The purpose of this paper is to discuss the process of translation of the news made in specific language-cultural context. Theoretical basis of the analysis are critical discourse analysis and postcolonial studies as well as translation and media studies. Empirical part of the paper aims at reconstruction and qualitative analysis of a complex media fact (as opposite to actual fact) of “commemoration of Nazi murderers within former Nazi concentration camp.” Possible process of creation and circulation of the news is reconstructed and two companion phenomena are analysed. Those are: hidden ideologization of the news in Russian media as well as recontextualisation of the same news in Polish media.
Terminological issues are problematic in the analysis of translation processes in news production. In the 1980s, Stetting coined the term “transediting”, which has been widely used in the translation studies literature, but “translation” itself becomes contentious in communication studies, a discipline closely related to news translation research. Only a few communication scholars have specifically dealt with the linguistic and cultural transformations of source texts, but they tend to regard translation as word-for-word transfer, unusual news production. More productive for the study of news translation seems to be the application of the concept of framing, widely used in communication studies. Framing considers the linguistic and paralinguistic elements of news texts in the promotion of certain organizing ideas that the target audience can identify with. In news translation, this entails the adaptation of a text for the target readership, a process can lead to appropriation of source material. Two examples are mentioned to illustrate this point: the appropriation of the US Department of State cables by the Wikileak organisation, and the pro-Romanian slogans produced by the Gandul newspaper as a response to Britain’s anti-immigration campaigns. The final section relates news adaptation to adaptation of other text types, such as literary and historical works.
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