Fuzzy Language In English Journalism And The Corresponding Translation Strategies

This thesis mainly discusses fuzzy phenomena in English journalism and the corresponding translation strategies. Dominated by the traditional idea of precise thinking and precise language, people think that precision is the antithesis of fuzziness. Therefore, fuzziness has become a long neglected language phenomenon. Enlightened by the phenomenon of fuzzy language, L. A. Zadeh founded his theory of fuzzy sets in 1965. This immediately had an impact on the development of linguistics, with the emergence of a new branch of linguistics, namely that of Fuzzy Linguistics. As a matter of fact, fuzziness, which exists in all kinds of writing, is an inherent attribute of human language as well as human thinking. However, the main thrust of this thesis is not devoted to a purely linguistic study on a theoretical basis. Rather, built on the theoretical reflections of fuzzy theory, and also combining with first-hand examples from English newspapers and magazines both at home and abroad, this paper attempts to justify the inevitability of fuzzy phenomena in news writing from six aspects. In addition, due to three features inherent in fuzzy expression, they fit it perfectly well with the stylistic features of news writing. The paper surely will not confine itself to the list of fuzzy cases but go further to its main concern—translation strategies of fuzzy language in English journalism. The difficulty is mounting with a keener awareness of the requirements peculiar to journalistic translation that the translation must highlight the qualities of being informative, readable, publishable and newsy. In this sense, it is proposed that a blend of regular and strategic tactics should be employed in pursuit of an optimum transfer of information.