A Study Of C-E Soft News Translation Based On The Approach To Translation As Adaptation And Selection

With the rapid development of economic globalization and information industry, the world is turning into a global village. News translation is one of the most significant methods to promote cultural communication and enhance mutual understanding among countries. Soft news with its own characteristics of interest has been playing an extremely prominent role in the international communication and understanding, however, the research on C-E soft news translation has not been paid enough attention to till now.The thesis falls into six parts to deal with the research on C-E soft news translation: Part one is an introduction including research background, significance and the structure of this thesis. Part two consists of literature review of studies on news translation, especially on C-E soft news translation; Chapter Three focuses on some definitions of"adaptation"and introduces the approach of translation as adaptation and selection which is the theoretical foundation of the study. In the fourth chapter, the research methodology is illustrated, which consists of research questions and how the data are collected and analyzed. Part five, the part of research prcess along with results and discussion, is the study of C-E soft news translation based on the translation practice of Jin Ri Zhong Guo. At the same time, the author analyzes the collected examples from the perspective of translation as adaptation and selection, trying to find out the features of C-E soft news translation. The last part is a conclusion.During the research, four Chinese articles in Jin Ri Zhong Guo and the corresponding English versions in China Today are chosen and the author invited two students of graduateⅡandⅢto translate first two of the articles chosen from Jin Ri Zhong Guo and their translated texts: People to Nantong to listen to the sound of river and appreciate that of the ocean and A Grand Gathering for the Human Civilization are used to do a comparative analysis.The main research method of this thesis is qualitative description and analysis and the specific methods adopted in this thesis include descriptive analysis, contrastive analysis, theoretical explanation and example illustration by which many soft news translations collected from resources are described and analyzed. Miss Hu, holds the view that the process of translating is a production of target texts by"natural"selection by means of the translator's adaptation to the eco-environment and the translator's selection of both the degree of the adaptation and decisions about the form of the final target text. So the author studies the translational eco-environment of C-E soft news translation and translator's adaptation and selection to the environment, especially adaptation and selection in communicative dimension, cultural dimension and linguistic dimension using the approach to translation as adaptation and selection as the theory foundation. Also, the author made a limited questionnaire survey to study the reader's acceptability to different translated versions to make the research more objective.The author finds out that, during translation process, successful translators select the similar translation strategies and methods in C-E soft news translation in different levels. As news text is both vocative and informative, translators firstly consider adaptive selection in communicative dimension, especially by restructuring, addition and omission in translating. Generally speaking, in adaptation and selection in cultural dimension, translators use different methods in several aspects, such as in translating of culture-loaded words,"literal translation + interpretation","literal translation + transliteration","free translation + interpretation"and sometimes"transliteration + free translation + complementary interpretation"are alternatively used to get better effects; In idioms and allusions translation,"free translation"and"borrowing translation"are the preferred methods by experienced translators; About couplets translating, experienced translators omitted them and in geographic terms translating, methods of"literal translation + free translation"are mainly used and translators omitted minor place names. During the adaptation to linguistic dimension, shiny and metaphorical phrases in Chinese are replaced by plain and accurate English words; in some situations, some specific figures are dealt with in fuzzy words to avoid absolutization in expressions.At last, the author also makes a study of some examples which have not been translated by adaptive selection and gives her own versions under the guide of the approach to translation as adaptation and selection.