A Register Based Evaluation of Website Translations of Euronews Political Headlines: Problems, Suggestions and Implications

Abstract

Headlines attract the readers to the story because they are the first thing that every one notices. Clearly, translating headlines demands additional skills due to the crucial importance of news genre. Incorrect translations may lead to misinforming the readers. The present study aimed to investigate the importance of recognizing register in translation of political news headlines. For this purpose, 100 political headlines from the Euronews website and their Persian translations were selected. Halliday's (1985) model was used as a theoretical framework. The research was descriptive and consisted of several parts: field, tenor, and mode. Each of which utilized relevant lexicogramatical mechanisms such as the theme, the transitivity, and the mood. After collecting samples, they were compared based on the selected model in order to calculate the frequency of the features observed in English headlines and their Persian translations. Finally, the mismatching in different parts of register and importance of register from the point of equivalence in both languages were analyzed. According to the analysis, ideational themes, material processes, and declarative moods were respectively the most frequent themes, verb processes, and moods used by writers and translators creating headlines.