英汉新闻特点对比及翻译

The features and translation of English and Chinese news

英汉新闻特点对比及其翻译

中文摘要

新闻是大众传播媒介中的主要方式, 在媒介中处于主导地位, 它顽强的生命力与其它各类节目, 甚至整个传播事业的兴衰紧密相连。新闻的生命在于真实, 立足当代,只有当新闻事件中的价值因素与受众的需要相结合时, 新闻所蕴含的丰富涵义才得以凸显, 新闻才能产生别具一格的魅力, 新闻也才是有意义的。我们说,新闻事件中的原因、过程、结果及其影响等因素就是新闻的意义。只有充分挖掘新闻的意义, 新闻才会有生命力。开掘新闻的意义已成为当前世界各国新闻报道的首要目标。英汉新闻是新闻体系中两大发展最快的新闻，他们在人们交流沟通中起着很重要的作用。通过阅读报纸，可以获悉生活中所发生的各类事件并有效扩充人们的知识储备。新闻语言的本质是“信息传播的语言，报道事实的语言，解释问题的语言，可快速交流的语言”因而英汉新闻的语言共同点是准确，通俗，简洁。本文主要通过分析英汉新闻的各类语言特点，使读者对此类新闻各部分的异同有一个全面的认识。

论文的第一章是本文的介绍部分。概括介绍了本文的研究动机，目的，和国内外新闻研究的现状

论文第二，三，四章是本文的主体部分，主要分析了英语新闻和汉语新闻中其标题，导语，文体的特点及其翻译

论文第五章是结论部分，这一章指出了研究英汉新闻语言特色的意义及其编译的策略。本文的研究总体比较概括，本身存在着局限性，对于中英新闻文体特征的研究有待进一步完善和深化

关键词：英汉新闻，特点，翻译

I

Abstract

News reporting is the primary method of mass media medium and plays an essential role in the field of communication. Its strong vitality is closely connected with other programs even the whole communication business. In today’s modern society, whether the profound meaning of news can be highlighted depends on the combination of news’ value and the requirements of audiences. There are lots of factors which can influence the enchantment and significance of reporting such as the reasons, procedure,consequence.For the sake of injecting energy into news, excavating the meaning of it has become the chief goal of media industry.

English and Chinese news are two kinds of fleetly developed reporting forms and they are the vital channels between readers and events. People usually enlarge their reservation of knowledge by reading newspapers, magazines and so on and news’ language is a language which can spread information, report true things, swift exchange ideas. So, the similarities of English and Chinese news are precise, vulgar, concise.

This essay mainly talks about the various features of these two kinds of news in order to give readers a comprehensive realization of all parts of it. What can be exemplified are the words’elections, sentences’ formation, rhetorical skills in terms of leads, headlines, contents.

Chapter one serves as an introductory part about writing the paper.The research motivation, objectives and methodology .Besides these, it also refers to the status of news’research.

Chapter two, three, four are the main body of this thesis which analyze the characteristics of English and Chinese news from leads, titles, contents.

Chapter five is the concluding part. This paper gives us a clear concept about the news’ features and also explains the purpose of doing this paper as well as the strategies of translation.

Yet, the study is a general one, and there are still limitations and shortages in it. So further and more systematic work is expected to be done.

Key words: English and Chinese news, features, translation

II

Contents

摘要 ............................................................................................................. I Abstract ..................................................................................................... II I. Introduction .......................................................................................... 1

1.1Background ....................................................................................................... 1

1.1.1Research motivation ................................................................................ 1 1.1.2Research orientation ................................................................................ 2 1.2Research status of the study .............................................................................. 2 1.3Theory and research Methods ........................................................................... 3

1.3.1Pragmatic theory ...................................................................................... 3 1.3.2contrastive linguistics .............................................................................. 3 1.3.3Cultural linguistics .................................................................................. 4 1.3.4Cross-cultural communication................................................................. 5

II. The characteristics of English news’ title ...................................... 5

2.1The features of news’ title ................................................................................. 5

2.1.1the features of words and voice ............................................................... 5 2.1.2The features of rhetorical device ............................................................. 6 2.2 The features of news’ leads .............................................................................. 7 2.3 The features of news’ content ........................................................................... 8

2.3.1Concentrated process: .............................................................................. 8 2.3.2 The highly concentrated premodifiers .................................................... 8 2.3.3 Journalists should express their ideas and news’ meaning objectively. . 9

III. Features of Chinese News ............................................................... 10

3.1 Features of words ........................................................................................... 10

3.1.1 News terminologies. ............................................................................. 10 3.1.2 Fresh and lively news words. ............................................................... 11 3.2 Features of sentences ...................................................................................... 12

IV. Comparisons between ChineseNews and English News and the Translation .............................................................................................. 13

4.1 English and Chinese news titles: .................................................................... 13 4.2 Comparison between English and Chinese news leads and translation ......... 15

4.2.1 Adjust or choose elements .................................................................... 15 4.2.2 Adjust the structure of the original introduction................................... 17 4.2.3 Clear and Expanse the leads ............................................................ 18 4.2.4 Write the leads again ............................................................................ 19 4.3 Content and Others ......................................................................................... 20

V.Conclusion ........................................................................................... 22 Acknowledgements ...................................................... 错误！未定义书签。 References .................................................................................................. 24

III

I. Introduction

1.1Background

1.1.1Research motivation

As we all know, English is an international language and it is used in various situations, nations as well as different cultures. American English and British English has developed into several ways such as Singaporean English, India English even Chinese English. Communication happens in every moment of our lifeand people transmit information through exchanging symbols, wordsand sound by their behaviors.We can find that every minute, every second a myriad of events exist in all over the world—terrorism events, incident of violence,natural calamities,announcements and so on. However, only a tiny fraction of these can be called news.And only a few of news can be printed in the newspaper or broadcasted on the air.Thanks to news reporting,people are able to know what is happening in the world. News can satisfy curiosity of people,boost their level of knowledge, and expand their horizon. A few people as a matter of fact,see an event with his own eyes,but many individuals note will be able to read or hear it because they can receive information even they are not the witness.So, we see news as the middleman between the events and the readers, viewers or listeners.But there are many problems which become the hinders of transforming different types’ news.For instance,the diversity of culture, the joint of languages, the way of how to compile news.News reporting spread information throughtelevision, internetand magazines.Newspaper, a most popular form of news reporting, has been a vital part of human beings for decades and decades throughout the world. With the development of society,every form of news possesses their own characteristics of local culture. This written paper aims to let people has a bright mind about billions of newspapers in diverse languages and multiple contents which are published every day in nearly every country and learn how to transform information between English and Chinese.

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1.1.2Research orientation

Based on the existed theories and various papers of modern stylistics, this paper would focus on the English and Chinese news ‘features of lexis, grammar and semantics.And based on the research of lexicology,pragmatics and rhetoric, it would answer the organized ways which used in different news.

In this research paper, some questions need to be answered:

(1)To find out the stylistic and lexical, rhetorical features of English and Chinese news reports.

(2)To examine the significant differences and similarities of English and Chinese news . (3)To investigate the ways which used by individuals to translate the English news into Chinese news or formulate the Chinese information into English.

(4)To learn every parts of news ‘characteristics such as headings, main body and conclusion.

It is hoped that this thesis will enable people to get a better understanding and appreciation of English and Chinese news and obtain a clear idea of the style of news. In this paper, the quantitative and qualitative approaches are employed and some examples are exemplified.

1.2Research status of the study

Linguistics of news is a kind of discipline, in china; it focuses on researching its noumenon.For instance, the research of news’ language, the comparison of different medias’ language of news and the exploration of news narwhal form.In foreign countries, there are lots of analysis and research methods about this field.However,just three domestic periodicals were searched through querying the Enkidatabase:

Thus it can be seen that there are few researches about linguistics of news and the methods are still immature.The research of news’ language, the pragmatics of news,the problems of news are the main themes . It’s not hard to see that many ideals and knowledge comes from western countries and Chinese analysis are either not in place or not comprehensive.

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1.3Theory and research Methods

1.3.1Pragmatic theory

From the 1980s, the research of comparison in terms of Chinese and English news started. “Pragmatics” is the subject which discusses the relation betweenusers .Furthermore, it is used to explore how to apply languages in the certain environment of

communication.This paper study English and Chinese news how to select words properly in the environment of language and this belong to the category of pragmatics. In addition, the result of it would guide the selection of words in news.

1.3.2contrastive linguistics

Contrastive linguistics is a branch of linguistics; it aims to make an analysis the similarity and difference between at least two languages, especially the diversity of them. And then , apply these achievements to other related field.The contrastive linguistics has the direct guiding significance towards intercultural communication. The comparison of words can help us have a better comprehension of English and Chinese news in terms of its features and give a hand to readers to overcome the obstacle of intercultural

communication. It also plays a driving role in translating information precisely. So, put the results of contrastive linguistics in to the practical world become increasingly essential.

1.3.3Cultural linguistics

The object of cultural linguistics is the cultural function of language. In one aspect, analyze the influence of cultural elements to organization of language from its backgrounds; in another aspect, outlook the culture which a language loaded from the organization and essential factors of language itself.It goes without saying that culture related with language closely, people cannot ignore culture but just pay attention to language.

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1.3.4Cross-cultural communication

It mainly occurs in the situation of speakers who come from different places and use various languages.The combination of intercultural communication’s theory and Chinese ,English comparison has an important practical value .Different cultural backgrounds caused person use different languages .In individual communication, people tend to use their mother tongue to decode the information from other person and this would cause the inaccurate deduction.So, in some extends, explore the clash and diversity of cross-cultural communication could remove the obstacles.

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II. The characteristics ofEnglish news’ title

2.1The features of news’ title

There are lots of ways which news adopted and titles are the bridges between readers and opus. This paper mainly talks about followed features of news’ headings

2.1.1the features of words and voice

Deletion: it means that delete the all function words which don’t influence the meaning of sentence. This highlights the feature of English—concise and comprehensive. The most frequently deleted words are “to be”. For instance “The ex-mayor murdered”= “The ex-mayor was murdered”. The other example: “Old people to get care allowance”= “Old people are to get care allowance”

Abbreviation: This is always used in headings especially the use of acronym. And acronyms are the names of nation’s government, International organizations and the special long terminologies in the field of technology and medicine. For instance: NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organization);

WTO (World Trade Organization); BSE ( 疯牛病) ; Aids (爱滋病) ; UNESCO ( 联合国教科文组织)

Passive voice and active voice: In terms of application of language, passive voice and active voice possess the function of adjusting distance between speakers and readers. Just like the opinion in Explaining English Grammar written by George Yule: The active voice close to speakers, it can show events vividly and has dramatic effect. However, passive voice far away from talkers, it has the feature of narrating things which happened in the past years. So, combine these two ways can let titles more glamourous.eg, ( 1) 10 Revolting Officers Executed.( 2) Fine Young Man Convicted of Misdemeanor.( 3) Patient s Punished by Stocks.( 4) Human Cloning Not Far Off .( 5) Failure of BSE Tests Revealed

The use of short term: In order to attract readers and to save space there are lots of short

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terms in news’ headings. Two kinds of short terms can be found--integrated words and the cut-off words. For example, advertisement=ad, quake=earthquake, flu=influenza. Some normal words especially nouns are always cut off the first letter .Eg: Man Utd 2-2 Crystal Pal ,in this title, Man Utd= Manchester United and Crystal Pal =Crystal Palace. A famous linguistician called this short and simple term “almighty word” and it can displace a long word like “deal”-“negotiation”, ”back”-“support”.

The use of loanword:In news reporting, the loanwords are often adopted because these words give us a clear impression of fangled and effectively invite readers’ interest. In addition, borrowed words make news have a stronger timeliness and express its connotation appropriately. Like “Blitz” =”lighting” which come from German, “percent” borrowed from Latin. So, with time going on people would increasingly accept loanwords which borrowed from various language’s system.Lots of Chinese words then become the terms of English like Confucius, Mooncake ,Hutong and they are gradually equipped with characteristics of localization.

2.1.2The features of rhetorical device

Communicative Rhetoric: It tends to choose the more precise and meaningful words to express feelings and information. The structure of English news is rigorous, combat and pertinent and the communicative rhetoric plays an important role in news’ headings. One vital principle of producing news’ title is that choose the most refined words and a single overarching methodology to efficiently,appropriatelytransmit information .people create new words to stimulate reader’s interests and arouse their attention.In title “The End of Zipergate”, Zipergate is a very famous historical event and after that many scandals which related with politician use “-gate” to build words. “ipad” , “Obamican” are the new words frequently employed.

Parallelism,Inversion,Comparison: For the sake of achieving aesthetic value and rhetorical effect, people would realign the order of words according to certain situation and needs of contents.Parallelism gives readers a profound impression and creates majestic atmosphere. For instance “It’s fresh, It’s hot, it’s tastes delicious It’s foreign bread” this sentence adopts parallelism and every part has the same number of words, in terms of contents, every part closely linked and expresses the uniform meaning. This title with the beauty of form and strong rhythm, in certain extent when read these headings, they would

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increase the willing to purchase it. Inversion is used to outline some parts of content like “Seldom Are Heard Unencouraging Words” in this sentence, bring forward “Seldom “in order to emphasize its rarity. “Seldom” has negative meaning, putting it in the beginning of the sentence can polish the whole contents.

Comparison: News’ heading usually consisted of the sentence which has the same grammar’s structure or analogical phrases. Like “Sun goes down, town lights up”. “Go ”“light” are the verbs, “down ““up” are the adverbs, “sun” and “town” has the samelast syllables and readers can have a vivid scenery in their mind.

2.2 The features of news’ leads

People regard the first paragraph of news as lead; it is the initial part of whole content and the pivotal section which assists reader to get a better understanding about news. Leads play an irreplaceable role due to its special function and excellent one can grab people’s heart.

The first feature is “no more than 35 words” in other words; leads are always the simple and precise sentences such as subject-predicate structure. Journalists tend to describe events’ backgrounds by utilizing appositive, prepositional phrase, participial phrase. For instance, Cyrus R.Vance.The United Nation’s special envoy, called on Serbian leaders in Belgrade today to suspend military action in this ethnically torn republic. It is clear that this sentence contains appositive structure in order to avoid the employ of attributive clause. Eg,With rebel forces poised to take over control of the capital of Afghanistan, the leaders of 10Afghan guerrilla factions failed in a meeting here today to set aside their differences in an effort to avert a chaotic struggle for power. It’s easy to find that prepositional phrases are applied to illustrate happening time, places, reasons and results and they displace the relevant adverbial clauses.

The second feature of news’ lead, the use of vogue words.Vogue words appear in some daily conversations or prevail acertain period of days. Whether a word or a phrase can becomewidely trendy words is decided by many elements. One of them iswhether it can satisfy the needs of language expression. Somevogue words which are simply formed, concisely used and clearlyexpressed are a great attraction to people.Vogue words can be divided into two types.The first type refers to those whose original meanings areexpanded

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and extended, so the original meanings are covered.The word \"source\" is an example. It usually indicates well –informedperson or officials in English news report. The second type refers those that are created due to the emergenceof something new. These words are often accompaniedby specific politic, science or others, and have significant sociality.Internets, biotech crops and minicomputer are some examples.

Thirdly, leads can extend the basic structure by taking on phrases and clauses according to the needs of content.

For example: A widowed millionaire is threatening to quit Britain if the Home Office(内政部) deports a young man aged 19 he regards as his son .(Clause, phrase)

2.3 The features of news’ content

2.3.1Concentrated process:

In the process of concentrating information, short sentences are frequently concentrated into nouns and phrases, the meaning of a procedure usually concentrated into a part of information. There are lots of requirements for us to compile news reporting but the primary one is that a short and simple sentence need contain information as much as it can. “Competition from shopping malls and discount stores, coupled with a torpid response by Sear’s own management, forced a retreat to the company’s core retail business, which analysis predicted would not prosper. From the perspective of information’s arrangement, this sentence can be divided into two parts the main part is the theme and another one is rhyme. So, some short verse can be found: (The companies) competed for shopping malls and discount stores, and Sear’s own management responded torpidly. This forced the company’s core retail business to retreat. Analysis predicted this would not prosper.

2.3.2 The highly concentrated premodifiers

The premodifiers which are transformed from phrases or short sentences can be exemplified as followed: 1, darkness-at-edge-of-town-shadows; 2, the top of 143- year- oldcompany. Make the prepositive compositions become postpositional constituents: 1,

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their shadows which display darkness at the edge of the town (in the picture):2, the top of the company which was set up 143 years ago.

2.3.3 Journalists should express their ideas and news’ meaning objectively.

There is an example: Paris –Air France said on Wednesday that it would not raise wages in 1993 beyond an increase agreed upon last year, and lashed at its unions saying they had no conception of the state- owned carrier’s difficulties. This sentence clearly expressed who said this, when said this and what is the content so people would firmly believe information conveyed by news. In addition, specific reports and picturesque communication are also essential because individuals like to know things comprehensively. In TIMES, there is a news which said“1987, an awful fire destroyed the west forest in United Kingdom just like a precipitate darkness. According to the special department’s research, this fire caused by some butts”. It explains the time, place, reason and regarded this fire as darkness.

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III. Features of Chinese News

News Chinese, which is used in Chinese News, is a special form of Chinese in order to meet the special need of news communication. It is different from the normal Chinese used in daily communication. It is also a special form of Chinese written language. We are often asked to adhere to the ABC principle in news report----Accuracy, Brevity and Clarity. Therefore, Chinese news exhibit distinct characteristics in many respects

3.1 Features of words

As the news should not only provide information in a limited layout as much as possible, but also make the greatest efforts to attract the reader's attention and to expand the propaganda effect. Therefore, the use of the words should be simple, clear, vivid, and imaging. It is required to report the news in at least as possible layout, get close to the audience, and meet the audience's reading psychology as far as possible. So the feature of the words in news is: There are some news terminologies, with more fresh and lively news words.

3.1.1 News terminologies.

Include: special news terminologies and publishing management words.

Such as:Issues of national unity(全国统一刊号), codes, newspapers(本报), reporters, correspondent, according to(据), telegram(电), inform(讯), excerpts(本版), editor, responsible editors, editor’s note(编者按), editorial, monographs, columns, in-depth reports, important news, commentary, revision, the next turn, on the next and so on. All these are the essential news terminologies.

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3.1.2 Fresh and lively news words.

In Chinese news, the title is also a particularly important part.Some news is even just made of the title, which is called \"Headline News\". Compared to the body of the news, wording of the title has different characteristics. As the title contains news facts and subjective comments, and capacity is quite huge. The words of title not only should be simple, clear, vivid, and imaging, but also should be novel. These requirements make the wording of the title have such characteristics: Classical Chinese is use more frequently, the tendency of using the word morpheme is obvious, abbreviations are frequently used, and popular words, new words appear more often.

(1) The use of classical Chinese.

For example,“教育优先，惠生”（《光明日报》，30th,Dec,2009），the “惠泽” in it. And the “告”in “新年告读者”.the “扩” in“扩内需项目成效显著”, moreover, “经，众（乘客），未（定），促，撰”and so on are all from classical Chinese. So news, unlike spoken and written Chinese,is particularly evident in this respect. Classical Chinese can not only cut back the number of the word but also looks like elegant and dignified

(2) Abbreviations.

The words such as “央视”instead of the full name “电视台”, “春晚”instead of “春节联欢晚会”, and “津京，驻京办，涉华，2G，3G”is frequently used in news words. What’s more exaggerated, words of news on the Internet are much less. Such as a “贸降谷进”，when we scan the content of the paper, the full name of the title maybe “贸易逆差降三成，谷物进口增一倍”.The writers cut the words so seriously only if the meaning is right. This is the second prominent characteristic of news Chinese vocabulary

(3) Popular Words and New Words

In recent years, more and more vocabularies appear among the people especially on the Internet. In order to cater to the needs of the readers, Let the news appears more fashionable. So in the current news, the author will use a lot of popular words and new words. The words such as “被代表”，“北漂” and so on all are first use in Chinese news. So the readers influence the news and the news also has effect on the readers. This is

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another typical characteristic of Chinese news.

The news text has corresponding synonyms link the title. Classical Chinese words may be replaced by the modern Chinese words. Monosyllabic words are changed to modern Chinese two-syllable word. There are both many written language words and spoken words in the body of the news, and written language words which have a tendency to political words is a bit more. Such as: 政治要闻，会见，总理，国家政要，新闻发言人，会谈，人民大会堂，仪式 and so on. And the words full of emotion, such as: 稳定，有序，严正 are widely used in Chinese news.

3.2 Features of sentences

Chinese news has some fixed patterns and commonly used sentence patterns. Especially news headlines are more distinctive. In addition to political news will use some ordinary and simple sentences, other news headlines always use rhetoric. Many writers use antithesis, modeled on the antithesis or directly use Ancient Chinese poetry sentences.In this way the news may be elegance and simplicity. In a word, the aim is to attract the readers’ attention. These points are obvious especially in sports news. Such as “几家欢喜几家愁——世界杯预选赛综述”，“皇马将历史踩在脚下”，“李娜，I服了 YOU” and so on.

The sentence has such characteristics of news text content, which is called “Two Lot and One Long”. Namely: Many verb predicate sentences, much political rhetoric and long sentences. The format such as “以…….为指导，深入贯彻…….观，总结…….经验，提出……要求，作出……部署”and so on. Master these \"rhetoric\" can effectively improve the ability of our understanding of the news.

In addition, Chinese news has its own characteristics in the connection of chapters and paragraphs. The title, guide language and the body share the \"inverted pyramid structure\". Arrangement, the title, and guide language are the tip of the body of the main content. The author will use a lot of correlative in order to express the logical relationship between the sentences. And so on.

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IV. Comparisons between Chinese News and

English News and the Translation

Contrast is a kind of important scientific research method. Comparison method is applied in linguistics for a long time. In the previous two chapters, we respectively analyzed and summarized some typical characteristics of English news and Chinese news from different angles. Therefore, we also need to compare the English news and Chinese news from some of the same aspects, and analyze the similarities and differences. Then give advices about translation of Chinese and English news.

4.1 English and Chinese news titles:

The title is an integral part of the news. The full text is in power if the title gets the upper hand. The main functions of Chinese news headlines are: dividing and organizing news content; revealing news content for audiences to choose to read the content; evaluation of news content; attracting readers; landscaping layout and performance of newspaper style. While the roles of titles of English News are mainly in: refining news content; landscaping layout format. It is visible that Chinese and English news headlines have in common is to make the finishing point and beautify the layout.

What’s more, English and Chinese news headlines mainly have differences in the following several aspects:

4.1.1 Content extraction degree is different

Chinese title is multi-layered, with a certain depth and breadth, tend to totality, focusing on news content and including it as completely detailed as possible. Chinese title itself is a piece of ultra-miniature news, while the English title is able to tend to \"focus\ intended to refine the text and outline the most important news at some point or aspect to attract readers.

Such as：谢军获国际象棋世界冠军.While in English newspapers: Xie Jun ends Soviet hold on chess title

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4.1.2 Different evaluation ways of news content

Chinese can evaluate news content by four ways:First, evaluate news through the choice of news fact. Second, we can evaluate the arrangement of the content, which is the primary and which is the secondarythrough the title. Third, evaluate the news directly on the fact or their opinions. Fourth, evaluate the using of the language. While in English writers always choose sharp words more to make headlines.

Such as:冰人! 耐冻六十一小时While in English newspapers: New York Gets an Icy Magic Performance

4.1.3 The structure of news headings

The structure of the Chinese news headlines is divided into compound and the single type. The title of the composite structure is composed of a topic and the subtitle of subject, as well can be teasers plus theme or topic and subtitle form, also can be the subject and topic and the subtitle in the form of three available. Such as：

（Topic）:南信大高标准海内外招才引智 （Subtitle）:最高可获百万元年薪

While the English news headlines mainly adopts single layer type title. Such as:

Tiger’s desperate search for a win

4.1.4 Different rhetorical

Rhetoric devices which used in Chinese news headlines often are: metaphor, analogy, metonymy, parallelism, cascade, dual control, derived, pun, asked the question, ask, zeugma and so on. Such as:

让外国车穿“中国鞋” (metaphor)

While the commonly used rhetorical devices in English news headlines are: rhyme, humor, metaphor, hyperbole, parallelism, pun, and using allusions, idioms, etc. Such as：Foreigners lend flair (rhyme)

4.1.5 Different edit forms

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1. The Chinese use separate subject-predicate phrase, English use complete sentences. 2. The Chinese use noun phrases, English use complete sentences.

3. The Chinese use noun phrases, English also use noun phrases, but the word order is not consistently.

4. The Chinese use simple sentences. English use noun + preposition phrases or adverb phrase. Such as：

亚太经合组织 畅谈亚太经贸

Leaders Discuss Asian Trade at APEC Summit

4.1.6 Others.

Chinese and English have common form, but their content and expression are different. Such as：

尘埃落定 布什发表当选演讲

Bush Gives Long - Awaited Acceptance Speech

4.2 Comparison between English and Chinese news leads and translation

Leads are written at the beginning of the news (usually the first paragraph). It is also the most critical part. It can be divided into direct style and delayed style. Direct introduction commonly focuses on the fact of the news which is the most important and the freshest, while the latter is more appear in close-up.

Leads of press release in Chinese English translation can be roughly divided into four categories: (1) Adjust or choose elements;(2) Adjust the structure of the original leads;(3) clear and expansion of the original leads;(4) Write the leads again.

4.2.1 Adjust or choose elements

News elements usually include personnel, events, time, places, why and how, not every elements are indispensable. What elements should leads contain, and how to organize these

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elements, the processing method is not the same in both English and Chinese news. Let's look at a piece of news.

Chinese leads：今天（21 日）上午，黑龙江省宋法棠在省亲切会见了由金泽大学校长林勇二郎率领的日本石川县大学交流代表团。

In English：Heilongjiang Governor met this morning with an exchange delegation from lshikawa University in Japan .

The news lead includes four elements such as time, places, characters and events. We respectively analyze the differences: （1）Time

Put “morning” after “met”and delete “21st”. Although time hardly becomes the most important element of the news, much Chinese news still starts with time. Then what about English news? According to many researchers“It’s a good way to let the time follow the verbs”。 （2）Places

Place is not the most important elements of the news as well. But Chinese news leads often describe the location of the incident in detail. While there rare are location elements in English news leads. For foreign audience, it doesn't matter where the governor met with the Japanese. So it can be deleted. （3）Characters

The English news deleted“金泽大学校长林勇二郎”and “宋法棠”. Chinese news leads often contain names and identities; sometimes they even a long list, such as“市领导赵某某、段某某、王某某、张某等出席了开幕式”。These names are very important to the Chinese readers or listeners, but not for foreigners in China. Foreigners don't know who they are. So for foreign readers or listeners, there is no news value for these names. Therefore, unless news people, it does not need to appear person's name in the English news leads.

（4） Events

Events are essential elements of news, so we can’t omit them in both Chinese and English news leads.

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4.2.2Adjust the structure of the original introduction

Leads collect the most important facts of the news. Sometimes, writers choose the same fact elements both in Chinese and English news leads, but the ways of combining these elements are different. Chinese news are often located after the theme of the related information, there is a \"from the secondary to the main, from the background to the task, from the development of the relevant information to the topic\". However, if we translate them into English, it doesn’t have distinct themes. For this kind of situation, we can put information on the rear and prioritize elements method. （1）put information on the rear

Chinese news leads tend to take introduces relevant information first, and then cut into the topic. English news usually talk about the subject firs then talk about the related information. Such as：

黑龙江检验检疫局近日公布对流通领域部分进口商品检查的结果。在检查的计算机等10 大类进口商品中，未加贴CCIB 安全标志的高达33. 5 % ，并发现有加贴假冒标志的现象。

The Chinese news lead does not introduce test results directly, but from the beginning of the relevant information, and then to the findings. Chinese readers may have been accustomed to this kind of curve into the topic, but foreign audiences cannot accept such a discourse structure.

So the translation is like this: (The lead go to the theme straightly, only mention the unit slightly at the end of the lead)

A spot-check of ten categories of imported goods has revealed large proportion of imports lacking safety certification ，according to Heilongjiang Inspection and Quarantine Bureau.

In this way, the news lead is in the English news leads writing habits, and is more easily accepted by foreign audiences.

（2）Orders of primary and secondary information

There is always a list of facts or details in Chinese news leads, while in English writers always order the facts according to the importance of them.

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Such as：在全国36 个大、中城市实施的道路交通“畅通工程”今天下午在北京拉开帷幕。

This lead is very specific. It contains a large amount of facts. It meets the way of traditional Chinese news writing----as complete and abundant as possible. However, if we put the way into English news, foreigners who are not familiar with Chinese national conditions would not get the point. So we order the information, start with the point which the readers care the most:

A program to ease city traffic got under way in Beijing this afternoon. This programrunby Chinese Public Security Ministry ，Will involve thirty six cities across the country. After the adjustment, the news is more clear and vivid. So we can say that English leads put great importance to the hierarchy of the information.

4.2.3 Clear and Expanse the leads

There are always such words like“取得重大进步”、“得到专家的一致好评”、“有了新的突破”and so on。If we translate the word directly into English, it will be kind of abstract, general and lack of convincing. So writers hardly use such words in English. We have two solutions: One is clear the information; The other is expanse the leads with words from context. （1 ）Clear

Chinese news writing is more implicative; sometimes not tell the information directly. We can see it from the following example:

Chinese News：今天上午，上海出租车更改型引来的新款“的士”推销战正式打响，全国五大厂家携带六种品牌汽车，在“上海出租汽车专用车展览会”上竞比高低。 In EnglishFive car manufacturers have gone into battle in an effort to win contracts to supply new taxis for the streets of Shanghai.

The Chinese news is very general, and in English the aim of the exhibition is clear

（2）expanse

Fuzzy leads can be specific through expanse and supplement. Such as:

Chinese News：从1996 年9 月起开展的江苏与陕西两挂钩扶贫协作，3 年多来取得

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显著成效。

In EnglishJiangsu has assisted its sister province Shanxi in eight hundred and seven projects since September 1996 in agriculture and education.

It is enough for Chinese reader to know that the assist get good results. But it may be empty for English readers. So we expanse and supplement the number 807 and more details.

4.2.4 Write the leads again

Based on the different understanding of importance and fresh facts, we can choose different focus and different angle to describe in Chinese and English. （1）Focus

Meeting news accounts for a large amount of Chinese news. Chinese news always started with name of meeting, time, place and names of people. But in English, although there are such events in the news, but writers and readers will put more attention to the topic of the meeting.

（2）Angle of view

Chinese news is generally loyal to events, while English news often change the narrative point of view, to attract readers.

Such as：中文稿全文：省中医院3 月1 号将举行百家名专家大义诊。医院所有专科、门诊均由副主任以上的专家亲自坐诊。届时，将对所有前来就诊的患者免收挂号费和处方费。

In English：People seeking medical care Will be able to consult experienced doctors for free one day next week. Provincial Hospital of Chinese Traditional medicine has set aside March the first for this activity. Its ranking physicians will diagnose patients without charging for registration or prescriptions.

Contrast Chinese news and English news, it can be found that in Chinese the lead describe events from the perspective of hospital, following the order that“ first the reason then the result”. While English version is from the perspective of the audience, choose the most familiar and the most attractive fact----the free clinic as leads, then introduce the reason and the specific situation of the events. The order is “reason after the result”.

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Look from the handling of leads, Chinese and English news leads have certain differences in discourse structure. They are mainly embodied in the placement of the elements and different choices. Chinese news leads mainly contains additional information in the beginning, and then cut into the subject; And English news often begin with the most important facts introduction in first sentence. Some Chinese news leads need readers to understand. While the English news leads is clear. In addition, Chinese and English new leads are from different angle and have different key point.

4.3 Content and Others

As for comparison of Chinese news’ and English news’ content and other parts of the paper, as well as the translation, they aresimilar with headlines and leads in general, and so on.

Generally speaking, Chinese are euphemistical, implicative, like to show their attitude indirectly. Chinese writers often give the theme to readers, make them to experience and explore.In addition, In Chinese culture, peopleare used to pursuit the true nature of things, don't pay attention to the internal logical relationship, and put the facts on the ground naturally. While westerners advocate personality, emphasize the freedom to express personal point of view, their articles are often opinionated, direct and clear.They focus great importance to the reasoning process andaim at problem solving.

Moreover, the commercialization of western news is far higher than that of the Chinese news.The industrial revolution made the western economy developed rapidly; people's life rhythm is speeding up, which endow the English news with great commercial value orientation.Readers are the gods of western journalists, so the journalists always try their best to please the readers and attract their attention, while Chinese news is not so commercial strongly.

Of course, these differencesare relative.Both English and Chinese news are under development and changes, Chinese news writers are continuously learningand using for reference from English writers.When we study today's Chinese news theories, it can be found that most of them arefrom western theories, but in the process of practical application, Chinese journalists did not put these theories into practice completely.Some of our translation should follow the western practice of news and the requests, but most of the

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newspapershave the above characteristics.

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V. Conclusion

As a specific genre, news has its special writing styles and skills.But on the whole, it still has their news writing discourse organization characteristics in both English and Chinese.When we are writing or translation news, we are influenced by Chinese discourse organizing principle to a large extent, and always use Chinese habits to write and translate English news.Coupled with a lack of understanding of English discourse organization rule or sensitive, so it is difficult for writers to write or translate specific English news work. So when we were in the English-Chinese translation of the news, we should strive to do the following:

(1) Based on news fact, understand the news correctly and objectively.

(2) Grasp the meaning of the statement accurately, check related information, avoidtaking the words too literally.

(3) Grasp the typical features of Chinese news and English news, and the rules of the previous chapters in this paper.

(4) Try to be familiar with articles in different style, different rhetorical devices, literal translation combined with free translation.

(5) Combine the cultural and ideological differences between east and west. (6) Makes every effort to express clear, vividly, smooth and fluently.

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Acknowledgements

Upon the completion of this dissertation, I wish I could give enough thanks to all those who have kindly and lavishly given me advice and generous support.

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