An Analysis: Adaptation In English-Chinese News Translation

As a bridge between different cultures, news translation is geared to cater to the needs of information flow, opinion exchanges and understanding enhancement. In view of this importance, a mere reproduction of the original meaning or a mere substitution of words and sentences in one language with those from another is by no means feasible. A news translator should be primarily concerned with acceptability as opposed to fidelity to the source text. Therefore, an adapting translation which is not obviously a translation in the traditional sense can count as admissible.Although there is a general tendency in news translations to adopt adapting methodology, few efforts have been made in working out a theoretic justification in this area.In view of the increasing importance of news translation and the urgent need to justify the existence of adaptation in this area, this thesis attempts to testify the necessity and possibility of adaptation in news translation, supplying feasible methods for adapting practices. Time limits the focus only on English-Chinese (E-C) news translation.This thesis adopts comparative analytical method with functionalism as theoretical basis. An analysis of news helps to identify the exclusive nature of news translation. Through comparison between translation brief and source text-in situation, it is intended to justify the necessity of adaptation in news translation and propose a top-down procedure.