新闻英语标题的特点与翻译对策(12)

英语论文,英语专业本科毕业论文。

can take the reads ’attention.

A House in Two Parts 两个部分拼凑而成的房子(Metaphor)

This is the headline of a report about the constitution of Canada, the news introduces the contradiction between the French-speaking province Quebec and other provinces which take English as their mother tongue. This metaphor conveys the separate situation of different cultures in one country vividly to the readers. Rich Man , Poor Fan 富球星,穷观众 (Antithesis)

This headline criticizes the fact that football fans cannot afford the tickets due to the high salary of some football stars. It is short but expresses the purpose of the author pithily.

Proper adoption of rhetorical devices can strengthen the literary grace of the news article and romance the atmosphere, thus add the interest of the report and catch the attention of the public. Judging from the examples above, we can see that by using the rhetorical devices, the headlines become more eye-catching, but this also creates some difficulties in translation. The reason is simple and clear, the rhetorical systems are not corresponding to each other.

2.3 Simple Grammar

2.3.1 Wide-range Use of Present Tense

Grammatically, English headlines often use simple present tense, present progressive tense and simple future tense, while Chinese headlines often use present tense, progressive tense, future tense and past tense. In Chinese headlines, the present tense is often implicated by meaning, without obvious tense mark, and can substitute the past tense just like that in English. In Chinese, the“adj.+noun” from is often used, while in English, the “noun+modifier” is often used.

Generally speaking, news in newspapers and magazines is about evens that already happened, past tense should be used in principle. But if so, readers are prone to get the impression of platitude. News is about evens that recently happened. So English headlines often take present tense to enhance the freshness, reality and immediacy. This kind of tense is called “Journalistic present tense”, which serves as