Cover not available
Article published In:
What can research on indirect translation do for Translation Studies?
Edited by Hanna Pięta, Laura Ivaska and Yves Gambier
[Target 34:3] 2022
► pp. 419–440

On the role of indirect translation in the history of news production

| South China Business College (SCBC) | University of Oviedo | University of the Free State

This article aims to problematize the role of translation in news production as a result of the invisibility of indirect translation (ITr). In the first section, I argue that in journalistic translation ITr is not merely ‘hidden translation’ but rather ‘ignored translation’ as a consequence of the traditional status of the translational activity in journalism and because researchers can hardly find traces of ITr in news production, such as the name of sources, attributions, or paratexts. I then move on to discuss the importance of the various forms of translation in the emergence of journalism in the early modern period. Human conflicts and movement meant that news texts were recycled across Europe, often via ITr. News writers used various sources from different languages and adapted the texts taking into account political and cultural considerations. This establishes a link with contemporary journalism, as news articles are characterized by their multi-authored nature. In addition, translations can be embedded and are often circular rather than linear. In the concluding discussion, I suggest that journalistic translation research, including research into ITr, can benefit not only from interdisciplinary approaches, but also from incorporating historical aspects.

Keywords: journalistic translation, indirect translation, early modern period, circular and embedded translation
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Indirect translation in early modern news texts
    • 2.1Language, translation, and power in early modern news translation
    • 2.2The role of human movement and conflicts in translated news
    • 2.3Indirect translation and news recycling
    • 2.4The multi-authored natured of translated news
    • 2.5The status of languages in news production
    • 2.6Linear versus circular indirect translations
    • 2.7Indirect translation as a political tool
    • 2.8The multi-directionality of news translation
  • 3.Final discussion
  • References
Published online: 16 August 2022
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/target.00011.val
References
Andrews, Alexander
1859 The History of British Journalism from the Foundation of the Newspaper Press in England, to the Repeal of the Stamp Act in 1855. Vol. I1. London: Richard Bentley.Google Scholar
Atwood, Roy
1978 “New Directions for Journalism Historiography.” Journal of Communication Inquiry 4 (1): 3–14. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Barbarics-Hermanik, Zsuzsa
2011 “The Coexistence of Manuscript and Print: Handwritten Newsletters in the Second Century of Print, 1540–1640.” In The Book Triumphant: Print in Transition in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries, edited by Malcolm Walsby and Graeme Kemp, 347–368. Leiden: Brill.Google Scholar
Barbarics, Zsuzsa, and Renate Pieper
2007 “Handwritten Newsletters as a Means of Communication in Early Modern Europe.” In Cultural Exchange in Early Modern Europe Volume III: Correspondence and Cultural Exchange in Europe, 1400–1700, edited by Francisco Bethencourt and Florike Egmond, 53–79. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Bielsa, Esperança, and Susan Bassnett
2009 Translation in Global News. Abingdon: Routledge.Google Scholar
Brownlees, Nicholas
2010 “Narrating Contemporaneity: Text and Structure in English News.” In Brendan Dooley (2010c, 225–250).Google Scholar
2014 The Language of Periodical News in Seventeenth-Century England. Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars.Google Scholar
2018 “The Gazette de Londres: Disseminating News and Exercising News Managing Through Translation.” Token: A Journal of English Linguistics 71: 13–33.Google Scholar
Chalaby, Jean K.
1996 “Journalism as an Anglo-American Invention: A Comparison of the Development of French and Anglo-American Journalism, 1830s–1920s.” European Journal of Communication 11 (3): 303–326. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Conway, Kyle
2010a “Paradoxes of Translation in Television News.” Media, Culture & Society 32 (6): 979–996. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
2010b “La traduction qui n’en est pas une: la traduction des nouvelles et ses enjeux [The translation that is not one: The translation of the news and its challenges].” Cahiers franco-canadiens de l’Ouest 22 (2): 153–162. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
2014 “Vagaries of News Translation on Canadian Broadcasting Corporation Television: Traces of History.” Meta 59 (3): 620–635. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Couvée, Dirk Hendrik
1962 “The First Coranteers – The Flow of the News in the 1620’s.” International Communication Gazette 8 (1): 22–36. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Curelly, Laurent
2017 An Anatomy of an English Radical Newspaper: The Moderate (1648–9). Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars.Google Scholar
Davier, Lucile
2014 “The Paradoxical Invisibility of Translation in the Highly Multilingual Context of News Agencies.” Global Media and Communication 10 (1): 53–72. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
2017 Les enjeux de la traduction dans les agences de presse [The challenges of translation in news agencies]. Lille: Presses Universitaires du Septentrion. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Davier, Lucile, Schäffner, Christina, and Luc van Doorslaer
eds. 2018 Methodological Issues in News Translation Research. Special issue of Across Languages and Cultures 19 (2).Google Scholar
Delabastita, Dirk
2008 “Status, Origin, Features: Translation and Beyond.” In Beyond Descriptive Translation Studies: Investigations in Homage to Gideon Toury, edited by Anthony Pym, Miriam Shlesinger, and Daniel Simeoni, 233–246. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Der Weduwen, Arthur
2017 Dutch and Flemish Newspapers of the Seventeenth Century, 1618–1700. Vol. 11. Leiden: Brill. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Dooley, Brendan
2010a “Introduction.” In Dooley (2010c, 1–23). DOI logoGoogle Scholar
2010b “Making It Present.” In Dooley (2010c, 95–114).Google Scholar
2010c The Dissemination of News and the Emergence of Comtemporaneity in Early Modern Europe. Farnham: Ashgate.Google Scholar
Dooley, Brendan, and Sabrina A. Baron
2001 The Politics of Information in Early Modern Europe. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Espejo, Carmen
2011 “European Communication Networks in the Early Modern Age: A New Framework of Interpretation for the Birth of Journalism.” In Sport and the Media in Ireland, edited by Seán Crosson and Philip Dine, special issue of Media History 17 (2): 189–202. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Ettinghausen, Henry
2001 “Politics and the Press in Spain.” In Dooley and Baron (2001, 199–216).Google Scholar
Filmer, Denise
2014 “Journalators? An Ethnographic Study of British Journalists Who Translate.” Cultus: The Journal of Intercultural Mediation and Communication 71: 135–157.Google Scholar
Harms, Roeland, Joad Raymond, and Jeroen Salman
eds. 2013a Not Dead Things: The Dissemination of Popular Print in England and Wales, Italy, and the Low Countries, 1500–1820. Leiden: Brill. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
2013b “Introduction: The Distribution and Dissemination of Popular Print.” In Harms, Raymond, and Salman (2013a, 1–29). DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Hernández Guerrero, María Jose
2012 “La traducción al servicio de una línea editorial [Translation at the service of an editorial stance].” In Journalism and Translation, edited by Roberto A. Valdeón, special issue of Meta 57 (4): 960–976.Google Scholar
Hernández Guerrero, María José
2009 Traducción y periodismo [Translation and journalism]. Bern: Peter Lang. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Høyer, Svennik
2003 “Newspapers without Journalists.” Journalism Studies 4 (4): 451–463. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
House, Juliane, and Jens Loenhoff
2016 “Communication Studies and Translation Studies: A Special Relationship.” In Border Crossings: Translation Studies and Other Disciplines, edited by Yves Gambier and Luc van Doorslaer, 97–116. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Hunt, John M.
2014 “Rumours, Newsletters, and the Pope’s Death in Early Modern Rome.” In News in Early Modern Europe: Currents and Connections, edited by Simon F. Davies and Puck Fletcher, 143–158. Leiden: Brill.Google Scholar
Infelise, Mario
2010 “News Networks between Italy and Europe.” In Dooley (2010c, 51–67).Google Scholar
Kálmán, Gyorgy C.
1986 “Some Borderline Cases of Translation.” New Comparison 11: 117–122.Google Scholar
Kingsley, Patrick
2020a “Amsterdam’s Red Light Zone Stays Shut as Rest of City Edges Open.” The New York Times. June 2, 2020. [URL]
2020b “Ámsterdam está a punto de abrir, excepto por el barrio rojo de la ciudad [Amsterdam is about to open, except for the city’s red light district].” The New York Times. June 5, 2020. [URL]
Koopmans, Joop W.
2013 “Storehouses of News: The Meaning of Early Modern News Periodicals in Western Europe.” In Harms, Raymond, and Salman (2013a, 253–274). DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Merkle, Denise
2013 “Official Translation.” In Handbook of Translation Studies, Vol. 41, edited by Yves Gambier and Luc van Doorslaer, 119–122. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Milcent, Carine
2020a “Pourquoi il faut se méfier des chiffres chinois sur le coronavirus [Why you should be wary of Chinese figures on the coronavirus].” Le Monde Diplomatique. June 2020 [URL]
2020b “Por qué generan tanta desconfianza las cifras chinas sobre el coronavirus [Why Chinese figures on the coronavirus cause so much distrust].” Le Monde Diplomatique en español. June 2020 [URL]
Palmer, Michael
2008 “International News from Paris- and London-based Newsrooms.” In The Future of Newspapers, edited by Bob Franklin, special issue of Journalism Studies 9 (5): 813–821. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Parmelee, Lisa Ferraro
1996 Good Newes from Fraunce: French Anti-League Propaganda in Late Elizabethan England. Rochester: University of Rochester Press.Google Scholar
Raymond, Joad
2003 Pamphlets and Pamphleteering in Early Modern Britain. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
2006 “Introduction: Networks, Communication, Practice.” In News Networks in Seventeenth Century Britain and Europe, edited by Joad Raymond, 1–18. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
2013 “International News and the Seventeenth-Century English Newspaper.” In Harms, Raymond, and Salman (2013a, 229–251). DOI logoGoogle Scholar
2014 “Exporting Impartiality.” In The Emergence of Impartiality, edited by Kathryn Murphy and Anita Traninger, 141–167. Leiden: Brill.Google Scholar
Ries, Paul
2001 “The Politics of Information in Seventeenth-Century Scandinavia.” In Dooley and Baron (2001, 123–150).Google Scholar
Ringmar, Martin
2012 “Relay Translation.” In Handbook of Translation Studies, Vol. 31, edited by Yves Gambier and Luc van Doorsaler, 141–144. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Trouillot, Michel-Rolph
1995 Power and the Production of History. Boston: Beacon Press.Google Scholar
Schäffner, Christina
2012 “Rethinking Transediting.” In Journalism and Translation, edited by Roberto A. Valdeón, special issue of Meta 57 (4): 866–883.Google Scholar
Schröder, Thomas
2001 “The Origins of the German Press.” In Dooley and Baron (2001, 123–150).Google Scholar
Schultheiß-Heinz, Sonja
2010 “Contemporaneity in 1672–1679: The Paris Gazette, the London Gazette, and the Teutche Kriegs-Kurier (1672–1679).” In Dooley (2010c, 115–136).Google Scholar
Song, Yonsuk
2017 “Impact of Power and Ideology on News Translation in Korea.” Perspectives 25 (4): 658–672. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Tymoczko, Maria
1999 “Post-colonial Writing and Literary Translation.” In Postcolonial Translation: Theory and Practice, edited by Susan Bassnett and Harish Trivedi, 19–40. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Valdeón, Roberto A.
2007 “Ideological Independence or Negative Mediation: BBC Mundo and CNN en Español’s (translated) Reporting of Madrid’s Terrorist Attacks.” In Translating and Interpreting Conflict, edited by Myriam Salama-Carr, 97–118. Amsterdam: Rodopi.Google Scholar
2015 “Fifteen Years of Journalistic Translation and More.” In Culture and News Translation, edited by Kyle Conway, special issue of Perspectives 23 (4): 634–662. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
2018 “On the Use of the Term ‘Translation’ in Journalism Studies.” In Transformations in Journalism, special issue of Journalism 19 (2): 252–269. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
2020 “Journalistic Translation Research Goes Global: Theoretical and Methodological Considerations Five Years On.” Perspectives 28 (3): 325–338. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Van Doorslaer, Luc
2010 “The Double Extension of Translation in the Journalistic Field.” Across Languages and Cultures 11 (2): 175–188. DOI logoGoogle Scholar