A news event usually includes 3 aspects: the substantial, the formal, and the situational. Stylistics endeavors to explain how the “meaning” of the news is achieved through the writer’s language choice. Exploring the lexical, grammar, syntax level is an effective way to better understand English news.
As we all know that, the word is always changing every day, creating large amounts of English news materials. However, looking back on the previous study, the examples in it seem to be no updating for a long time and maybe no overall structure. In this way, I feel urged to give an overall structure of the analysis of English news & its translation. Meanwhile some new elements shall be added.
2.2 Headline
We all know that, a good headline is sure to grasp the essence of the event and to attract the readers’ attention. From lexical level, the headline of the news reports is full of characteristics. It is of great importance to express the headline vividly in the shortest words. So acronyms, first letter phonetic words, acronyms, and the short word are usually employed in the headline of news broadcasting. In addition, articles, conjunctions, verb, auxiliary verb, personal pronouns and the word of a minor role, are often eliminated for the need of the title. In this way, the attention of readers will be lead to the most important keywords. See the following example:
Example (1): Unity in Adversity
Germany to lift ban on transport of N-waste (Jan.27, 2000.Financial Times)
From the grammar level, headline also has its own unique place. Generally speaking, the title of the verb often appears to be present tense, even if the event occurred in the past. Its main purpose is to create a sense of reality (immediacy), and enhance the appeal of the language. Moreover, the active voice in the headline usually appears more frequently than the passive voice, which makes the language style of the headline is even more powerful and direct. If it is necessary to use the passive voice, then the auxiliary verb be is often omitted, and only the past participle is left down.
Example (2): Issue of aging becomes weighty
Olympic hotels becomes victim of debt
2.3 Lead
. As the name suggests, the lead’s role is to guide readers to read the news. In fact, the lead is a concentrated micro-news (the mini-story). It often stands the first paragraph of the news; in terms of longer news reports, the lead is sometimes occupied at the beginning of the first paragraph. Straight to the point and summarizing throughout the text, lead is the essence of the news. There are many different kinds of lead in English news broadcasting. Some leads belong to the generality of lead (summary lead), and their function is to outline a clean breast of news content. Some deliberately introduce the amazing details of the event, in order to arouse the reader to read the news body. This kind of lead is known as a descriptive guide language (descriptive lead). Some leads directly use quotations. They constitute quote sexual leads (quotation leads) in order to create eye-catching effect. Some leads take the form of questions, and are usually called the question lead (question lead).
2.4 Main Body
The main body of the news is usually made up of many facts to be reported. An event, generally, consists of a number of facts. The importance of these facts naturally differs. In some news reports, the most important information or the most worthy facts of the body usually occupies the first paragraph, constituting the lead. Slightly secondary information stands next to the lead, supplementing the details of the events one by one. Similarly, the least important facts are placed in the last part of the news. From this feature of reporting information by decreasing importance--arrangement of the body of the English news broadcasting, the architecture of the news, like an upside down pyramid, is called the "inverted pyramid" (the inverted pyramid the style). 论英语新闻的翻译(2):http://www.751com.cn/yingyu/lunwen_8713.html