established in any cross point either in the levels (include grammar, vocabulary, pronunciation, morphology so on) and the ranks (like syntactic structure, sentence, phrase, word and morpheme and so on). The equivalent relation is not established on the same langue meanings of SL and TL, but on their same characteristics under a detailed context. Different contextual system has different characteristic in forms, and it requires adjustment in language during the translation in order to achieve the translation equivalence. Moreover, in describing the translation equivalence, Catford gives further explanations. According to Catford, translation is not merely a meaning conveying between two languages, instead, it is the meaning replacement between two languages, with an aim to enable two versions to have the same function under the same context. Catford contends that the core task of translation is established based on the translation theory of “equivalence” which is also becomes the basis and the proof of the “replacement” definition. Another important component in Catfords translation theory is the shift theory. Actually, Catford took the initial to adopt the term of “shift” to build up his translation studies. The so-called translation shift refers to the form shift which occurs when the SL is translated into the TL, that is, the language shift during the translation. There are basically two types of shift, respectively, level shift and category shift. The level shift means those equivalent units which are placed in different language levels. For example, some definition is expressed by grammar in one language while it is expressed by vocabulary in another language. The next one is category shift which includes structure shift, class shift, unit shift and intra-system shift. The structure shift refers to the structural adjustment in the domain of translation strategies. The class shift refers to the change of word property in the domain of translation strategy. The unit shift is the literal translation or the word for word translation. The intra-system shift only occurs when SL and TL share similar language systems and they have different structures in translation. Contribution and Limitations of CatfordContributions Catford took the lead in doing the translation research rather than sticking to old translation criticism. By adopting systematic grammar, Catford integrates the transition mechanism of language categories and the language level into the transaltion study and carry out further studies on the constituent analysis and translation equivalence. Moreover, he has raised a set of relatively wholesome translation theoretical models, which enables translation studies to be developed towards the objective and scientific approach. Limitations Catford also suffered sharp criticism from academic circles. Most of these criticisms came from people who focus on abstract and ideal examples that Catford gives to illustrate his point. These examples somehow omitted the textual level. Venuti pointed out that Catford concentrate his effort on the discussion of words and sentences and his examples are all created by himself rather than being genuine ones. Snell-Hornby also gave her opinions in 1988 that, Catford uses isolated and simple examples. She contended that the translation process cant be simply regarded as language practice; instead, it carries textual, cultural and situational factors and so on. Meanwhile, she doesnt agree the statement given by Catford that the linguistics is the only support