translation-procedures-and-shifts

name	translation-procedures-and-shifts
description	Reviews micro-level translation decisions using the precise metalanguage of translation procedures and shifts — the Vinay & Darbelnet ladder (direct — borrowing, calque, literal; oblique — transposition, modulation, equivalence, adaptation), Catford's level and category shifts, and the servitude-versus-option distinction between obligatory and optional shifts. When a review's core question is which linguistic equivalent to choose (word, collocation, idiom, grammar, or information-structure equivalence), route it instead to the sibling translation-equivalence-advisor; this skill stays on naming and diagnosing the procedure or shift itself, not on selecting among candidate equivalents. Within this package, procedure/shift naming stays here; formal-versus-dynamic orientation/effect fit routes to `equivalence-orientations-and-effect` and the theory-of-meaning premise to `meaning-signification-and-equivalence-critique`.
kind	skill
status	ready
provenance	{"principles":["P006","P015","P037","P072","P119","P120","P122","P163","P164","P168"],"claims":["C00035","C00036","C00039","C00095","C00096","C00097","C00098","C00099","C00100","C00101","C00102","C00103","C00104","C00105","C00106","C00107"],"evidence":[],"source_anchors":[],"authored_from_digest":"1395e0b59458f30b541fac6e9ccebe50c935f8a93cc5d351fd7f6661d8d3b2b3"}

Translation Procedures And Shifts

Purpose

This skill reviews micro-level translation decisions using the precise metalanguage of procedure and shift: Catford's level and category shifts, the Vinay & Darbelnet ladder of direct procedures (borrowing, calque, literal translation) and oblique procedures (transposition, modulation, equivalence, adaptation), and the servitude-versus-option distinction between shifts the language systems force and shifts the translator chooses. It checks that a reviewed analysis names the procedure or shift correctly, follows an explicit source-to-target method, and treats a shift as functional fidelity rather than caprice. This skill reviews a translation, a translation choice, or a translation-studies analysis; it does not produce the finished translation.

When to use

• A micro-level rendering is being justified or criticised and needs naming with the procedure/shift metalanguage.
• A refusal to adapt has left an over-literal calque that disturbs the development of ideas.
• Obligatory (system-forced) and optional shifts are being conflated.
• Catford-style category or level shifts need identifying as functional, not arbitrary.
• A supplementary procedure (amplification, false-friend check, explicitation, generalization, compensation) needs auditing for hazards.

Procedure

1. Check whether the reviewed rendering's departure from formal correspondence is correctly named as a Catford shift — a level shift rendering a source item at one linguistic level (grammar or lexis) by a target item at another, or a category shift (structure, class, unit/rank, or intra-system) — and flag any rank-bound translation confined below the sentence as producing bad translation (P006).
2. Verify that the analysis works the Vinay and Darbelnet procedure ladder in order: direct translation (borrowing, calque, or literal translation, prescribed as the basis of good translation) is tried first, and oblique translation (transposition, modulation, equivalence, or adaptation) is invoked only once a literal rendering is unacceptable on grammatical, syntactic, or pragmatic grounds (P015).
3. Confirm that any supplementary procedure used — amplification weighed against economy of word count, a false-friend check, explicitation of implicit information, or generalization to a broader term — is applied deliberately, and that any resulting loss of nuance is compensated by a gain introduced elsewhere in the text (P037).
4. Verify that each of the four oblique procedures is correctly identified and justified: transposition (a word-class change that preserves meaning), modulation (a change of viewpoint used when a correct literal version is unidiomatic or awkward), equivalence (idiomatic rendering drawn from the established repertoire for idioms and proverbs, not a coined calque), or adaptation (a new situationally-equivalent situation invoked only when the source situation is unknown to the target culture) (P072).
5. Verify that each of the three direct procedures is correctly identified: borrowing (a source word taken directly, guarded against false-friend faux amis), calque (an expression form borrowed but each element translated literally), or literal translation (grammatically and idiomatically correct word-for-word transfer observing only the target language's servitudes) (P119).
6. Detect a refusal to adapt as a symptom of degraded translation — an over-literal calque-jargon that disturbs the development of ideas — and check that the analysis recognizes the seven procedures operate at three planes (lexis, syntactic structure, message) and routinely combine within a single sentence (P120).
7. Reframe any flagged shift as functional fidelity — locating a suitable equivalent in the translator's own time and milieu — rather than as the translator wishing to change the work, and check that a minimax strategy (maximum effect for minimum effort) has not, in weak work, flattened the source's style into a dry, uninspiring description (P122).
8. Separate every shift the analysis treats as obligatory (servitude: a transposition or modulation forced by the language systems) from every shift it treats as optional (option: a stylistic choice among available expressive nuances), and confirm the review's main scrutiny falls on the optional choices (P163).
9. Confirm the analysis follows an explicit procedure from source to target: identifying the unit of translation (the smallest segment whose signs should not be translated individually, not the single word), evaluating its content, reconstructing the metalinguistic context, evaluating the stylistic effects, and producing and revising the target text (P164).
10. Confirm the analysis conducts its micro-level review with the precise metalanguage of procedure and, where register matters, reads the source's marked Field (terminology and proper names), Tenor (the writer-reader relationship, modality, reporting verbs), or Mode (cohesion, thematic word order) feature only far enough to name the procedure or shift that feature motivates; building the full field/tenor/mode discourse-and-cohesion profile is the province of the sibling register-discourse-and-audiovisual-constraints skill, so route a review that turns on the whole register profile there and keep this skill on the procedure/shift diagnosis the marked feature points to (P168).
11. Synthesize the findings and order them highest-impact first: a mislabeled or missing procedure/shift diagnosis outranks a downstream stylistic quibble.

Inputs

• The source segment, its rendering, and the procedure/shift rationale offered.
• The reasoning offered for the decision under review: the orientation, strategy, brief, and any quality claim made.

Output

Per finding: name the flaw and the principle it violates, apply the correction using the correct Vinay & Darbelnet or Catford term, state the residual trade-off (for example, the servitude the correction still owes to the target language, or the stylistic value traded away), and end with a concrete next step. Order findings highest-impact first — a mislabeled category of shift or an undetected refusal to adapt before a fine-grained register quibble. When the request is an advise or compare rather than a post-hoc critique, apply the same checks forward — in advise mode, a recommendation naming the governing principle(s) and orientation with its residual trade-off; in compare mode, a side-by-side of what each option preserves and costs, ending in a brief-weighted recommendation. This skill reviews a translation, a translation choice, or a translation-studies analysis; it does not produce the finished translation or make the publication decision.

Anti-patterns to flag

• A shift is dismissed as an arbitrary or careless departure from the source instead of being named as a level shift or one of the four category shifts (structure, class, unit/rank, intra-system) (P006).
• The analysis jumps straight to an oblique procedure without first testing whether a direct rendering (borrowing, calque, or literal translation) would already preserve the meaning (P015).
• An amplification or generalization is introduced without weighing it against economy, and no compensating gain appears anywhere else in the text for the nuance it costs (P037).
• A modulation is praised as a transposition, or an adaptation is reached for before checking whether the source situation genuinely has no target-culture counterpart (P072).
• A borrowed term is left unguarded against the false-friend risk, or a calque is mistaken for a literal translation because both preserve source word order (P119).
• An over-literal, sabir-atlantique calque-jargon is defended as fidelity rather than flagged as the symptom of a refusal to adapt (P120).
• A shift is read as the translator's caprice or an unjustified departure rather than as functional fidelity to the target milieu, or a minimax shortcut has flattened the source's style into flat, uninspiring prose (P122).
• An obligatory, system-forced shift is treated as if it were a stylistic choice open to debate, or an optional shift is waved through as if the grammar required it (P163).
• A rendering is defended or attacked without first identifying its unit of translation, so the critique targets an isolated word the source's own segmentation would never have translated alone (P164).
• A finding stays at the level of vague impression ("sounds off") instead of naming the procedure and, where register is at stake, locating the marked Field, Tenor, or Mode feature that motivated the target decision (P168).

References

See ../../references/descriptive-translation-principles-index.md for the full principle catalogue grouped by skill, and ../../references/descriptive-translation-evidence-notes.md for how these principles are grounded and kept faithful to the sources.

Provenance

Derived from P006, P015, P037, P072, P119, P120, P122, P163, P164, P168, grounded in the distillation-only sources (Munday, Introducing Translation Studies; Venuti, ed., The Translation Studies Reader; Toury, The Nature and Role of Norms in Translation). The frontmatter provenance block lists the exact principle and claim ids, which resolve into principles/principles.yaml and analysis/claims.jsonl.