The importance of news translation in constructing and shaping discourses at different levels of society and culture is rarely acknowledged by scholars outside the field of Translation Studies (Conway, 2011; ValdeĆ³n, 2015). Moreover, as Palmer notes, the practice of translation in the news is rarely questioned, and it is therefore āimpossible to know to what extent news translation is the source of problematic language transfers, as such questioning is rareā (Palmer, 2009, p. 189). We are aware that language transfers actually happen in the news but tracking them down and pinpointing them within the fluid and ever changing journalistic context is a troublesome task. However difficult and challenging this task may be, I do think it is one worth undertaking. Indeed, researching news translation and, by extension, multilingual journalism, means making sense of a growing number of informative inputs that create influential discourses in different geographical contexts. Ultimately, the output of such research educates us, as receptors of these inputs, and in turn encourages us to embrace a more critical understanding of what we watch, listen to, read and experience.
The field of Translation Studies (TS) has dealt with news translation for at least 15 years (ValdeĆ³n, 2015) and from different analytical and methodological perspectives, such as Media Studies, Cultural Studies, Ethnography and so on. Scholars who have met the challenge of researching language transfer activities in the news agree that we need to redefine and broaden our understanding of what translation means, as obtaining information across geographical boundaries means not only transferring them linguistically, but also, and necessarily, culturally.
Thus, as Bassnett and Bielsa observe, ā[i]t would seem that in the global media world, the very definition of translation is challenged and the boundaries of what we might term translation have been recastā (Bielsa & Bassnett, 2009, p. 2). Following Van Doorslaerās claim that āpopular views of ātranslation properā as a purely linguistic transfer are not appropriate to explain the complex processes of change involved in news text productionā (Van Doorslaer, 2010, p. 186), this book intends to contribute to the field of research by addressing the issue of multilingual journalism and translation from a stance that endeavours to go beyond the Jakobsonian notion of interlinguistic translation (Jakobson, 1959), eventually approaching it as an intercultural activity that implies linguistic and cultural transfer as well as creativity (Katan, 2016). In connection with this research question there is another one addressing the attitude of networks and news people towards the term ātranslationā. In the course of this study, I will devote some space to the issue of labelling language transfer activities within the news. I will do so by engaging with ethnography (Chapter 2 and Sect. 3.ā3) and eventually pondering whether an expansion of the definition of translation might make news providers more aware of the complexities of translational processes within the news.
Starting from the assumption that, on the one hand, news translation enables the communication of information at the global level, and, on the other hand, journalism is an extremely persuasive and biased carrier of information, we, as researchers, accept that news translation is not an innocent means of linguistic transfer, but rather an accessory to the shaping and disseminating of influential discourses within society (M. Baker, 2013; Conway, 2011; Tymoczko & Baker, 2010). Thus, one of the research questions that this book purports to address is whether and how can we access and deconstruct the multiple layers of meaning that language transfer activities in the news embed. In doing so, my aim is to contribute to bridging the existing gap between news translation and communication and media studies, by analysing and deconstructing multilingual news outputs as well as their contexts of production and delivery.
Central to and extremely functional in this aim is the application of Corpus Linguistics (CL) or rather Corpus-based Discourse Analysis to cross-linguistic analysis of the news. Indeed, the Corpus-based Discourse Analysis approach (P. Baker, 2006; Baker & McEnery, 2015; Baker et al., 2008; Partington, Duguid, & Taylor, 2013) allows researchers to roam freely between multilingual texts without being indebted to the binary Source Text (ST)ā Target Text (TT) dichotomy, which is understandably a feature of more traditional areas of TS, but, as pointed out above, seems to be rather restrictive when it comes to news translation. Indeed, the application of discourse analytical and corpus linguistics tools is of paramount importance in understanding how the surface-level realization of a discourse, i.e. language, actually influences other spheres of reality and society in a deep and powerful manner. Journalism and the discourses it shapes and promotes surround and impact peopleās existence.
While suggesting a method to investigate what happens when the same news item is carried across spaces and culture, I look at the process of recontextualization as explained by Reisigl and Wodak (2009), who state that if an element is transferred into a new context it ā(partly) acquires a new meaning, since meanings are formed in useā (Riesigl & Wodak, 2009, p. 90). Therefore, I claim that what happens during the processes of news diffusion, and thus in news translation, is indeed adding new meanings and consequently ascribable to the concept of recontextualization.
I have named this mixed theoretical and methodological approach āconvergence frameworkā, a term that is inspired by the increasingly pervasive phenomenon of media convergence (Flew, 2009; Jenkins, 2006; Quandt & Singer, 2009) and that employs a convergence of theories and methods (e.g. TS, CL, Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA), comparative analysis) to address the complexities of multilingual journalism and its meaning-making activities. In this book, the term convergence has a twofold methodological function: it establishes a clear intertextual connection with the namesake phenomenon of media convergence; as a metaphor, it describes how those theoretical-methodological inputs converge into an organic framework that allows the researcher to gain multiple perspectives on broadcast news, on their contexts and languages, and on their discourses and narratives.
This book is divided into six chapters, which are in turn articulated in a number of sections. Chapter 2 presents two main sections, in the first one (Sect. 2.ā1) I review the literature about research on multilingual journalism and news translation, addressing the issue of multilingual journalism from different viewpoints, namely TS, Journalism Studies (JS) and Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA), concluding with a review of those theories that I deem relevant in order to adopt a translational perspective on the news. The second (Sect. 2.ā2) of Chapter 2 is further divided in two closely related subsections, each instrumental to the other. In Sect. 2.ā2.ā1, I describe how the combination of different methods and theories in the fields of CDA, CL and TS may bear fruitful results and advances within the analysis of news discourses and transl...