On Translator’s Subjectivity In News Translation

Based on the C-E translation of the News section of Ningbo government website, this MTI translation report is written, revised and comes into its final form. The reason for the use of “Ningbo Government Website” in the subtitle of this report instead of “the News section of Ningbo Government Website” is that although Ningbo Government Website contains several sections, only the News section is updated on a daily basis. Thus, it is generally accepted among the translators of this website that translating Ningbo Government Website means translating its News section. This translation report is finished based on my C-E translation practice of Ningbo Government Website, thus the main purpose of it is to discuss related issues encountered in the process of the translation practice with theory as its aid, not to compose a theoretical research.It is universally acknowledged that news translation is not only a translation process between different languages, but also a cross-cultural rewriting of the news to maximize the effect of international communication.In this perspective, news translators are news writers at the same time. Due to the fact that the translator’s subjectivity is manifested in the whole process of task translation, this report attempts to combine the study of translator’s subjectivity with the translation of newspaper English. In the process of news translation, characteristics of news language, different cultural backgrounds, various object preferences and so on should be taken into consideration. Therefore, when facing cultural problems, linguistic problems, long sentences and logic problems, the translator should dynamically choose full translation, abstract translation, editing translation and other appropriate translation strategies to make the translation smooth and clear. The importance of the translator’s subjectivity determines the fact that its study needs to be advanced in a wider scope and on a deeper level.This report serves as an introduction as well as a summary of the whole translation process of the website. There are altogether four parts in this report. Chapter One gives a brief description to the task, highlighting the value of the subject, clarifying the translation requirements raised by the client and introducing the process that has been followed in order to control translation quality. In Chapter Two, a brief introduction of translator’ssubjectivity is provided, and problems in translating news are summarized. Based on the theory of translator’s subjectivity, Chapter Three provides a detailed description of translation strategies on how to deal with problems encountered in news translation. In Chapter Four, main points of this report are reiterated and feedback from the client is given.The original Chinese news and my English translation are attached in the appendix.