A Rhetorical Study of News Headlines Translation

Abstract

News report has become an important source for people to obtain information, and as the “eye” of a piece of news, the title highly summarizes its theme, and expresses the attitude of the author. By analyzing the relevant literature, it is found that most of the current studies focus on the stylistic characteristics and translation principles of news translation. The studies on news headline translation are limited. Besides, the researches on the translation of news headlines mainly focus on the characteristics and specific translation methods. Few studies focus on rhetorical strategies of news headlines translation. Therefore, literature research and qualitative analysis will be adopted to study the translation of news headlines from the perspective of rhetoric. By selecting a certain amount of news headlines translation, to the paper explores the news headlines translation from the rhetoric appeals and a rhetorical model for guiding the translation of news headlines has been given.

This study finds that the three rhetorical appeals have certain guiding significance for news headlines translation. In terms of ethos, the translator enhances the audience’s sense of credibility in the news by stating the views of authoritative people or platforms, or quoting the words in authoritative works; in terms of pathos, the translator takes “audience” as the center. Understanding the audience better and sharing common grounds with them is helpful to complete the persuasion to the audience; in terms of logos, the translator improves the language expressions and their internal logic so that the audience can be effectively persuaded. The rhetorical model put forward provides a new perspective for the translation of news headlines. In addition, this study expands the horizons of news translation research, and has certain reference significance for news translation practice.