Redundant information

[papulo]

I always found that news in mainland china are redacted in a redundant way, the same information is repeated in two or more paragraphs.

 

I know that there is nothing unusual in first do a introduction of some topic and then proceed to explain it English or other European languages. What I mean is that the same exact information is repeated along the text.

 

One example of this:

 

去年12月，央视新闻、《人民日报》的官方微博都发了一条关于南京保卫战及南京大屠杀的微博。微博前半段高度赞扬保卫南京城的中国军人的英勇奋战精神，并说南京保卫战打得惨烈、中国守军伤亡巨大。但微博评论里有不少网友认为南京保卫战打得不惨烈，守军官兵不顽强抵抗 ，说15万大军中有不少精锐德械师，但仅守了三天就兵败城破不应该吹嘘云云。

 

当然也有正面肯定南京保卫战的言论，比如上海师范大学教授洪小夏就认为，南京保卫战打得十分惨烈，学界低估了南京保卫战。同样，仍有不少网友认为洪教授夸大了南京保卫战的惨烈程度。

 

It just me or the information contained in both paragraphs is almost the same? Even the structure is identical and the wording almost the same. We already know that a lot of posts express a doubtful attitude about the courage of the soldiers defending Nanjing, why they repeated it? What puzzles me the most is the use of 同样，仍...

 

As I said this is not a exception, and examples like this one can be found repeatedly in Chinese news.

 

Anyone knows why this happen? 

 

[lips]

First paragraph:  Official weibo states that there were fierce battles in defending Nanjing; however, many in weibo say the battles were not fierce.

Second paragragh:  There are also sayings that the battles were fierce, like Professor Hong.  Similary (to the reaction to the offcial weibo), still quite a few on the Internet think that Professor Hong exaggerated the fierceness of the battles.

 

Two sources were quoted, along with the contrary opinions.  Par for the course for a news story.

 

I do agree that the writing isn't the greatest.  Mabe that's what makes it seem redundant and tedious.

[papulo]

Thank you lips.

 

You are totally right, on a more careful examination I noticed that there was that slight difference between the two sentences. The first reaction was to the Weibo post, the second to the Hong´s words.

 

But still, the sentence in the second paragraph  is word by word a repetition of the one in the first paragraph,有不少网友认为.

 

I don´t know, maybe is done this way for the sake of simplicity, maybe is a figure of speech, maybe is just bad Chinese, but as the text was taken from The paper, considered as  one of the best News sites in mainland China, I am giving it the benefit of the doubt.

[Lu]

This is common for newspaper articles both in China and in Taiwan. Information in the headline; more information, including almost the exact headline, in the introductory paragraph; and then again some more information, often repeating some phrases from the intro, in the first 1-2 paragraphs. If the article is longer, other information, with new phrases, comes after that.

 

I don't know why this happens, it's just how they write news. I don't think it should be considered bad writing if it's so wide-spread and appears in reputable newspapers.

 

Another factor is that good written Chinese is very tolerant of repetitions. In English or Dutch, you're not supposed to use the same word two sentences in a row (or even two pages in a row if the word is unusual enough), but in Chinese, this is totally fine. So in news articles, there's probably also a sense of 'why come up with new phrasing if I can just use the old one with no loss of quality'.

 

If you ever translate things like news articles or books, you need to translate out most of the repetitions. It considerably shortens news articles.

[roddy]

I do wonder sometimes though - is it tolerant of it, or does it constitute good writing itself. "Tolerant" implies to me it's annoying but you put up with it, or have just stopped seeing it because it's so omnipresent. If you rewrote the article to avoid the repetitions, would it be judged a better or worse article?

 

"It considerably shortens news articles."

Yeah, and then the client wants to know where all the other paragraphs are...

[Lu]

I do wonder sometimes though - is it tolerant of it, or does it constitute good writing itself.

For literature, from what I see it's a completely acceptable part of good writing. Authors that are judged good do it. Things like repeating the name of the character instead of writing 他/她 is something I see quite a lot, as is repeating 他说， 他说 again and again. If this was bad I don't think so many authors would do it. I don't know if it's better than not doing it, but it certainly seems a thing that is acceptable to use if you as author think it looks good in your piece.

 

For news writing, I don't know, but news writing in my own language also has some special stylistic features that are specific to news articles, or even the articles of a specific paper.

 

When I translation-shortened news articles I was lucky enough to be working for a company that knew exactly how Chinese-language news is written. If I had a client complain I'd explain how it worked. Hopefully beforehand. And hopefully they'd understand, but I suppose that can vary.

[889]

Myself I've always thought, always thought, that repetition, repetition not just once but often twice -- twice! -- was a common, very common, teaching approach, teaching method, of teachers teaching in China, Mainland China.

[papulo]

I am a translation student myself, when I asked my teacher about the reasons of this repeating quality of Chinese language, she told me that it have something to do with Cultural Revolution... Simplify and repeat seems to be part of a certain style that was implemented/forced on Chinese literary style.

 

I would take this insight with a grain of salt, as Chinese seems to blame everything they don't like on Cultural Revolution, anyway may be one of the reasons. In the other hand, Chinese always strike me as a language where simplicity is the key, complicated structures are prone to result in confusing ones, and taking examples long before Cultural Revolution you can find that repetition was there already, I am right now reading 老张哲学, and in a short paragraph it was repeated three times that old Zhang mouth was like a shaobing, using the same words (嘴似烧饼）in every instance.

[Milkybar_Kid]

 

...when I asked my teacher about the reasons of this repeating quality of Chinese language, she told me that it have something to do with Cultural Revolution... Simplify and repeat seems to be part of a certain style that was implemented/forced on Chinese literary style.

 

But that doesn't explain why this repetition is also found in Taiwanese news articles (there was no Cultural Revolution in Taiwan as far as I'm aware).

 

One more example that I saw today:

 

 

〔記者王榮祥／高雄報導〕高雄市一艘鴨子船昨疑似動力不足，上岸時卡在斜坡上，被迫打一一九求援；轄區前金消防分隊趕抵現場評估後，動用絞盤、鐵鍊順利把鴨子船拖上岸，鴨子船上岸抵達終點放下乘客後隨即進廠檢修。

 

高市輪船公司總經理黃昭星說明，多年前曾發生過類似動力不足問題，詳細原因仍待檢查，目前兩艘鴨子船全都在保養廠檢修，預計大年初一復出；乘客部分，輪船公司事後招待大家再搭一趟愛之船。

 

黃昭星感慨說，這過程有點糗，但也讓他們發現問題，一定會要求廠商把兩隻鴨子都保養好，再出來服務遊客。

 

高市消防局昨下午一時五十四分接獲通報，有艘鴨子船上岸時疑因動力不足、卡在光榮碼頭（愛河河口左側）附近斜坡上，鴨子船上連司機、解說員、乘客共廿四人。

 

轄區前金消防分隊迅速到場，經評估後決定動用絞盤、鐵鍊救援，前後費時約十分鐘，即順利把鴨子船拖上岸；上岸的鴨子船隨即恢復正常動力，立刻離開現場把乘客送回終點站，接著直接被帶進廠檢修，輪船公司事後招待乘客多搭一趟愛之船做為彌補。

 

前金分隊透露，這不是第一次救援鴨子船，去年某次風浪較大時，曾到鴨子船靠岸碼頭協助船身穩定，讓乘客順利上岸。

Source: http://news.ltn.com.tw/news/local/paper/956876

 

 

My basic translation and analysis below (identified duplications in red):

 

Introduction

• Amphibious vehicle suspected not to have enough power
• Coming onto the short got stuck on the slope
• Called the fire brigade for help
• Fire brigade arrive, assess the situation and pull the amphibious vehicle to the embankment
• Passengers got off
• Vehicle sent for maintenance

 

Body Paragraph 1

• CEO from the city boating company reports that a similar problem was experienced a few years ago
• Exact cause of the problem is still being investigated
• Both amphibious vehicles are currently undergoing maintenance
• Expected that both vehicles will return to service during the first day of the lunar new year
• Customers who were affected by the break down were offered a ride on the Love Boat.

 

Body Paragraph 2

• CEO reports that this incident is a little embarrassing for the company.
• Says that the company will ask the manufacturers of the amphibious vehicles to resolve the problem before putting the vehicles back in to service.

 

Body Paragraph 3

• The Fire brigade receives incident report at 1:54 p.m.
• An amphibious vehicle is stuck on the slope at the Guangrong Harbour due to a suspected lack of power.
• A total of 24 people are stranded including the passengers, captain and crew.

 

Body paragraph 4

• Fire brigade rush to arrive at the scene.
• Fire brigade assess the situation.
• Fire brigade uses tools to successfully pull the amphibious vehicle onto the embankment within ten minutes.
• The amphibious vehicle immediately regains its power after being pulled ashore.
• The amphibious vehicle immediately takes all of the passengers to the final stop of the route.
• The amphibious vehicle is then immediately taken to the factory to undergo maintenance.
• Boating company offers the passengers a free ride on the Love Boat as compensation.

 

Conclusion

• Fire brigade reveal that this isn’t the first time that they’ve had to rescue the amphibious vehicle.
• Last year passengers on an amphibious vehicle had to be rescued due to big waves.

Is this sort of repetition a feature of all Chinese writing? I rarely do any writing in Chinese so I'm unsure of what is actually required, however I am going to start preparing for the HSK6 exam soon so it would be useful to know if this kind of structure is required.

 

Thanks

[Lu]

But that doesn't explain why this repetition is also found in Taiwanese news articles (there was no Cultural Revolution in Taiwan as far as I'm aware).

You're correct, there has not been a Cultural Revolution in Taiwan. And I think that teacher is mistaken and the repetitions are not a cause of the CR.

 

Not all Chinese writing does this. If you've rarely written in Chinese, I think you can first worry about constructing good sentences and such, style will come later. Also, reading a lot of Chinese will both help your own writing and give you a better idea of styles.

[anonymoose]

One theory I've heard is that authors are paid per character, so obviously copying a pasting is free money. Not sure it that's the reason here.

[Demonic_Duck]

I refuse to believe that repeating information where it doesn't add structural clarity or rhetorical or literary effect is good practice in any language.

 

The "pay per character" theory makes sense, though clearly it's not good business practice as it encourages sub-par writing (much like the old practice of paying coders based on number of lines written...)

[yosondysh]

I would say the first report in this thread is good , while the latter one is just acceptable.

 

Usually, repeating similar phrases or even sentences is avoided, although it seems to be more common in news writing. But there are other concerns. In Chinese writings, when positive and negative opinions are shown in  the same paragraph, the length of the description for both sides should be about equal; otherwise the paragraph would  feel unfinished. This is well demonstrated in this paragraph, "当然也有正面肯定南京保卫战的言论，比如上海师范大学教授洪小夏就认为，南京保卫战打得十分惨烈，学界低估了南京保卫战。同样，仍有不少网友认为洪教授夸大了南京保卫战的惨烈程度。". With this skill, the viewpoints of both sides are formally balanced; such is a typical way to end an article.

 

The latter news report has too many meaningless repetition. I guess the author wrote it this way just to meet the requirement of the article length. Paragraphing in Chinese writing is done in an arbitrary way that sometimes it may be quite confusing. The structure of this article is like: (1) Introduction; (2) 高市輪船公司總經理黃昭星's opinion  (paragraph 2-3);  (3) 高市消防局's opinion (paragraph 4-6).  The structure is ok, hence I think the writing is acceptable.

 

By the way, "同樣，仍....." is pretty much like "at the same time.....". Hope this helps.