Ideological Manipulations In Reference News:from The Adaptation Viewpoint

Reference News, a daily newspaper enjoying the largest circulation in China, is published by Xinhua News Agency, China’s state official news agency. It provides the Chinese readers with news reports that have been adapted. The selection of source materials and methods for adaptation in Reference News, is to a large extent, manipulated by Chinese mainstream ideological factors.Although the "cultural turn" in translation studies has provoked growing attention on ideological impacts in translation, research on how ideology influences news adaptation, especially adaptation in Reference News, has not witnessed a flourishing time. On the basis of Andre Lefevere’s manipulation theory as the theoretical framework, the thesis investigates how ideology manipulates in Reference News the choice of source news and methods for adaptation, exemplified by the source reports and their Chinese versions about the mid-air collision between China and America in2001and the South China Sea dispute in2011.Based on a systematic study of relationship between ideological influences and adaptation in Reference News and a comparison of reports about the two events, this thesis points out that selecting source material is governed by ideology. Translators and editors, in adaptation process, adopt addition, deletion and variation to make the target versions in line with Chinese ideology. Moreover, Reference News in2011presents a more objective approach, compared to adaptation in2001. This thesis tends to extend ideological manipulations in translation from literary texts to news discourses and show their significance in news translation practices.