Abstract

Under the economic globalization, countries are linked into a whole through internet and new media, thus the communication among countries is crucial. News translation gains its importance since news is a necessary way to keep in contact with the ever-changing world. As is known that news headline is an indispensable element of a piece of news which generalizes the gist of the news and its translation is never easy since the diction is simplified and distinctive by using abbreviations and rhetorical devices. Therefore it is necessary to study the translation of news headlines.

    This paper aims at discussing the translation strategies on news headlines by library research. This author discussed the definition, functions and forms of news headlines at first and came up with specific translation strategies through analysis of the language features of headlines and illustrations of examples from newspapers, books and websites. There are three chapters in this paper. The first part of this paper is about the general introduction of the paper which includes the objective, significance and methodology of this study. The first chapter is the literature review. In this chapter, the author introduces the basic information of news headlines such like the definition, functions of news headlines. And then comes a simple review of the researches at home and abroad. In the second chapter, the author begins to discuss the language features of news headlines including lexical, grammatical and rhetorical features and there are examples from books and websites to illustrate. The third chapter is about translation strategies such as literal translation, free translation, addition, omission shifting of forms and using of punctuation based on different language features. Likewise, there are abundant examples which contain different features given to apply for various kinds of translation strategies. And in the last part, the author concludes the paper and makes an expectation of news headline translation.

This paper hopes to help people with better understanding of English news headlines and to adopt different translation strategies according to specific features of headlines so that the translation can follow the original meaning and remain the distinctive language features. In addition, this paper wishes that translators can consider the function of news headlines and use proper words for better cross-cultural communication. 

Key Words: News English; News Headline; Translation Strategy

Contents

Abstract

摘要

1. Introduction-1

2. Literature Review-3

1.1 Introduction of News Headlines-3

1.1.1 Definition of News Headlines-3

1.1.2 Functions of News Headlines-3

1.2 Literature Review of the Studies on News Headlines Translation-4

1.2.1 Previous Study on News Translation-4

3. Language Features of News Headlines-7

2.1. Lexical Features of News Headlines-7

2.1.1 Using of Nouns and Midget Words-7

2.1.2 Use of Abbreviation and Acronym-9

2.1.3 Use of New Words-10

2.2 Grammatical Features of News Headline-11

2.2.1 Present Tense-11

2.2.2 Active Voice-12

2.2.3 Omission-13

2.3 Rhetorical Features of News Headline-14

2.3.1 Pun-14

2.3.2 Alliteration-14

2.3.3 Quotation-15

4. Translation of News Headlines-16

3.1 Principles in Headlines Translation-16

3.2. Strategies in Translation-16

3.2.1 Translation methods-18

3.2.2 Translation techniques-20

5. Conclusion-25

Bibliography-26

Acknowledgments-28