Курсовая работа: Difficulties in Translation of Publicistic Headlines and their Pragmatic Aspect

Strikes: PM to ACT.

Motorway crash: Death toll rises. Quotation marks (‘…’) are used to show that words were said by some else, and that the newspaper does not necessarily claim that they are time.

- Crash Driver ‘Had been drinking’

A question mark (?) is often used when something is not certain.

- Crisis over by September?

Short words save space, and so they are very common in newspaper headlines. Some of the short words in headlines are unusual in ordinary language (e.g. curb, meaning ’restrict’ or ‘restriction’), and some are used in special senses which they do not often have in ordinary language (e.g. big, meaning ‘attempt’). Other words are chosen not because they are short, but because they sound dramatic (e.g. blare, which means ‘big fire’, and is used in headlines to refer to any fire). The following is a list of common headline vocabulary.

Act - take action: do something.

-Foot Crisis: Government to act.

Aid – military or financial help: to help

-More aid for poor countries.

-Unions aid hospital strikers.

Alert – alarm, warning.

-Flood alert on east coast.

Allege – make on accusation.

- Woman alleges unfair treatment.

Appears – appear in court accused of a crime.

- MP to appear on drugs charges.

Axe – abolish, close down: abolition, closure.

- Country bus services axed.

- Small schools face axe.

Knowledge as to the usage of the pun’s mechanisms in publicity lead to better understanding of the specificity of English press and may be used in the theory of translation or during the creation of newspaper or advertisement headline with the help of a pun.

The headline (the title given to a news item or article) is a dependent form of newspaper writing. It is in fact a part of a larger whole. The specific functional and linguistic features of the headline provide sufficient ground for isolating and analyzing it as a specific “genre” of journalism. The main function of the headline is to inform the reader briefly what the text that follows is about. But apart from its, headlines often contain elements of appraisal i.e. they show the reporter’s or the paper’s attitude to the facts reported or commented on, thus also performing the function of instructing the reader.

English headlines are short and catching; they “compact the gist of news stories into a few eye-snaring words. A skillfully turned out headlines tells a story, or enough of it, to arouse or satisfy the reader’s curiosity.”

Such group headlines are almost a summary of the information contained in the news item or article.

The functions and the peculiar nature of English headlines predetermine the choice of the language means used. The vocabulary groups considered in the analysis of brief news items are commonly found in headlines.

An excellent way for a more advanced learner to increase their English proficiency is to read an English-language newspaper on a regular basis. Most people who read a newspaper do so selectively and skim though the pages looking for the most interesting-looking articles to read first. They usually make their choice on the basis of the headlines of the articles. And this is where the difficulty for the non-native speaker of English arises, since newspaper headlines are often extremely difficult to understand. There are two main reasons for this. The first reason is that newspaper headlines have to be brief and consequently use words that are rarely used in everyday speech or indeed in the rest of the article itself. (Probe for investigation, blast for explosion etc.) And the second reason is that headline writers, at least in British newspapers, look for every opportunity to include a pun in their headlines. It is the main aspect of newspaper headlines that we want to concentrate on in this work.

All the headlines of all types (primary or page headlines, secondary or paper headlines, paper subsection headlines, leads and captions) of the local daily called Kauno diena) is emotionally destructive and people should be aware of this in order to diminish its emotional impact.

By the basic functions of newspaper titles nominativna, informing, communicative, and also pragmatic or attraktivna, that will realize the action of text, his having a special purpose orientation. Exactly some researchers consider this function basic, as setting of title consists above all things in bringing in of attention to the article, in creation of stimulus for its reading, which is often achieved by the use of the system of expressive means of languages, among which an important place is taken a play on words.

1.3 Linguistic peculiarities of publicistic headlines