E-C Translation Report Of North China Daily News(Excerpts)

This is a report on the E-C newspapers translation practice of the author.The translation material for the report is North China Daily News,an English newspaper established by British missionaries and merchants living in Shanghai in 1850.The translation materials selected from the news were from items between 1874 and 1878,and in the year of 1937 and 1938,respectively,with total words number of 11220.The newspaper aims to promote the Sino-British political,economic and cultural exchanges.Diversified news from politics,livelihood to entertainment was reported in the newspaper.It has not only brought into trendy life experiences for Chinese at that time,but also become well-known for its sharp comments on Chinese politics.The newspaper belongs to the expressive text type,and it serves both as the official and nonofficial media for publicity.The news in North China Daily News contains policy and ethical values.Influenced by the differences between the author of the newspaper and the translator in terms of political affiliation,cultural background and history,it is inevitable that the translator would be affected by the factors like power,history and culture.Andre Lefevere,who is the representative of manipulation theory,proposed that translation is a social activity.When translating a news item,a translator tends to be clearly manipulated by ideology.As the carrier of social mainstream ideology,the ideology of readers and of individuals,it is unavoidable for the translator to rewrite the original text during translation.As a result,the translation becomes infidelity in contents and variation in form,which can be paraphrased as“translation variation".The translation report is to analyze the translated version of North China Daily News,the most influential English newspaper published from 1850 to 1950,guided by the ideology manipulation theory proposed in by Lefevere.The author of the report is also the translator of North China Daily News.In the translation process,by giving priority to the readers' ideology and readers' expectations,the translator rewrote words and expressions that did not conform to Chinese history,traditional culture and ideology which were reported in North China Daily News regarding rewriting as the primary strategy in the process;translation techniques like omission,amplification,substitution,selective translation,compilation and adaption were applied for the variation of translation.Finally,it is concluded that in historical news translation,language factors like being felicitous and concise should not be ignored on the one hand,and the role of ideology in manipulating a translation to meet the readers'expectation should not be exaggerated on the other hand.In this way,the ideology of the target readers needs to be deleted,amplified and adapted to write a piece of objective and formal news.The translation report aims to provide some practical suggestions on the translation of newspaper and periodicals.