1、新闻翻译,Contents,1.Basic knowledge about agency news translation 1.1A brief introduction to news agencies as translation agencies 1.2The importance of agency news translation 1.3The nature of news translation 1.4 News translation criteria 2. Basic knowledge about news writing 2.1Definition of news 2.2N
2、ews text types 2.3Structure of news text,2.4Sentence construction of news report 2.5Word features of news report 2.6Language style and text style of news report 2.7Genres and materials of news report 3.Translation of news title 4.Word matching in news translation 5. Principles of word matching in ne
3、ws translation,News agencies as translation agencies：a brief introduction,News agencies specialized, since their creation in the middle of the 19th century, in the provision of international news, initially to domestic markets and later, through alliances with other news agencies worldwide, on a glo
4、bal scale. This implied dealing with a diversity of languages and with translation from the very start.,It is not a coincidence that these organizations were created by cosmopolitan, mul-tilingual businessmen: Charles Havas, founder of Agence Havas, the predecessor of Agence France Presse, had lived
5、 and conducted business in Lisbon, while Paul Julius Reuter was a German who obtained his initial experience of news agency journalism in France before settling in Britain and founding Reuters in 1851.,In fact, before it was transformed into the first news agency in 1835, Agence Havas was a translat
6、ion agency known as Bureau Havas (18321835), which provided the French media and business community with translations from the international press. Bureau Havas centralized news translations leaving many freelancers out of work and is the first expression of the growing need for international news f
7、rom around the world.,In the first decades after their inception, news agencies already offered news services in different languages directed to the main Western news markets, and developed global networks which efficiently dealt with linguistic diversity. Agency journalists who pioneered in the exp
8、ansion of their worldwide networks, managing offices in new regions and serving as agents in the furthest corners of the world were, very much like the founders themselves, also characterized by their cosmopolitan formation and multilingual skills.,The organization and features of news agencies toda
9、y with regard to language and translation are not substantially different from what they were in the second half of the 19th century. At present, three organizations occupy a leading position in the field of global news: Reuters, the American news cooperative Associated Press, and Agence France Pres
10、se. Global news agencies traditionally produce newswires in the major European languages (English, French, Spanish, Portuguese, German;,AFP does not offer a Portuguese service but produces a Dutch wire), which are the languages of their main news markets. To these only Arabic is a recent addition (l
11、aunched by Reuters in 1954 and by AFP in 1969). Therefore, news translation into one of these major languages is undertaken by the news agencies themselves. In the case of other languages, it is the subscribing news organizations which assume the task of translating the information provided by the n
12、ews agencies.,Translation of agency news,The need to deal with linguistic diversity in news production and the simultaneous circulation of news in different languages makes translation an important part of news agency work. But news agencies do not tend to employ translators as such.,This is because
13、 translation is not conceived as separate from other journalistic tasks of writing up and editing, and is mainly assumed by the news editor, who usually works as part of a desk, where news reports are edited and translated and sent to a specific newswire. Both processes of edition and translation im
14、ply the tasks of selection, correction, verification, completion, development or reduction that will give texts the final form in which they appear in the newswire.,Translation is thus an important part of journalistic work and is subject to the same requirements of genre and style that govern journ
15、alistic production in general. News organizations employ journalists rather than translators because only the former have the specific skills needed for the job: an experience of journalistic work and a precise knowledge of journalistic genres and style. Even if they are not journalists, news transl
16、ators are required to work as if they were.,We will see in more detail below what the process of news translation entails. At the moment, it will suffice to present it as an example of rewriting in the journalistic field, comparable to literary rewritings such as translations, anthologies (collectio
17、ns), literary histories, biographies and book reviews, all of which, according to Andr Lefevere, entail similar processes of adaptation and manipulation of the original text (1992: 38). Like literary rewritings, journalistic rewritings are the form in which news are made available to readers worldwi
18、de, although this fact is either generally hidden or taken for granted.,News translation challenges more traditional conceptions of the translator, whose role is in this context perceived in more active terms. Jos Manuel Vidal has put it as follows:The news translator is, maybe because of the nature
19、 of the medium in which she writes, a recreator, a writer, limited by the idea she has to recreate and by the journalistic genre in which her translation has to be done. (2005: 386),Multilingual journalists qualifications,Multilingual journalists may not have specific training in translation as such
20、, although they are often experts in news translation: able to produce fast and reliable translations on a wide range of subjects that are covered in the journalistic medium. Today, as in the early years, agency journalists are expected to be fluent in foreign languages.,Moreover, both in AFP and Re
21、uters one specific test for entry to work as news editor in a desk is the translation of a piece of news. The integration of translation in the production of news maximizes the efficiency of news organizations that have had, since their inception, to deal with linguistic diversity and to communicate
22、 information across linguistic borders. However, news organizations have also developed special structures that facilitate the flow of information and minimize the need for translation. The next section examines in more detail how global agencies deal with linguistic diversity and the role of transl
23、ation at different stages of the production of news.,The nature of news translation,It could be argued that the main objective of news translation is the fast transmission of information in a clear way so that it can be communicated effectively to readers. Journalistic factors related to time, space
24、 and genre are as important as the linguistic and cultural aspects involved in the process of interlingual transfer. Bearing in mind the influence of the former, some major features which specifically characterize news translation and distinguish it from other forms have been pointed out.,Features o
25、f news translation,1. The main objective of news translators is to transmit information. 2. News translators translate for a mass audience. Consequently, a clear and direct language needs to be used. 3. News translators translate for a specific geographical, temporal and cultural context. Their job
26、is also conditioned by the medium in which they work.,4. News translators are subject to important limitations of time and space. 5. News translators are usually “backtranslators” and proofreaders 6. necessary versatility, which enables news translators to work on an immense variety of topics, from
27、sports to economy. the link between these diverse subjects is the journalistic medium itself and the norms of genre and style to which all those working in the field are subjected.,In translating news, journalists must rewrite texts to make them suitable for their new context according to the rules
28、and practices of the medium in which they work. News translation entails a considerable amount of transformation of the source text which results in the significantly different content of the target text. On the other hand, the process of news translation is not dissimilar from that of editing, thro
29、ugh which news reports are checked, corrected, modified, polished up and prepared for publication.,In this context, Karen Stetting proposed the concept of transediting as “a new term for coping with the grey area between editing and translating” (1989: 371). While acknowledging that a certain amount
30、 of editing has always been part of the work of the translator, who needs to incorporate cultural and situational variations and who in many cases has to “clean up” poor manuscripts, Stetting points to the fact that transediting is widely practiced in certain types of translation to better suit the
31、needs of the receivers: e.g. film and TV translation, TV interviews, written journalism, company and institutional brochures and PR material.,Rather than adopting the somewhat artificial concept of transediting the use of which would seem to imply the existence of another form of translating news we
32、 will simply refer to news translation to point to this particular combination between editing and translating, and more specifically to the form that translation takes when it has become integrated in news production within the journalistic field.,Skills for news translation,1.Change of title and l
33、ead: titles and leads (informative subtitles) are often substituted for new ones so as to better suit the needs of the target reader or the requirements of the target publication. 2.Elimination of unnecessary information: information can become redundant either because it is already known by the tar
34、get readers or because it becomes too detailed and specific for a reader who is geographically and culturally removed from the reality described.,3.Addition of important background information: when the target readers change it becomes necessary to add background information that will not necessaril
35、y be known in the new context. 4.Change in the order of paragraphs: the relevance of the information in a new context and the style of the publication might make it necessary to alter the order of paragraphs.,5.Summarising information: this method is often used to fit the source text into the space
36、available and to reduce lengthy paragraphs which are no longer fully relevant to the target readers. These alterations are usually justified by and respond to the two related criteria of news relevance and background knowledge of the target reader. The effect of this kind of intervention on the sour
37、ce text is to make its translated version more like an original, new text, specifically suited to the needs of the publication in which it appears and the readers to which it is targeted. The outcome of the process of news translation is the creation of a new text, destined to function as “news” for
38、 a different public according to the textual conventions of another language.,News translation and writing,In the case of news translation which occupies us here, this role is none other than that of the journalist. Journalists who write original news reports are not any different from those who tra
39、nslate them. Moreover, the same person often combines both tasks indistinctively and translation is not felt to be something essentially dissimilar from other tasks involved in the production of news.,Journalists tend to be initially surprised when they are asked about their role as news translators
40、, because they do not see translation as a separate process from the edition of texts. It is only if they are led to do so by the researcher that they start reflecting on the specific nature of translation as such, and on the important part it plays in their everyday work and more generally in the p
41、roduction of news.,News translation criteria: objectivity and faithfulness,The journalist who writes a text does not possess a significantly different status from the journalist who translates it. Nor has the source text an essence that must be respected in the target text: it does not require that
42、its form and content are preserved without significant alterations in translation, allowing the translator to adopt an interventionist role.,The central importance of authorship, reflected in the sacrality of the original text, is a product of the autonomy of the literary field, and does not have an
43、 equivalent form in the highly heteronomous journalistic field. The news translator, unlike the literary translator, does not owe respect and faithfulness to the source text but is able to engage in a significantly different relationship with an often unsigned piece of news, the main purpose of whic
44、h is to provide information of an event in a concise and clear way.,one of the main concerns of the news translator is the problem of objectivity rather than faithfulness to the source text, a feature that is particularly relevant and central in the translation of agency news, to which he refers: in
45、 the case of a news translator, and specifically of a translator who works in a news agency, what is characteristic is that faithfulness to the original text is subordinated to faithfulness to the narrated facts, which on some occasions and whenever there exists a clear justification allows for the
46、introduction of alterations of meaning, which are intolerable to a translator specialized in other fields; that is to say, it obliges the translator to combine his translating task with the task of a journalistic editor.,However, the question of to whom or what must the news translator be faithful i
47、s a key one because it leads us to reflect on the nature of news translation and its differences or deviations from other forms of translation, which can be ultimately traced back to concepts of equivalence. No matter how debated, the notion of equivalence continues to be a central concept in Transl
48、ation Studies, maybe because in a way it defines what translation itself is taken to be.,Theories of dynamic or communicative equivalence, in which the key notion becomes “equivalent effect” rather than identity, questioned and significantly enlarged early notions of (formal) equivalence that corres
49、ponded more to the concept of word-for-word translation. Nevertheless, even with broad and, according to some, essentially inaccurate and unmeasurable concepts such as Eugene Nidas dynamic equivalence, fundamental problems appear when we try to apply them to news translation.,That is to say, the fun
50、ction of the original and the translation is the same: to inform, but they do it from a different perspective; while the original deals in more depth.,Types of journalistic texts,Journalistic texts can be broadly divided into informative genres (the typical news report, containing factual descriptions of events), interpretative genres (such as reportage, in which information is selected, interpreted and narrated by the journalist) and argumentative genres (in which the authors style, who is often not a journalist, prevails, such as the opinion article or the column).,
