On the Strategies for Translating English News Headlines

Wang Chao

【Abstract】A good headline can not only attract readers attention and trigger their desire to read, but also help them grasp the main points. Thus, news headlines act as guides for readers to choose the information they need. Headlines play a peculiar and essential role in news reporting. In order to understand the headline well, its better for us to know something about the features and translations of English news headlines. In this paper, the strategies of translation of English news headlines are introduced.

【Key words】English news headlines; strategies of translation

I. Introduction

A headline is the title of a news item and plays a crucial roal in a piece of news writing. The translation of news headlines is actually also an important part of journalistic translation. News report reaches almost all the aspects of the social life, such as politics, commerce, military affairs, science, and sports and so on. Therefore, journalistic English style has a large vocabulary and changes frequently. In order to know more about the English news headline, we had better absorb some knowledge about its translation.

II. Strategies for Translating English News Headlines

2.1 Addition

When the translated English headlines may cause confusion or misunderstanding among target readers for lack of introduction to relevant background information, addition becomes necessary. (Zhang Jian, 1996:54)

2.1.1 Add the auxiliary verb

If the omitted auxiliary verb isnt translated, surely readers will feel hard to understand the news headline.

(1)NATO soldier (is) killed 一名北約士兵被杀

(2)Woman (was) accused of killing HK boyfriend 一名妇女被指控杀害香港男友

(3)White-collar workers (are) under increasing stress 白领工人压力逐增

2.1.2 Add the classifier

The quantifier after the number in the English news headline is often omitted. During the translation, we should translate it in order to make it clear and smooth.

(1)4,500 proposals raised四千五百件提议已经提出

(2)10 trees in Chengdu attain “kingly” status成都十种树获得王者身份

2.2 Omission

Omission is necessary when the translated headlines contain redundant information.

(1)(You) Need to Sleep Less than You Think 适量少睡更健康

(2)(How) Globalization Hurts the Poor in Africa 全球化有损非洲穷人利益

2.3 Using punctuation

Because English news headlines emphasize on the terseness of structure, not all the punctuations are used. However, the few used punctuation marks in the news headlines usually stand for special relations between the words or the phrases, for example, the coordinate relation, the explanation relation and so on.

2.3.1 Comma

Comma is usually used to substitute for “and”.

(1)UN, Iraq talk on refugee aid 联合国和伊拉克谈判援助难民问题

(2)Shang Hai, HK seek closer cooperation 上海与香港寻求近一步的合作

2.3.2 Colon

Usually colon is used to replace the link verb “be” and its often translated into “说”，“宣称”，“是”,

(1)Document: satellite test no threat to any country文件稱卫星测验并不会对任何国家构成威胁

(2)Health survey: New Yorkers fitter, slimmer健康调查称纽约人更加健康和苗条

2.3.3 Dash

The dash is often followed by speaker. There are two methods to translate it. When it is followed by a speaker, it can be translated into “说” while it should be translated into “再” when it emphasizes on something.

(1)Labor councils face bankruptcy—officials 官员们说劳动党委员会面临崩溃

(2)Yeltsin in hospital—again 叶利钦再次住院

2.4 Literal translation

Literal translation is the basic approach used in English news headlines translation since it can retain both the form and content of the original to the maximum. It can reduce the readers difficulty in understanding the meaning of the headline. Literal translation is by no means word-for-word translation but it ranges from one word to one word, group to group, collocation to collocation, sentence to sentence. Literal translation can be used if the original English headline is clear and direct of its meaning.

(1)Looking back to look ahead 回首往昔，展望未来

(2)Americas careening foreign policy 摇摆不定的美国外交政策

(3)UK' oldest person dies at 115 英国第一寿星谢世，享年115岁

III.Conclusion

The translation of journalistic English including English news headlines plays a crucial role in the public affairs of our country as well as in our daily work and life. Because of this, we can learn and understand the advanced and advantageous information in the world. Though the translation of news reporting is very valuable, it is really a hard task to fulfill. It requires special translation strategies because journalistic English is quite different from English of other styles. Therefore, the author introduces some strategies for translating English news headlines and gives some examples, from which we could translate the headline in a proper way.