Shifts of cohesion in the translation process as seen in English texts andtheir Italian translations

The translation process necessarily entails shifts between the source text and target text, which take place at different levels. Analysing these shif ts, that is the end product, it is possible to gain a better understanding of the process and to take account for the factors involved. The present pa per describes shifts of cohesion and tries to detect their causes. The meth odology consists in comparing coupled pairs of source and target text-segme nts, drawn from English texts and their Italian translations. The segments examined have been taken from different text types (the literary text, the scientific text, the pragmatic text).