Trans-editing for Global Journalism

Junior students in journalism

College of Journalism, SISU

. 2008
. 2010
2012
2013

CLASS
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SCHEDULE

Course Orientation()
Getting Started
Digging into Headlines
Making Your Translation Newsier (
)
Making your Translation More Chinese

Warding off Misinterpretation:E-C:

Warding off MisinterpretationC-E(
Striving for Hidden Meaning
Proper Words in Proper Places

The Making of a Translator ()

Neologisms & Hot Words in China Reports

1
2. . 2008

The schedule is subject to change, depending on progress,

lecturer, public holidays, and other circumstances.

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Getting Started
Try to work out some general rules or tactics in translating into Chinese the following news stories (including the headlines).

Time-limited promos in shops banned after Carrefour stampede

Time-limited sales promotions in retail
outlets have been banned following a
stampede at a Carrefour supermarket in
Southwestern
Chinas
Chongqing
Municipality that killed three and injured 31
last Saturday, according to a government
circular issued by authorities concerned
after the stampede.
The Ministry of Commerce ordered
local authorities across China to overhaul
safety requirements in shops to prevent
similar occurrences of time-limited sales

promotions, said a statement dated

Monday on its website.
"In order to eliminate hidden safety
concerns, companies are required not to
organize time-limited sales promotions
which may lead to traffic congestion, bodily
harm and disorderly conduct," it said.
In the Saturday stampede, victims
were crushed as bargain-hunters rushed to
get into the supermarket for a tenth
anniversary sale.
''I rushed to the oil shelf with other four

people and grabbed four bottles,'' one

shopper, who was a middle-aged laid-off
woman, told reporters.
Some people had begun to queue at 4
am for the five-litre oil bottles, which had
been discounted to 39.9 yuan from their
usual price of 51.4 yuan.
The stampede injured 31 people who
were
''recovering
well'',
Chongqing
Television said.
Local authorities have closed the store
and began an investigation.

Murderers Caught Thanks to a Monkey

A monkey is being credited with a key
role in the capture of three murderers in
Xishuangbanna Dai Autonomous Prefecture
in Yunnan Province.
On a June day, a PLA political
instructor, identified as Zhang, and a soldier,
identified as Liu, were driving through the
mountains in Xishuangbanna when a
monkey jumped on to the highway in front of
their jeep and began to point to the south,
all the while tugging at their arms.
The two men got out of the jeep and
followed the monkey to a pit, where it

started to dig at the earth so hard that its

paws began to bleed. Zhang and Liu were
confused and took the monkey to the local
Public Security Bureau.
Two bodies were dug out of the pit
after the monkey led policemen to it. The
monkey pointed to a nearby village when
the policemen asked it who the murderers
were.
That evening, an assembly was called
in the village. The moment the monkey was
brought in, it threw itself on a young man,

who tried to run away, as did two others, but

they were caught.
The three men later confessed to
murdering the monkeys owners --- two
traveling show people from inland. They
had presented a show in the village. Then
the three got them drunk, stabbed them to
death and took all their money. They tried to
kill the monkey too, but it escaped. They
said it had been crying loudly as the murder
occurred.

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Dig into Headlines

I.

Linguistic Features of Headlines

1. tenses

ENT doctor dies at 86

2 Ethiopia jails Jews escaping to Israel
3 Mount St. Helens erupts after 50 years silence
Largest Chinese trade delegation to visit US in Nov.
Death toll in quake-hit Kobe growing
1

2. voices
1 37 killed in Italian plane crash
Nate Brazill Sentenced to Grow Up in Prison
The Florida teen gets 28 years for shooting his teacher.
Only time will tell if the judge was harsh enough

3. omissions
1
2

Israel, Palestine to resume peace talks

Great Wall at top of " Worlds New Seven Wonders "

4. punctuations
World unity against terrorism needed --- Blair
French professor: Malaria still menaces quarter of humanity
Chinese cooks: masters at turning turnip into flower

5. short, dynamic wordings

Allowance to be cut in 200,000 families
Osaka-Kobe quake death toll may top 5,000
Street battle in heavy shelling as peace talks proceed
Reshuffle slashes France's cabinet

6. abbreviations
Epic control cuts death figures
Jia elected CPPCC head

II. Tactics for Headline Translation

1. literal or semi-literal translation

Financials, estates lead HK stocks in broad retreat

Olympics Begin in Style, Swimmer Takes 1st Gold

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2. complementary translation
Jia elected CPPCC head
Terror bombing kills 189 in Bali

3. Standing out rhetorical devices

After

the

Everything Is Gloom
Soccer Kicks off with Violence

4. Bridging the rhetorical gap

Older, wiser, calmer
Japanese dash to US to sayI do

Boom

IV. Practice
Translate into Chinese the headlines in the list below:
Richest get poorer in global economic depression
Surgeon saves gorilla from the mist
Shanghai index soars 9.29% as trading tax slashed
Stocks sink to record lows amid growing inflation worries
Refiners lead way higher as shares end losing streak

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Making Your Translation Newsier

Suggest some workable approaches that can be applied to translating the following press clipping into Chinese.
Gandhi's Assassination: "Bapu (Father) Is Finished"
New Delhi, January 30,
1948
(United
Press
Association)--- Mohandas K.
Gandhi was assassinated
today by a Hindu extremist
whose act plunged India into
sorrow and fear.
Rioting
broke
out
immediately in Bombay.
The seventy-eight-year-old
leader whose people had
christened him the Great Soul
of India died at 3:45 P.M. (1:15
A.M.EST) with his head
cradled in the lap of his
sixteen-year-old granddaughter,
Mani.
Just half an hour before, a
Hindu fanatic, Ram Naturam,
had pumped three bullets from
a revolver into Gandhi's frail
body, emaciated by years of
fasting and asceticism.
Gandhi was shot in the
luxurious gardens of Birla

House in the presence of one

thousand of his followers,
whom he was leading to the
little pagoda where it was his
habit to make his evening
devotions.
Dressed as always in his
homespun, sacklike dhoti, and
leaning heavily on a staff of
stout wood, Gandhi was only a
few feet from the pagoda when
the shots were fired.
Gandhi
crumpled
instantly, putting his hand to
his forehead in the Hindu
gesture of forgiveness to his
assassin.
Three
bullets
penetrated his body at close
range, one in the upper right
thigh, one in the abdomen,
and one in the chest.
...
The shots sounded like a
string of firecrackers and it was
a moment before Gandhi's

devotees realized what had

happened. Then they turned on
the assassin savagely and
would have torn him to bits had
not police guards intervened
with rifles and drawn bayonets.
The assassin was hustled to
safekeeping.
...
Over all India the word
spread like wildfire. Minutes
after the flash was received in
Bombay rioting broke out, with
Hindu extremists attacking
Moslems. A panic-stricken
Moslem woman echoed the
thoughts of thousands with a
cry: "God help us all!"
In Delhi itself, in the
quick-gathering gloom of the
night, the news set the people
on the march.
They walked slowly down
the avenues and out of the
squalid bazaars, converging on

Birla House. There by the

thousands
they
stood
weeping silently or moaning
a wailing. Some sought to
scale the high walls and catch
one last glimpse of the
Mahatma.
Strong
troop
contingents strove to keep
order. Tonight in response to
the insistent demand of the
people, his body was shown to
them.
...
Within Birla House there
was grief and mourning
which at least for the
moment fused the dissident
sects of India --- the Hindus,
the Moslems, and the Sikhs
-- into a community of
sorrow.
But there were grave fears,
heightened by the savage
outbreaks in Bombay, that
without her saint to hold

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passions in check, all India

might be whirled into strife.

Translate the press clippings below into newsy Chinese by the help of four-character Chinese
phrases where necessary:
1. The US Stocks opened higher and dived into the close yesterday, with the S&P 500 index tumbling 8.6 per cent at
909.92.
2. The BBC reporters overwhelmed the police as much with courtesy as with force, and rushed to the scene in time.
3. Some personnel executives complained that many college graduates they had interviewed here had two-star
abilities with five-star ambitions.
4. The then young senator was struck by the powerful profile of his secretary of Asian descent, her rich black hair
falling freely onto her shoulders, the intensity of her dark eyes.
5. Unemployment has stubbornly refused to contract for more than a decade.
6. Companies with a big staff in Beijing find themselves squeezed between high operating costs and shrinking
business.
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Making Your Translation Newsier More Chinese

Translate the press clippings below into Chinese, paying attention to the conversion from hypotaxis into
parataxis where necessary:
1. The study found that non-smoking wives of men who smoke cigarettes face a much greater than normal danger of
developing lung cancer. The more cigarettes smoked by the husband, the greater the threat faced by his
non-smoking wife.
2. The minimal cost for taxi far outweighs the inconvenience of being immobile in this vast urban area.
3. Roads, parks and sewage facilities are grossly over-utilized and under-maintained.
4. The Chinese trade delegation enjoyed red-carpet welcome at the otherwise under-attended trade fair.
5. Established in 1960s when federal money flowed, the clinics are now a shadow of their former selves. Patients wait
hours while the undermanned-and-sometimes-short-tempered staff
6. Even with the effort to limit the demands upon his time, there were fears that Mandela would be overtaxed. His
crowded American itinerary would test the stamina of a presidential campaigner, much less a frail-looking
73-year-old Mandela recovering from surgery to remove a benign cyst from his bladder.
7. In a potentially important reversal of roles, a mainland Chinese electronics company based in Shenzhen has
kickstarted a multimillion-dollar investment in Hongkong's laggard high-technology sector by signing a contract with
the Hongkong Government to take a site for a planned US $312 million state-of-the-art semiconductor plant.

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Warding off Misinterpretation:E-C

1. Junes World Cup in Seoul will be a security nightmare for Japan as well as South Korea.
2. The former White House intern repeatedly implied that she possessed compromising information
about Clinton, which was, if publicized, liable to harm his re-election for presidency .
3. Professor Wang was quoted as saying that his proposal had died a bureaucratic death.
4. According to experts, almost everything about President Bushs looks and character are an
image-makers nightmare.
5. The man was lured (by a bar girl) to a nearby house and secretly filmed in a compromising position
with the woman.

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Warding off Misinterpretation:C-E

1.
13

2.
3.

4.

5.

6.

7.

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Striving for Hidden Meaning

A growing number of parents complain that children nowadays always live ahead of their salaries.

The research find that young women are heading for an early grave through smoking and lack of

exercise.

All told, China has roughly 380 million women between the ages of 15 and 55, and few of them ---

particularly in the cities --- want to look any less than the best their budgets allow.

Eager to trust but determined to verify, many single women in an age of risky romance are hiring

private detectives to check the background of their suitors.

Rich choice tobaccos plus the modern filter make Kent the international passport to smoking
pleasure.

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Proper Words in Proper Places

1. Hong Kong ended flat as trading volumes dwindled. The Hang Seng index slipped 0.1 per cent to close at
23,057.99.
2. The Shanghai Composite index closed 1.8 per cent lower at 3,560.24 points, having fallen as much as 3.3 per cent.
Insurers were among the biggest fallers of the day.
3. A free kick by Uruguayan star forward Paz in the 20th minute forced Colombia to take the offensive and Sarmiento
headed home an equalizer in the 40th minute.
4. After trouncing Korea 7-0 yesterday, the women's soccer players of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea ran
a lap of honour for the spectators.
5. Clear or cloudy skies may continue for the next week in the city.
6. At least six people were killed and eight others injured in a six-car pileup as a result of a head-on collision between
a delivery lorry and a sports car driving on the wrong side of the road.
7. The stock market is expected to bottom out at the end of this month.
8. Chinese stocks snapped a 10-day losing run yesterday as bargain-hunters moved in following a decline in oil
prices.
9. However, Shandong Chenming Paper suffered a miserable discount debut as it ended the session at HK$7.50 a
17 per cent discount to its offer price.
10. Chinese stocks snapped a 10-day losing run yesterday as bargain-hunters moved in following a decline in oil
prices.
11. However, Shandong Chenming Paper suffered a miserable discount debut as it ended the session at HK$7.50 a
17 per cent discount to its offer price.
12. Being ignorant of laws and afraid of being exposed to the public, they resorted to settling the matter out of court.
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The Making of a Translator

()
2. (
3.
1.

5. 9 88 1
6.
4.

7.

5 10 1 1
79

8.

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Neologisms & Hot Words in China Reports

MTV
13

20%

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Reference Books
Bielsa E. & Bassnett, S. (2011). Translation in Global News
[M].

Eugene A Nida. Language and CultureContexts in Translating [M] Shanghai: Shanghai Foreign Language education
press 2001.
Fawcett, Peter (1997).Translation and Language. London: St. Jerome Publishing.
Newmark P. A Textbook of Translation [M] Shanghai: Shanghai Foreign Language Education Press 2004.
Nida, Eugene A. (1993). Language, Culture and Translating. Shanghai: Shanghai Foreign Language Education Press.
[M]2004
[M]2004
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2001
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2007
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2009
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2010

2013
. [J]. 2013 20-30 .
. [///////
///////////] [J]
20112014.
.
2003
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