On The Newsiness And Hanyuhua Of Financial News Translation From The Perspective Of Reception Aesthetics

This research focuses on the translation of financial news from the perspective ofReception Aesthetics. The financial news discussed here refers to a generalized categoryof financial reports, which covers all the news reports in finance, economy, and otherrelated fields.Reception aesthetics marks a shift in concern from the author and the text to thetext-reader relationship in literary criticism. The reception theory introduced the notionssuch as “horizon of expectations”,“fusion of expectations” and “indeterminacy”, andreaders’ response is considered as the criteria for judging the accomplishment of literaryworks. The reception theory sets up a writer-text-reader model, in which the readerplays a very important role. The reception aesthetics has its influence in translationstudies, the translator must take into consideration of the target reader’s socialexperience, aesthetic tendency and receptive capacity so as to meet the reader’s horizonof expectation.In the activities of mass communication, the audience reception and reflection isthe decisive factor of the communication effect of news reports. Themessage-media-audience model in communication mirrors the writer-text-reader modelin reception theory, and the audience demand should be fully gratified. In the translationof financial coverage, the translator also is part of the media, and his translation shouldmeet the expectation of the target readers, who may have their special demand whenthey select the financial reports they intend to read.Financial news is a special kind of news report which has its own features, withthose special terms, figures and statistics, it tends to be hard and professional. Whilewith the popularity of financial news, the range of its readers has been greatly enlarged.Its target readers may not only be the professionals, but the public as well. The readersof financial news may have their own demand, that is, to know the latest information, toenlarge their financial knowledge, to understand the meaning of business news, and to judge how to deal with their money, etc.. In order to meet the readers’ expectation, thefinancial news should have its own features, including: utility, to provide usefulinformation for the readers; speculation, to make analysis and forecast of the economicsituation and help readers to make critical thinking; proximity, to report events close topeople’s life; significance, to report those sensational events or events with greatinfluence in people’s life; interest, to have appeal to readers either in its ideas, language,or forms. These features may be considered as chief values of financial news whichattract its readers and hereby the word “newsiness” is used to describe them. Thesefeatures, or the “newsiness” of financial reports should be presented in both English andChinese in order to gratify the readers’ demand. Thus the translator should selectinfluential materials, use attractive headlines, take a human-interest form of the reportand choose a lively language.The main purpose of financial news translation is to convey information, ratherthan appreciate foreign culture. So it is important to avoid the obscure expressions insource language information, and adapt it to the target language culture and make itunderstandable to the target readers. In the English-Chinese translation of financialnews, it is necessary to avoid the translationese in the translation, making it naturalenough to Chinese readers, that is, to Hanyuhua its translation. This is to improve thereadability of the financial news and thus to meet Chinese readers’ aesthetic expectation.This includes proper handling of language difference and culture gap between Englishand Chinese, appropriate use of different rhetoric methods and the proper use ofinteresting expressions with Chinese characteristics.Newsiness and Hanyuhua are crucial in financial news translation in order togratify the readers’ expectation and should be integrated. Or rather, the newsiness offinancial reports must be presented in a way acceptable to Chinese readers. In order todo so, the translator should have necessary background knowledge in economics andgood enough language skills, he or she also has to take some strategies. That includes:the truthful translation of the information, coexistence of domestication and alienation, acombination of literal translation and semantic translation, and a possible reflection ofChinese feature. Most financial news reports are objective, the translator should truthfully convey its original meaning, and make an accurate translation. For instance,the back translation of those frequently used special terms in finance would benecessary. As the chief function of the financial news translation is to conveyinformation, it is quite common to use domestication in its translation in order to makeit more easily acceptable to the target language readers. While with the globalization ofworld economy, it is also necessary to use alienation in some cases, so that the readersmay have a glimpse of the foreign culture and update their knowledge. So it is thetranslator’s role to decide the proper use of domestication and alienation. Due to thedifference between Chinese and English in language and culture, pure literal translationmay make the report seem absurd to Chinese readers, it would be better for thetranslator to adapt his translation to the Chinese readers’ cognition. So some Chinesefeatures may be considered in the translation work, such as the four-characterphraseology, simplification of long chain-structure English sentences into shortblock-structure Chinese sentences, certain use of Chinese rhetoric methods, etc..A case study is used in the research to support its argument. The case study uses asample survey based on the financial reports in the year2012from Cankaoxiaoxi, apopular newspaper in China composed of translated news reports. The survey takessamples from the paper’s financial reports on page4and page5, choosing three days’reports per month (5th,15th,25th). The case study makes an analysis of the headlinefeatures, structure features, lexical features, and rhetorical features of financial newstranslation by comparing the original English reports with their Chinese translatedversions. Thus to illustrate the features of financial news respectively in English andChinese and the difficulties in their translation, and the possible way the translator mayuse to solve these problems.All in all, the translation of financial news should truthfully convey the sourcelanguage information, keep or even enhance its newsiness, make it natural enough toChinese readers, so that it can be better understood and accepted by Chinese readers.