2.4.1 Wide use of direct quotations and indirect quotations
Persons who often read the newspaper may notice that in the English news reporting, direct speech and indirect speech is usually used alternately.
Example (3): Money crisis: A lesson for China
KUALALUMPUR----With East Asia’s financial crisis in mind, Chinese President Jiang Zemin said he believes China should continue opening its capital market and financial services in a progressing manner. (Indirect quotation)
In a meeting with Singaporean Prime Minister GohChok Tong yesterday, Jiang said China has a good lessons to learn from the recent financial turmoil in East Asia. (Indirect quotation)
For instance, economic security cannot exist without financial security, Jiang said. (Indirect quotation)
“While carrying out reform and opening-up policies, we should foster a rational economic structure and improve financial supervision”, he suggested. (Direct quotation)
“We should also keep our foreign debt under a proper cap of scale and management” (Direct quotation) (December 17th, 1997 China Daily)
2.4.2 Wide use of parenthesis
In order to provide readers with more background knowledge and the relevant ideas about the event as well as the reporter’s evaluation, parenthesis is often employed in English news broadcasting. The parenthesis, boasting its own unique semantic, is often leaded by dashes.
Example (4): COLOMBO(Agencies via Xinhua)----Hundreds of thousands of laborers on Sri Lanka’s tea, rubber and coconut plantations----the country’s economic lifeline---have threatened to stop work unless they are given more wages, union leaders and business officials said yesterday, (January 10th, 1998 China Daily)
2.4.3 Frequent use of extended simple sentences
In order to be easy enough to understand, English news usually uses simple sentences, while requiring the simple sentence containing as much information as possible. Language components of the appositive, prepositional phrases, participial phrases, are frequently used to extend into the simple sentences.
Example (5): More than 1 billion people---nearly one-fifth of the world’s population---lack safe, clean water, and the problem will worsen in the early 21st century, experts said on March 22, which marks the World Day for water. (March 31, 1999 21st century)
Scared but determined. Robbin Ihara bought the small telephone-tapping device at an electronic store and had it hooked up to a phone and tape recorder in an upstairs bedroom.
Then came the hard part: Every day, after her son Nathan, 14, had left for school, Ihara listened to the tape of his previous night’s conversation with his friend. As details of his secret life poured forth, they confirmed her suspicions. 论英语新闻的翻译(3):http://www.youerw.com/yingyu/lunwen_8713.html