The study aims to describe translation shifts in Al-Haloul’s Arabic translation of Hemingway’s “Big Two-Hearted River” using Leuven-Zwart’s comparative-descriptive model. The main objective of the study is to identify the types and frequencies of shifts in the microstructural elements of the target text. In addition, the study examines the factors and constraints that give rise to the shifts. The study also describes the consequences of the consistent usage of specific types of shifts on the macrostructure of the target text. The final objective of the study is to examine the appropriateness of Leuven-Zwart’s model for describing the shifts utilized by the translator to render a narrative text from English into Arabic. For the purpose of the study, the researcher follows a descriptive analysis methodology to analyze 27 passages extracted from Hemingway’s short story “Big TwoHearted River” and their Arabic translations. The findings of the study revealed that all Leuven-Zwart’s types of translation shifts were identified with modification shifts as the most frequent types of shifts while mutation shifts were the least frequent ones. Syntactic modification, in terms of thematic meaning, explicitation, and function words, had the highest frequency. The researcher came to the conclusion that translation shifts were not only an appropriate solution to translation problems resulting from the discrepancy between the SL and the TL, but were also motivated by linguistic, cultural and psycholinguistic factors. It was also concluded that the translator aimed at making the text more comprehensible, explicit, and coherent for the target readership. The researcher finally emphasizes the importance of including the study of translation shifts and their macro effects in translation curriculum.
