shiffts

Task A4.2
➤ The Eurostar ST has been reproduced below together with the German
translation. Look at the translation units that are matched up and, using the
back-translation to help you, note any ‘mismatches’, denoting shifts.
Example A4.3a
Eurostar
Please note that smoke detectors will be fitted on-board. Any misconduct will result in
necessary action being taken by rail staff and/or police.
Example A4.3b German
Beachten Sie bitte, daß die Züge mit Rauchdetektoren ausgestattet werden. Jeder
Verstoß wird mit den erforderlichen Maßnahmen durch das Bahnpersonal und/oder die
Polizei geahndet.
[Note please that the trains with smokedetectors fitted will be. Each violation will-be
with the necessary measures through the railstaff and/or the police punished.]

ST TT
1. please bitte
2. note beachten Sie
3. that daß
die Züge
4. smoke detectors mit Rauchdetektoren
5. will be fitted ausgestattet werden
6. on-board
7. Any misconduct Jeder Verstoß
8. will result in wird . . . mit
9. necessary action den erforderlichen Maßnahmen
10. being taken geahndet
11. by rail staff durch das Bahnpersonal
12. and/or und/oder
13. police die Polizei

Clear shifts in the second sentence can be seen in translation unit 7, where any
misconduct becomes the more specific and stronger ‘each violation’ in the German,
and in units 8 and 10, where will result in . . . being taken is altered to ‘will . . . with
. . . be punished’.Yet numerous issues arise when this type of analysis is undertaken,
not least what the translation unit is. This is illustrated by the term smoke detectors
in this and other versions (the leaflet also contained French and Flemish versions):
the German and Flemish have a one word equivalent (Rauchdetektoren and rookdetectoren
respectively) but the French needs the multi-word unit détecteurs de fumée
[‘detectors of smoke’]. Few would argue that the translations are correct and close
equivalents, but should the number of word forms used be taken into consideration
when deciding if a shift has taken place? Similarly, has a shift occurred in the
German because of the obligatory placing of the passive werden at the end of sentence
1? And how are we to decide if Verstoß, infraction (in the French) or overtreding
(Flemish) involves a shift from ST misconduct?
Identifying that a shift has taken place leads to questions such as what kind of
shift, what form of classification we can use and what the importance of the shifts
is. As will begin to become clear in Section B Text B3.1, Vinay and Darbelnet’s
categorization of translation procedures is very detailed. They name 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.
30
I n t r o d u c t i o n
A
SECTION
ST TT
1. please bitte
2. note beachten Sie
3. that daß
die Züge
4. smoke detectors mit Rauchdetektoren
5. will be fitted ausgestattet werden
6. on-board
7. Any misconduct Jeder Verstoß
8. will result in wird . . . mit
9. necessary action den erforderlichen Maßnahmen
10. being taken geahndet
11. by rail staff durch das Bahnpersonal
12. and/or und/oder
13. police die Polizei

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.