A Report On The Intern Experience As A Chinese-to-English News Trans-editor At Guangdong Radio And Television

During the summer of 2017,the author had two-month internship at the Radio English Service of Guangdong Radio and Television(GRT)working as a Chinese-toEnglish news trans-editor.It is based on this very experience that the author sets out to write this report,aiming to share the good practices in news-translation,news-editing and news-writing.The report covers the author's preparations for the intern role,the difficulties that he has come across over the process,and most importantly,how he has handled these difficulties with the implementation of different skills and techniques for news trans-editing.At GRT,a piece of news needs to undergo three stages before it is ready for broadcast: firstly,to trans-edit the news from Chinese into English;then submit it to a Chinese editor who will check the accuracy,add and/or cut out certain information;finally submit the second draft to an English-speaking editor who will polish the language and further improve its quality.Accordingly,this report gives a compare-andcontrast presentation on some of the first drafts of the trans-edited news and the versions edited by the author's supervisors,especially the drafts edited by the native speaker,so as to demonstrate the differences in word choices as well as our different ways of expressing a same meaning.This evolutionary process has been of great help to the improvement of the author's English,and thus by showing these drafts in a compareand-contrast demonstration the author hopes that readers of this report can also achieve the same effects.In addition to the conventional challenges a translator might face,such as cultureand China-specific terms,and adapting the target audience from the domestic Chinese to international audience,the author has mostly encountered the following difficulties during the news trans-editing practice: time constraints;processing and editing a huge amount of information;and adjusting to the style of news writing in English.To quicken the process of news trans-editing within time constraints,the author has employed translation techniques such as paraphrasing,addition,deletion and has learned to deal with the significant differences in Chinese and English news writing such as the headline,the lead and the main body.Based on his internship experience,the author suggests that beginners of news trans-editors should always remain humble and curious;be versatile;actively engage in western media and try to think like a native speaker;be reasonably critical of the source text and be responsible.