英语新闻标题的特点及翻译---毕业论文

1、【标题】英语新闻标题的特点及翻译 【作者】彭小丽 【关键词】新闻标题; 特点; 翻译 【指导老师】游 伟 【专业】英语 【正文】i. introduction     with the gradual deepening of the opening policy, with the chinas entry to the wto, and the emergence of the global village, the chinese people become more and more eager to know the wor

2、ld. it has become a daily demand for many people to read english newspaper or chinese translation of news stories from english media. so as a bridge for getting more information, english news translation does play a vital part in our daily life.     generally, the news is compose

3、d of three parts: the headline, the synopsis, and the main body, among which the news headline holds a key position for its special function. its a window or someones eyes through which one can see what the whole story talks about.      a good headline should be concise, ori

4、ginal and attractive, showing readers the most wonderful part of the news in simple words and allowing them to get more information in few seconds. therefore it is necessary to get a full knowledge of the characteristics of the headline, and to find fit ways of translation.ii. the definitions and fu

5、nctions of news headlines  a. definitions of news headlines     now in the information age，media are playing a significant role in our daily life, crossing the barrier of time and space to provide people with the latest news in the world. when we read the news stories throug

6、h media, we should first read headlines. then what is the headline? how can we study on headlines if we even dont know what a headline is? so in the following there are some different versions of the definition of a headline according to some dictionaries and some authorized scholars. working on the

7、se definitions is to give some provisions of the later analysis.     headline is a journalist jargon. it is the title of a news report or an article on newspapers especially of news. headline is one of the main procedures of news editing. headlines are used to summarize and adver

8、tise the content of the news report to help readers to understand the report better. 1a headline is any line or collection of lines of display type that precedes a story to introduce or summarize it.2       a headline of a newspaper story or article is usually printed i

9、n various types and devised to summarize the news that follows. 3 from the definitions above, we can get two points:a headline is the jargon of the whole news.a headline summarizes or makes comments on the news content that follows.on the basis of the above definitions provided by some foreign

10、dictionaries andsome authorized chinese scholars may work out the working definition of a headline: a headline is a line or a line of concise words outside a newspaper story or article, usually printed in various types and devised to summarize and make comments on the news content.   

11、 b. functions of news headlines    as a headline of the news is a line of concise words to summarize or make comments of the following news content. it is hard for readers to memorize the news content while an attractive headline may be caved in their mind. thus the function of a head

12、line cant be estimated.    1. the advertisement function       that is to say a headline should be reaching such an extent that interesting enough to attractive readers read the story or article. a headline which cant arouse peoples desire to go on readin

13、g is fail of its purpose. the determine factor of whether a certain story or article will be read or passed is a headline. usually our eyes sweep rapidly through a page, stopping momentarily at each headline. almost instantly we will decide, through these brief glances, making our decision to read i

14、t or not. good headlines are excellent advertisement for the stories. they are striking; they compel attention; they arouse interests; they lead the reader into the story or article without any effort on his part. in a word, a good headline sells as well as tells.    2. the summary fu

15、nction     generally speaking, we buy newspaper in order to get the main information on daily happenings. however, to serve different purposes, todays newspapers are getting fatter with a great number of pages. for example, a daily newspaper has ranged from 20 pages to about 80 p

16、ages or more. and the sunday newspapers are sometimes conclude more than 20 pages. nevertheless one could hardly read all the stories processed every day. so many readers have formed a habit of scanning headlines, which enables them to get the general comprehension of the news in an instant. a well-

17、designed headline should be offered to tell the reader the gist of the accompanying story, which means a headline should be summarizing accurately and vividly.    3. the beautification function    nothing is more important than packaging the product. a piece of news and

18、 its headline resemble the product and the packaging respectively. only when the headlines grasp the attention of the readers, the whole page can obtain vitality. as bright eyes of creatures, headlines are the marks of any kinds of stories and articles of the newspaper, through which one can easily

19、understand the contents. headlines are in great circumstances printed in various forms, which divided the newspaper into several patterns. without headlines, readers cant see clearly what the part is concerned, because there are all black words here, dull and boring. for the various forms and types

20、of headlines in terms of their sizes, color, and styles, as well as the beautifying degree, if applied properly, will make the whole page much attracting. iii. characteristics of news headlines    different language skills used in headlines exert different effects, thus arouse ou

21、r interests to think of it and to study it. a good headline usually leads us to continue read the whole news, enabling people to get as much information as they can in shortest time. the headline plays important role in news reporting.     generally speaking, terseness, conspicuo

22、usness, compactness, and humor characterize the good headline of a piece of news. the brief headline has its uniqueness at various language levels such as lexical, grammatical, and rhetorical level. the language of news headlines is special and has its own characteristics on these three levels. so t

23、here are some language features on these three aspects in the following part, which pose a great challenge to foreign learners of english when they begin to read english newspapers.   a. the lexical characteristics     the news headlines require a high degree of brevity

24、, which leads to special lexical preference. the most distinctive aspects of news headlines in lexical preference are as follows:     1. preference for short words     short words are often used in headlines to replace the long words. usually, there is no enou

25、gh room provided for news headlines, that is to say, the room for news headlines is quite limited, so using short words has the advantages of avoiding changing lines. furthermore, short words or midget words have large semantic category, and also more lively and flexible.     as

26、we all know, there are many synonyms in english words, when we want to attract readers eyes, we choose a headline which must has clarity to save space, and it must impact. “clarity” means the word conveys to the reader the ideas and thoughts of the news without confusion or ambiguity. “imp

27、act” means that the effect of the headline is strong enough to persuade the consumers to read on. that is to say powerful words should be short, simple, and concrete, and are usually of one or two syllables, almost never more than three. we can see some examples as follows: us refused to back enviro

28、nment fund ( back = support it), world eyes mid-east peace talks ( eyes = watches/observes ), governor to axe aide ( axe = dismiss ), allowance to be cut in 2000,000 families ( cut = reduce )    these words have hidden meanin

29、g connecting to the news, it is not difficult to find their exact meaning from the view of the whole part. following are some of the most frequently used short words in english news headline.short verbs:aid        help/assistaxe      &

30、#160; dismiss/reducebar        preventblast       explorekick       abandonties        (diplomatic) relations    in general, short words may convey an

31、d describe their won meanings more vividly and relevantly. in addition to its effectiveness and forcefulness, short words are preferred in headlines making for economic space.    2. abbreviations and acronyms    a great number of english words have their own special abb

32、reviation forms and acronym forms. abbreviation is also called clipping, that is, a new word is created by cutting the final part or with a slight variation such as “memo” for “memorandum”, “math” for “mathematics”, and by cutting the initial part of the word such as “phone”

33、 for “telephone”, “copter” for “helicopter”. acronym is made up from the first letter of many words for a certain unit of meaning. they are used instead of complicated and long words, thus saving more space and balancing the sentence structure. acronyms used in headlines can be divide

34、d into three categories, names of organizations, such as “abc” for “american broadcasting company”, “bbc” for “british broadcasting corporation”; position or titles, such as “mp” for “member of parliament”, “vip” for “very important people”; common objects, su

35、ch as “ufo” for “unidentified flying object”, “dji” for “dow-jones index”. acronyms are supposed to be very commonly seen to readers, but sometimes acronyms appeared in news headlines arise confusions to readers. so readers will continue to read it till they find the meaning of t

36、he acronym.    3. neologisms    when we read newspaper quite often we may encounter many new words. it is not an easy job for even those english learners with high proficiency to get understand it. according to american heritage dictionary, to be simple, we may conclude

37、 that a neologism refers to new words. new words here means some words appear in certain period coined by some novelists, journalist or scientist and they may treated them as “new words”, gradually, people accept them and began to call them  “neologism”. there are several kinds of neo

38、logism.    the first one is compounding: two or more independent words combine together that form a single word with a new meaning.     the second one is shift of meaning: some familiar words have another added meaning, so more attention should be paid to these wor

39、ds when we see them.     the third one is conversion: it is the most productive way of news words in english, when we only need to transfer one word class to another word class without change its basic meaning.    the forth one is derivation: a word that comes from

40、 another words or language. in this case a word need the help of affix like prefix and suffix.    the fifth one is blending: blends formed by some phonemes from one word with some other phoneme of another word.  b. the grammatical characteristics     headline

41、is an artificial language with grammatical rules of its own. without these rules, readers will hard to go on reading, because there are too many grammatical errors in the body. this section is aimed at whether any general type of grammatical construction could be used for special effect.  

42、  1. present tense greatly used in headlines    the present tense is customarily used to describe something happened in the past. this usage is not created by certain writers, but is simply something borrowed from everyday speech. present tense is greatly used because it is the t

43、ense of immediately and is more vivid. some people think past tense should be used in headlines because the events have already happened, but at the same time it is outdated and boring. that is why present tense is commonly seen in headlines and so called “the present tense of news”. for exampl

44、e: edinburgh books literary title, flying cars swoop to the rescue.      in the two headlines, present tense is used here to describe the things happened in the past. besides present tense, future tense is also used in headlines.     2. adopt infinitive f

45、orms of verbs in future tense     in addition to “will +verbs”, the structure of “be+ infinitive verb” is more often seen in headlines, in which “be” is usually omitted. therefore infinitive forms are employed to describe future things directly.  

46、60;  following are some examples: last two beirut hostages “ to go free”, russia to hold polish border maneuvers.      3. using present participle in headlines     in accordance with the rules and regulation in daily english usage, “be+ pre

47、sent participle” is often used while “be” is always omitted. so the present participles is used to describe things are happening or the trends of their development. such as:     deposits loans rising in shanghai       wtc workers losing tent

48、0;c. the rhetorical characteristics to achieve vividness and humor of news headlines, various rhetorical devices are indispensable.1. alliteration“the purpose of journalistic writing is to attract more readers. alliteration is very effective way to reach this aim. alliteration is the recurrence

49、 of the same initial sound (not necessarily letter) in words in close succession.” 4 as is seen in the following sentence: magnetic, magnificent meryl 5in the example above, alliteration is used for emphasis. the initial sound /m/ repeats for 3 times without any interruption which mak

50、es the lines special and unforgettable.     alliteration used in headlines has some special functions:     the first one is conciseness and vividness.     in english news headlines, there many short headlines, short but powerful. for instan

51、ce, the following heading comprises only one predict and one object:missing mike in the story, a media and data business is pining for its former inspirational leader, michael bloomberg, who left to become mayor of new york. in the headline, mike, the nickname for michael, is used to show peopl

52、es fondness of him. and the word “miss” is chosen to constitute alliteration with “mike” and to highlight his fellows strong desire for him. thus the headline becomes very concise and vivid.     the second one is comparison and contrast.     proper u

53、sage of alliteration also has the effect of making a contrast and leaving a deep impression. for example:     trading grain for green      the word “grain” not only alliterates with “green” phonetically but also makes a vivid contrast against it

54、 in meaning.     the third one is emphasis and impressiveness.     good writing appeals to the readers senses, which actually means enabling the reader to see, hear, smell or feel. alliteration in headlines also can create such effectiveness to convey to the r

55、eaders vivid visual or aural feelings. as the following:     art council costs criticized       in the headline, “council”, “cost” and “criticized” go for alliteration, and since /k/ is a plosive sound, repeating such a rigid cons

56、tant will convey to readers the strength of the criticism.     2. assonance     assonance is the use of the same or related vowel sounds in successive words to create a musical rhythm and sound effect in language6     such as:  &#

57、160;  air fare increases. in this news headline, the use of the words “air” and “fare” is in the form of assonance.     the digital village. in this example, the assonance employed here strengthens the music feature of language and is appealing to ears.  

58、   3. consonance     consonance means the repetition of consonants or of a consonant pattern, especially at the ends of words, as in “blank” and “think” or “strong” and “string”. due to its musical features, consonance is commonly seen in english new

59、s headlines and produces a very pleasant musical effect:     if it satisfies the lips it will air on the hips7 the report tries to offer advices on how to lose weight and it persuades people not to have excessive food but to take more exercise to keep fit and healthy. in the

60、 headline, “hips” and “lips” constitute a consonance, which not only adds musical air but also makes the relation between “lips” and “hips” closer.     4. metaphor     metaphor is one of the most commonly used rhetorical devices in all type

61、s of writing. it can be also found that metaphors are used a lot in news headlines.     “down in the mouth” news for dentists (“down in the mouth” here means “sad”).carlo ponti in hot water again (“in hot water” here means “in trouble”).   

62、  5. parody     parody is a figure of speech using the words, thought, or style of an author, but with a slight change adapting them to a new purpose or ridiculously inappropriate subject.      where there is smoke, there is cash. in this headli

63、ne, parody is employed here imitating the proverb “where is reek, there is heat” to satirize the politics of american interest organization.     liberty is the true mother of invention.     this is the headline of a news report which describes the importa

64、nce of liberty to invention. it is derived from a famous saying “necessity is the mother of invention”.     too many cooks threaten to spoil farm bill.     the headline is similar to “too many cooks spoil the broth” which means that when too many peo

65、ple get involved in a project, the product can be ruined.     6. pun     pun is a play on words based on similarity of sound and sharp contrast in meaning. pun is used in news headlines to achieve a sense of humor, and sometimes it can bring to the readers the

66、 ironic tone in a news report. it is a commonly used rhetorical device employed in news headlines.there are two forms of pun can be found in news headlines.     the first form: similar pronunciation but different meaning.     like: the sun sets for last time     in this news headline, the “pun” is “the sun”. it may refer