论新闻英语词汇中新词的翻译策略

论新闻英语词汇中新词的翻译策略
On the Translation Strategy of Neologisms in Journalistic Eng-
lish Vocabulary
Abstract
As the society and the progress of the times, the modern emergence of a large number of English vocabulary, and most of these new things and new expression first to appear in English news. Journalistic neologisms not only introduce the newly emerging things, phe-nomena and experience in a vivid way, but also enrich our daily vocabulary, enhance our ability to express.
Neologisms are especially usefuly in identifying inventions, new phenomena or old ideas which have taken on a new cultural content; they have close relationship with partic-ular political and social backgrounds; they are coined and used to arouse public attention and interest. A neologism may arise from word formation, borrowing words from other languages, or old words with new meanings.
The language in English news is interesting to understand, simple refining, strong in expression, vivid narrative, So, translation of the news must be more tempered in the wording to reflect the total apperance of journalistic English. In the light of translatology and linguistics, the paper bases on Newmark’s major contribution--- the dichotomy of communicative vs. semantic translation theory in the translation of journalistic English, the paper focuses on some translation strategies on English journalistic neologisms and its translation.
Key Words: neologism, Newmark’s translation theory, translation strategy
内容摘要
随着社会和时代的进步，现代英语中出现了大量的词汇，这些表达新事物和新概念的英语新词新义大多率先出现在英语新闻中。

新闻新词是介绍新生事物，体现新的现象，丰富我们的日常词汇，增强我们表达能力，表现新的文化内容和经验的一个生动的方式。

新词总与特定的政治和社会背景有密切联系，它们的创造和使用能引起公众的兴趣和关注。

新词可以通过构词法形成，从其他语言借用或是从旧词的意义引申转化而成。

新闻英语语言有趣易懂，简洁精炼，表达有力，叙述生动，翻译时就必须在用词上多加锤炼，才能体现新闻文体的总貌。

作者借助于翻译学和语言学，以纽马克的“交际翻译理论”和“语义翻译理论”为依据和指导，并将翻译理论和英语汉译实践相结合，用新闻翻译的实例分析新闻英语中新词的构词特点和翻译策略。

关键词：新词；纽马克理论；翻译策略
Contents
Introduction (1)
1. A Brief Survey of the Newmark’s Theory (3)
2. Studies of the Source of Neologisms (5)
3. Formation of English Neologisms (6)
3.1 Word Building Formation (7)
3.2 Semantic Neologism (9)
3.2.1 Borrowings (9)
3.2.2 Old Words With New Senses (10)
4. Translation Strategies of Newspaper Neologisms (11)
4.1 Equivalent Translation (11)
4.2 Back-translation (13)
4.3 Literal translation (14)
4.4 Free translation (16)
4.5 Transliteration (18)
Conclusion (21)
Notes (24)
Bibliography (25)
Acknowledgements ............................................................................. 错误！未定义书签。

Introduction
Newspaper is considered as an effective channel for people to know the outside world. Through reading newspaper, people can be informed of the current events happening all around the world, get aquaintance with the per-formance of a new policy, and are provided with a colorful life owing to a va-riety of entertainment in the newspaper. As we know, all the novel phenomena require something new to name them, which gives rise to birth to neologisms. And then the neologisms make their way into mass media such as newspapers to be spread and popularize d among people. In Oxford Advanced Learner’s English—Chinese Dictionary, a neologism is “a new world or expression or a new meaning of a word”①
As the most active part in language，vocabulary always reflects the changing of society and life. From words we can know social development，emergence of new things and so on，which can also be clearly observed in news writing. Take for example English words like “super”, “cool”, “VIP”“environmentalist”, “quality time” and “Dink”. Many of them are short-lived and some are nonce words, which appear and spread so soon before they va-nish from our sight that we could hardly notice their existence. There are some lucky ones that can find their way into the common vocabulary. At any rate these neologisms are really capable of catching readers' eyes immediately,
often on account of their special characteristics or meanings. In addition, they will not only generate readers' interest but also contribute to the readability of a newspaper. So the news translation inevitably plays an important role in in-formation communication.
Many language workers are taking efforts in the translation of neolog-isms since the appearance of many neologisms has aroused the great interest at all levels and these neologisms are appealing timely translation. Quite a number of works related with the translation of new words have been pub-lished during the recent years. However, all of these works didn't give an overall introduction of the creation of neologism as well as its translation; neither make analysis of some consequences of the use of new words and ex-pressions in daily life. This paper, based on the abundant materials about neologism, includes a comprehensive introduction of neologism in English news vocabulary and focus on some strategies of how to translate neologisms into Chinese.
The study on English neologisms is an arduous and continuing task. It keeps in touch with the most active and unstable part of the de-velopment of a language, so the research on it is standing on the frontier of the word revolution and facing the challenges brought require-ments of inter-translation between two languages. No in by the mater what happens, new words and expressions keep rising and the translation needs to
continue. This everlasting activity provides a wide rangeof topics the study to of research and results in epoch making significance for translation theories.
1. A Brief Survey of the Newmark’s Theory
Peter Newmark, a famous theorist and professor of Polytechnic of Cen-tral London made an important contribution to the study of translation theory. His major contribution is the dichotomy of communicative vs. semantic translation in his Approaches to Translation written in 2001. "Communicative translation attempts to produce on its readers an effect as close as possible to that obtained on the readers of the original. Semantic translation attempts to render, as closely as the semantic and syntactic structures of the second lan-guage allow, the exact contextual meaning of the original"②. He made con-trastive analysis from the following aspects:
(1) Communicative translation addresses itself solely to the second read-er, Semantic translation remains within the original culture and assists the reader only in its connotations if they constitute the essential human mes-sage of the text.
(2) Communicative translation must emphasize the `force' rather than the content of the message. Semantic translation would be more informative but
less effective.
(3) A semantic translation is always inferior to its original, since it in-volves loss of meaning; Communicative translation may gain enforce and cla-rify what it loses in semantic content. The translator is trying in his own lan-guage to write a little better than the original③.
The center of communicative translation is force of information and reader; while semantic translation focuses on meaning and author. Although these two kinds of translation have obvious difference, they "may well coin-cide in particular, where the text conveys a general rather than a culturally bound message and where the matter is as important as the manner"④. And they both comply with the usually syntactic equivalents for the two languages. That is to say, a translation can be more or less semantic, or more or less communicative, but without complete division.
"Original expression, where the specific language of the speaker or writ-er is as important as the content, whether it is philosophical, religious, politi-cal, scientific, technical or literary, needs to be translated semantically"○5. Up to now, it is obviously clear that journalistic English belongs to informative text, whose proper translation should be "communicative translation" there are also many original expressions (political speech of government some im-portant figures, etc) quoted by the reporter and they need semantic translation. Therefore, both "communicative translation" and "semantic translation" are
suitable for news translation.
2. Studies of the Source of Neologisms
Neologisms have close relationship with particular political and social backgrounds; they are coined and used to arouse public attention and interest. More studies have been carried out on the source of neologisms.
Zhang Yihua⑥summarizes three major sources: the development of science and technology, the development of information technology, inherit-ance and creative power of language in its process of development. Zhao Lizhu⑦holds that economic development is one of the important sources of new words. Wu Gang⑧adds that politics provides many new words to Eng-lish. For example, "Iraqphobia"(伊恐症)is coined as a result of the Iraqi War. "-gate" from "Watergate" has become a suffix indicating "political scandal".
In the ever-developing society, science and technology is the main sup-plier of new vocabulary. Today, if you don't know anything about "blog", you are sure to have fallen behind. "Blog" is the short form of "web log". Web logs have come of age. "Blogosphere" is the realm of the "blog". "Bloggers" take on a prominent role in vetting the mainstream media.
Many neologisms, such as prime time(黄金时间), talk show(脱口秀)，blockbuster(火爆)，boomed with the popularization of TV and radio. Many
social problems can also come along with lots of neologism. For example: DINK (an acronym for "couples with dual income and no kids”丁克家庭).
3. Formation of English Neologisms
In the recent 20 years, English vocabulary has increased in quantity and in extent, mainly by changing word form and changing word meaning. Peter Newmark gives a definition in his works A Textbook of Translation: “Neo-logisms can be defined as newly coined lexical units or existing lexical units that acquire a new sense.”He holds the opinion that "new objects and processes are continually created in technology. New ideas and variations on feelings come from the media. Terms from the social sciences, slang, dialect coming into the mainstream of language, transferred words, make up the rest." From Newmark's definition, we are able to make two basic points about a neologism. It could be a newly created linguistic form from a linguistic point of view. Or, from a semantic point of view it could be an old form that has existed for quite a long time but a new meaning is attached to. His state-ment also makes it clear that a neologism may arise from new things and me-thods, or from fresh ideas and emotions and that a neologism can originate from science and technology, foreign languages as well.⑨
3.1 Word Building Formation
In the course of word revolution, various methods of word formation re-sult in numerous new words and then these newcomers of word stock present the prevailing and practical methods of word-building. As a good mirror to display the laws of vocabulary development, this dynamic process facilitates language workers to learn more about the up-dated trend of word revolution and induct prevailing ways of new word creation so as to direct the appropri-ate utilization of neologisms and enrich the expressions of language.
(1) Compounding
Compounding, also called composition, is characteristic of flexibility, changeability and dynamism. A compound is a lexical unit consisting of more than one stem and functioning both grammatically and semantically as a sin-gle word. “Silkworm” and “e-mail” are compounds; so are “bungle jumping” and “home page”.
(2) Affixation
Affixation is composed of prefixes and suffixes. Among the new prefixes were born over the last decades, eco- is an active one, we have been familiar with the words, such as ecosystem(生态系统)，eco-catastrophe(生态灾难)，etc. In recent years, eco-efficiency(生态效率)is attracting people's attention. It means maintaining the stable economic development without destroying the environment.
(3) Analogy
Analogy is a method of inventing new words through imitating words and phrases frequently used. New words and phrases can be based on the si-milarity in form between the old and the new.
In 1960s, the word "sit-in" was used in the anti-racial movement by the Negroes. It was translated as“室内静坐”.Later, a lot of similar words ap-peared in the local newspapers, such as: ride-in(黑人与白人同乘一车)，swim-in(到白人游泳池游泳), read-in(进入白人图书馆阅读)，pray-in(进入白人教堂做礼拜).
(4) Blending
Blending is mixing together parts of two or more words. For example: autocide (automobile + suicide撞车自杀)，videophone (video + telephone 电视电话)，medicare (medicine+care老年保健医疗制度)，telescript (tele-vision +script电视广播稿)，psywar (psychological+ warfare心理战).
5) Shortening
Shortening is composed of clipped words(缩短词)and acronyms(首字母缩略词) Clipped words are re-formed after cutting some part off the original words, such as: “Phone”(telephone), “ad”(advertisements), “fridge”(refrigerator), and “coke”(coca cola). The most typical example of acronym is “AIDS”(=acquired immune deficiency syndrome). Other exam-ples include CNN (Cable News Network), SOHO (=Small Office, Home Of-
fice)
3.2 Semantic Neologism
Examining English vocabulary in its historical perspective, we can see that English is characterized by a marked tendency to go outside her own lin-guistic resources and borrow from other languages. We often encounter fa-miliar words amid the vast number of strange ones. These words are new not in form but in meaning. To extend the meanings of a word is also an impor-tant way of producing neologisms.
3.2.1 Borrowings
English is characterized by a marked tendency to go outside her own linguistic resources and borrow from other languages. It is quite receptive to foreign linguistic influence. It is estimated that English borrowings constitute 80% of the modem English vocabulary, among which 26.4% borrowings come from French, 15.8% from Latin and the rest from various sources around the globe○10. Although this borrowing has slowed down, it is still an important factor in English vocabulary growth. And among them are Chinese borrowings, though they account for a small part only. Such as the following
examples:
Diagram 1:
These words are often appeared in oversea newspapers, and some of them were collected into authoritative English dictionaries.
3.2.2 Old Words With New Senses
Actually, old words with new meanings is a common phenomenon in language. The words which were used previously may now carry a fresh meaning and stand for a new thing. They will increase both in the number and in the range as well. For example，the term "hotline" was first made the headlines in the early 1960s, when it was applied to the direct telephone link between the US and Soviet governments, serving as an aid to mutual under-standing in times of international crisis. However, when one needs any help, advice and even a heart-to-heart talk today, he may take advantage of a hot-line, a direct, exclusive communication channel linking to his desired radio host or hostess，etc. Other examples include in diagram 2:
diagram 2:
4. Translation Strategies of Newspaper Neologisms
New Mark holds the opinion that "Neologisms are perhaps the non-literary and the professional translator's biggest problem." So the transla-tion of news-style neologisms is a hard nut to crack. He also stated that "one cannot standardize the translating of a neologism when its future is in doubt.○11 " His statement clearly points out the impossibility to find any recognized terms for neologisms in the news translation. Nevertheless, as a matter of the whole, the rendering of a neologism in newspapers has to observe the prin-ciples of news translation, for they are part of a piece of news reporting. Faithfulness to the content and style of the original and naturalness in lan-guage will be the fundamental guidelines for translating news-style neolog-isms. At the same time, timeliness and effectiveness may have to be guaran-teed.
4.1 Equivalent Translation
Some neologisms are created according to the rules or methods of word formation. Although they do not present any character of words in other lan-guages, we can find their equivalent or most equivalent translation in other languages. This is because people in different regions share the same informa-tion all over the world and they can make a lot of agreements despite the great difference between languages.
Equivalent translation can transfer the source-language message directly into the target language when the two languages point to the same meaning. Therefore, news readers will not have any obstacle in understanding, which caused by language barrier. In another aspect, equivalent translation is the ea-siest way because it is equivalent in the form and in the content as well. But the prerequisite of this way is that both the source language and the target language have the same understanding and interpretation for the same con-cept.
In practice, people do follow this principle much to translate new word and expressions.For example:Mexican telecoms tycoon Carlos Slim came in second with an estimated worth of $60 billion, pushing Gates to third place after 13 years of holding the No. 1 spot. In this piece of news, ‘tycoon’is from the Chinese language meaning“A wealthy and powerful bussinessperson or industrialist”.Nursing is not a n ine-to-five job with every weekend off. Here‘nine-to-five’is a popular term used to describe the average day job with
hours from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. This quite conforms to office working hours in China, and we has such a term as“朝九晚五”to describe the working hour system.
4.2 Back-translation
Since China's opening to the outside world, a great number of foreign neologisms have entered into Chinese vocabulary and most of them have be-come popular with the Chinese. Sometimes, people discover that these new words and terms are not originated in their native language, but borrowed from other languages. These new expressions come into force due to the new ideas and concepts originating in other countries.
However, most of people get more acquainted with the ones in their na-tive language than in foreign languages. In translating these foreign borrow-ings, it is advisable to adopt the back-translation, i.e. to translate back straight to their originals. Say, the recent transliterated English words like “酷”，“黑客”，“雅虎”，and“伊妹儿”all can be immediately transferred back to "cool", "hacker", "Yahoo" and "e-mail" respectively.
Another instance is the version of“千年虫问题”，which refers to "the inability of certain computer software to deal correctly with dates later than
31 December 1999, threatening to bring computer's systems worldwide crashing to a halt at the arrival of the millennium". Also sometimes referred to as the "millennium bomb". There is a report on this in 1996 Times: "The In-ternal Revenue Service envisages taking 300 man-years to defeat the‘new millennium bug’”. Therefore, it is wrong to come up with the English version of "the problem of millennium bug" for the term“千年虫问题”.
In fact, lots of words can be back-translated, for the examples in diagram 3:
diagram 3:
From the above examples, it is not difficult to find that back-translation is particularly advantageous in translating those words and expressions com-ing from foreign languages. Hence, back-translation is a process of returning neologisms to their original forms.
4.3 Literal translation
Literal translation is considered to be the basic translation procedure, both in communicative and semantic translation. It is the practical applica-
tion of Newmark's "semantic translation", emphasizing on the exact expres-sion of the original. That is to say, if possible, translate the literal meaning. It is the most perfect way to translate the source language into the target lan-guage is to keep the form and content in accordance with the original lan-guage.
Word-for-word translation can be applied to translate the new ones under the conditions that the context provides the feasibility and the translation is capable of maintaining not only the content of the original but also the cultur-al connotation, rhetoric effect and semantic representations. Chinese language is so plentiful in number of vocabulary that it has more choices in picking up Chinese characters and tries to give the English words and expressions the Chinese-like translations as its native terms. We have translation for many words and phrases such as: euthanasia(安乐死)，globalization(全球化), gen-eration gap（代沟）, white-collar workers(白领工人) and so on. Literal translation makes a great contribution to Chinese borrowing from English be-cause it conforms to the characteristics of Chinese language structure and ex-poses clear meaning. Thanks to these features, words by literal translation are easy to be understood and accepted in Chinese and then innumerable new words and phrases are given rise to.
English-readers even made creations on the translation loans so as to enrich English word stock and diversify ways of expression. For instance,
"Dragon-boat Festival" is getting international attention and English-speakers take use of this translation loan to create "dragon-boaters": "The Chinese Cultural Association posted notice of Canada's first dragon-boat festival...less than a decade later, there are estimated to be more than 8,000 dragon boaters in Canada."○12In this sentence, competitors in dragon-boat racing are called "dragon-boaters". It is a creation by adding English affix to a Chinese transla-tion loan.
Owing to its derivation characteristics, English can make more new words. This kind of derived words has gained support from another example "Chinese Wall": "The bank said it had been unaware of the holding which un-til disclosed put it in breach of the Companies Code, due to a Chinese Wall in communications within the bank."○13. Derived from "the Great Wall of China", "Chinese Wall" means an insuperable barrier of convention within a financial institution, business organization, etc.
4.4 Free translation
Free translation refers to the translation that is faithful to the original meaning, but has some originality on the form. The spirit of Newmark's "communicative translation" can be well reflected in this method. For exam-ple, sports bar(播放体育比赛电视的酒吧)，physically challenged(身体有残
疾的)，skell(无家可归者), heliskiing(乘坐直升飞机上山的滑雪运动)，etc.
Free translation usually includes noun phrases, compound words, and words with stems and suffixes. Even a short sentence can be borrowed through free translation. "People mountains" "people sea" was from Chinese “人山人海”. Some neologisms, with strong cultural characteristics, can hardly be literally translated into the target language. Free translation should be used to represent the original meaning in the target language thanks to its more flexibility. On the premise of transmitting the original information, free translation breaks through the restriction of language structure and produces in the target language the more acceptable translation for the receptors.
"For a professional translator what counts is the effective transfer of the meaning because that is precisely what clients want and need○14". Free transla-tion is the most frequently-used technique in dealing with two languages. Sometimes, the meaning of words and phrases cannot be told from their literal meaning. Depending on complete understanding, free translation can be taken good use of. For example, "sandwich course" may make one confused about what it stands for. With more learning about the cultural background, it is known as the course alternating teaching with practice. So it can be translated as“教学与实习相间的课程”.
Free translation is an active element in translating new words and ex-pressions: “It's a frigid Des Moines Sunday afternoon and the daughter of the
upstart Republican presidential candidate is holding court in her new corner office above the campaign's Iowa headquarter s.○15”Here“upstart”means “a person who has suddenly risen to a higher economic status but has not gained social acceptance of others in that class.”Many Chinese readers know English expressions "upstart" and "new rich" are equivalent to Chinese“暴发户”.Factually, "money bag" and "jumped-up people" are wonderful portrayal of the same meaning as well.
English newspapers also prefer rhetoric description that creates vivid image for the objects. It is not hard to find out the translation as long as the exact meaning is acquired. For instance, "windfall profit" is the same as "ex-cessive profit" and "sudden huge profit" (暴利)which means“profit that oc-curs unexpectedly as a consequence of some event not controlled by those who profit from it”, it uses metaphor to create a much better expression than the ordinary ones.
4.5 Transliteration
Transliteration is a way to borrow the phonemic with more or less subs-titution of native phonemes, to refer to the same object or idea it represents in the donor language. Transliteration is easy, direct and full of exotic flavor. Quite a number of transliterations keep alive after the wide spread over times. When readers are not eager to seek any other translation names for them, the
transliterations are kept in their minds. News readers come to realize the defi-ciency of transliteration after they learn more about the inner meaning, and they would substitute better translations for the transliterations.
For example: Among other transgressions, the site's home page displays mistakes by German TV stations in which Nepalese police, shown in videos rounding up Tibetan protesters in Kathmandu are identified as Chinese. Here "Homepage", initially transliterated as“烘焙鸡”，caused difficulty of under-standing and finally was put into“主页”, the opening page of a web site. It shows that some transliterations are inexplicable and awkward-sounding but their free translations are explicit and easy to bear in mind. On the other side, some transliteration can stand the times and keep living till now so that their transliterations and free translations are leg and leg. As a matter of fact, trans-literation is giving its full play in translating trademarks. Take“可乐”. It has become a proper name for a kind of sweet drink and shares the good reputa-tion with tea and mineral water.
Some linguists show preference to the importation of phonetic loans for the following reasons: convenience in need-filling, precision in expression and avoidance of ambiguity, desire for novelty, and quite academically, the helpful trace for etymology. There is a saying which goes "something national can be internationalized". We may sense the pulse of borrowing development by studying some Chinese loans in English media.
In recent years, more westerners prefer the use of "tai chi"(太极) to "shadow boxing", "mantou"(馒头) to "steamed bread", "qipao"(旗袍) to "cheongsam", and "putonghua"(普通话) to "mandarin Chinese".
The above citations show a tendency of introducing foreign things by giving their original phonemic shape, which is a way of alienating the cul-ture-loaded loanwords. That complete transliteration flourishes perhaps re-sults from the fact .that it is the method of least resistance a speaker or writer may take when faced with a gap or inadequacy in the vocabulary. Instead of making a creative effort of some kind, one can simply take over a suitable word from other languages.
News report is closely related to figures, events, time and place.According to TanWeiguo’s research of 40 news leads in the New York Times, proper names nvolved amount to 598 words, according for about one third of the total number 1865.○16Transliteration is a main technique in trans-lating some proper terms such as people's names and place names. When we use this technique, some points should be taken into consideration:
(1) To avoid a long translation, some phonemes that cannot be heard ap-parently in the English words need not to be translated. For instance: Engels 恩格斯(instead of 恩格尔斯), Elizabeth伊丽莎白(instead of伊丽莎白丝) etc.
(2) To avoid the forming of a misleading concept, some Chinese charac-。