Журналистика | Филологический аспект №04 (60) Апрель 2020

Способы передачи эпатажных заголовков новостей

Махатова Назым Мухатаевна
магистр педагогических наук, Карагандинский государственный университет им. Е. А. Букетова, Караганда, Казахстан, nazym.studyinn@gmail.com
Мукажан Айгерим Курметовна
магистр гуманитарных наук, Карагандинский государственный университет им. Е. А. Букетова, Караганда, Казахстан, ice_lady_01.05@mail.ru

Аннотация: Цель научной статьи состоит в выявлении трудностей, встречающихся в переводе заголовков новостных газет на казахском языке. В ходе исследования уточнена сущность понятия заголовок новостных статей; определена концепт и функция новостных заголовков; выявлена лексико-стилистические особенности заголовков в переводе с английского на казахский язык. Осуществлен сравнительный анализ заголовков с использованием клише, тропов и сокращений. Читая современные газеты, мы можем быть уверены, что заголовок представляет собой особую лексико-грамматическую структуру газетного текста, которая не только информирует читателя об истории статьи, но и выполняет дополнительную функцию - демонстрацию культурного восприятия мира. Заголовки содержат эмоционально окрашенные слова, фразы, поговорки, выражения и особые термины для создания сильного эмоционального эффекта. С лингвистической точки зрения все заголовки подобны произведению искусства, которое также должно быть максимально сохранено при переводе. Заголовки могут рассматриваться как выражение культурной самобытности, что может создавать некоторые проблемы при переводе.
Ключевые слова: новостные заголовки, перевод, передача, публикация, функция, подзаголовок, сравнительный анализ, публицистический стиль.

Makhatova Nazym Muhataevna
Master of Education, E.A. Buketov Karaganda State University, Karaganda, Kazakhstan
Mukazhan Ajgerim Kurmetovna
Master of Humanity, E.A. Buketov Karaganda State University, Karaganda, Kazakhstan

Abstract: The purpose of the scientific article is to identify the challenges encountered in translating the headlines of news newspapers in the Kazakh language. In the course of the study, the essence of the concept heading news articles was clarified; defined concept and function of news headlines; defined lexical-stylistic features of headings in translation from English into Kazakh are revealed. A comparative analysis of the headers using idioms, clichés, tropes and abbreviations is performed. Reading modern newspapers, we can be certain that the headline is a special lexico-grammatical structure of the newspaper text, which not only informs the reader about the story of the article, but also has an additional function, demonstration of the cultural perception of the world. Headlines contain emotionally colored words, phrases, sayings, expressions and special terms to produce a strong emotional effect. From a linguistic point of view, all headlines are just like work of art that also should be preserved as much as possible in translation. Headlines can be viewed as an expression of cultural identity which may pose some problems in translation.
Keywords: news headline, conveyance, publication, function, subheadline, comparative analysis, publicistic style.

Throughout the history of its existence the effectiveness of a newspaper text largely depends on its title. The audience primarily relies on the title when choosing the text, so its function is to make people pay attention toward its content. It should motivate the recipient to read and to be involved. David Ogilvy mentioned “On the average, five times as many people read the headlines as read the body copy. It follows that unless your headline sells your product, you have wasted 90 percent of your money” [1; 7]. Shocking discoveries, information leaks, as well as hilarious and tragic news will keep an audience engaged toward the content. A.N. Kulakov noted that “The headline stands above the text and it is separate from it, this allows it to function as an independent unit of speech” [2 ].

The characteristic features of the newspaper style are its information content, logic, accuracy and objectivity. The reader is faced with many lexical and grammatical difficulties. But even at the stage of searching for the necessary information, the first thing that draws attention is the title of the article. In addition, an understanding of someone else’s mentality, the ability to interpret correctly and transmit the source text into the target language are very important for the translator, officer, as this is associated with the fulfillment of tasks [3].

V. Dal emphasizes the headline as “an output sheet, the first sheet of a book or essay, where its name is indicated. The title also refers to the name of the section and the chapter of the book” [4].  S. Ozhegov said that the title is already defined as the name of a work (literary, musical) or as the name of its parts [5].

All the definitions above are true for the newspaper headlines. It should be noted that the newspaper headline has its own specificity, reflecting the newspaper features as its follows: efficiency, publicity, genre coloring. The headline is the first signal that forces us to pay attention to the newspaper article or set it aside. Preceding the text headlines bring us certain information about the article and about the publication as a whole.

Thus, the headline represents the first element of the published text first of all, the main functions of a newspaper headline are informative and expressive functions. On the one hand, the title should convey the main content of the article in a concise form (i.e. provide information), on the other hand, it should catch the reader’s attention to particular article, which is impossible without using certain expression. The headlines should be conspicuous and memorable.

Many American newspaper headlines reflect the essence of the event in a compendious form as it is possible. In order to perform this task all well-known lexical and syntactic means of expression can be used. According to the figurative meaning of words an article can have expressive headline with colored vocabulary, synonyms and antonyms. In the headlines we can face proverbs, sayings, idioms, names of famous songs, movies, plays, quotes, conversational elements, phonetic and morphological means of expression.

For example: English newspapers use cope instead of policeman, foe instead of enemy, to irk instead of the verb to irritate. In addition, the headlines of English newspapers are characterized by the frequent use of special words (heading jargon): ban, bid, claim, crack, crash, cut, dash, hit, move, pact, plea, probe, quit, quiz, rap, rush, slash and others. A distinctive feature of such a “heading vocabulary” is not characterized only by the frequency of their usage, but also by the universal nature of their semantics. For example: – 25,000 new England cotton workers hit the bricks - the expression to hit the bricks is borrowed from the American thieves’ jargon, that means to get out of prison, and here it is used in a metaphorically meaning to go out, go out of the factory, i.e. to strike. The translation should contain neutral vocabulary: – Англияда 25000 тоқыма өндірушілері ереуілге шықты.

Ellipsis. Ellipsis is an omission of words that do not affect the understanding of the text. This technique is used to reduce the number of words so that the headline does not seem long and can catch the readers’ eye. Different parts of a sentence, often they are subject or predicate, can be omitted from the sentence, what can causes difficulties in translation. If the subject is omitted, the translator has to deal with impersonal sentences: – “Expect no change in North Korea” – “Солтүстік кореядан өзгерістер күтілмейді”, if the predicate is omitted in the sentence, the meaning is not so difficult to understand, translating of such headlines is not time-consuming. We can observe this in the following example: – “Web Protest". – “Желідегі наразылық”.

The headline “Golden Shot for British Teenager” translates to “Британдық жасөспірімге алтын оқ”. Here, after the word “shot”can stand the predicate “is made” with the preposition “by”. Then the translation would be as following: Алтын оқ Британдық жасөспірім қолынан жасалды. But there is no need to use the predicate in order to convey the meaning of the sentence. The absence of the predicate gives dynamic character to the headline. The headline of another article, “Royal Approval for Young Leader’s Africa Mission,” translates as “Африкадағы жас миссионерлерге арналған корольдік қолдау” The sentence also omits the predicate “is made”. As in the first example, the predicate is not necessary. And without this predicate, the meaning of the sentence is completely clear.

The headline constructs a single system with an article “headline – text” [6]. The headlines can contain quotes, which can be expressed as a direct, indirect speech: “Russian Link is Basic to us” – the President. – “Ресей мемлекетімен ара қатынасымыз өте маңызды”-дейді елбасы. Many headlines in English and American newspapers are structured as questions: What Are We Eating?

The use of cliches and tropes. Often English-language headlines are accompanied by various cliches, expressive means, allegories, persistent phrases. The difficulties of such examples lies not only on recognizing these aspects, but also on their correct rendering to a foreign language. Example of allusion: “Mars attacks! Morocco pelted with rocks from the Red Planet” – “Марс шабуылдауда! Марстан Морокко жеріне метеорит жауыны түсті”. This proposal is a reference to the comedy directed by Tim Burton, “Mars Attacks!” (1996). Headlines with such allusions are difficult to distinguish if the translator is not sufficiently familiar with the literature, political life, and everyday life of England or the USA. So, for example, in order to understand the following headline: A New York Times story about random sounds in music and on TV commercials that make people think it’s their phone ringing was headlined, -“I Hear Ringing and There's No One There. I Wonder Why”. -“Қоңырауды естимін бірақ жауап жоқ, неліктен бұл білмеймін” A perfect headline for that story. But it's also an allusion to the Irving Berlin's comedy song, "You're Just in Love,"(Call Me Madam).

The desire to give an intriguing, enticing character to the headline leads to the fact that headline do not perform its informational function, without reporting the actual meaning of the content. In these cases it is necessary to expand the headline and to attract attention adding extra details from the text. Example: -“Giant leap for mankind”. –“Адамзат үшін бір қадам”. The title is supplemented with some details from the article in order to give extra information to the reader: Armstrong takes 1st step on moon. From this subheadline, the title becomes clear and encourages the reader to read the entire article. 

Pic.1. Article from the Chicago Tribune       

Pic.2. Article from the St.Petersburg Times

In the headline “Clinton Rice his Eyebrows” the phrase “to raise eyebrows” conveys a feeling of either surprise or neglection. To clarify the meaning of this phrase, we have to refer to the text: President Clinton commended to journalists today that he had been much surprised by the suggestion that the control of visas for entry into the United States be transferred from the State Department to the Department of Justice. From the text it becomes clear there were the sense of surprise, and now we can give a proper translation to the title, trying to preserve the imagery element of the headline. Since this element is the phrase “to raise the eyebrows” is not common to use in Kazakh translator have to find an analogue: “Clinton makes surprised face”. “Клинтон мырза/ханым аң-таң”.

For example: Teacher Strikes Idle Kids. First meaning is “The teachers are on strike, which idles the kids”. Second meaning is “A teacher strikes kids who are idle”. Actual meaning is “Kids are idle because their teachers are participating in the protestations. And this headline forces the recipient to read the article to understand the meaning. The ambiguity is not a bad thing to use in newspapers. Newspaper headlines are supposed to attract the readers’ attention and this headline is expected to attract the readers’ attention. The abbreviated language we see in headlines is not faithfully mirror of the language somebody would use in a conversation. Headlines are meant to be short, haunting and absorbing. Readers always expect the brevity.

Headlines try to be clever. A headline has a lot of information in a small space. The words have to be chosen carefully. These actually appeared in newspapers. Translators’ task is to figure out two things with ambiguous newspaper headlines: what did the writer mean to say, and how else could the headline be interpreted. For example: 1) –“Iraqi head seeks arms”. Actual meaning is “An Iraqi official of the state is seeking weaponry”. -Ирак шенеунігі қару іздестіруде. 2) –“Stolen painting found by tree”. Actual meaning is “A stolen painting has been found near tree”. – Ұрланған сурет ағаш маңынан табылды 3) Miners refuse to work after death. Actual meaning “Miners refuse to work any further, following the death of a miner. – Кеншілер бір өлімнен соң жұмыс істеуден бас тартуда. 

The national stereotypes are usually predetermined by the national specificity of person’s thinking. Representatives of different ethnic groups use different lexical and grammatical units when expressing the same semantic content. For example, the Kazakhstan boxer Gennady Golovkin: “Головкиннің кезекті жеңісі” (Егемен Қазақстан / Egemen Kazakhstan 21.10.2014), “Қарсыласын шалқасынан түсірді”(Ана тілі/ Ana tili 23.10.2014), “Стивенсті сабады” (Сарыарқа самалы / Saryarka samaly 05.11.2013), “Nothing can stop Gennad          Pic.3. Article from the New York Timesy Golovkin, not even a punch to the face” (Washington post 27.07.2014), “Runyonesque Flurry Spans Two Arenas” (New York Times 22.07.2014). As we see, the headlines in Kazakh language are built usually in the form of denominative statements or using literary and figurative words providing the expressive headline of the article. American newspapers were more generous describing victories of fighters using imagery techniques and so giving great attention to the headline.

Pic.3. Article from the New York Times

We may not ignore the dual nature of the linguistic view of the world: it reflects the conditions of human life and the environment, which directly determine their behavior, consciousness and identity, while at the same time, the process of perception of the world by the human takes place directly through his native language, pre-empting, in turn, his way of thinking. In any case, we cannot refuse the fact that the language and culture of a particular nation forms their thinking, and that the worldview of the speakers of different languages differ from each other.

E.G. Tareva says that, “translation is not only translation between two languages, but also a kind of cross-cultural communication; interpretation that is full of challenges” [7].

It seems logical that there is no clear answer to the question “how to translate foreign headlines”. Every headline is considered to be observed in details, each headline has a unique way of translating. If we offer any headline to several translators, each will give a suitable interpretation, but these translations will all be completely different, what is considered to be the main interesting feature of this profession.

 Reading modern newspapers, we can be certain that the headline is a special lexical-grammatical structure of the newspaper text, which not only informs the reader about the story of the article, but also has an additional function, demonstration of the cultural perception of the world. Headlines contain emotionally colored words, phrases, sayings, expressions and special terms to produce a strong emotional effect. From a linguistic point of view, all headlines are just like work of art that also should be preserved as much as possible in translation. Headlines can be viewed as an expression of cultural identity which may pose some problems in translation. Publicistic headlines are responsible for the success or failure of the newspaper.

The constant growth of information flow within the existing world can appear in having lack knowledge of the language culture. Headlines are written as concisely as possible, with semantically secondary elements are omitted. The headlines of the English-language press are characterized by the frequent use of special words that make so-called “headline jargon”. But if the translator understands the features of the translated text, takes into account the specifics of the language, can recognize metaphors and allusions, he will be able to translate easily and translation will be of high quality.

We need to add translators’ understanding skill to get high-quality translation. Lexical translation errors occur because of misunderstanding (or incorrect understanding) of the source material. It is important to compare and analyze the cultural and national values while translating the same values of other nations. Analyzing headlines of two languages, we notice differences in the perception of the world at the lexical and at the grammatical level. The Anglo-American headline’s language is special and has its own characteristics. It is known that the headlines have been studied extensively not only by journalists but also by linguists.

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