English News Texts Research Articles

Supplementary Practices and Decreasing Translation Problems in Translating Political English News Texts into Persian

The present study investigated the effect of using supplementary practices on decreasing translation problems in translating political English news texts into Persian. To this end, first, two volunteer groups of B.A. senior students of Translation Studies were selected, an Oxford Quick Placement Test was administered and those who obtained the required score in both groups were chosen as the sample. Then, a pre-test consisting of political English news sentences was held. Next, both groups were taught a book on news texts, however; the experimental group received supplementary practices. After that, a post-test was given to both groups. It was a parallel version of the pre-test with the same level of difficulty. Finally, chi-square was conducted and the results were compared. The results showed that both groups decreased translation problems, but the group who received treatment decreased translation problems to a higher extent. Therefore, it could be concluded that supplementary practices had significant effect on decreasing translation problems in translating political English news texts into Persian.

Thematic choice and progression in English and Chinese radio news texts: a systemic functional analysis

AbstractThis paper reports on a comparative study of thematic choice and progression in English and Chinese radio news texts, conducted within the systemic functional theory of Theme–Rheme (

News Discourse in Translation: Topical Structure and News Content in the Analytical News Article

Topical structure in news translation has received relatively little attention despite its stated significance in discourse content and in producing functionally adequate translations. Journalists write news stories with a given structure, order, viewpoint and values, which are “transferred” in translation and affect the way topics are organized. This study explores how shifts in topical development in translation influence rhetorical structure and ultimately news content. Using Lautamatti’s Topical Structure Analysis and Bell’s Event Structure Model, the paper describes the translation strategies applied in (re)producing the source text’s topical and event structures in the target language in a corpus of Hungarian–English news texts (the summary sections of analytical news articles). Results show that while translators generally preserve the sources’ structure in translation, in some cases (e.g. sequential topic progression) significant changes occur, altering the status of some information as well as the event structure, thus producing modified news contents. The paper also examines whether the claim that news translation is influenced by norms similar to those regulating news production more generally applies to this news genre, too. Findings suggest that due to the stereotypical features of this genre, the data only partially support this claim.

Shifts in repetition vs. shifts in text meaning

This study focuses on the discoursal role of repetition, exploring the way shifts in repetition patterns in text trigger coherence shifts, altering the meaning potential of translations. As repetition in translation has been hypothesized to be affected by certain universals of translation, the paper also offers initial data to support the universals of explicitation and avoiding repetition. Lexical repetitions are investigated using Hoey’s (1991) theory in a corpus of Hungarian—English news texts. Analyses reveal considerable shifts in repetition in translations; however, these differences are not statistically significant. The corpus also provides evidence for repetition shifts affecting the macropropositional structure of target texts, leading to macropropositional shifts, which alter the global meaning of translations compared to sources.