Chapter One: Introduction
In the world of globalization, economic exchange among countries and regionsare growing in frequency and in volume. Acting as one of the major tools fordisseminating economic information, economic news has become a necessary part inpeople’s daily life. Since China ranked as the second largest economy in the world in2010, global focus on China’s economy has been on the increase. TheEnglish-Chinese (E-C) trans-editing of economic news not only provides Chinesereaders with the latest information and trends of global economy, but also theworldwide view of China’s economic development.As the representative of China’s image in the eyes of foreigners, the GlobalTimes shows the Chinese readers how we are perceived and understood in the globalrange. The larger number of trans-edited economic news published on this newspaperhave constructed a landscape of global view upon China’s economic development fordomestic readers.Among all the positive and negative comments on China’s economy fromforeign mainstream media and world’s consensus, two newly emerging ones, “China’seconomic decline” (“唱衰中国经济”) and “China’s economic collapse theory” (“中国经济崩溃论”), shifting people’s attention from the previous “China threat theory”,are particularly popular (王东, 2012). These voices can be frequently spotted in theeconomic news in the Global Times. Thus, one of the trans-editors’ tasks in dealingwith the English economic news is to handle the opinions properly with specificapproaches. Taking the element of intercultural communication into consideration,they must meet the needs of domestic readers, comply with the regulation of certainmedia institution, and maintain China’s social stability.This thesis intends to analyze 30 economic news articles selected from theGlobal Times and their corresponding English version in a micro and macro way respectively, explore into the approaches of trans-editing from the perspective ofintercultural communication, and provide practical critiques for the E-C trans-editingof economic news with the consideration of intercultural communication. The thesiswill conduct its analysis mainly based on Mona Baker’s narrative theory, the Vinayand Darbelnet’s model and Venuti’s foreignization and domestication theory.The analysis will emphasize the vital importance of intercultural communication,and correlation between trans-editing and intercultural communication. Consequently,the research results not only aim to help improve the trans-editing quality of Englisheconomic news, but also enhance the communication effect, avoid cultural conflictand benefit the social harmony. Founded in January 1993, the Global Times is a daily Chinese tabloid under theauspices of the People’s Daily (《人民日报》), the official newspaper of the ChineseCommunist Party (Wikipedia, 2013). It mainly focuses on international issues. Sincethe implementation of reform and opening-up, China has been endeavoring tointegrate itself into the world. It’s essential for Chinese people to view the worldcomprehensively, as well as to know ourselves. Accordingly, the Global Times strivesto make clear the image of China in the eyes of foreigners for Chinese readers byvarious channels, including interviewing people from different occupations bydomestic and foreign correspondents, and trans-editing reports from foreignmainstream media. Among all the columns, the “Focus on China” column focuses onpublishing reports about China from foreign media. Positive, negative, or neutral, theGlobal Times tries to reflect global views about China in an objective way.Economic news reports have always been playing a significant role in the GlobalTimes. It presents the critical thoughts and timely judgment of China’s economy, theoverheating situation of China’s economic development scale, and the complicatedstatus of China’s products entering into the world’s market, etc. (张晓红, 2011) It iswidely known that a large amount of fresh news about China emerge every day, onprint media like newspaper and magazine, television, radio, and the Internet, but onlyone to two pieces of China’s economic news are selected and trans-edited into Chinese in the “Focus on China” column in the Global Times. Thus, how thetrans-editors select the proper economic news and what their selecting standards areare issues worth further investigating.The author of the present study chose 30 economic reports from January 1, 2013to October 1, 2013 from the column “Focus on China” in the Global Times. All of thesource articles are in English and are from American and British media. Overall, theyare about different aspects of China’s economy, including the whole economicdevelopment situation and trend, economy and resources, import and export,productivity and spending power, the financial market, the economic cooperationbetween China and other countries, etc.
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Chapter Two: Literature Review
2.1 News writing
There is no exact definition of “news” (欧阳霞, 2009). The author will refer tothe expression of Li (李良荣, 2013: 26), who regards news as reports of newlyemerging events and information of currently changing events. To put it more clearly,news is what people need or want to know, whatever interests them, whatever adds totheir knowledge and understanding of the world around them (Hough, 1988).Although the definition of news varies from person to person, the following commoncharacteristics of news are still widely accepted around the world: timeliness,significance, prominence, proximity, rarity, and human interest (欧阳霞, 2009).News categories are diverse regarding to different dividing standards. If it’scategorized by the relationship between news and readers, news can be broadlyclassified into hard news and soft news, with the former comprising serious news suchas serious accidents, laws and regulations, stock market, and the result of elections,while the latter involving news of a lighter nature such as features, sports,entertainment, and human interest stories (李良荣, 2013; Hough, 1988). According tothe contents of news, it can be distributed into political news, economic news,entertainment news, sports news, social news and so on (李良荣, 2013: 37-40). The five elements of news, namely, “what”, “who”, “where”, “when”, and “why”(5W) refer to the necessary materials in a piece of news. “What” means the generalinformation of the event, “who” presents the major characters of this news, “where”points to the happening place, “when” indicates the happening time, and “why” showsthe reason. Some scholars may add the element “how”, that is, the whole story, into it,forming “5W1H”. It’s just like that a complete face of a person consists of five facialfeatures. Similarly, news cannot be integrated without any of the above elements.Defining these elements can provide news writers with a convenient means to clarifyevery detail of the news, focus on the major points, and highlight the most importantdetails of the news (李良荣, 2013: 35-37). The body of news is the major part in a piece of news. It mainly consists of newsfacts, backgrounds and explanations about the news subject, complicated points of thenews, as well as the meaning of the event (刘其中, 2003). Although its writing patternvaries with different news writing structures that the journalists adopt, some generalguidelines should still be strictly complied with. Accuracy, conciseness, and clarityare the fundamental but paramount principles, in which writing with high accuracybeing the first and most vital for the reason that the news is worthless if it’s inaccurate (Parks, 2009). To put it more specific, the following criterions should be applied tojournalism on the whole: choose simple, clear and positive language; use correct andproper quotations; use less cliché and adjectives, but more nouns and action verbsfocusing on actors and action; translate jargon by paraphrasing; and prefer theconcrete and detailed description of characters and figures to the abstract and generaldepict of the story (Stein et al., 1998: 76-78).Exploring into news body in English and Chinese separately, it can be concludedthat English news articles usually use longer sentences, more sub-clauses, shorterparagraphs, and longer articles (刘其中, 2009). Clarifying these characteristics can behelpful for the further analysis of economic news E-C trans-editing.
2.2 Definition of special terms
As can be seen from the name of the thesis, news trans-editing, economic news,and intercultural communication are the key words and lay the basic researchfoundation and framework for the entire paper. Precisely understanding and framingthese concepts and the correlation between them will help to further discuss this topicacademically. In 1989, Karen Stetting coined the word “trans-editing” as “a new term forcoping with the grey area between editing and translating” (Stetting, 1989: 371).According to Stetting, a certain amount of editing has always been included in thetranslation task, when the translator has to consider problems such as whether tochange, add or remove the information. The aim of trans-editing is to improve clarity,relevance and adherence to the conventions of the textural type, incorporate culturaland situational variations inside their productions, and mediate understanding betweendifferent modernities and experiences of globalization around the world (Comaneci,1992; Hautanen, 2006). This type of editing belongs to the “world of practical texts”(Hautanen, 2006).The activity of trans-editing exists in every type of translation, but it is, asindicated by Vuorinen (1997:170), more prominent in news trans-editing due to the special characteristics of news items and the particular conditions of news production.As can be seen, news trans-editing is a composite task of news translation and newsediting. Both translating and editing activities exist simultaneously in any given newstrans-editing task and cannot be easily distinguished from each other. Therefore,translators doing news trans-editing are usually referred to as news trans-editors, andthe approaches used are called trans-editing approaches, including re-organization,deletion, addition, and substitution (Vuorinen, 1997; Hursti, 2001). One of the mainpurposes of news trans-editing is to incorporate into the target news texts thereceiving perspective and the target audience’s needs and interests to maximizecommunicative efficiency (李德凤, 2001: 47-48). Economic news is categorized into business journalism, which is the branch ofjournalism that tracks, records, analyzes and interprets the economic changes that takeplace in a society. It intends to transmit the latest economic information and reflectfresh financial situation accurately and rapidly ( 侯宝晶 , 2008). Accordingly,economic news can include any economy-related information ranging from personalfinance, to business at the local market and shopping malls, and to the performance ofwell-known and not-so-well-known companies (Wikipedia). In a word, economicnews is the report of the latest issues linked directly or indirectly to economy.As an effective reflection of economy, business news plays a vital role inpeople’s daily life, especially in the era of economic globalization, when people’sdemands of information about cross-border movement of goods, service, technology,and capital are on the increase (Wikipedia; 杨京英, 2006). It penetrates into our lives,having more influence than anything else reported in the newspaper. As to the case inChina, people are more eager to know what is going on in the world since theimplementation of opening up. Thus, it is of considerable importance to find out theapproaches that relevant media apply to deal with economic news E-C trans-editingand provide convenience for the fulfillment of their duties.
Chapter Three: Theoretical Basis .................................................16
3.1 Mona Baker’s narrative theory ............................................16
3.1.1 Features of narratives.............................................17
3.1.2 Framing narratives in translation ............................................18
3.2 Vinay and Darbelnet’s model.......................................19
3.3 Venuti’s foreignization and domestication............................................23
Chapter Four: Sample Text Analysis and Discussion..........................24
4.1 Micro-analyses of the samples.....................................24
Chapter Five: Conclusion ...............................52
5.1 Summary of the study ........................................52
5.2 Limitations and suggestions for further research.........................53
Chapter Four: Sample Text Analysis and Discussion
4.1 Micro-analyses of the samples
According to van Dijk (1998), news discourse has widely acknowledgedstandardized schemata, which is used to organize the news report. In the schemata, thestarting part is the headline and lead of news, which generalize the news report from ahigher level. In this paper, the lead of news will be analyzed with the news body. Asfor the headline, it needs to convey the main idea of the news item concisely, andappeal to readers as much as possible with novelty, humor, human interest andcomprehensibility, etc (Huang, 2010). In like manner, the corresponding Chinesetrans-editing has to both live up to the basic news principles and comply with thespecial characteristics of economic news by applying certain trans-editing approaches.It is noticeable that many trans-editing of the English news headlines in the database vary considerably from the original if tested with back-translation. Therefore,it makes much more sense to pinpoint the trans-editing approaches on the wholerather than analyzing the news headlines approach by approach.All the news headlines of the sample texts, both in Chinese and English, are listedin the Appendix 1. For the sake of convenience, in the following parts, the translationof the original headline is abbreviated as “TT1”, which in most cases is a literaltranslation of the original headline, whereas the news headline which is oftencombined with some editing work by the trans-editor is abbreviated as “TT2”. BothTT1 and TT2 are available in the sample texts. According to analysis, apart from theliteral translation, the author categorizes the purposes of the economic news headlinestrans-editing into three divisions: to present the attitude clearer, to reverse the negativeattitude, and to make it more concise. Several examples will be discussed as follows. In this sample, the original headline uses the interrogative sentence structure.This article is about the short travelling experience of the article author, Justin Fox, inseveral cities in China. That was the very time when Shanghai integrated free tradezone was launched. Holding opposite view on the development status of China, JustinFox analyzed the forward momentum of China and got the conclusion that China willhave a positive future. Based on the main opinion of the news article, the trans-editorchose to change the interrogative sentence to the simple declarative sentence, withactive voice and simple present tense. Due to the application of shift of subject, thetrans-editing Chinese news headline repositions the participant, and shows readers theexact tune of this article, and makes it clear that the article is about the reasons forbelieving in a prosperous China. To make sure that it is catchy and thought provoking, nearly every news headlineis trans-edited with different techniques. In the example (2), the approach of omissionis utilized to cater for the reading habit of domestic readers. It is common that westerncountries criticize the rigid corporate culture, a top-down approach to innovation, thedraconian education system, and the political system, etc, of China. In this newsarticle, the original author presents several examples, such as Lenovo’s inquisition ofIBM’s PC division, Geely Automobile buying Volvo from Ford, and Chery’s QQ CityCar, and compares the economic development trend of China with that of Japan andSouth Korea, showing the obstacle of regime in the path of China’s innovation andcompeting in the global stage. It’s critical for the economic development status ofChina actually, yet the original text and the literal translation in TT1 puts the emphasison “regime” (制度) and “held back” (拖累), resulting in the negative tone of thearticle at the first sight. But the trans-editor of the article made a reversion by omittingthe focus on “regime” and “held back”, and adjusting the title to “China’s Quest forAcknowledgement of the World-beating Brand”. In this way, the article endowsreaders with a sense that Chinese enterprises are striving for the global accreditation,showing the positive attitude of China. Table 4.3 illustrates the use frequency of trans-editing approaches in MonaBaker’s framing narrative approaches and Vinay and Darbelnet’s model in terms oftrans-editing the body of news. The results show that selective appropriation (addition,omission) is employed the most frequently in total and transposition the least. In fact,selective appropriation, repositioning of participants, and literal translation accountfor a larger use frequency compared with modulation, borrowing, division, framing bylabeling, equivalence, calque, and transposition, which means that the formerapproaches are more preferred in the E-C economic news trans-editing.In addition to the theory and the model, the results also display two additionaltrans-editing approaches, in which the approach of combination outnumbers most ofthose in the theory and the model. The findings of these extra approaches demonstratethat Mona Baker’s theory and Vinay and Darbelnet’s model may just cover a limitedfield of translation approaches, and focus on a certain domain of translation. Theycould not comprehensively include all the E-C trans-editing procedures and that thetrans-editors attempt to pursue readability for the target readers by adhering to theChinese language conventions.Most important of all, the total percentage of direct translation approaches is farmore less than that of oblique translation approaches and framing narrativeapproaches, which further suggests that trans-editors in the Global Times try to followthe Chinese stylistic and linguistic conventions to guarantee that the trans-editedeconomic news articles can be readable for target readerships, and fulfill the functionof economic news as an informative text to convey the facts and truth of China’s economy.
4.2 Macro-analyses of the samples
In this part, based on Venuti’s foreignization and domestication theory, the authorwill discuss the manipulation of intercultural elements in the process of trans-editingthe selected English economic news in a macroscopic way.For trans-editors, the cultural gaps between the SL and the TL have always actedas a hard nut to crack. Nida (2001: 82) maintains that “for truly successful translation,biculturalism is even more important than bilingualism, since words only havemeanings in terms of the cultures in which they function”.According to Venuti (1995), domestication means replacing the source culturewith the target culture, while foreignization refers to preserve the differences of thesource culture. They are concerned with two different cultures. As stated by Wang (王东风,2002: 24), the conflict between domestication and foreignization as oppositetranslation approaches can be regarded as the cultural and political rather thanlinguistic extension. Thus, in this paper, a study of the E-C trans-editing of economicnews from an intercultural perspective, both linguistic presentation and culturalconnotation are presented, and it’s theoretically valid to apply Venuti’s theory toconduct text analysis. In example (21), “MSCI Emerging markets index” is trans-edited into “摩根士丹利资本国际新兴市场指数”, which is exactly a semantic trans-editing. In this way,the source culture is emphasized so that the trans-edited institute name expresses theprecise meaning of the original. It reminds the readers of the existence of the sourceculture and meanwhile facilitating intercultural communication and understanding.Similarly, the “Peterson Institute for International Economics” in example (22) isalso trans-edited according to its semantic meaning as “彼得森国际经济研究所”.This foreignization approach in trans-editing the culture-laden terms provides not onlya trans-editing of the original text, but also a chance for domestic readers to knowmore about foreign cultures, especially foreign economy industry terminology. This isa good way to enhance the economy literacy of domestic readers.
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Chapter Five: Conclusion
5.1 Summary of the study
The present study attempts to explore the economic news E-C trans-editingapproaches utilized by the trans-editors in the Global Times, collecting 30 trans-editednews articles in Chinese and their corresponding English versions as the sample texts.It thoroughly analyzes every news story by referring to Mona Baker’s framingnarrative approaches (2006), Vinay and Darbelnet’s model (1958; 1995), and Venuti’sforeignization and domestication theory (1995).As to the news headlines, the research finds out that the trans-editors are activelyusing the framing narrative approaches and oblique approaches to guarantee theconciseness and readability of the trans-edited Chinese economic news articles. Thenin the process of trans-editing news bodies, the statistical results show that selectiveappropriation, repositioning of participants, and literal translation are effectively usedby trans-editors. Also, the results indicate that some additional trans-editingapproaches are required apart from Mona Baker’s framing narrative approaches andVinay and Darbelnet’s model. It manifests that the trans-editors are in pursuit of areadable trans-editing to facilitate information transmissions within the constraints ofthe TL norms. It is just in accordance with Newmark’s opinion (1988), that newstranslation, as one type of informative texts whose core is truth, aims to convey thefacts from one text to another in the reader’s own language. In this regard,linguistically speaking, the trans-editing of the economic news in the Global Timesuses more domestication than foreignization.Furthermore, since it has been extensively argued that translation studies shouldtake into account not only linguistic transfer but also the whole cultural contextbetween the two texts, the research also conducts the analysis from the interculturalperspective in a macroscopic way (Bassnett, 1980). It investigates the trans-editing ofthe culture-laden expressions to ascertain whether news trans-editing in the economic news, especially some economic industry terminology, is foreignized or domesticated(Venuti, 1995). The results show that the trans-editors more intend to useforeignization than domestication. When domestic readers experience unfamiliarcultures through the trans-edited news articles, they are becoming a part of theintercultural communication and integrating themselves into the economicglobalization unconsciously.In summary, the economic news E-C trans-editing of the Global Times islinguistically domesticated and culturally foreignized.
5.2 Limitations and suggestions for further research
With the method of case study, this research has explicitly presented theeconomic news E-C trans-editing approaches in the Global Times. Still, as far as thestructure and method of the research are concerned, several limitations existed in theprocess of the research have to be indicated here in an attempt to avoidmisunderstanding of the findings discovered in the research.First, although three theories are applied in the process of analysis, there are stillsome trans-editing approaches used by trans-editors haven’t been concluded in theirdomain. This study is preliminary in listing some basic E-C trans-editing approachesof economic news. It’s practical to further develop a more detailed list of theapproaches applied by trans-editors. Just as Bassnett appeals that it will “allow us toreflect on whether there are globalizing tendencies in news translation that transcendlinguistic and cultural expectation” (Bassnett, 2005:130).Second, whether the single case studied in the research can reflect the commonpractices of economic news E-C trans-editing in China deserves further questioning.There must be some subtle differences in the practices between news institutions inChina. Constrained by the scale of the study, the findings can only represent situationsand phenomenon existed in the individual newspaper. Also, the non-textual factors,such as the working status, qualities of the trans-editors, and the regulations andideology of the media institutions, are also highly worthy to be explored into.Third, the author has interned in different news institutions, and has relevantnews trans-editing experiences. Although serving an observer in the process ofresearch, the author may still inevitably be influenced by personal inclinations.
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参考文献（略）