On The Translation Of Euphemisms In Journalism English-A Functionalist Approach

Since 1970s, the biggest change for modern English, especially for American English, is the return of euphemism. (Swales, J, 1993) This phenomenon is extremely obvious in journalism English. Euphemism is a common phenomenon in Journalism, which always brings special effects to Journalistic language. In recent 10 years, scholars have a high spirits to the study of euphemism translation, but they seldom pay attention to the translation of euphemisms in journalism.The main principles of news language are authentic, accurate and prompt. However, euphemism takes roundabout as its characteristics, which shows the function of beautification, smoothness, and inflexion and so on. In fact, most euphemisms have great differences with directness. Is it contradictory between the vagueness of euphemism and the preciseness of news language? What is the significance of using euphemism in news language? These are the problems will be studied in this thesis.In journalism English, euphemism transfers the intention of journalist as well as its social meaning and cultural connotation. For the differences between language and culture, translators may not render all into their own language. Besides, the translation of news language is different from translating the common euphemisms. As a tool of communication, news media carry the characteristics of cross-nation and cross-culture. Moreover, different cultural background and value will make the translation more complex.Based on the above mention, I find that the traditional equivalence translation theory fails to direct the translation of euphemism in English journalism. Translation is not a static or rind but a dynamic course. This thesis is to analyze euphemism from the culture perspective and take the Skopos theory as the theoretical framework. Skopos theory looks upon translation as a communicative action and culture transmission, and puts purpose as the top principle in the course of translation. Translators should adopt different skills to meet the requirement of the translation purpose. This thesis will take some examples to illustrate the effectiveness of skopos theory, hoping to make some contributions to the translation of euphemism in journalism English.