Features And Translation Of English News Headlines From The Perspective Of Relevance Theory

News headlines are an essential part of major news. Not all readershave either enough time or patience to read a piece of news frombeginning to end. Many people are so busy that they just read newsheadlines. English news headlines are usually so attractive that readerscannot avoid reading them. As various kinds of communication amongdifferent nations have been increasing dramatically, translation ofEnglish news headlines is becoming increasingly important.The translator needs to have a good knowledge of English newsheadlines in order to translate them well. That is why this thesis conductsa detailed study of the definition, major functions and linguistic featuresof English news headlines.In the process of translating English news headlines, some scholarsadopt the theory of equivalence, while others utilize domestication andforeignization. However, on the basis of analysis of a large number oftypical examples, this thesis makes a bold attempt to prove or verify thefeasibility of translation of English news headlines in light of therelevance theory, which is something unprecedented.According to Sperber and Wilson, the pioneers of relevance theory,translation is a dual ostensive-inferential process which involves thesource text writer, the translator and the target text reader. Neglectingany of them will result in failure in communication. The translator mustensure that the target readers get maximum contextual effect, thoughthey just make little processing effort. Bearing in mind the linguisticfeatures of English news headlines, the translator is supposed to putacross the original writer’s intention to convey informative and hisintention to communicate to the target text readers and act on hiscriterion of pursuing most optimal relevance.This thesis is intended to acquaint news translators with a good knowledge of English news headlines and to enable them to do newstranslation better with the help of the relevance theory.