功能对等视角下的英语新闻标题翻译问题与策略

Challenges and Strategies in English News Headline Translation from the Perspective of Functional Equivalence

摘要: 新闻标题要概括内容、传递信息并吸引读者。受篇幅等因素制约，其语言简洁凝练，常用省略、习语、双关等表达方式。译成汉语后，若只追求词语和句式对等，容易出现理解偏差、文化信息传递不足和语言效果减弱等问题。功能对等理论主张译文在目标语中产生与原文相近的功能和读者反应，可用于新闻标题翻译分析。本文基于功能对等理论，以《经济学人》部分英语新闻标题为案例，从信息传递、文化理解和语言表达三方面分析翻译问题，并讨论直译、意译、文化负载表达转换、修辞转换和语言重构等策略。新闻标题翻译不必拘泥原文形式，应依据标题的信息功能、表达方式和目标读者习惯作适当调整，在准确传递信息的同时尽量保留原标题的表达效果。

Abstract: News headlines are designed to summarize content, convey information, and attract readers’ attention. Constrained by factors such as limited space, headlines are typically concise and compact, frequently employing devices such as ellipsis, idiomatic expressions, and puns. When translated into Chinese, an exclusive focus on lexical and syntactic equivalence may result in misunderstanding, insufficient transmission of cultural information, and weakened linguistic effects. Functional equivalence holds that a translation should produce a similar function and reader response in the target language to those of the source text, making it applicable to the analysis of news headline translation. Drawing on functional equivalence theory, this paper examines selected English news headlines from “The Economist” and analyzes translation problems from three aspects: information transmission, cultural comprehension, and linguistic expression. It also discusses such translation strategies as literal translation, free translation, the adaptation of culture-loaded expressions, rhetorical transformation, and linguistic restructuring. News headline translation need not be confined to the formal features of the source text; instead, appropriate adjustments should be made according to the informational function and expressive features of the headline as well as the linguistic conventions of target readers, so as to convey the information accurately while preserving, as far as possible, the expressive effect of the original headline.