to transfer financial information.
However, one fact cannot be overlooked is that financial news aims at common readers who want to pick up the latest financial information, not experts of financial field. If the language of the financial news is too formal, it will be hard to maintain the readers‘ interests, let alone to say to provide them with financial information. To settle this issue, financial news makes great efforts to make news more understandable and attractive by using vivid languages. This effect may be achieved by using some figure of speeches, slangs, and oral English. For example:
Jamie Oliver has been invited by Gordon Brown to cook a banquet ① at No.10 for President Barack Obama and other leaders of the G20, offering ②a cut-price menu to reflect recessionary times. ③Downing Street sources say the celebrity chef will cook using ④―Honest high-street products‖ and avoid expensive or ⑤―fancy‖ ingredients. (China Daily, 3-25, 2009)
① ―No.10‖ is an omission, its full name is No.10 Downing Street. As the official residence of UK prime minister, it is well- known to people. Therefore here the use of it, especially the omission of it makes the news closer to readers‘ daily life.
②―A cut-price menu‖ uses the rhetorical device of pun，it has two double meaning: one means the cook will use cheaper materials to save money for the banquet; the other implies the meeting G20 is going to discuss the measures of handling the financial crisis and to come up with ideas to go through the recessionary time.
③―Downing Street sources‖ is a humorous way to refer to people who know things earlier than others. It is a use of metaphor.
④―Honest high-street products‖: High-street is unique to UK. It is usually used to describe the fashionable and flourishing business street in the city or town. Honest is a word generally used to describe persons who are credible and upstanding. Here it uses rhetorical device of personality and implies food is cooked by using folk material which is inexpensive. Above all, this expression is close to readers‘ life, and gives them a familiar sense.
⑤―fancy‖: when describing food, fancy usually means refined dish which is
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above average quality. It is a positive word to describe the delicious food, but in the news a quotation mark is used to this word to imply a contrary meaning. The positive word is changed into a negative word, so it surprises readers and arouses their interests.
Above all, the humorous and vivid language makes the news very interesting and worthy of reading.
In a word, though serious language and humorous language are opposite to each other, they are wonderfully united in financial news. The main tone of financial news language is serious. It tends to use serious expressions and statements to describe the reason, nature, and significance of a certain economic events. To make the somewhat boring descriptions more enjoyable, financial news tends to add flavor to it by using some humorous language,
The formal language occupies a dominate position while the use of informal language helps to make the formal language more intelligible and less boring. These two kinds of language features work together to make the financial news more attractive.
3.2.3.2 Concise and Complex Language Features
The purpose of financial news is to educate its readers, to explain financial events. For things familiar to readers or not important enough to explain in details, to save space, financial news just mentions them or gives a brief introduction of them in concise languages. For example:
China wants to tap the capital and technology of overseas company like Veolia Environment to supply clean water for the country. (The New York Times, 8-22, 2006)
In the news, the company Veolia Environmental Services is a world famous enterprise, and it is familiar to most of English readers. Besides, here it is minor information. Therefore, the news just mentions it with very concise language.
Financial events changing from time to time are unstable, therefore the new financial terms and events, which are strange to the common readers, may emerge at
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anytime. To make the financial news more understandable, reporters tend to use many sentences, examples even paragraphs to explain the new things. In this sense, the language of financial news has a feature of complexity.
For instance: New Zealand‘s employment participation rate, which measures the proportion of the population working or seeking employment, rose to 66.6 percent from 66.3 percent. (傅伟良，2008)
In the news, reporter makes an explanation to tell readers what ―employment participation rate‖ is.
Above all, either the use of concise language or complex language is for the purpose of making the financial news more readable. It is the condition of the readers that determines to use the concise language or complex language.
3.2.3.3 Accurate and Vague Language Features
Financial news is objective, and it has a high requirement for accuracy. Only in this way can the financial news be more persuasive, otherwise, readers won‘t trust it, and financial news will lose market share in the end. So to make the reports more credible and fresh, financial news writers would like to use accurate language by listing some numbers, giving sources of some quotations, using unambiguous expressions. For example:
―I think some employees are looking at a mass exodus,‖ said Robert Morgan, president for employment solution at Spherion, an international recruiting and outsourcing firm based in Fort Lauderdale, Florida.
In a survey conducted by Spherion in July last year, 51percent of the 3,000 workers questioned said they wanted to leave the jobs, and 75 percent of that group said they were likely to leave within a year. In 1997, Morgan said, only 25 percent of the respondents expressed a desire to move on. (The New York Times, 2007)
In this example, the underlined sentence makes a detailed introduction of source of the quotation, and it makes the news very credible. The survey strengthens the accuracy of the news. The accurate numbers used in the survey make the news too
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accurate to be suspected.
In situations where the detailed information is not very clear and it is not wise for writers to omit the information or to make a subject conjecture, vague language will play roles. Besides, it is also sensible for us to adopt vague language in situations where the minor information needn‘t to be expounded. For example:
Asian ministers also plan to seal a ―trade and investment facilitation arrangement‖ with the United States that will bring in funds for regional projects, official said. (The Associated Press, 8-20, 2006)
By using vague language, the news just tells readers ―funds‖ without saying the specific quantity. Vagueness is also true of ―regional projects‖ which doesn‘t tell readers the name of the regions.
Another example: Gross domestic product is forecast to shrink more this year than at any other time since the Great Depression (China Daily, 3-19, 2009)
In the above news, the underlined words are using vague language to save room for more important information and avoid inaccuracy.
Therefore, using of vague language has the same function as that of the accurate language. They cooperate to make financial news more authentic and credible.
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Chapter Four Translation Principles of Financial News under the Guidance of Skopostheorie
In many cases, it is easy for us to make an equivalent translation, but there are other situations where it is hard for us to make the word-to-word translation. So if we encounter such situations, what shall we do? Perhaps it is a good way to turn to Skopostheorie for help. In chapter two we have mentioned Skopostheorie and now it is time for us to put it into practice.
In this chapter, on the basis of Skopostheorie and translation practices, the author puts forward three principles for financial news translation and discusses them under the help of some vivid examples.
4.1 The Principle of Loyalty
In this chapter we will analyze the translation principle of loyalty from the aspects of headlines and bodies.
4.1.1The Loyalty Principle Used in the Translation of Headlines
As for headlines, in Chapter three we have made an analysis of their features which including omissions, unique use of tenses and using of short words. Sometimes due to these characters, some ambiguities are inevitable. In such cases, if we make the translation at lexical-level equivalence, it may puzzle the Chinese readers. To avoid such ambiguities and transfer exact information to Chinese readers, we ought to follow the loyal principle in financial news headlines translation.
Loyal principle requires the translators render the financial news headlines according to their original meanings and avoid unnecessary ambiguities. The financial news headlines translation is an action under certain purposes: to interest and educate readers, to increase the circulation of newspaper, and to increase numbers of readers. If the translators just pursuit the word-to-word equivalence, the translated news
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