Catford defines translation as the replacement of textual material in one language (SL) by equivalent textual material in another language (TL). A Formal Correspondence is any TL category which may be said to occupy the same place in the economy of TL as the given SL category occupies in the SL. A Textual Equivalent is any TL text or portion of text which is to be equivalent of a given SL text or portion of text.The small linguistic changes that occur between ST and TT are known as translation shifts.A level shit would be something which is expressed by grammar in one language and lexis in another.These shifts are from one part of speech to another. When a SL item is translated with TL item which belongs to a different class. A verb may be translated as a noun.

2. Waheedah Naz
TRANSLATION STUDIES
MS English-Linguistics
UNIVERSITY OF SIALKOT

3. Catford And
Translation Shifts

4. Catford defines translation as the replacement
of textual material in one language (SL) by
equivalent textual material in another
language (TL).
Translation is unidirectional (from SL to TL)
Example:
• English. This is my brother.
• Arabic: ‫أخي‬ ‫يكون‬ ‫هذا‬

5.  A Formal Correspondence is any TL category
which may be said to occupy the same place in the
economy of TL as the given SL category occupies in
the SL.
 Formal correspondence is more general system
based concept .
 Example :
French : fenetre
English : window

6.  A Textual Equivalent is any TL text or portion of
text which is to be equivalent of a given SL text or
portion of text.
 Textual Equivalent is tied to a particular ST-TT
pair.
 Example
French : Au dehors
English : out of the windows

7.  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).
 His definition of shifts is ‘departures from
formal correspondence in the process of
going from the SL to the TL’.

8. Shifts
Level shift Category Shifts
Class
Shifts
Intra-system
Shifts
Unit/Rank
Shifts
Structural
Shifts

9.  A level shit would be something which is
expressed by grammar in one language and
lexis in another.
 Example:
Source text: John has stopped smoking.
Target text: John sudah berhenti merokok.

10.  It refers to unbounded and rank- bounded
translation.
Structural Shifts
This shift is the most common form of shifts and to
involve mostly a shift in grammatical structure.
For example the structure of English is S+V+O and
when the text is translated into Arabic it would be
V+S+O.
Ali came to school.
• English >>ST: Green lamp ( adj noun)
Malay > TT: lampu hijau (noun adj)

11.  These shifts are from one part of speech to another.
 When a SL item is translated with TL item which
belongs to a different class. A verb may be
translated as a noun.
 Example
English : A medical student
French : un etudiant en medecine
In this example the English adjective medical is
translated by adverb as en medecine

12.  Rank" refers to the hierarchal linguistic
units of sentence, clause, group, word and
morpheme.
 These are the shifts where the translation
equivalent in the TL is at a different rank to
the SL.
 Example
ST : Housekeeper
TT : Pengurus rumah tangga

13.  Intra-system Shifts When we try to
translate within the same language this is
called intra-system shift.
 For example précis, and explanation of a
text.
 The word 'boy' was English singular noun
transfer into 'anak- anak' in Indonesia
plural noun.