A Survey On The Translation Of Chinese-English Web News Headlines From The Perspective Of Adaptation Theory

With the rapid development of Internet, the network becomes an important medium to disseminate news and information. Meanwhile, the global, timely, infinite and diverse characteristics of the web news have attracted a growing number of people to choose the new channel for information. As a new form of headlines, web-news headlines emerge on the new media of network and the greatest feature is that the headlines are presented on the web page. Moreover, the corresponding news contents need to rely on readers to click on the link to unfold. Hence, compared to other components of web-news, the research of the headline is particularly critical. The development of the Internet also promotes the cross-cultural exchange between China and the west, and people can learn the linguistic features and cultural differences between the two languages through a great deal of news and information. However, the news headlines serve as a cross-cultural bridge between the Chinese and the westerners.This paper attempts to apply Jef Verschueren's Linguistic Adaptation Theory into the study of Chinese-English web-news headline translation. According to the Adaptation Theory, language use is the continuous making of linguistic choices, consciously or unconsciously, for language-internal and/or language-external reasons. With regard to the language use, four perspectives are analyzed, i.e., contextual correlates of adaptability, structural objects of adaptability, the dynamics of adaptability and the salience of adaptation processes. In order to do a better job of English translation of the web news headlines, the comparative study between the Chinese and English headlines is a prerequisite. As a consequence, a comparative analysis is conducted at first. In translation practice, the linguistic structure can be divided into three specific levels, that is, vocabulary, grammar and rhetoric while the context is composed of two aspects, that is, the social world and the psychological world. The translation on Chinese-English web news headlines is actually translator's attempts to adapt to target readers'language structures and their social and psychological world.