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.
Chapter Two
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
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: