In November 2005, as French interior minister and presidential candidate, Nicolas Sarkozy became the focus of international media attention. Riots in Franceâs banlieues â poor, high-immigration residential areas on the peripheries of major cities â were being reported to have been sparked by controversial language used by the former French president on a visit to a citĂ© (high-rise housing development) in Parisâ banlieue. What Sarkozy said became a news story. But while French journalists were bound by ideals of accuracy and objectivity to report precisely what Sarkozy had said, the translation process made this an impossibility for journalists reporting in other languages. The words chosen to translate key terms vary, but a typical translation in the British press quotes Sarkozy as promising to wash out the âscumâ [racaille] with a âpower hoseâ [KĂ€rcher]. In France, Sarkozyâs use of the word âracailleâ caused particular controversy. The different translations used in the British press (which include ârabbleâ, âriff-raffâ and âyobsâ in addition to âscumâ) reflect that there is no clear equivalent in English. In addition to the words used by Sarkozy , representations of the speech event were shaped by the terms used to translate the French culture-specific reality Sarkozy was speaking in and about â a citĂ© in the banlieue of Paris. Translations tend to situate the speech event in the âsuburbsâ of Paris. In British English, âsuburbsâ are typically affluent and desirable residential areas on the outskirts of cities; translating banlieue to âsuburbsâ therefore has the effect of communicating a distinctly different reality to a British audience.
The translations of banlieue to âsuburbâ, and âracailleâ to ârabbleâ, âyobsâ, ârif-raffâ or âscumâ, in reports of what Sarkozy said in the British press , reflect a norm for âdomesticatingâ translation strategies in the news (Bielsa and Bassnett 2009; Holland 2013; SchĂ€ffner 2005). A âdomesticatingâ translation strategy (Venuti 2008) is one which uses only terms the reader will immediately recognise and understand. As such, a âdomesticatingâ approach to translation is in accordance with the newswriting principle that readers should be able to quickly understand the reporting, without needing to look beyond the information provided (Cotter 2010, p. 119). Foreignising strategies (Venuti 2008), which, by contrast, involve retaining something of the foreignness of the source text (be that foreign language, concepts or syntax, for example), are considered an unviable alternative for news translation on the basis of the need to conform to readersâ needs and expectations (Bassnett 2005; Bielsa and Bassnett 2009; Holland 2013; SchĂ€ffner 2005).
In the flow of news information across linguistic boundaries, made possible by translation, there is the opportunity for readers to come into contact with and thus acquire new knowledge and understanding of foreign realities. As SchĂ€ffner (2005, p. 165) remarks: â[t]ranslation involves crossing linguistic, geographical and political spaces. The resulting encounters with the âotherâ should lead to new modes of thinking, feeling, and experiencing the worldâ. SchĂ€ffnerâs statement echoes the cosmopolitan ideal which Bielsa (2010, 2014, 2016) advocates in the context of news translation. In Bielsaâs work, an argument is made in favour of foreignising news translation in terms of its cosmopolitan potential. She underlines that translation can be a site of cosmopolitan openness in global news, but only through the use of strategies that expose rather than obscure cultural and linguistic difference. This book investigates the scope for a foreignised approach to translation in the news as an ethical alternative to the current domestication norm. The ethical potential of a foreignised approach is found in the key role news translation plays as a tool of intercultural communication and in the implications of the translation process for the accuracy of quotation.
The term foreignised, used to describe the approach developed in the investigation, is a deliberate variation on Venutiâs (2008) âforeignisationâ, the opposing strategy to âdomesticationâ, to reflect that it is only foreignising in certain defined respects. In other words, and as presented in the following chapters, the foreignised approach is only intended to be foreignising to a degree. The book takes Venutiâs arguments surrounding the ethical value of foreignising strategies in literary translations (Venuti 1998, 2008), and reformulates them in a news translation context. It examines individual translations in English-language news reporting in order to determine what forms of foreignisation could represent practical translation strategies for journalists. The study is particularly interested in quotation and culture-specific concepts as two key sites of translation in the new...