the-features-and-translation-of-english-sports-news--英语体育新闻特色及翻译学位论文.doc

The Features and Translation of English Sports News

Abstract: In the current society, with the increasing level of people’s living and on the basis of satisfaction of material life, people started to pursue their spiritual fulfillment. Taking part in and watching sports programs have become a incredible part in people’s spiritual life. As the international competitions increase, the transmission of sports news has been seen as the carrier of sports information, which has made the sports news an irreplaceable part of transmission of international news. Since 1992, the third leapfrog development was made in China’s press, the paper and electrical media enjoyed a rapid development. As the development of media, watching sports news , as an important face and time presented on the various media, has become a topic issue surrounding people’s life.
This thesis firstly introduced the general characteristics and forms including the structure, lexicon, topic,numbers and the opinions and skills the translators came up with. In addition, this paper also displayed the problems always occurred in translating English sports news and its reason. According to the basic principles and elements of translation, this thesis puts the emphasis on the discussion of the standard, condition, skills and method of translation.
Key Words: Translation methods; sports news; application

英语体育新闻的特色及翻译

摘要：当前社会，人民生活水平日益提高，在物质生活满足的基础上，人们开始追求精神上的满足。其中参与与欣赏体育运动成为了人民精神生活中不可或缺的重要部分并且随着国际赛事的增多，体育新闻的传播成为了体育信息传播的载体。这也使得体育新闻成为了国际新闻传播的一部分。自1992年以来，中国新闻界实现第三次跨越式发展，中国的电子媒介和纸业媒介迅猛发展，新闻媒体的数量急剧增加。在这现象的其中包含了这样一个问题，任何一家新兴的新闻媒体，体育新闻都成为了重要的新闻，并且体育新闻被置于于媒体的时段和重要版面，而观看体育新闻，则成为了中国老百姓茶余饭后的焦点。
本文首先重点介绍了英语体育新闻的形式及总体特征，包括：词汇、句子结构、标题和数字的运用，以及体育新闻翻译研究工作者们的针对于此的观点以及翻译技巧。其次，在文中介绍了在翻译英语体育新闻时常出现的问题以及出现的原因。接着根据翻译学的基本原理和原则，综和上述特点，从翻译的标准、条件、方法及技巧方面进行探讨。
关键词：翻译方法；体育新闻；应用

I

Contents
Abstract in English I
Abstract in Chinese II
1.Introduction 2
2. The definition and features of English sports news 3
2.1 The definition of English sports news 3
2.1.1 The definition of news 3
2.1.2 The brief description of English sports news 4
2.2 The Features of English Sports News 5
2.2.1 Lexical Features 5
2.2.2 Stylistic Features 6
3.The Problems of English Sports News Translation 8
3.1 The Misconception about Context 8
3.1.1 Insufficient Understanding of the Context 8
3.1.2 Insufficient Background Information 10
3.1.3 Failure to Retain the Original Language Style 11
3.2 The Lack of Sports Expertise 13
3.2.1 Professional Athlete 13
3.2.2 Amateur 14
4.Translation methods and skills in English Sports News 17
4.1 Free Translation and Literal Translation 17
4.1.1 Literal Translation 17
4.1.2 Free Translation 18
4.2 Dynamic Equivalence 19
5.Conclusion 21
Bibliography 22
Acknowledgments 23

1.Introduction
Sports has become an irreplaceable part to people’s life and is surging increasing attention worldwide. As a major source for the public to learn more about sports knowledge. Sports news have been playing an important role in current news media, and taking up one of the four mainstream news departments. Sports report is becoming a writing style that shows both its own characteristics and common characteristics of news writing.
Due to the different environment just like background and reporting targets, sports news in many countries has different features. According to this reality, the thesis started from the English and Chinese sports news, conducting comparative analysis and research, to come up with the different features and the problems needed to pay attention.
In the processing of translating the language between English and Chinese, the differences of professional terms in sports news remain a problem for translators. The terms includes the name of event, skill and tactics, rules of competition and referee’s command. For the high standard of professional requirements, translation mistakes and other problems have great effects on audiences.
On the website like BBC and CNN, they have two versions including English and Chinese. We started from two point-----on the language level and social and cultural background. The research showed that there are many elements including the ideological diversity effecting the translation of sports news except the language level.

2. The definition and features of English sports news
2.1 The definition of English sports news
The most important elements in figuring out the features and translation between the English and Chinese sports news is the specific definition. It can be used in the every part of the process of judging the differences among various versions. In this thesis, we mainly contrast the English and Chinese sports news.
2.1.1 The definition of news
Brake gave the definition of news as it is the bridge connecting the hearts of people. In China, Lu Dingyi said that news is the report reflecting the issues happened recently. As a mediation, news have its principles as follows.
First, news aim to the events occurred recently and it relates to people’s lives and their benefit. Secondly, news must be true in reacting the real problems of our society. Last, news are the events people really care about.
Information technology has changed a lot in the society of globalization of the world economy. Besides, IT has a huge influence on politics, economy, culture and commercial trade. The traditional life style has improved by the information technology.
In a sense，style is a way that author can express his feelings and thoughts. For example, the style can be read from the words and sentences’ structure in an thesis. News has its own features to satisfy the purpose of news reporting and readers. News includes three parts: Title, Introductions and Body. The Title is regarded as the eye of news. The Introductions always be put on the first line of a report including “Five S” :Who, What, Why, Where, When and “One H”: How The Body is the most important part of a news report for readers could obtain more specific information they want.

2.1.2 The brief description of English sports news
Sports news is the news that aims to report the sports events to people. It is a branch of news. Therefore it has the same characteristics as news. In general, English sports news has few features as follows.
(1) Timeliness
News must be new. It must be the news happened currently. The news is supposed to refer to the events happened recently and be transmitted in a very short time and a broad range.
(2) Fun
In current society, people get busy to earn money and a better life. Therefore we can spend a little time on entertainment around us. That is the reason why news reporting must be fun. A fun news will arouse readers’ interesting and thinking. So this is an irreplaceable part of news for it could attract people’s attention.
(3) Informativeness
In this informative society, the transmission of information has various aspects including history, politics, sports, culture, economy and education. In this thesis, I focus on the sports news. In sports channels, papers and other media, sports news bears the responsibility of the transmission of the information of sports events.
With the increasing requirements of life, people started to create the spare-time activities and within which mostly the sports for it can be happened without limitation of equipment and fields. If it limits, you can run along the road anyway.
(4) Objectivity
Objectivity is the heart of news. The most prominent characteristic is that news must reflect the truth faithfully. The news reporting usually be put on the neutral position. If any personal feelings and prejudices are mixed up with it, the news cannot meet the basic qualifications of news.

2.2 The Features of English Sports News
Although sports news is a branch of news, it is different from other forms of news. It aims to transmit sports events and it demands a high standard of the understanding of sports terms and knowledge. In this paper, I will invite two points as follows as the differences to other forms of news.
2.2.1 Lexical Features
(1) Initials
Initials refer to the first letter of every major words, which is also called the Acronyms. National Basketball Associations of United States is the most famous term in reporting sports news. Other professional names of titles just like the MVP which means the Most Valuable Player.
In this way, the news writers could save lots of space and words by using few capital letters. The most common initials mostly include names of institutions and organizations just like the NBA and FIFA.
(2) Names or nicknames
In general, the names sports teams or organizations are very long.
The nicknames and some certain names standing for the teams and players always are used in considering to concise language. For example, there is a title that Iverson downs Wizard, the Iverson is not the team name but the player serves for the team called Philadelphia 76. Iverson is a famous basketball player in NBA. When reading this title, NBA fun could learn the news that the team Philadelphia 76 has beat the Washington Wizard because of the good performance of the player Iverson. In addition, to attract the readers to the sports events and to make audience and readers close, sports reporters always use nicknames of teams or athletes.
(3) Abbreviations
In the process of writing sports news, the writers always cut the head or take off its tail to shorten the words in translating the nouns and adjectives. For example, the word ‘GYM’ refers to the word gymnasium and ‘Huston vs. Bulls’ refers to Huston versus Bulls.
(4) Neologisms
News writers always use neologisms to catch up with the trend in linguistics in order to make the content of news comfortable. In sports news writers tend to use more neologisms. Within so many terms, the military terms are the most popular. “The Winning Eleven”was a title of a movie that told a fierce war on battlefield. This name always be picked by an English writer as one of a title of an essay to deliver a strong feeling of a war was aroused in two teams competition when they are chasing the champion of match. In China such phenomenon is more common for examples: “巴西足球军团全军覆没”,“北京和泰达球迷针锋相对”, etc.
2.2.2 Stylistic Features
Stylistic includes many factors including the signal, tone, language characteristics, features of headline, numbers and so on. In this section, I will give priority to the sections of sentences and the features of headline.
(1) Simple sentences and extended simple sentences
Simple sentences will make readers a plain train of thought. Simple sentences are always used to report an event in live broadcast. In addition, writers like to use some active tone in simple sentences. That makes the news directly delivered to readers and audiences. In general, there are three basic sentence pattern of news.
The first one is SV, which means subject+verb, e.g.“Huston Rocket falls”(休斯顿火箭队输掉了比赛）；Secondly, the SVP refers to Subject+verb+predicative, for example “The U.S win nil one”(美国队一比零赢了); SVO stands for the mode of subject+verb+object, e.g. “The football has been kicked out.”(足球出界了).
Reporters always expand simple sentences by supplying the sentence group, adverbial modifier and appositive to curtail the space or make a conclusion in one sentence,. For example, “Yao has 20 points and 26 rebounds Monday night, leading the Huston to a 95-88 victory over the Lakers”(周一晚上，姚明夺得20分，26个篮板，率领火箭队以95：88击败了湖人队。) In this sentence, writer uses participle phrase to prolong the simple sentence with the match result.
(2) The features of headline
In general, English news usually includes few parts such as main body, lead and title. The title is the general summary of the all paper of news. It focuses on the most valuable contents. Therefore the news writers could attract the reader’s attention by these headlines.

3.The Problems of English Sports News Translation
3.1 The Misconception about Context
The English sports news translation has become more and more important in recently years while China held many international sports events and an increasing number of Chinese athletes attracting world’s attention. In today’s press circle, translator bears much more responsibility than they were. Meanwhile, kinds of problems have come out with various versions of translation. In this section, I try to find out the reason causing the existing mistranslation problems.
3.1.1 Insufficient Understanding of the Context
Context is defined as “the words that come just before and after a word, phrase or statement and help you to understand its meaning”in dictionary. Its extending meaning refers to that it could stand for the scope of the all passage or paragraph. Even the background circumstance in which certain words or phrases. Sports news has a kind of style in writing with its own language system.
English words always have more than one meaning. According to such phenomenon the context has play an irreplaceable part in picking up the suitable word for perfect description. Such as the B.Malinowsky said that context is the only judge in translating. Without this standard, there is no point in other choice. The narrow meaning of context is that context is the liking part of the paragraphs. Obviously this definition describing the accuracy of translation of English sports news is not enough. In the process of translation English sports news, due to the language always be used in the certain time, space and circumstance, it is supposed to be combined with the objective conditions and backgrounds.
For example, “Even if you're among the small percentage of people who are actually working out regularly, even if you are as fit as a fiddle, even if you look like a Greek god or goddess, you are still at the same risk for disease as your less-fit colleagues. In the language of science, sedentary behavior is an "independent risk factor," one you face every time you sit down at your desk, regardless of your outside-the-office fitness level. ”
In this paragraph, the “Greek god ” and “ Goddess” literally means “美男子” “圣母”, but the author want to express that the people who have perfect body and healthy muscles. The correct translation, according to the context, should be “身材姣好的男女”.
I quoted from the book wrote by the famous sports professional Larry Swanson, he said as follows.
“Simply standing up for the 5 minutes or so that it takes you to read this prologue triggers mechanisms in your body that help to regulate your blood pressure, re-engage your "second heart" (deep muscles in your calves that help pump blood back up to your heart), trigger the release of enzymes that help to optimize your cholesterol levels, and reactivate a number of other vital phy