Abstract

With the further development of reform and opening up policy, the communications between China and other nations have been increasingly growing. The news plays an important role in promoting China’s policy as well as informing the social development to the world.

A piece of news is usually composed of three parts: the headline, the lead and the main body. The headline is an indispensable part of the news because it is usually designed to convey the essence of a set of facts and intends to catch readers’ attention, enabling them to obtain the maximum information with the minimum time.Studying the translation of news headlines from the perspective of Relevance Theory can guide us to do the translation work better, resolve the existing problems in the present study of this field and realize the effective values of the news headline.

 This thesis begins with the main features of the news headline, and then gives a brief introduction to the development of Relevance Theory. And it also analyses the applications of the theory to the translation of the news headline and then offers some translation strategies for the improvement of the translation of news headlines. By means of literature research and quantitative analysis, it concludes that the translator should keep the cognitive environment in mind and adopt the translation strategy of the literal or free translation according to the features of specific source text in order to achieve the optimal relevance.

Key words: news headline; Relevance Theory; translation strategies

Contents

Abstract

摘要

1 Introduction1

2 Functions and Features of News Headline.2

2.1 The Functions of News Headlines2

    2.1.1 Informative Function.3

2.1.2 Expressive Function3

2.1.3 Aesthetic Function.3

2.2 The Features of News Headlines4

2.2.1 Lexical features4

2.2.2 Grammatical features.5

3 Relevance Theory and its Application in Translation6

  3.1 An Introduction to Relevance Theory.6

  3.2 Development of Relevance Theory7

3.2.1 Ostensive-inferential Communication.8

3.2.2 Context and Cognitive Environment.8

3.2.3 Principle of Relevance.9

  3.3 Its Application in Translation10

    3.3.1 Translation as an act of communication.9

    3.3.2 Translation as a dual ostensive-inferential process.10

4 Major Strategies for Translation of News Headline10

  4.1 Literal Translation .10

  4.2 Free Translation .12

4.2.1 Transformation of the Sentence Forms.12

4.2.2 Use of the Chinese Idioms13

5 Conclusions.14

References15