A Study Of Chinese Translation Of English News Headlines From The Perspective Of Skopos Theory

In this information explosion age, as the prominent media of gaining information, news plays a more and more important role in the fields of information transmission and cross-cultural communication for its great advantages.With the rapid development of the economy and society, the communication between China and the world is getting more and more frequent. Chinese readers have more chances to access to authentic English news. However, in people’s daily life, facing various kinds of news reports, people have to decide whether to continue the news after browsing the news headlines because of their limited time. A wonderful news headline itself is a piece of brief news. On the one hand, it is a quintessence of a report and on the other hand, it can attract the readers’ attention and intrigue them to read on. Thus, as the soul of the news, the Chinese translation of English news headlines is drawing more and more attention.This study is designed to discuss Chinese translation of English news headlines on the basis of Skopos Theory put forward by Han J. Vermeer who was a famous scholar of German functionalist translation theory in1978. As a breakthrough with the traditional equivalence-oriented theories, Skopos Theory has provided a new angle to translation researches. Under the guidance of Skopos Theory, translation is a purposeful intercultural action emphasizing both target text and the target receivers instead of the source text and the status of the translator.in addition, translation skopos decides the translation strategies or methods. Many factors are involved to affect the process of translation. In order to successfully fulfill the final purpose of translation, it requires that the translator should get the intention of the source text and apply appropriate methods or strategies based on the intended function of different texts. This study is conducted under the framework of the theories raised by German translation masters:such as the three important rules presented by Hans J. Vermeer, including the skopos rule, the coherence rule and the fidelity rule; Justa Holz-Manttari’s theory of translational action as well as the function and loyalty principle proposed by Christiane Nord.Chinese translation of English news headlines is always regarded as a kind of purposeful communicative activity. Translators are suggested to skillfully and purposefully translate English news headlines on both lexical and syntactical level so as to well achieve the goal of information dissemination. However, because of the discrepancies of languages, background knowledge, cultures and ideologies, translating the source text literally is not easy. Sometimes an ideal effect of information transferring cannot be achieved if the translator is completely loyal to the source text. It is, therefore, suggested in this thesis that translators can take Skopos Theory as guidance to transmit the source language and culture into the intended language and culture that are more acceptable to the target language receivers and adopt translation strategies such as free translation and adaptive translation to fulfill the purpose of information communication. As the guiding theory of this study, Skopos Theory provides a new perspective for Chinese translation of English news headlines study. Therefore, in the light of Skopos Theory, the translator has the freedom to effectively adopt some feasible translation strategies to reach the skopos of information dissemination between different countries.The thesis is made up of six chapters. The first chapter is the introduction, including the research background, the purpose and significance of this study and the outline of the thesis. In Chapter Two, the study presents a literature review of English news headlines. Firstly, definitions of related terms are explained; next it gives an introduction of English news headlines, including its functions and features. The last part examines some previous studies on news headlines translation. Chapter Three is the theoretical framework for this study. It presents the development, core contents and three rules of Skopos Theory. Chapter Four illustrates the research methodology of the study including research questions, research procedures and data collection. Chapter Five is the core of the study. First the application of the model for Chinese translation of English news headlines under the guidance of Skopos Theory is explained. Then the author analyzes the factors that affect English news headline translation. Next, the three rules, namely, the skopos rule, the coherence rule and the fidelity rule are applied in Chinese translation of English news headlines. Finally some suggested strategies for English news headlines translation are proposed. Chapter Six is the conclusion which covers an overview of the whole thesis. Some major findings and implications are discussed. Then, some limitations and problems of the study are pointed out. In the end, some suggestions are made for further studies.It is hoped that this thesis can provide a theoretical support for Chinese translation of English news headlines and can be helpful for future researches.