First, translation of news should be truthful. This criterion has been prescribed by the informative function of news. The most important duty of reporters is to present a real picture of what has happened by using accurate and objective language. The undying energy source of news stems exactly from the language truthfulness, which also means that translators should operate on truthful SL, and meanwhile guarantee undistorted information reproduction with truthful TL. Here truthfulness in a real sense has gone far beyond faithfulness, a common yardstick for all translation. Truthfulness actually compels translators, prior the translation, to probe into the credibility of news sources, accuracy of the news events, and preciseness of related information. Any act of transiting falsified information, deliberately or not, will lead to translators’ complete failure. Second, translation of news needs to be esthetically pleasant. To meet this criterion, translators should attach importance to the non-information elements embedded in the original news texts including the authors’ stylistic features and social and cultural background. The reservation of such non-information elements, which contain abundant esthetic value, in fact enables readers to appreciate esthetic beauty while digesting information. Although truthful translation of news can facilitates the communication between SL editors and TL readers, it cannot yet be counted as successful translation. Newspapers are like a “mirror”, so to speak, reflecting the reality of life, phenomena and culture in a society that readers may likewise show their interest in. Translators’ task is to discover those literal evidences in source culture through the “mirror”, and then do their best to make a pleasant presentation of the evidences for TL readers. The above two criteria are not alienated to each other but functioning cooperatively and complementarily. Whenever the two criteria conflict with each other or cannot be met at the same time in translation, translators will have no choice but to sacrifice the esthetic value because truthfulness after all is the spirit of news. 1.4.2 Relations with CT and ST The two criteria aim to balance the relationship between information transmission and reservation of esthetic characteristics in the translation of news texts, which are largely overlapped with the discussion scope on communicative translation and semantic translation. The first criterion pursues the highest fidelity in information transmission, and communicative translation can well meet this criterion by treating information and readers with the foremost concern; the second criterion pursues the esthetic value of news, and semantic translation does concentrate on maintaining authors’ thought patterns and writing styles. The relationship between the criteria and communicative translation and semantic translation is exactly like that between the end and the means of translation. The two criteria set rules that translators should abide by so that the two translation methods can be applied under rigorous supervision and finally be tested, and the two methods outline operational procedures that translators can follow so that the criteria can be fulfilled.
Application of Communicative Translation and Semantic Translation to Translation of News In the previous chapter, this thesis has already discussed the text type of news, based upon which two translation criteria have been tentatively proposed. What is next, the communicative translation method and semantic translation method will be put into real practice. News belongs to informative texts. In this type of texts, the content is of more importance than the form; the authors’ primary intention is to convey their designated information to readers instead of presenting their writing styles and language manners. Communicative translation is suitable for this type of texts. In translation, translators need to spend more efforts on TL rather than SL because the quality of TL texts is a high-stake factor influencing the effectiveness of readers’ information reception. Translators should also minimize the negative effect caused by SL grammatical rules so as to ensure faithful transfer of information thus giving TL readers the same impact as SL readers perceive. Although news belong to informative text, whose proper translation should be communicative translation, but there are also many original expressions (political speech of government man, some important figures, etc) quoted by the reporter and they needs semantic translation. Therefore, both communicative translation and semantic translation are suitable for news translation. 2.1 Lexical Features and Translation |
