Source — Catford, A Linguistic Theory of Translation (1965), full text
- Title: A Linguistic Theory of Translation: An Essay in Applied Linguistics
- Author: J. C. Catford
- Publication: London: Oxford University Press, 1965
- URL: https://archive.org/stream/J.C.CatfordALinguisticTheoryOfTranslationOxfordUniv.Press1965/j.+c.+catford-a+linguistic+theory+of+translation-oxford+univ.+press+(1965)_djvu.txt (OCR full-text scan)
- Type: primary — the book itself (OCR text), consulted directly for its own definitions rather than at second hand
- Accessed: 2026-08-28
- Caveat: fetched via an OCR text stream; only the definitional passages below were retrieved and checked, not the full book (in particular, the full Chapter 12 text on translation shifts was not retrieved directly — the shift taxonomy recorded here is corroborated via the Panou source, which cites the same book with page numbers).
Extract
Catford's own definitions, in his own words, for the two central terms of his theory:
- Formal correspondence (Ch. 4, p. 32): "A formal correspondent...is any TL category which may be said to occupy, as nearly as possible, the 'same' place in the economy of the TL as the given SL category occupies in the SL." Catford treats this as necessarily approximate, since "every language is ultimately sui generis" — formal correspondence is a system-to-system comparison, not tied to any one text.
- Textual equivalence (Ch. 3, p. 27): "A textual equivalent is any TL text or portion of text which is observed on a particular occasion...to be the equivalent of a given SL text or portion of text." Unlike formal correspondence, this is tied to one particular source-text/target-text pair, established (p. 29) through "commutation and observation of concomitant variation" — i.e., empirically, by varying the source text and observing how the target text varies in response.
- Translation shifts: defined as "departures from formal correspondence in the process of going from the source language to the target language" (as also reported by the Panou source, citing p. 73). Two main types: level shifts (an SL item at one linguistic level, e.g. grammar, corresponds to a TL item at a different level, e.g. lexis) and category shifts, the latter subdivided into structure-shifts, class-shifts, unit-shifts, and intra-system shifts (see the Panou source for the fuller definitions of each, sourced to the same book's p. 80).