| Soft news, also known as"human-interest news", refers to"news with highly emotional factors and light-hearted style which appeals to the readers or audiences and is rewarded instantly."(Gan Xinfen, 1993:35) Social news, as a typical example of soft news, includes tidbits, recreational news, sport news and so on. Soft news has several characteristics: first, the contents of soft news reflect the main aspects of society, culture, life, spirit, morality and so on. Second, soft news aims at motivating readers'interest. Third, soft news attaches importance to light and touching styles. Finally, soft news has no limits in time. It can be categorized as"news delayed". Compared with hard news which is timely and serious, soft news is inclined to attract different readers'attentions and satisfy their specific requirements. Therefore, soft news translation and its researches are increasingly important and essential.According to Reiss's typology, soft news is an appellative or operative text type,which intends to move the readers and get emotional resonance and sympathy in readers. One of the unconventional translation methods is adaptation which suggests editing and processing source texts before translation.Prof. Huang Zhonglian puts forward a new theory—Translation Variation Theory in the 1990s. He points out that"translation variation is an activity aimed at deriving the relevant contents of the original by using the appropriate adaptations such as addition, deletion, edition, reporting, condensing, combination and adaptation in the light of the specific demands of specific readers under specific conditions."As a comprehensive framework, translation variation theory contains one of adaptive approaches—adaptation. Adaptation is the specific application and implementation of translation variation theory. The relation between translation variation theory and adaptation is a general and specific relation. At the same time, their relation also belongs to one between theory and practice. It can be seen that translation variation theory takes the demands of target text readers into consideration from the purposes and functions of target text and provides a solid and theoretical support for adaptation in English–Chinese translation of soft news.Research methods like documentary study, textual analysis and comparative analysis are utilized in this thesis. Examples are extracted from such newspapers as Daily Mail, New York Daily News, New York Times and Daily Mirror. Corresponding translations of soft news are extracted from the column called"Translated News Exclusive"of Cheng Shi Xin Bao which is published in Qingdao. Comparative analysis of two kinds of examples will be conducted to explore the utilization of adaptation strategies and methods in English-Chinese translation of soft news. The contents of soft news can be delivered to Chinese readers in a maximal and optimal way. Chinese readers can have a better understanding of British and American culture. |
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