A Research On Sports News Translation Based On Functionalist Translation Theory

In recent years, as the Beijing Olympics and other large-scale sporting activitieshave been held successfully in China, competitive sports in China develop by leaps andbounds, and there is a great flame of enthusiasm for sports in Chinese people. The closecooperation of excellent talents from home and abroad promotes the international sportsculture exchange in the world. In order to meet needs of different audiences for knowingabout international sports information, sports news translation is given to more and moreattention. In the period of globalization, sports news text holds out a diversifieddevelopment trend. Therefore, in the international communication of sports culture, howto break language and cultural barriers in transforming sports information effectively inorder to promote the international sports’ exchange and to propaganda influence ofChina’s sports becomes a main purpose of sports news translation studies.With guide of functionalist translation theory, this thesis expounds functionalcharacteristics of sports news and its translation strategies based on illustration of samplenews, and comes to the conclusions: firstly, sports news translation should give fullconsideration to expectation and response of target readers and employ the appropriatetranslation strategy according to text type and translation purpose of sports news;secondly, sports news translators should enrich professional sports knowledge andcultural background information, and improve the political awareness in news translationin order to realize effective sports cultural exchange.This thesis consists of three parts: introduction, main body, and conclusion.To begin with, the introduction shows the overview of writing background andsignificance of this thesis, reviewing the important achievements of domestic researchand foreign research on sports news translation. It introduces sources of the newsexamples employed in this thesis.The main body includes three chapters:The first chapter is theory basis of this thesis. This chapter introduces thebackground, major theoretical results of functionalist translation theory and the guidingsignificance to sports news translation. According to the text typology from Reiss, thetext is divided into three types: informative text, expressive text, and operative text,corresponding to three sports news genres: game coverage, sports feature and sports commentary respectively. According to theory of translation action of Manttari, as a kindof social activity, sports news translation must be affected by many various social factorsin practice. The Vermeer’s skopos theory and its three rules are the most outstandingtheoretical achievements in functionalist translation theory. Skopos theory holds thattranslation purpose decides the translation strategy. Translation purpose is decidedthrough discussion between translator and commission forming the translation brief toguide the translation practice. Skopos theory focuses on the readability of the target text,and its contribution to cross-cultural communication. Representing new graduation offunctionalist translation theory, Nord proposes the principle of “function plus loyalty” tosolve the culture difference and coordinate relationships of participants in translation.The principal of “function plus loyalty” provides guide and moral principle to adaptionand selective translation in sports news translation to avoid irresponsible translation inpractice. In addition, the functional text analysis proposed by Nord is conducive to acomprehensive analysis on the writing style and lexical feature of sports news.The second chapter is a functional analysis of the sports news. According to theoryof text analysis proposed by Nord, this chapter expounds extratextual factors andintratextual factors influencing sports news translation. Extratextual factors includesports news features, translation purpose and addressee analysis, while intratextualfactors contain lexical features and rhetorical devices in sports news. Based on typologyof Reiss and skopos theory of Vermeer, this chapter expounds the functionalcharacteristics of sports text type and its translation purpose through some typical newsexamples. As one kind of the informative text, game coverage centers on fact and resultof certain sports competition, and the target text should be translated in concise language.The sports feature belongs to expressive text focusing on the description of details andatmospheres of sports events, and sports feature’s target text should try to reproduce theemotion of source text through abundant rhetoric features. The sports commentarybelongs to operative text stressing on expressing idea to lead social opinion. The targettext should respect the author’s attitude of the source text, giving full consideration toreceptivity and expectation of target readers. This chapter lays a good foundation fortranslation strategies study in the next chapter.The third chapter focuses on strategies of the sports news translation. At the beginning, this chapter analyzes various social factors influencing the quality of sportstranslation. The social factors include difference on translator’s capacity, difference ontext type, difference on language culture, and difference on writing structure. The chapteralso illustrates application of basic translation strategies in sports news such as literaltranslation, free translation, amplification and transliteration. Owing to greatdevelopment of modern sports reports, some addressees do not just satisfy simple sportsreports but also pay more attention to gossip of sports star or sports investmentinformation. Therefore, at the end of this chapter, the writer of this thesis makes anextended study on the crossover and mergence of sports and other disciplines such asentertainment, economy and politics in a creative perspective. This chapter alsoillustrates application of adaption in sports news translation and expounds slang’stranslation in sports news through comprehensive analysis on typical news examples,emphasizing the importance of ideology and cultural factors in sports news translation.The last part of this thesis is conclusion, which summarizes main content of thisthesis. Based on functionalist translation theory, this thesis provides comprehensiveanalysis on functional features of sports news and translation strategies, aiming atenriching the system of translation theory and giving effective guide to practical sportsnews translation in order to promote development and exchange of international sportsculture.