摘 要

当今世界，社会多元化的浪潮日见高涨，全球化和信息化的趋势也逐渐呈现。因此，各国的新闻媒介在报道方式、载体形式和信息内容上呈现出极大的创新性和拓展性。软新闻因其灵活的报道方式以及易引起人情感共鸣的内容，在促进中国与世界接轨，以及增强中国软实力等方面发挥了重要作用。随着我国的对外传播活动也不断深入，软新闻已成为世界各国了解中国的社会和文化的窗口，因而软新闻汉译英的重要性日益凸显。在新媒体时代背景下，包括中国日报在内的传统纸质媒体也纷纷通过新媒体技术开发了微信公众号，这对于我国本土文化的传播、国内外经济的交流极为有利。本文基于德国翻译学家汉斯·费米尔的翻译目的论，以《中国日报》微信公众号双语新闻软新闻的翻译为例，分析了软新闻的语言特征，提出了针对新媒体特定语境下的翻译策略及相关建议，以期能为该领域的翻译研究提供一定的借鉴作用。

关键词：新媒体；微信公众号；目的论；软新闻英译；中国日报双语新闻

Abstract

In today’s world, with the increasing trend of social diversification, globalization and informatization is gradually developing. Therefore, the news media of various countries has shown great innovation and expansion in their reporting methods, carrier forms and information content. Flexible reporting ways and changeable content that resonate with emotions have played an important role in promoting China's integration with the world and enhancing China's soft power. At the same time, China's external communication activities are also deepening. Soft news has become a window to the world to understand China's society and culture, so the importance of soft news translation is increasingly prominent. In the context of the new media era, traditional paper media, including China Daily, have also developed WeChat public accounts through new media technologies, which is extremely beneficial to the spread of China's local culture and international economic exchanges. This paper， based on German translator Hans Vermeer’ s Skopos Theory, taking the translation of soft news of the Bilingual News of China Daily’ s WeChat public account as an example, gives an analysis of the linguistic features of soft news. On this basis, news translation strategies and some recommendations in the specific context of new media are proposed to provide some reference for translation research in this field.

Key Words: New media; WeChat official account; Skopos Theory; soft news translation; China Daily Bilingual News

Contents

1 Introduction 4

1.1 New Media 4

1.2 China Daily Bilingual News WeChat Official Account 5

2 Soft News 6

2.1 Definition of Soft News 6

2.2 Features of Soft News 6

2.2.1 Multi-modal Forms 6

2.2.2 Commonly Understood Language 7

2.2.3 Limited Space 8

3 Skopos Theory 9

3.1 The Skopos Rule 9

3.2 The Coherence Rule 9

3.3 The Fidelity Rule 10

4 Analysis of Chinese Soft News Translation Based on Skopos Theory 11

4.1 In Terms of Multi-modal Forms 11

4.2 In Terms of Syntactic Characteristics 12

4.2.1 Passive Voice 13

4.2.2 Parallel Structure 14

4.2.3 Cohesion 15

4.3 In Terms of Culture-loaded Words 15

4.3.1 Historical Culture-loaded Words 16

4.3.2 Political Culture-loaded Words 17

4.4 In Terms of Buzzwords 18

4.4.1 With Literal Meaning 19

4.4.2 With Connotative Meaning 19

5 Conclusion 21

References 22

Acknowledgements 24

Chinese Soft News Translation in the New Media Age: A Case Study of the Bilingual News of China Daily’s WeChat Official Account

1 Introduction

1.1 New Media

In 1967, P. Goldmark, director of the CBS Institute of Technology in the United States, mentioned the term "new media" for the first time when he published the EVR commodity plan. Subsequently, in 1969, E. Roskm, chairman of the Special Committee on Communications Policy of the United States, repeatedly used the term "new media" in his report to President Nixon. From then on, "new media" became popular in the United States and soon spread to the whole world.

The concept of new media is relative to traditional media. New media is a form of media that are computational and relies on computers for redistribution. Traditional media mainly include magazines, newspapers and TV, while new media is mainly based on digital technology, such as network media and mobile media.

With the rise of Weibo, WeChat and various video software, people gradually shift the focus of obtaining information and watching news from traditional media to new media. With the advantages of interactivity and timeliness, new media technology has gradually developed into an important channel for information dissemination. The emergence of new mobile phone applications, represented by the WeChat public account, has even further impacted traditional media. It is because of the strong communication capabilities of new media that traditional media companies have begun to take full advantage of new media and set up WeChat public accounts to adapt to the development of the market.

1.2 China Daily Bilingual News WeChat Official Account

China Daily is China's national English-language daily paper. Founded in the early 1980s, China Daily has a history of 47 years. China Daily can help Chinese residents better understand the world, and at the same time help people from all countries in the world to better understand China. In the context of the new media era, China Daily has also set up its own official website (www.chinadaily.com.cn), and its own public account (CHINADAILYWX) on the mobile platform WeChat software, which is greatly convenient for users to read.

China Daily Bilingual News WeChat official account (Chinadaily_Mobile), as the largest bilingual news information public account in China, is a branch of China Daily. Its slogan is "seven days a week to keep your English fresh". Different from China Daily's rigorous way of news reporting, China Daily Bilingual News is more colorful and accessible to the citizen’s everyday life, including global events, social hot spots, foreign culture, as well as practical English expressions, news hot word punch card, pure English broadcast reading...

WeChat public account, as a new phenomenon in recent years, is rarely studied in the domestic translation field. This paper, by collecting some news of China Daily Bilingual News WeChat official account, analyzes the English translated text to provide a certain reference for future research.

2 Soft News

2.1 Definition of Soft News

Hard news and soft news are two basic forms of news. Hard news refers to news with serious themes and strong timeliness, which generally includes politics, economy, military and other aspects, and has certain rules and requirements in terms of genre. Soft news, on the other hand, refers to news that has a more relaxed and interesting theme and is full of human touch, generally including social news, cultural news, entertainment news and sports news, etc. Different from hard news, the writing style of soft news is changeable and not stick to one pattern. With strong artistic appeal and rich sentimental color, soft news focuses on intriguing reader's interest in reading, arousing the audience's sensory stimulation and emotional response.

2.2 Features of Soft News

With the acceleration of urbanization, the daily time of urban residents to read news materials through mobile phones is also divided into fragments. Besides, many people also tend to "fast-food reading" and their reading motivation is more casual. This leads them to read according to their own preferences and select certain content for target reading. Influenced by these reading habits, the new media is featured by the use of multi-modal forms and commonly understood language, as well as limited space.

2.2.1 Multi-modal Forms

In the new media culture, due to the development of digital network communication technology, soft news text is no longer limited to the traditional concept of text form. Instead, it now exists as a digital multi-modal unification of text, symbols, pictures, audio, video, etc. Xie Yuhong (2015) believes that spectacle culture and modality are the main characteristics of media communication in current consumption society. Multi-modal discourse refers to the phenomenon of communication employing language, image, sound, action and symbolic resources through a variety of senses such as hearing, vision and touch (Zhang Delu, 2009). Due to the increasingly rich material means involved in human activities, the traditional method of expressing meaning mainly through language has gradually been replaced by symbolic discourses in which multiple media coexist. Multi-modality has also become an inherent characteristic of today's social and cultural systems (Li Zhanzi amp; Lu Danyun, 2012).

It can be seen that today's Internet and mobile terminal soft news forms are featured by multi-modality. What’s more, multi-modal text has become the basic form of soft news in the new media culture.

This paper selects 100 articles the Bilingual News of China Daily’ s WeChat official account from December 12, 2019 to December 31, 2019. The following tables clearly show that multi-modal form has become a prominent feature of soft news.