today we are going to talk about um catford's uh translation shifts which were done in the in the 60s in 1965 that was the first time that article by catford was actually been being used and been talked about now what is so special about these shifts is that um when do we use them actually we use them only when it is impossible to match the formal equivalence in translation as you know the formal equivalence is relating to the actual um structure and content or meaning of the sentence so when you cannot match the actual formal equivalence you are bound to as a translator to go for what's called translation shifts and these translation shifts are extremely useful when it is impossible to match the actual uh structure or class or unit um uh of translation and that is when you use them uh actually these uh shifts now what are shifts in translation according to catford in 1965 he's saying that they are the departure or departures from formal equivalence in the translation process from sl to the tl so when you are departing from the formal equivalence the exact equivalence if you like in terms of linguistics linguistic equivalence between the two languages the sl source language and the tl the target language if you cannot match it correspondingly then you have to move on and use what's called translation shifts and here of course the focus i have to say that in the 60s and 1960s the focus was on equivalence and linguistics linguistics and translation and we are not talking here about cultural equivalence um in particular because cultural equivalence was used to an extent uh by neither when he was talking about the formal equivalence um late in the late 60s and of course neither later on he has actually said that when you are translating that language is part of culture and therefore you have to be as a translator bilingual and bicultural but let me just now not go into that because that's quite a lot of um maybe i could cover that in some other session about uh culture and translation lefevre and bassnet suzanne bassnet and quite a few others in in in culture studies and translation uh or culture and translation like venuti for example where they talk about the ideology and and and patronage and other elements and components of culture and translation but here the main concern is with regards to translation shifts and we are talking about translation shifts and as i said i'm just going to repeat that these shifts shifts in translation are departures according to the exact words of gathered in 1965 he says there are departures from formal equivalence from formal equivalence in the translation process from the sl to the tl now there are two types main two types of shifts that occur that occur one of them one main type is level shifts and the other one is category shifts the level shifts of course is moving from an item an sl item from one linguistic level to a tl translation equivalent at a different linguistic level i.e the linguistic level has is going to change when you are translating uh that item from the sl to the tl and as i said earlier why do we go for shifts is because there is an impossibility of getting the right similar corresponding structure or corresponding unit or corresponding grammar or corresponding class i'm just going to show you some of the uh a few points to raise in this of course as you can see that is the idea of the shifts in translation according to catford our departures from formal equivalence in translation in the translation process from the sl to the tl and the two major types or kinds are level shifts and category shifts the level shifts as i said it's moving from one linguistic level in the sl to its equivalent in the tl when you are translating translating or finding the translation equivalent and i just said earlier that why do we go for these shifts not necessarily only level shifts but category shifts as well we go for them because they're of the impossibility of keeping an sl item at the same level in the in the tl during the actual translation process now of course these shifts that are level shifts they are what is meant by them is that there are shifts from grammar for example to lexis or vice versa for instance in other words you are translating translating something that is in grammar in the sl but you found something that is equivalent but it is lexical i.e a word not a grammatical uh structure or grammatical item these shifts of course here's an example of a shift from russian to english and this is what actually catford has used and he says that imperfective which is in russian that's imperfect and incomplete aspect of tense with his unmarked item and the perfective that's in russian as well which is the perfect or the complete complete action with its marked term in russian as in peasel and and piezo these will be equated to or has their equivalence in past simple and past and continuous in english of course the past simple we know that it's neutral with its unmarked term and we have the continuous or the progressive as some american usage call it with its marked term in english so the the russian pistol and and i'm sorry my russian is not that good but this is how they are spelt is equated to the word wrote the verb because we're talking about the verbal aspect here it is translated as wrote and writing in other words it's translated into past simple past and past continuous the russian aspects are sometimes translatable into these two english aspects and that is what actually uh catford has said in particular and this example is by catwald in his article which he wrote about translation shifts now there are also shifts that are not really complete ones cases of incomplete shifts from grammar to lexus in other words not fully grammar and it's not fully lexical the shift for instance when you're translating the diactic item in english grammar the sl modifier this or that or whatever diactic item you use into the french article plus lexical adjective le prize prison i'm sorry my french is not pronunciation wise it's not very good but you can see how it's written now in the english you say this text is intended for but in the french you say la present manuel dressier again apologies for my bad pronunciation but this example which has been given by catford shows the word this is translated as prison or lo prison and that is a shift but this shift is not a fully uh grammatical or to lexical and it's um and you as you can see the word this is translated the present text instead of this text these are the level shifts that we have just looked at which is moving from grammar to lexus or plexus to grammar vice versa but the the other main types of shifts according to catford is called category shift and of course in category shifts here you are talking about um a a a different kind of shifts to the ones we have looked at the ones we looked at was between moving from grammar to lexus or from lexus to grammar for example which we will come back to in in a minute uh when we are talking about um translating some tense aspect to another aspect in another tense as in imperfect and perfect in the russian which is opposed to as opposed to in english to the simple present past and the past uh continuous but now with the catford or with catfish shifts the second type which is category shift there are two types according to cathode under category shifts the first one is unbound which is free translation or unbound the translation and the other one is called rank bound translation i.e it's not bound by rank the unbound translation equivalence may occur between sentences clauses phrases words more themes even so that's the kind of unbound equivalence here that you are actually translating in other words you are translating a clause with a sentence or you are translating a phrase with a clause translating a word into a phrase that is a quite that's what's called category shifts now of course in these category shifts and if we look at them uh on the slides let's have a look at the slides because that helps us quite a lot in uh following this element here we find that of course as they are of two types which is unbound and rank pound bound the un unbound translation equivalence may occur between sentences clauses as i said earlier phrases words morphemes etc whereas the rank bound equivalence translation equivalence occurs when changing the rank rank changing meaning rank changes unit changes and these changes can be structure changes or class changes they're called class shifts and also unit shifts which means how many units in english are translated into how many units in arabic or in french and there's also what's called intra system shifts which is language system change in other words you have in english for example subject verb object but in arabic you'll have verb and then subject and then object in other words the word order is changing due to the intra system shifts intra means within the same language in other words in the english language there's a system you have to follow and there is in the arabic system an internal system which is you have to follow ac or if it's in french or in german or whichever language now structure shifts i can give you an example of structure shifts in grammar which can occur of course because we say structure that means grammar that means syntax or related to syntax that is when you are translating for example an interrogative structure like a question into an affirmative one or affirmative structure in this case you are translating a question or indirect or direct speech into an indirect speech for example as in the case here he asks what are you doing tomorrow and then you translate it in the target text into he asked about what you are doing tomorrow so in other words we have changed the structure here and we have done a shift here in the structure from an interrogative structure to an affirmative one a statement similar to a statement one of course there's also what's called a class shift and the class shift here is when you are translating uh changing the class word class word class for example it's an adjective and you're translating it into a verb or it's a verb you're translating into a noun and and these kind of changes in the class word class when you are translating the verb into an adjective that is a class shift because you are moving from one class to another from noun to verb from verb to adjective from adjective to adverb and so on so you are changing the word class as you are translating and as i said earlier that you are doing that only because only because it's impossible to get it in the same corresponding formal correspondence between the two languages the source text and the target text here are some examples to to actually show you some of what i mean about the structure and and and and how it works like for example a white house in french is translated into omison blanche when in other words and you can see that the modifier white in white house is has changed into qualifier in the target language which has become after the noun mizon so blanche came after that's why it's a qualifying adjective in french whereas in english it is a modifying adjective and that is a kind of shift that's happening in terms of the intra system which is that that means each which comes along with other structure and class and unit the intra system shifts occur internally within the system within the language systems whether it's french system or english system sometimes the systems are similar some in some languages like for example in singular and plural in some languages are similar but perhaps in others other languages it might not but here's an example the case the case is in french you can see the singular and plural are the same however frequently you find that it happens that the formal correspondence does not occur so the singular is translated into plural in french like for example the word advice in english is translated into the conciere concier and the english the dishes is which is plural is translated in french into french into le now vezil other words and my apologies for my bad pronunciation in french um you can see that the english is in plural the dishes and in french it is singular and then finally in english the word trousers which is plural lu pantalon is in french albertallon in arabic and sometimes you say serual there is also some other shifts which are intra system shifts i would give you more examples of is the abstract nouns the abstract nouns in english with their no definite article yet in other words they don't use different articles for abstract nouns but their equivalents require different articles the word the dignity in arabic is translated into dignity in english without the and in french is the same la mor which means love in english with now without the definite article whereas in arabic of course it's not only alcarama there are all these various abstract nouns in arabic which take a different article but they don't do in english like honesty and um honestly for example um it takes a definite article in uh arabic but not in english and glory almost and so on so it's quite a lot of um these examples of uh that i'm telling you about is that they are actually being used where you find the shift and the shift it's to do with the actual intra system of the target language in other words in the target language uh this is what's happening here it can happen again with plural and singular sometimes you can find in arabic and english for example you can say women in english and you can say al-mara in arabic the woman which which implies the general superordinate and also cars in english which is referring to cars in general can mean can be translated as sayara and which is to refer to the superordinate reference here so you see in english it is plural in arabic it's singular with a different article given to it in order to actually make it sound arabic