A Study Of E-C Journalistic Translation From The Perspective Of The Translation Variation Theory

The researches on translation approaches are carried out so as to improve thetranslators‘translating ability. Till now, researches at home and abroad mainly focuson literature translation with complete translation as the most preferred translationtype. The existing translation theories are mostly based on the principles of fidelityand equivalence, taking a relatively negative attitude towards the translation variationin some types of pragmatic translation (adaption in news translation and abridgedtranslation in scientific and technological information, etc.). As the understandingtowards the translation object improves, translation theorists develop a more accurateconception of the objects‘extension, which leads to a clearer division of completetranslation and translation variation. Western translation theorists try to explaintranslation variation on the basis of various current translation theories. However, ithelps more to explain the facts than to solve the problems in practice.Adaption in journalistic translation is a common type of translation variation.According to the features of the content, journalistic texts can be divided into threetypes: news, features and commentaries and columns. Journalistic texts are used tomeet the need of information exchange in social activities, so journalistic translationpays much attention to the target readers‘need and is based on the principle ofpracticability with information presentation as the main purpose. In the realm ofjournalistic translation, domestic researchers tend to analyze and summarize thetranslation skills on the basis of existing translation theories, or analyze the effect thata certain factor has on journalistic translation. Most of the existing translation theoriesabroad take journalistic adaption as a special case in translation activities and excludeit from the current theoretical frame of translation.The Translation Variation Theory, established by Prof. Huang Zhonglian, is anindependent and systematic translation theory that focuses on the phenomenon oftranslation variation. The main methodology of the theory is to represent the maincontents or keynote of the original text by using proper accommodation to meet the particular needs of the target readers. The proposal of the theory sets up a newperspective for the classification of translation types. There is an important differencebetween the western researches on the phenomenon of translation variation and thetheory of translation variation—the Translation Variation Theory pays more attentionto the case studies of translation variation and lays more stress on the practical valuein guiding translation practice.Journalistic translation and the Translation Variation Theory have a lot incommon. For a very good reason, the Translation Variation Theory can be connectedwith journalistic text to guide its translation practice. In this paper, seven variationstrategies—supplement, deletion, edition, paraphrase, compression, conflation andrewriting, in the framework of the Translation Variation Theory will be used toanalyze and evaluate the techniques and strategies in different cases of journalistictranslation. Appropriate translation suggestions will also be proposed afterwards. Thisresearch is carried out in order to verify the practicability of the Translation VariationTheory and deduce practical strategies in journalistic translation accordingly.