ABSTRACT
This book derives from research in two distinct interdisciplinary fields: translation studies and globalization studies. Both have expanded enormously in the twenty-first century, in an age when intercultural communication is becoming increasingly significant, but have developed along parallel tracks, with researchers in each area often quite unaware of how closely their work may be connected. As is shown in Chapter 1, translation studies has tended to focus on debates about the nature of linguistic equivalence, the problems of untranslatability and the complex relationship between language and culture, while globalization research has, perhaps surprisingly, tended to disregard language issues even while it has expanded research into other aspects of global communication and interchange. Part of the explanation lies, of course, in the linguistic beginnings of the one and the sociological beginnings of the other, but as both fields have expanded and have at times used the same theoretical apparatus in their analyses, such as the work of Benedict Anderson, so the points of contact have increased and it is therefore timely to bring diverse research strands together in a discussion of a field that has major implications both for globalization and translation: the international transmission of news. This book considers the ways in which news agencies, arguably the most
powerful organizations in the field of global news, have developed historically and how they conceive of and employ translation in a global setting. At the same time, it explores the highly complex set of processes that underpin the interlingual transfer of news items, processes that raise important questions about the boundaries and indeed definition of translation itself. For while the accepted notion of translation is that it is a linguistic act
that involves the transfer of material from one language into another, what emerges when we start to look at the ways in which the news is translated shows us that translation is very much more than this. When journalists talk about ‘translation’, they tend to be thinking of what
others might term ‘literal translation’, and, as will be shown, some of the views expressed by people who prefer to call themselves ‘international journalists’ rather than translators reveal that the way in which they conceive of translation is very different from the way in which linguists or language
teachers might. Information that passes between cultures through news agencies is not only ‘translated’ in the interlingual sense, it is reshaped, edited, synthesized and transformed for the consumption of a new set of readers. It 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 recast. Through an investigation into the mechanics of news translation, this
book seeks to establish a basis on which further research into global communication strategies can evolve. Globalization studies, media studies, sociology and translation studies have vast areas of common interest, yet have not until recently started to share those common concerns. The question of global information flows is linked to the ways in which the media constructs news stories, and the transfer of those stories often involves moving not only across space but also across language and cultural boundaries. Globalization, as is argued in Chapter 2, makes our world appear smaller
and more homogeneous. The idea of global flows and the World Wide Web are images of interconnectedness that suggest that local spaces are decreasing in importance. The dominance of English as a global information language has added to this view, and there is evidence of the decline and disappearance of some local languages, a trend directly linked to the ideological domination of certain world languages. But there is another story beyond these assumptions: even as we acknowledge global communication networks as vital to world economic development, there are signs of a revival of local interests, most notably through the proliferation of new nationalisms and regional conflict zones. The current situation in Africa, the unresolved conflict in the Balkans, the Middle East, Afghanistan are all examples of localization struggles in which global and local forces are inextricably bound together. At such a time, understanding local differences is of crucial importance,
and here the role of translation is central. Western politicians who rushed into Afghanistan announcing that henceforth democracy would prevail and all Afghan women would be released from the burka forthwith completely failed to grasp how Afghan culture functioned and what weight traditional social patterns would continue to carry. Indeed, it is questionable whether a Western concept of democracy is exportable at all, since history would suggest the opposite. After the assassination of Benazir Bhutto in Pakistan in January 2008 and her legacy of party leadership to her 19-year-old son and unpopular husband, the Western media was surprisingly silent on the desirability of political dynasties, probably because it is a concept that does not sit comfortably with Western democracy and yet cannot, in the Pakistani context, be easily explained away or dismissed. This book looks at global communication through an examination of
translation practices, both diachronically, through an account of the globalization of news in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, and synchronically, in terms of contemporary journalistic practice. It is hoped that anyone with an
2 Translation in global news
interest in how the news is transferred around the world will find something of interest here. It is also hoped that this study may serve as a starting point for further research into media and internet translation, a rich and relatively unexplored field that is already posing all kinds of challenges for translators. Above all, it is hoped that these preliminary findings will encourage more interdisciplinary work and will encourage both students and practitioners working in media studies, translation studies and sociology to share information and ideas.
