The Characteristics and Translation of News English1.doc

第 1 页 共 22 页 新闻英语的特点及其翻译新闻英语的特点及其翻译 the characteristics and translation of news english contents abstract.1 key words.1 general introduction1 part i i introduction on auditory news english3 ii the characters of voa special english4 2.1 using plain words and phrases 4 2.2 broadcasting at slow speed4 2.3 clear and concise sentence structure .4 iii the characters of voa standard english.4 iv translation of auditory english auditive translation.5 4.1 unfamiliar words, phrases and proper nouns5 4.2 unfamiliar multiple meanings of a given word5 4.3 incorrect pronunciation.6 iv how to solve the problems in the auditive translation.6 part ii i brief introduction on american and english newspapers and magazines7 1.1 american newspapers.7 1.2 great britains newspapers8 第 2 页 共 22 页 1.3 political trend of the western newspapers9 ii the characteristics of the headline and its translation9 2.1 concision and clarity 9 2.2 rhetoric10 2.3 ellipsis.11 2.4 tense11 3.5 abbreviations and acronyms11 iii diction in the body of the news.12 3.1 words of special trait and color of the news.12 3.2 midget word12 3.3 abbreviation13 3.4 provisional invented words13 3.5 new words14 3.6 euphemism.14 iv characters of the passage.14 4.1 grammatical characters14 4.2 syntactical characters15 v cultural elements in translation.15 5.1 differences by living environment16 5.2 the language reflects the historical background of the people16 5.3 the popularity of religion has produced many religious expression16 vi analysis on news language.17 6.1 proverb and apothegm.17 6.2electoral language.18 viiconclusion.19 references19 第 3 页 共 22 页 the characteristics and translation of news english 摘摘 要：要：随着我国加入世界贸易组织，国际间交流日益频繁。当今世界竞争激烈，科学技术发 展日新月异。科技交流促进各国经济发展突飞猛进。而所有这些都离不开信息的传播。 新闻翻译以其特有的方式有效、快速地传播信息并将信息呈现献给所有读者。新闻英语 的学习是掌握英语的一件利器，在扩大词汇量，拓宽知识面，提高阅读速度及新闻的听 力水平方面很有帮助；对于英语专业毕业生，特别是计划从事新闻传播，新闻报道和记 者行业的人，需要学习和研究这方面的资料。 关键词关键词：新闻英语；新闻翻译新闻传播 abstract: the communication with the world becomes more and more frequently since our country entered into the wto. the world of today gets more competitive, and the development of technology changes faster and faster. the interaction and communication of science and technology promotes the rapid developments of economy of different nations. however, all of the above depends on the exchanging and spreading of information. the translation of news english transmits the information in an effective and prompt way. meanwhile, the learning of news english would be of great help in learning the english language, in the aspects of enlarging the vocabulary, broadening the knowledge, and improving the reading speed and listening ability. for the graduates of english major, especially who want to engage in the reportorial career, they need to learn and study materials of this domain. key words: news english news translation news transmission 第 4 页 共 22 页 general introduction in my paper, i will repectively explore the characteristics of auditive news english and written news english. on the aspect of translation, i will focus on the translation of news paper. first we should understand the definition of news. so what is news? a western saying is: its not news if a dog bites a man, it is news that if a man bites a dog. while hilarious, it tells the readers from one perspective that news should be interesting at first; others break the word news into n, e, w and s, which respectively represents north, east, west and south. we combine the first letters of the four directions and get “news”. that means news is a kind of record to write down some happenings in different direction. the generally accepted definition by chinese is: news is the message and its report of the recent facts. timeliness and reliability are of the two basic elements. （马建国 p2- 3） although different news is regarded with different characters, news report has got some general characters in common, for example, news english still maintains the well- known writing style of “inverted pyramid” and writing principle of 5ws(who, what, when, where, and occasionally why) e.g. “sinopec: no new oil refineries scheduled sinopec, the flagship of chinas petrochemical industry, has announced that no new oil refineries will be set up in the country for at least three years. “we will upgrade our existing enterprises through overall technological renovation, rather than launching new projects in the near future or early in the next century,” sheng huaren, president of the china petrochemical corporation (sinopec), said. the reform will help sinopec reduce its total investment in the ninth-five-year plan (1996-2000) to 150 billion yuan ($18 billion), from the previously planned 180 billion yuan ($22 billion), sheng said. sinopec has led the rapid growth of chinas petrochemical industry since its establishment in 1983. the amount of processed crude oil in the country climbed to 118 million tons last year, from 70 million tons in 1983. but domestic petrochemical enterprises have to increase economic efficiency and enhance their competitiveness since more and more foreign companies have entered china and made market competition even more fierce,” sheng said. “expanding production capacity of old enterprises through intensive technological 第 5 页 共 22 页 renovation has been proved more economical and efficient than building new ones,” he said.” let us make an analysis on the piece of news above: paragraph 1 reported: no new oil refineries will be set up for at least three years in china. paragraph 2 and 3 made an explanation, expansion and supplement by quoting the general managers words. paragraph 4, 5 and 6 give the background information. paragraph 7 and 8 are the important contents that are related to the main idea of the news. the writing style of this piece of news is one typical “inverted pyramid” structure. the news lead is a simple and clear statement. the paragraphs afterwards explain, expand and supply the news lead, and therefore potently support the news lead. part i i .introduction on auditory news english people are used to taking written english on newspapers, journals or magazines as news english, while they neglect that the auditory news is also the most important news english manifestation. auditory news english has great scientific research value whether when we refer to its characters, its utility and its function in improving the listening ability or taking the listening tests. the most famous auditory news english includes bbc, voa, and cri etc. in this paper, we will take voa as an example to make an analysis on auditory news english. after the world war ii, more and more people are interested in english language. however, their english level is too poor to catch up the voa standard english because of its speedy pronunciation. in order to meet the demand of english beginners and people whose second language is english, voa started to set a program named “special english” since october 19th, 1959. at the beginning, americans abroad fiercely opposed this program, however, it became very popular with the listeners in the region where they did not speak english, and the voa special english became one of the most successful voa programs. according to the statistics of american news agency, voa special english owns millions of listeners all around the world. 第 6 页 共 22 页 except the news section, voa special english has various features, including science report（科学报告）, agriculture report（农业报告）, worlds and their stories（美国词语掌故）, this is america（美国风土人情）, science in the news(最 新科技新闻), space and men（空间与人）, the making of a nation（美国立国志）, american mosaic（美国万花筒）, people in america（美国人物志）, american stories(美国短篇小说). some translate special english into “特别英语”, and some into “慢速英语”, i adopt “慢速英语”, because i think that “慢速” accurately reflects the character of this program, and that is why it is called “special”. ii .the characters of voa special english compared with the standard english broadcasting, the voa special english broadcasting program has its own characters. 2.1 using plain words and phrases according to voice of voa, all in all there are 150,000 words in the english language, and the items used in the voa standard english are 90,000. considering the english language competence of beginners, voa special english only employs 1,500 words, which take only 1% of all the english vocabulary. and in the pamphlet voa special english wordbook the 1,500 daily words has been listed. actually, only the words of the news section were in this range. as for some words that are rarely appear, the editor would try their best to replace them in the words of the 1,500. for example, in one report about the terrorists attack, the editor use “small bomb” to substitute the word “grenade” which is seldom used. the substitution rarely affects the content and effect of this report. however, this rule does not work in every circumstance, and the words beyond the 1,500 are adopted. for example, report on the championship of the olympic game has to refer various sports items. and the words are hardly to be replaced by other words. as for cycling(自行车运动), listeners may encounter words such as “time trial（计时赛） ”, “track cycling（赛车场竞赛） ”, “circuit race（环行路竞赛） ”, “cyclo-cross（越野赛） ”, “pursuit race(追逐赛)” and so on. 2.2 broadcasting at a slow speed the broadcasting speed of voa special english is less than 90 words per minute, 第 7 页 共 22 页 which is 1/3 slower than the normal broadcasting speed of 135 words per minute. 2.3 clear and concise sentence structure voa special english especially stresses on the shortening the sentence structure, with one sentence delivering one meaning. each sentence is no longer than two lines. iii .the characters of voa standard english as the standard english is the normal broadcasting speed program for the natives, so it seems redundant if we talk about too much of the characters of voa standard english. nevertheless, voa standard english is regarded as abundant and various materials, vast choice of words, different intonation of interviews and meetings, and speedy pronunciation of broadcasting. iv.translation of auditory english auditive translation we regard english listening such as voa, bbc or cnn as the important part of news english, and therefore, on a certain meaning, we consider being able to understand what has been listened as a kind of translation. in this process, the listeners firstly hear the english language information, and then they transfer it into what he could understand in their mother language. the transitional process is also a process of translation. regretfully, there is not much research on this domain; i define it as “auditive translation”. now we will analyze why the listener could not catch up or understand what they have listened- obstacles in auditive translation. 4.1 unfamiliar words, phrases and proper nouns some beginners can recognize the word, understand it, and read it, but they are still not familiar with it. when they listen to the pronunciation of radiobroadcaster, the process in their mind takes too much time, in which they have to translate the english meaning to chinese meaning. for one word only, many learners could recognize it, understand it, and read it, but they could not understand the meaning when the word combines with other words. e.g. they know the meaning of each of word “get”, “away”, “from”, but they do not know what the phrase “get away from” means. so when they are listening, they become confused. on proper nouns, the learners may not know the name of each country, of the places, 第 8 页 共 22 页 the institution of the government and the people. what is worth mentioning is about the abbreviation, some abbreviations are read letter by letter, such as cia, fbi and so on. some are read as one word, such as unesco, nato, asean, opec and so on. without preparations or preliminary study, the beginners would face a great difficulty. 4.2unfamiliar multiple meanings of a given word many learners could recognize the word and read it, but they still cant understand while listening because they only understand one meaning of the word. for example, they only consider the meaning of “office” as “办公室”，rather than other meanings such as “公职，官职”e.g. a report broadcast in august 1989, “ the chief american arms negotiator says it is possible that the united states and the soviet union will soon reach an agreement about cutting nuclear weapons. he said it could happen before president reagan leaves office.” if we regard “office” as “办公室”, then “before president reagan leaves office” means “在里根总统离开办公室以前”we would be confused: it is a serous job to sign a treaty, what is more, the united states and the soviet union have great bifurcation on the content, how could they instantly sign it before president reagan get out the door of his office? so the listeners would feel hard to understand the news. however, if they consider “office” as “官职”, the problems would be solved easily. the american election would be held in november 1988; president reagan had already been on office for 2 terms, so he could not run for the next president again. the expression “leaves offices” here means he would leave the white house at the beginning of 1989. then the sentence could be understood as “美国军备谈判首席代表说，苏美两国有可能 很快就削减核武器一事达成协议他说这件事可能在里根总统卸任以前完成.” 4.3 incorrect pronunciation the learners could recognize the word and understand it, but they themselves could not pronounce correctly. so when they listen to the pronunciation of the native radiobroadcasters, they would regard the correct pronunciation of one word as some other words. besides, there are indeed some words the listeners do not understand, and they are not acquainted with the background of the reported content. v. how to solve the problems in the auditive translation 第 9 页 共 22 页 for a moderate listener, all is not a problem to him/her, including the strange words and phrases, the meaning and the background. only one thing is the real lion in the way, which we call amnesia. listening recollection is a crucial competence in the listening process, especially in the listening test. in the course of listening a short piece of news of 200-300 words, it only takes less than two minutes from the information input to giving its output. however, there is an interesting phenomenon: most people would understand the news report or a dialogue, but they feel vacancy and blank in the mind when requested to answer the questions. we call this phenomenon “listening lethe”. according to the biological research, listening lethe is related to “short remembrance” in human brain. short remembrance intake the information that comes into the brain instantly. because the pieces of information are not related, they could not be stored in the memory for long time. so they are forgotten immediately. therefore, listening lethe is the natural phenomenon of short remembrance. to overcome listening lethe, people have to try their best to prolong the time that information stays in the short remembrance, and create opportunities for the information repeat. but this memory ability should be gained by long period systematic training. some western experts who engage in memory figure out the two key elements in memory: attention and imminence. the former relates the extent of focusing the attention while receiving the outside information. when men focus on something, the cerebral cells become excited, so the outside information that hits on the mind would leave a hard imprint. the latter indicates how urgent the people need the information. based on this theory, when listening, we should focus on the material no matter what kind of stuff it is. after that, we should listen again, again, and again until we could completely understand. listeners should drop the habit that they used to deal with the irrelevant jobs while listening. while they listen without pressure, what they have listened will be squeezed out of the memory. as time passes, they cannot enhance their listening ability; on the contrary, they forget more. so when the key obstacle is settled, others would be readily solved and the listeners would improve their listening ability promptly and effectively. part ii i.brief introduction on american and english newspapers and 第 10 页 共 22 页 magazines 1.1american newspapers american newspapers can be divided into 2 categories, demotic paper or civic paper, and paper of high quality and always for the intelligentsia. the characteristics of the former are to contest more readers, cater for the readers interest and seek after the sensational effect. by catering for the reader, the quality of the paper is detracted and the social responsibility of the paper is neglected. to make a profit, they are indifferent to the public concerning. while the latter, they have more influence though not comparable to the former in sales. they criticize the government, supervise the officials and therefore are called “guard of the democracy” the new york times, founded in 1851, belonging to the sulzberger family, is ranked as the three most influential newspapers in america together with the washington post and los angles times. usually, it reports important files of the government and speech of the national leaders in large sections. it is obligatory to read the new york times by lea