论文总字数：46606字

摘 要

新闻标题是新闻内容的概括，它用简约的文字浓缩了新闻报道中最精华、最值得关注的内容。人们说：“题好一半文”，这正强调了新闻标题的重要性。由于新闻文体的特殊性，英语新闻标题在其长期的发展中形成了自身的特色。此论文首先分别从措词、语法、修辞和标点符号等方面来分析英语新闻标题的特点。众所周知，在国际新闻中，英语新闻占的比重相当大。英语新闻标题特殊的修辞特点给翻译工作者带来了许多挑战。为了翻译好英语新闻标题，翻译工作者不仅要熟知新闻标题的特点，同时还要掌握一定的翻译技巧，使英语新闻标题的形韵以汉语的形式重现在中国读者面前。基于对英语新闻标题修辞特点的分析，本文总结了一些英语新闻标题的翻译技巧，即根据不同的修辞特点灵活运用各种翻译方法，如直译、翻译权衡法、添加注释性词语、再现原文修辞特点、运用恰当的语态以及俚语、俗语的运用。

关键词：英语新闻标题 特点 修辞 翻译

1. Introduction

1.1 Definition of News Headlines

When it comes to the definition of news headlines, one can never neglect the concept of news. A famous person, John B. Bogart (1918) of New York Sun, once said that, “When a dog bites a man, that is not news, because it happens too often. But if a man bites a dog, that is news.” From the saying we can find that only something abnormal and unusual makes news. News is a fresh report of issues, facts, or opinions which people do not know before they read the story. News reports everything in time which is important, useful, or interesting to a considerable number of persons. A piece of news usually includes a headline, a summary lead and a body. Sometimes some pieces of news are also composed of other parts, such as background information and conclusions. Timeliness, freshness, proximity, prominence, impact and uniqueness make news valuable.

Different English dictionaries define news headlines from different perspectives. In the Encarta Dictionary, a news headline refers to a title printed on top of a page or article in a newspaper, which is usually in large heavy letters and often summarizing the following content. The Concise Oxford Dictionary states that news headlines are titles or subtitles summarizing the content at the beginning of news headlines. While in the Webster’s New Collegiate Dictionary, a news headline is defined as a head of newspaper article, which equips itself with a large type and is used to summarize the following story or article. From the statement above, we may find that English news headlines, consisting of short and simple words, are used to describe the content of news. They are generally placed at the top of the main body in a way of using eye-catching words and punctuation.

Act as the “eye” of the news, a vivid and good headline, generally speaking, should be equipped with such features as accuracy, briefness and clearness. A news headline should have the ability to draw readers’ attention, arouse their reading desire, and help them seize the main idea.

Headlines in newspapers are different from one another. But the formulation of news headlines has to meet basic requirements set by the conventions of journalism, which also reflects the characteristics of news headlines from another angle:

Shortness: due to severe competition and the demand of commercial effects, journalists and news senders have to deliver the news as quickly and informatively as possible, which means they have to compress information into a limited space, usually in columns, without loss of clarity. As a result, news headlines are always short in size and the language of them must be accurate, concise and easy to understand.

Truthfulness: a news headline, being an important part of news, should consist of the qualities of news, such as being truthful and timely, which have been treated as the most precious journalistic characteristics. Besides, telling truth but fabricating fake information is the very responsibility of each news reporter and editor.

Variousness: many efforts have been made by media to seek fresh and novel expressions of news headlines. Different media prefer to adopt diversified headlines for the same news event rather than use uniformed formats. For example, the following headlines are all designed to announce the death of the British Queen:

Queen Mother Elizabeth Dies at 101 (The AP)

Britain’s Queen Mother Dies at 101 (The Washington Post)

Queen Mum Dies, Last Figurehead of Britain’s War (The Reuters)

Britain Mourns Beloved “Queen Mum” (NPR)

Britain’s Queen Mother Dead at 101 (CNN)

(Xu Mingwu，2003:214)

1.2 Rhetorical Functions of News Headlines

A news headline serves as the starting-point of news. Usually it is a sentence, phrase, word or a group of words set in large, bold type on a newspaper front page or above a body of a text on any page of newspaper or magazines. It acts like the “soul” of the news article, which uses the easiest words to highlight the most significant and noticeable part of the article. The most important function of news headlines is to reveal the main content of the news with concise language to the readers, which helps the readers grab the main idea of the news and judge its value. In most cases, a news headline determines whether this piece of news would be read or passed by the readers. A good news headline can attract reader’s attention, be fascinating enough to catch the readers’ hearts and encourage the reading of the following copy.

As is known to all, figures of speech make news headlines more attractive and easy to understand. The origin and special characteristics are listed as followed.

Figures of speech originated from the ancient Greek Times. It is a science aimed at studying the art of using language. According to lingual environment and the content of communication, rhetoric is used to select appropriate linguistic means and modes of expression, which makes languages have access to the beauty of rhyme, form, content, and artistic conception.

Unique rhetorical characteristics have been shaped during the long-term development of English news headlines. Rhetorical devices make headlines more elegant, eye-catching, striking and original. The details are as followed. First, as for word selection, news headlines prefer to choose simple words, such as acronym, midget words, new and vogue words. Second, news headlines do not use all punctuation; only comma, colon, and dash are used to show specific meanings. Finally, in order to save space, news headlines have to use simple and brief expressions, which help them develop their own grammatical style. These felicitous rhetorical features make news headlines interesting, striking, fascinating and appealing. Such characteristics of English news headlines mentioned above are vital and critical for news receivers to understand the real meanings of what news headlines express, and can also help translators overcome difficulties and solve problems when translating. This essay introduces some correspondent translating techniques on the basis of analyzing these features of English news headline.

2. Literature Review

2.1 Previous Studies on the Rhetoric and Features of English News Headlines

When it came to the kinds of rhetorical devices used in English news headlines, people’s opinions differed from one another. Hu Guixu and Liu Hongquan (2006) summarized in their article The rhetorical features of news headlines in the perspective of the Washington Post that phonetic rhetoric, oxymoron, metonymy, climax, satirize, parody, figures of speech, personification were the main kinds of rhetoric frequently used in news headlines. They also concluded that rhetoric made news headlines more interesting and vivid. They gave many examples to prove their opinions, which made their article easy to understand.

Some articles on the rhetoric and features of news headlines in Mainland China were published sporadically in Journal of Hangzhou University. Bai Xijia (1996) On the Characteristics and translation of news headlines described his views from his working experience in Zhejiang Television. His discussions focusing on the characteristics and translation of news headlines could be divided into three parts, namely, a) the features and requirements of news translation; b) headlines—the windows of news; c) the translation of novel and fresh words used by journalists. In his article, he presented three kinds of rhetoric, abbreviations, infinitives for what will happen and flexible uses of punctuation. He emphasized that translation should be of great fluency, rationality, and logicality.

2.2 A Brief Review of Researches on the Translation of News Headlines

When it came to the requirements of translation, the distinguished linguist Eugene A. Nida (1969) pointed out in his masterpiece the Theory and Practice of Translation that translating centered on reproducing the closest natural equivalent of the source language message, first in terms of meaning, and second in terms of style. From my point of view, this is just a general principle of translation, and there also are detailed methods with respect to translating news headlines.

Translation was a text-oriented activity, as Reiss put that it decided approaches for translators and it was the primary factor influencing translators’ choices of proper translation methods. This comment not only placed a premium on text typology in translation but also showed translators a right track for pursuing appropriate methods of translating news headlines.

Yu Yelu was the first person who had brought the translation theory of English news into China. The earliest Chinese article available to this kind of study was News Translation in the Perspective of Communication Theory (1969) by Hong Kong scholar Yu Yelu in his discussions of news translation studies. New and interesting in this field of study, the article outlined news translation as a social function, news translators as gatekeepers of news communicating, and the selection and translation of news as a process combining highly subjective judgments with objective reflections.

Liu Qizhong held an opinion that news translation was a process, in which SL news was translated into TL news. TL news, distributed through media, reached TL readers to offer them the same information and provide them with similar perception just the same as the SL readers’. Speedy and efficient news translation made it possible that readers whose mother languages were different could share the updated information in the world almost at the same time. In this process, news translators played a role to help readers expand their territory of knowledge by increasing the quantity and improving the quality of international news.

Early articles on news translation in Mainland China were published sporadically in Translators Journal. Liu Xinlin (1986) summarized in his article On News Translation that accuracy, speed, a wide range of topics and the latest fashion words were the main features of news translation. He also concluded that misunderstanding, lack of common sense, and misleading political standpoints were the main causes of making mistakes in translated news texts.

Discussions about news translation could also be found in chapters of books on translation studies. Liu Bingzhang (1983) pointed out that news English was characterized by frequent occurrence of new words and its wide range of topics and genres. His discussions centered on translating words used in news in three ways, namely, a) different interpretations of the same word in different contexts; b) appropriate allocations of the translated words; c) translating those English words without Chinese equivalents as part of phrases instead of as individual words.

Many scholars, experts and academics made more efforts in studying how to translate news headlines more suitably. Both Reiss and Newmark put news into information text thus making the first step forward to its translation. Liu Miqing held the view that the translators of news headlines should make their translation accurate and control their work strictly. Chen Hongwei argued that translators should have access to flexible translating methods because there was no fixed structural mode for news reports. Zhang Lijuan claimed that translation activities were also kinds of mass communication and accordingly she attempted to solve the problems of news translation through minimizing external disturbance in information communication. Chen Mingyao suggested that translators should use “adaptation” when translating soft news. Zhang Jian presented three steps to translate news, namely to precisely understand news reports, to properly handle original characteristics and to consistently improve news’ readability. There were other scholars (Chen Haodong, Wang Ying, Feng Jie etc) endeavoring to translate news or news headlines through comparing linguistic and cultural characteristics between the East and the West.

In Principles of Translation, Chen Dingan stated five key points in translating news headlines, namely a) translators should be accurate in translating special terms of all professions; b) the language style of news headlines’ translation should be neither too colloquial nor too formal; c) translators should have a correct understanding of the news content before translating the headline of a news story; d) translating the meanings of words or sentences prioritized translating their forms; e) translators should remain objective in doing translating.

In Cultural Differences and Translation of English News Headlines (2010), Hu Qun shared three principles of translating English news headlines, namely, a) literal translation; b) meaning translation; c) balance translation (including adding words and cutting words). These principles might help readers get a fully understanding of the in-depth meanings of English news headlines. He stated that translating news headlines requireed translators to gain some knowledge of the history of English countries, their cultures and age background. Besides, translators must get some certain knowledge of our own country’s history and Chinese linguistic features and rhetoric. Translators should take the differences between English and Chinese into consideration when translating English news headlines.

2.3 Foreign Studies on English News Headlines

A great number of books and articles on the study of news are written in foreign languages, especially in English; however, research findings about the translation of news headlines, as one might expect, are not so many. Therefore foreign scholars in this field and their research findings are of great importance because they provide the Westerner’s views on the translation of news headlines and may shed light on the study of this paper.

In the article of Comparison between Chinese and English Headlines and the Translation from English Headlines to Chinese Headlines, by referring to different books and journals, Min PENG analysed the differences between Chinese and English headlines through the aspects of words, grammar, rhetoric and structure. Then he found appropriate methods to translate the English headlines into Chinese headlines.

1. Rhetorical Appreciation of English News Headlines

3.1 The Role Rhetorical Devices of English News Headlines Play

News headlines make it possible for readers to grab the essence of news in the shortest time. It can be said that in the process of creating English news headlines, the rhetorical devices act as an edge tool. They aim to beautify the headlines and make the information brief, precise and effective. The functions of rhetorical devices used in news headlines are listed as follows:

1. attracting the readers’ attention
2. summarizing the main idea of news
3. showing the readers the contents of the page
4. expressing the mood of the story
5. helping set the tone of the newspaper
6. providing adequate typographic relief

(Baskette 175)

These are the distinct functions of news headlines. Summarizing function is the basic one of all these above. The attractive function is the most important one. In order to stimulate news receivers’ interest to read on, the language of news headlines should be brief, readable and aesthetic.

3.2 Lexical Features of English News Headlines

An English news headline is merely constituted of national words and those functional words, such as the verb “be” and the articles “a, an, the” can be crossed out. Therefore, such national words as nouns, adjectives, prepositional phrases, midget words, abbreviations, new and vogue words are used in a large amount.

Nouns: Nouns are extensively used in English news headlines. A noun or a few nouns instead of a sentence that has complete grammar can make a good news headline.

(1) Bans on TV shopping programs (2011-12-5, China Daily)

Adjectives and Prepositional Phrases: Because of the special features of news headlines, adjectives, adjective phrases and the prepositional phrases can be used alone without the linking verbs, like “be” or “become”.

(2) Olympic champion angry over fake prize gold (2011-11-08, China Daily)

Midget Words: For the sake of niceness and balance, short words are preferred to generalize news. News senders and editors would rather use words with fewer syllables but with more extensive meanings. For example, instead of using “damage”, they would like to use “hit, harm, hurt, ruin or wreck”.

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