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Journalism and Translation in the Era of Convergence
Edited by Lucile Davier and Kyle Conway
[Benjamins Translation Library 146] 2019
► pp. 177–207

Chapter 8
Technological convergence threatening translation

The professional vision of francophone journalists in Canada

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Le Droit is a monolingual French-language regional newspaper targeting audiences in two Canadian provinces. Although its multimodal content appears to be in French only, English permeates the daily work of reporters. Data include sessions of observation, semi-structured interviews, and text collection on different platforms (print, website, applications, and social media). This chapter shows that, at the level of news-gathering, contacts with English sources seem partially unavoidable or even desirable. At the level of production, however, all traces of translation are erased in the written form, while French voices are systematically preferred in audiovisual content. The growing importance of audiovisual content seems to predict the exclusion of sources in a second language.

Keywords: cross-platform production, Canadian media, community of practice, fieldwork, news translation
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Conceptual framework, method, and data
    • 2.1Professional vision in a community of practice
    • 2.2Fieldwork with interpretive analysis
    • 2.3The field: Le Droit
  • 3.News-gathering convergence: Including the other language community
    • 3.1Convergence at Le Droit : Institutional limitations
    • 3.2Contacts with English: A necessity
    • 3.3Contacts with English: A guilty pleasure
  • 4.Production convergence: Hiding the other
    • 4.1Written content: Invisible translation
      • 4.1.1No traces of translation
      • 4.1.2The hunt for anglicisms
    • 4.2Audiovisual content: Unwelcome translation
      • 4.2.1Compliance with institutional guidelines
      • 4.2.2Technical justifications
      • 4.2.3Risk management: The fear of complaints
      • 4.2.4The defense of a minority language
      • 4.2.5Making the other invisible
  • 5.Concluding remarks
  • Notes
  • References
  • Appendix
Published online: 24 April 2019
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https://doi.org/10.1075/btl.146.08dav
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