English News Translation As Constrained By Power And Discourse

As a medium for the dissemination of information, news has become an indispensable part of our daily life because of the rapid development of information technology and intensified communication between countries. Thus news translation studies receive more and more attention.Taking the theory of power and discourse as its framework, this thesis attempts to discuss the selection of news source texts and translation approaches, which are constrained by various power and discourse. The research shows that the selection of news source texts is subject to the influence from power and discourse elements like censorship, political and economic strength, and ideology, so as the translation methods like omission, addition and adaptation to the impact from such factors as political system, morality and ethics, social concept, and readers’acceptability. Therefore, as the reader of original news texts and the writer of news in target language, a news translator must be fully aware of the ubiquitous power and discourse. He or she should choose prudently the most appropriate source texts and translation approaches to cope with various conflicts of power and discourse.The theory of power and discourse has mostly been applied to the studies of literary translation and film translation, while scholars engaged in news translation studies usually take texts as their research focus. Thus this research is both theoretically and practically meaningful by studying news translation through the perspective of power and discourse theory.