I have been practising Chinese by trying to read some articles in the Chinese section of the BBC News site: http://www.bbc.co.uk/zhongwen/simp/. (I am making quite heavy use of Pleco Reader for this, I can only recognise about half the characters unaided.) The advantage of using the BBC is that after I have struggled through the Chinese I can compare my understanding with the original article, which of course is written in natural English.
For example, I looked at this report about the South African elections:
在南非结束种族隔离20年之际,该国民众踊跃参加国民议会大选投票。 民众在投票站外排起长队,特别是1994年南非结束白人少数统治后出生的年轻人投票选举的情绪很高。
这也是南非第一位黑人总统曼德拉去世后的首次大选。
虽然受到一些腐败的指控,预计执政的非国大将第5届连续赢得大选。 预计非国大将赢得60%的选票。 南非总统祖马也有望蝉联总统,再次执政5年。 记者们说,反对党可能在这次大选中获得更多的支持,但不足以改变自1994年以来非国大主导南非政坛的格局。
Do people consider that this is written in natural, idiomatic Chinese?
I have noticed that the translated articles often seem to be phrased in a much more repetitive way than the original English. Is this just standard style for Chinese news reports, or is it some kind of artifact of translation?