BBC World Service; Comparison; Gatekeeping; International Media; Linguistic Analysis; Localization; News Coverage; Trans-editing; Translation
Abstract :
[en] This article concerns the trans-editing (simultaneous translation and editing) of coverage of the 2008 US presidential elections on BBC World Service websites. We investigate how English-language source texts were reworked in Arabic, Persian, Tamil, and Turkish, with a detailed analysis of the structuring, content, and rhetoric of a sample text in English and in these other languages. This analysis shows that, while the BBC’s corporate aim is to provide a univocal service across its multilingual output, this aim is in tension with widely differing journalistic norms, and differing assumptions about audience knowledge and needs, in each of the World Service’s language departments. The ‘melody’ remains essentially the same, but it is orchestrated differently by each department.
Bassnett S (2005) Bringing the news back home: Strategies of acculturation and foreignization. Language and Intercultural Communication 5(2): 120-30.
Bielsa E and Bassnett S (2009) Translation in Global News. Abingdon: Routledge.
Bourdieu P and Wacquant L (2001) NewLiberalSpeak. Notes on the new planetary vulgate. Radical Philosophy 105: 2-5. Available at: http://www.radicalphilosophy.com/default.asp?channel-id=2187&editorial-id= 9956
Clausen L (2004) Localizing the global: 'Domestication' processes in international news production. Media Culture & Society 26(1): 25-44.
Gurevitch M, Levy M and Roeh I (1991) The global newsroom: Convergences and diversities in the globalisation of television news. In: Dahlgren P and Sparks C (eds) Communications and Citizenship: Journalism and the Public Sphere in the New Media Age. London: Routledge.
Poor ND (2007) A Cross-national study of computer news sites: Global news, local sites. The Information Society 23(2): 73-83.
Schleiermacher F (1963[1813]) Über die verschiedenen Methoden des Uebersetzens. In: Hans-Joachim Störig (ed.) Das Problem des Übersetzens. Stuttgart: Goverts, 39-69.
Stagl J (1981) Die Beschreibung des Fremden in der Wissenschaft. In: Duerr HP (ed.) Der Wissenschaftler und das Irrationale. Bd. 1: Beiträge aus Ethnologie und Anthropologie. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 273-95.
Stetting K (1989) Transediting - A new term for coping with the grey area between editing and translating. In: Caie G et al. (eds) Proceedings from the Fourth Nordic Conference for English Studies. Copenhagen: University of Copenhagen, Department of English, 371-82.
Vuorinen E (1995) News translation as gatekeeping. In: Snell-Hornby M, Jettmarová Z and Kaindl K (eds) Translation as Intercultural Communication. Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 161-72.
