What is a narrative transition? Does it have anything to do with specific to general, general to specific , or time shift?

While you have a specific title named in your tags,
Ballad of the Sad Cafe, your question is one that can be answered
by explaining the term narrative transition.

A narrative is
how a story is told and from what perspective. There are many different perspectives a
story can be told from.

First-person is when the narrator
tells their own story. What this offers the reader is the perspective of the person with
whom the story took place in their own life. The first-person narrator offers their own
interpretation of the action, personal feelings regarding other characters, and their
own inner thoughts to allow the reader to come to understand the narrator more
fully.

Third-person is a narration which takes place when
the narrator is not a character in the story. The narrator is simply an observer who
details the action of the story for the reader. There are multiple different types of
third-person narrators. The two most commonly used are the Omniscient and the
Limited.

An Omniscient narrator knows everything about all
characters in the story. This narrator offers the most insight into the lives and
characters of each and every person in the text.

The
Limited narrator offers a complete characterization of the main character, but only
fragments of characterizations of the other characters.

A
transition is a shift or change. In regard to a narrative transition, what happens is
the method of narration changes during the story. One classic example is the narrative
transition which happens in Shelley's novel
Frankenstein.

The novel shifts from
many different perspectives throughout the action of the novel. At one point, the story
is told from the first-person perspective of Robert Walton. Once the story actually
begins, it changes to another first-person narration as provided by Victor Frankenstein.
Later in the novel, Victor's creation takes the narrative reigns. After, transferring
back to Victor, the novel ends with the voice it began with, the voice of
Walton.

A narrative transition is simply the change of the
viewpoint from which a story is being told.