News Stories Intended For Another Culture: Translation Strategies Studied Through Media-scripts

Translating Chinese news into English is one of the essential ways of China's international communication. It's more than a mere transference of languages in that it involves the processing of the linguistic and cultural factors in a special way.Unlike other news styles such as news features or editorials, news story features its own particular structure and diction. The Chinese news stories differ greatly from the English ones in such linguistic elements as lexicon, syntax and text. At the same time, cultural elements can also be found in a text of news story at any time. These differences, along with the special style, make it necessary for a translator to consider not only such linguistic factors as choice of word(s), syntactical arrangement and textual adaptation, but also those cultural factors.This thesis is concerned with how to fulfill in the target language the intended function of the translated text of news story in the light of functionalism proposed by German Translation Scholar. As illustrated in the thesis, the "intended function" of the target text justifies the adoption of translating strategies. Thus, news story translation is in effect a "deconstruction" grounded on the source text, and the one circumfusing "function" or "purpose".With an analysis of the scripts from such English media as Los Angeles Times and Newsday, the thesis summarizes the differences of English styles in contrast with the Chinese ones. On the basis of examining and evaluating scripts of English news stories from Chinese media, the thesis illuminates the use of approaches of domesticating translation and foreignizing translation together with other target-oriented skills of adaptation for the purpose of an effective communication.