Long since Translation Studies emerged as a nascent academic discipline, it has seen a
considerable number of descriptive theories and models, among which, Catford’s (1965)
translation ‘shift’ approach has garnered particular attention within the realm of
translational comparative studies. Quranic texts have constantly been the center of
attention, as the Quran has established itself as the most famous and sublime text in Arabic. As such, the present comparative study aimed at investigating the frequencies of different types of translation shifts occurring in translations form Arabic into English drawing on Catford’s (1956) shift typology. To this end, seven translations of the first thirty verses of the Chapter ‘Yusuf’ rendered by Sarwar, Arberry, Irring, Pickthall, Saffarzade, Shakir and Yusef Ali were selected to be studied. First, each element was compared for any probable shift(s). Then, the Chi-square procedure was applied in order to establish the existence of any statistically significant differences in shift frequencies. The results indicated that there was a statistically significant difference between five types of shifts. The results also revealed that the most frequent translation shifts from Arabic into Persian were Unit shifts and Level shifts with a mean of 83 and 49 respectively.