As the most active part in language, vocabulary always reflects the changing of society and life. From words we can know social development, emergence of new things and so on, which can also be clearly observed in news writing. Besides the general characteristics of words in other writing types, journalistic words have its own features, which make the news more vivid and genuine, at the same time, attract more readers. In this part, the features of journalistic English vocabulary and their translation will be discussed in detail. 2.1.1 Midget Words Midget words refer to the simple-structured but actively functioning words, which enjoy wide popularity because news is believed to be “literature in a hurry”, no time given to editors to consider the elegance of the wording. Besides, easy wording can largely cater for average newspaper readers from different educational background or social classes. Midget words include midget nouns with large information capacity and midget verbs, which is simple but lively. For instance: aim—purpose drive—campaign talk—negotiation blast—explosion ask—inquire axe—reduce bid—attempt drop—abandon Communicative translation can be a workable method to translate the news texts featuring midget words because the fundamental principle of communicative translation and the basic function of midget words share much in common, i.e. to smooth and accelerate information transmission. For example: With jobs cuts, New York is losing war of brooms (The New York Times 27/2 2004) The word “cut” collocates with the word “job”. Obviously, it means “reduce”. In order to achieve the communicative purpose, it is translated into “裁减”. So the whole sentence should be translated as “纽约裁减清洁工，环境卫生恶化。” 2.1.2 Abbreviations An abbreviation refers to shortened form of a word or phrase used chiefly in writing to represent the complete form. There are two types of abbreviations frequently adopted in news: clipped Words and acronyms. For example: deli—delicatessen expo—exposition homo—homosexual SUV—Sports Utility Vehicle PM—Prime Minister TP—Traffic Policeman UN—United Nations In communicative translation of the news featuring abbreviations, the key work is still to identify the meanings of those words through journalistic conventions and replace them with corresponding Chinese equivalents. Likewise, translators are endowed with much freedom to remodel the structure of the original as necessary. ，法语论文范文 |
