Theory of Translation 1 Introduction

2.12 Levels of Shifts 
The above discussion shows that in the process of translation, a translator resorts to 
shifts for equivalence and not ‘to change’ the semantic properties of the text. To have 
a better insight into the process underlying the act of translation, it is necessary to 
identify the shifts of expression occurring at various levels of the text. The shifts can 
be classified with reference to their occurrence in terms of structure and semantics. As 
a matter of fact, in the wider sense, these two terms overlap each other and cannot be 
studied in isolation. Yet they have been categorized for convenience and a detail study 
of shifts occurring in the process.
A sentence can be studied in terms of its constituent parts. Hierarchically, the 
constituents of a sentence are: phoneme, morpheme, word, phrase, clause and 
sentence. A shift can occur at all the levels of a sentence. In literary translation, 
especially in the translation of poetry, the translator endeavours to translate the sound 
patterns of the poem like alliteration, assonance, rhyme scheme etc. However, a 
phonetic shift may occur due to variation in languages. For instance, the phrase 
‘
³ÖÖÓ›ü¾Ö»Öß ³ÖÖêÖµÖÓ¡Ö
’ is rendered as ‘the sex-gadget of capitalism’ in Vinda Karandikar’s 
poem ‘
ŸÖß •Ö­ÖŸÖÖ †´Ö¸ü †ÖÆêü!
’ (Immortal Are the People). The TL rendering loses the 
alliterative effects, thus, creating a shift at the level of sound and style, apart from the 
slight semantic shift occurred through interpretation of the words. In the course of the 

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practical study, several such examples are analyzed and discussed to show the shifts at 
various levels.
The sentences in a source text are transformed and re-structured by the translators for 
proper emphasis and balance of the sentences. In the process, sometimes a semantic 
and/or stylistic shift could be observed. For instance, in the translation of the prose 
texts, the translator combines sentences in the SL into a compound sentence, or vice 
versa. In such cases, a structural shift takes place which results in stylistic shift taking 
place in terms of movement and balance of the sentences. Another kind of shift is 
interpretative shift where a translator interprets a cultural term or a phenomenon 
absent in the target language. It may again affect the structural equivalence, which 
changes the style of the source text. 
Thus, it could be concluded that shifts occur at various level of the sentences. The 
structural shift results in stylistic shift and seldom in semantic shift which shows that 
various aspects of shifts are interrelated. Diagrammatically, the researcher makes an 
attempt to present various levels of shifts and their interrelation as shown below: 
SL Text 
Structural shift
Semantic Shift 
Phonetic Morphological Lexical Syntactic
Pragmatic Sociolinguistic Interpretative Stylistic