A Report On Editing Translation Of Phone-Screen Mediated News Based On The Translational Action Theory

This report results from a project of the editing translation of phone-screen mediated news that the author participated in. The project seeks to introduce to Chinese college students the latest research and discoveries in foreign countries through bilingual news items, in which science, technology, medicine and health topics are preferred. Referring to some principles of functionalist translation theory, particularly the Theory of Translational Action as guidance in this C-E news adaptation practice, the author makes some reflection on the selection of news topics, challenges in translation, strategies adopted in the adaptation process, as well as the revision process, from which she draws some conclusions and formulates the report.After an introduction to the task background, task description and requirements of the phone-screen mediated news project, the author makes an analysis of the features of the news selected for this project through case studies. She discusses three major challenges in this adaptation process, namely, improper topics selected, over-long original contents and original structures that need to be reformed in target texts. Case studies are made at lexical, sentential and textual levels respectively. The author concludes that by adopting topic selection, abridgment and restructuring into the edition translation process, Holz-Manttari’s translational action theory shows its practical and innovative value for this project.