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Matthew Ho, Professor Johnson, Writing 2

Translation Analysis Essay

According to Laura Bolin Carroll's "Backpacks vs. Briefcases", "no rhetorical

performance takes place in a vacuum."1 Whether written or spoken, communication is not

addressed to the void-- it has an intended audience and purpose. Genres are, as Lisa Bickmore

defines them, "a typified utterance that appears in a recurrent situation,"2 or a categorization of

communication. Both of these authors agree that genres are built on specific contexts. For this

assignment, I wrote a translation, a refactoring of a text from one genre to another. In order to

effectively present the information of the economic journal article "Violent Video Games and

Violent Crime" in the genre framework of the advice column article, I chose topics by

considering audience expertise, adapted the abstract along the lines of column conventions,

conveyed main ideas with a more appropriate persuasive mode, and presented results towards the

distinctive purpose of the genre.

My first step was determining which ideas could be translated. Unlike world languages,

where a sufficiently fluent interpreter ensures that ideas are rarely ever truly lost in translation,

economic journal articles and advice columns are situated in far too different contexts for every

idea to cross over. The article's primary focus is describing a statistical quasi-experimental study

analyzing large data sets with complex techniques. In the methodology section, the authors

"begin by estimating a standard multivariate regression model of the incidence of various crimes

1. Laura Bolin Carroll, "Backpacks vs. Briefcases: Steps toward Rhetorical Analysis," Writing Spaces
(2010): 52.
2. Lisa Bickmore, "Genre in the Wild: Understanding Genre Within Rhetorical (Eco)systems."
Pressbooks.
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as a function of sales of nonviolent and violent video games."3 The article's first equation with

five distinct and totally unexplained greek letters shortly follows. This is to say that the journal

article is presented for a highly technical audience assumed to be familiar with statistical

modeling and related jargon. Contrary to the journal's audience of scholars and researchers,

advice columnists write for the general public. The difference in common knowledge between

the general public and economic researchers means that large portions of the article (namely the

methodology and results sections) cannot appear in the advice column translation, or at least in

its native data-driven form. In more formal terms, the rhetorical situations, the contexts of

exigence, audience, and constraints,4 of each genre are too disparate for all the article's

information to be translated. In this case, the audience's lack of expertise is a constraint or filter

preventing methodological and analytical details from passing through. The introduction,

background, and conclusion sections, however, relate to broader ideas regarding the impact of

violence in media, and thus can assume a more comparable form in the translation. After

identifying the sections and ideas I could reasonably incorporate into my advice column, I was

finally ready to start writing.

I began at the top, translating the opening from the conventions of scholarly articles to

those of advice columns. The top of the article features its abstract, a brief summary of the

study's motivation and results.5 The abstract is a convention of the scholarly journal article, a

common feature that helps them be identified as such. It serves the distinct purpose of providing

3. Scott Cunningham, Benjamin Engelstätter, and Michael R. Ward, "Violent Video Games and Violent
Crime," Southern Economic Journal, no. 4 (2016): 1247-265.
4. Carroll, "Backpacks vs. Briefcases: Steps towards Rhetorical Analysis", 48.
5. Cunningham, Engelstätter, and Ward, "Violent Video Games and Violent Crime," 1247.
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readers a concise overview of the content below. Similarly, the advice column has its own

characteristic opening, seen across the samples I read6 and more, a letter from a reader. In line

with this convention, I wrote a letter from 'Concerned Mother' to columnist 'Barbara.'7 These

openings represent a difference in exigence. The exigence for an advice column entry is the

reader's question, laid bare in the exact words of said reader. In contrast, researchers are driven

by a question posed by the current issues and understanding of the field, a question the study is

designed to answer. In other words, both genres address a question, the difference being that the

researchers' question is internal and implicit in their thesis. To make this transition, I made this

article's research question explicit and rephrased it as a first-person description of a personal

problem--the issue in relation to an individual. With the exigent question translated, I started

using ideas from the article and conventions of the advice column to answer this question.

I presented a key idea from the article, that video games have their own genres, with the

mode of persuasion appropriate for the new format. In the article, this concept appeared in the

form of data and its analysis where Cunningham et. al analyzed numbers on 'intensely violent'

video games separately in their own distinct category.8 This is a hallmark of the academic

discipline9 of economics. Scientific disciplines, such as economics, demand scholars only draw

conclusions after rigorously pouring over quantitative evidence. In this way, economic

researchers utilize logos to its fullest. To convey this same distinction without numerically

6. Danny M. Lavery, “Help! My Partner Got My Dream Job,” Slate Magazine, The Slate Group, October
17, 2020
7. Matthew Ho, "Video Games: 'I'm Worried that my Boys will Develop Violent Tendencies.' Be cautious
but let them enjoy life," October 25 2020.
8. Cunningham, Engelstätter, and Ward, "Violent Video Games and Violent Crime," 1257-1260.
9. Academic disciplines: categories of organized learning and research
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swamping advice column readers, I directly assert that "there are plenty of nonviolent games,"

along with a personal example of Animal Crossing.10 While economic scholars use figures and

calculations, advice columnists back their assertions using personal anecdotes and their general

authority. In the examples I read, the authors inserted their own personal experience to

demonstrate their understanding of the readers' situation.11 I replaced the intellectual persuasion,

logos, with my apparent experience and authority-- my ethos. To further bolster my ethos, I even

used the pseudonym Barbara to present the image of a sagely older person.

Finally, I reached the crux of the article, its results and conclusion, where the context of

purpose led my translation to diverge from its source. After concluding that their study "suggests

the evidence that violent video games have substantial social costs is weak," the authors continue

onwards to explore possible sources of error and general weakness of their study.12 This is

directly tied to the goals of economic research. The researchers and authors intend for their study

to inform policy decisions as well as further research. To this end, the article must be objective in

its analysis and it must locate its own weakness. In stark contrast, I declare without elaboration

that there are studies to suggest video games lower crime rates before dispensing broader life

advice urging readers to enjoy life.13 My polar opposite approach to the same conclusion of the

research article is a reflection of a completely different purpose. As authorities of reason and

experience, advice columnists are expected to advise readers as to what is right and wrong.

10. Ho, "Video Games: 'I'm Worried that my Boys will Develop Violent Tendencies.' Be cautious but let
them enjoy life," October 25 2020.
11. Heather Havrilesky, “‘I’ve Made So Many Mistakes and I’m Way Behind in Life,’” The Cut, Vox
Media, September 23 2020.
12. Cunningham, Engelstätter, and Ward, "Violent Video Games and Violent Crime," 1261.
13. Ho, "Video Games: 'I'm Worried that my Boys will Develop Violent Tendencies.' Be cautious but let
them enjoy life," October 25 2020.
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Hence, I project total confidence by omitting any reference to the study's potential issues.

Regarding bias, the source material is peer-reviewed, meaning that it has been meticulously

reviewed by other scholars of economics to ensure that the article meets the discipline's

standards. These standards require impartiality, or at least acknowledgement of possible bias.

Conversely, my column is unconcerned with the standards of an academic discipline, so I am

free to follow the genre's purpose of dictating moral values using my personal beliefs and

embracing my personal stance on video games.

In my effort to translate across these radically different genres, context informed my

decisions throughout the process. The context of audience and their knowledge helped to decide

which elements of the article to translate, the characteristics of the advice column's exigence

shaped my opening letter to 'Barbara', genre conventions directed my avenue of persuasion, and

the specific purpose of advice columns led my ending down its path. Before starting this project,

I assumed my translation would isolate the effects of a changed audience since the base purpose

of informing a group of people remained the same. The various changes I made and the

corresponding discussion above indicates otherwise: the smallest differences in purpose are

significant indeed. In doing this exercise and engaging with the universal elements of rhetoric, I

have learned their importance and I hope this essay, a rhetorical performance in itself, is

evidence.
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Bibliography

Bickmore, Lisa. "Genre in the Wild: Understanding Genre Within Rhetorical (Eco)systems."

Pressbooks.

Carroll, Laura Bolin. "Backpacks vs. Briefcases: Steps toward Rhetorical Analysis." Writing

Spaces (2010): 52.

Cunningham, Scott, Benjamin Engelstätter, and Michael R. Ward. "Violent Video Games and

Violent Crime." Southern Economic Journal 82, no. 4 (2016): 1247-265. Accessed

October 25, 2020. doi: 10.2307/26632315.

Havrilesky, Heather. “‘I’ve Made So Many Mistakes and I’m Way Behind in Life.’” The Cut.

Vox Media. September 23, 2020. https://www.thecut.com/2020/09/ive-made-so-many-

mistakes-and-im-way-behind-in-life.html.

Ho, Matthew. "Video Games: 'I'm Worried that my Boys will Develop Violent Tendencies.' Be

cautious but let them enjoy life," October 25 2020.

Lavery, Danny M. “Help! My Partner Got My Dream Job.” Slate Magazine. The Slate Group.

October 17, 2020. https://slate.com/human-interest/2020/10/dear-prudence-partner-

dream-job.html.