Translation Shift

Approach

Key notions and

concepts

•

Translation Shift - small linguistic changes
occurring in translation of source text (ST)
into target text (TT)

•

‘shift’ - first used by Catford (linguistic
approach)

•

Taxonomy - classification of things or
concepts, including the underlying
principles

•

Vinay and Dalbernet’s taxonomy

– Direct translation:

• Borrowing
• Calque
• Literal translation

– Oblique translation

• Transposition
• Modulation 
• Equivalence
• Adaptation

– Function at the level of the lexicon, syntax and message

•

Catford’s linguistic approach

Catford (1965/2000)

1. level shifts
2. category shifts:

• structural
• class 
• unit or rank 
• intra-system 

•

van Lueven-Zwart’s detailed model

– 8 categories and 37 sub-categories!

Classification based on Vinay and

Darbelnet’s

categorization of translation

Two ‘methods’ covering seven procedures:
• 1. direct translation, which covers

borrowing, calque and literal
translation, and

• 2. oblique translation, which is

transposition, modulation, equivalence
and adaptation.

Borrowing

• To overcome a lacuna, usually a metalinguistic

one (e.g. a new technical process, an unknown
concept), borrowing is the simplest of all
translation methods.

• in order to introduce the flavour of the SL culture

into a translation, foreign terms may be used,

Calque

• A calque is a special kind of borrowing whereby a

language borrows an expression form of another,

but then translates literally each of its elements.

The result is either:

• i. a lexical calque, as in the first example below,

i.e. a calque which respects the syntactic

structure of the TL, whilst introducing a new

mode of expression; or

• ii. a structural calque, as in the second example,

below, which introduces a new construction into

the language,

Literal translation

• Literal, or word for word, translation is the direct

transfer of a SL text into a grammatically and
idiomatically appropriate TL text in which the
translators’ task is limited to observing the
adherence to the linguistic servitudes of the TL.

Transposition

• The method called Transposition involves

replacing one word class with another without
changing the meaning of the message.

Modulation

• Modulation is a variation of the form of the

message, obtained by a change in the point of
view. This change can be justified when,
although a literal, or even transposed, translation
results in a grammatically correct utterance, it is
considered unsuitable, unidiomatic or awkward in
the TL.

Equivalence

• We have repeatedly stressed that one and the

same situation can be rendered by two texts
using completely different stylistic and structural
methods. In such cases we are dealing with the
method which produces equivalent texts.

Adaptation

• With this seventh method we reach the extreme

limit of translation: it is used in those cases
where the type of situation being referred to by
the SL message is unknown in the TL culture. In
such cases translators have to create a new
situation that can be considered as being
equivalent. Adaptation can, therefore, be
described as a special kind of equivalence, a
situational equivalence. [They] are particularly
frequent in the translation of book and film titles,

These procedures are applied on three

levels of language:

• i. the lexicon
• ii. the grammatical structures and
• iii. the ‘message’, which is used to refer to the

situational utterance and some of the higher text

elements such as sentence and paragraphs.

• At the level of message, Vinay and Darbelnet discuss

such strategies as compensation,

• an important term in translation which is linked to the

notion of loss and gain.

Compensation, loss and gain

• A translation technique used to compensate for

translation loss. The translator offsets an

inevitable loss at one point in the text by

adding a suitable element at another point,

achieving a compensatory translation gain.

• Compensation in an interpretive sense,

restoring life to the TT, is the fourth

‘movement’ of Steiner’s hermeneutic process

(Steiner 1998:39).

Van Lueven-Zwart’s

comparative-descriptive

model

•

The model is ‘intended for the description
of integral translations of fictional texts’
and comprises (1) a comparative model
and (2) a descriptive model. Van Leuven-
Zwart considers that trends identified by
these complementary models provide
indications of the translational norms
adopted by the translator.

•

1 The comparative model involves a
detailed comparison of ST and TT and a
classification of all the microstructural
shifts (within sentences, clauses and
phrases).There are three main categories
of shifts:

•

modulation

•

modification

•

mutation

•

2 The descriptive model is a
macrostructural model, designed for the
analysis of translated literature. It is based
on concepts borrowed from narratology
and stylistics.