This electronic thesis or dissertation has been downloaded from the King’s Research Portal at https://kclpure.kcl.ac.uk/portal/ Putting the foreign in news translation A reader-response investigation of the scope for foreignising the translation strategies of the global agencies Scammell, Claire Naomi Awarding institution: King's College London The copyright of this thesis rests with the author and no quotation from it or information derived from it may be published without proper acknowledgement. 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Take down policy If you believe that this document breaches copyright please contact [email protected] providing details, and we will remove access to the work immediately and investigate your claim. Download date: 27. Sep. 2021 Putting the foreign in news translation: a reader- response investigation of the scope for foreignising the translation strategies of the global agencies Claire Scammell Thesis submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy March 2016 King’s College London Department of Education & Professional Studies 1 Abstract This thesis contributes to a developing body of translation studies research that has begun to cast much needed light on the role of translation in news production. A norm for news to be translated using an acculturating strategy has been identified and argued to be necessary in the case of journalistic texts (Bassnett, 2005). This thesis considers the acculturation norm to be problematic for two reasons: 1) acculturation obscures the translation process, and therefore the intervention of the journalist-translator in translated quotations; 2) acculturation obscures, and therefore prevents the reader from engaging with, the foreign source culture. It asks whether there might be scope for introducing a degree of foreignisation, and what the impact might be on reading ease, translation awareness and the potential for news translation to facilitate cosmopolitan openness. The thesis builds on the work of Cronin (2006) and Bielsa (2010; 2012; 2014) in introducing the sociological concept of cosmopolitanism to translation studies. The potential for news translation to enable cosmopolitan connections, a normative ideal in this thesis, is considered to be fulfilled by a translation strategy that reveals rather than obscures the foreignness of the source news context (Bielsa, 2014). As prolific news content providers, the global agencies (Reuters, Associated Press and Agence France-Presse) are the focus of the research; with Reuters, British readers and news from France as a case study. A ‘foreignised’ strategy is developed as a hypothetical, yet viable, alternative to current practice. The changes impact the translation of culture-specific terms and quotations; two elements of foreign news reporting that always involve translation. A reader-response investigation is conducted using focus groups, an under-used method in translation studies. The data indicates the strategy does not have a negative impact on reading ease and illuminates the cosmopolitan potential of a foreignised approach to news translation. 2 Acknowledgements I owe gratitude to many parties for the support which has enriched and helped make my PhD journey possible. At the application stage I am heartily grateful to Professor Theo Hermans for his invaluable advice and support, and too for the solid theoretical education during my Masters programme; an education I value as much as a translator as I do as a scholar. I am immensely grateful to the Arts & Humanities Research Council for the studentship which made it possible for me to return to academia and complete this research. Over the past three years I have benefited from the expert guidance and kind encouragement of my supervisors, Professor Guy Cook and Dr Federico Federici; I am grateful to King’s College London for facilitating this cross- university partnership. I owe further thanks to the Arts & Humanities Research Council for funding my visit to the 2014 CETRA summer school and to the staff and students for their input at an important juncture in my PhD journey. I am thankful to have had the opportunity to meet and discuss my research with Dr Esperança Bielsa, whose work on cosmopolitanism and news translation has been an important influence. I owe a special thank you to my family members and their friends for the time they generously dedicated to my focus groups; you all made the process run more smoothly than I dreamt possible. Lastly, thank you to Ian, who shared this experience with me from beginning to end, and whose infinite support and encouragement have been the key to making it such a happy one. 3 Table of Contents Abstract .......................................................................................................................................................... 2 Acknowledgements ...................................................................................................................................... 3 Chapter 1 Global news production ......................................................................................................... 11 1.1 The (increasing) dominance of the global news agencies ................................................... 11 1.1.1 The demise of original foreign news reporting ................................................................ 12 1.1.2 The growth of online news ................................................................................................ 14 1.1.3 Ready-to-publish news ..................................................................................................... 18 1.2 Reproductions of agency content – examples from the case study .................................... 21 1.2.1 The Reuters THUGOCRACY report in the Daily Mail .................................................... 21 1.2.2 The Reuters THUGOCRACY report in the Daily Telegraph & Telegraph Online ....... 23 1.2.3 The Reuters SECURITY report in the Mail Online ......................................................... 26 1.3 The global agencies as a source for translated quotations .................................................. 28 1.3.1 Reliance on the global news agencies as a source for quotations ............................... 29 1.3.2 News is what someone said, as the global agencies reported it .................................. 30 Chapter 2 Global news translation .......................................................................................................... 33 2.1 The nature of translation in the global news agencies .......................................................... 34 2.1.1 The (non)status of translation within the global agencies.............................................. 34 2.1.2 Recontextualising the news .............................................................................................. 35 2.1.3 Plurality of sources ............................................................................................................ 37 2.2 Global news as acculturated news ......................................................................................... 39 2.2.1 The foreignisation/acculturation debate .......................................................................... 40 2.2.2 The acculturated nature of translated news .................................................................... 43 2.2.3 Relabelling news translation ............................................................................................. 47 2.3 Translating global news – potentials and limitations ............................................................. 49 2.3.1 Reporting by (translated) quotation ................................................................................. 49 2.3.2 Journalist-translators as cultural mediators .................................................................... 52 4 2.3.3 The cosmopolitan potential of translation in the news ................................................... 54 Chapter 3 The research project ............................................................................................................... 57 3.1 Introduction................................................................................................................................ 57 3.1.1 Aims .................................................................................................................................... 57 3.1.2 Research questions ........................................................................................................... 59 3.1.3 Research design ................................................................................................................ 60 3.2 Key concepts............................................................................................................................