Translating Allusions in English Newspaper Headlines

The senior thesis examines the difficulties arising in the translation of allusive newspaper headlines. Allusions are frequently used in modern newspaper articles though it may be hard for a translator to identify and render them into the Russian language. The research is aimed at studying the intertextual nature of allusion and the functions it performs as well as at describing relevant approaches to translating allusive news headlines. The thesis consists of an introduction, two chapters, a conclusion, references and annexes. The first chapter is devoted to the theoretical background of the research including characteristics of newspaper style, the language and structure of a newspaper article, definition and functions of a headline, the general strategies of translating news headlines. Next, the allusion is studied and defined as a stylistic device that implicitly refers to a precedent phenomenon of speech to be decoded. There are also different viewpoints compared in respect of sources and functions of an allusion, problems of identifying and translating allusive language means. In the second chapter 50 headlines found in British newspapers are analyzed and classified in accordance with 1) the topic of a news article, 2) the source of an allusion. Next, the headlines are translated into Russian by means of direct equivalents, functional analogues or explicit translation. Allusions referring to the names of songs and the allusions based on play on words are found to be the most difficult for translation. The senior thesis comprises 93 pages including a list of 125 references in Russian and in English, 2 annexes.