Justin Kluger

Writing 2
The Journey of Translating an Academic Article to a Gossip Column

For my genre translation, I translated the academic article “Oops, I’ve

Overshared! When social media influencers’ self-disclosure damage

perceptions of source credibility” by Fernanda Leite, Nicolas Pontes, and

Paulo de Paula Baptista into a TMZ article. The original academic article is

about how social media influencers’ self-disclosure can either boost or lower

their credibility among their fans. It can boost their credibility if the

information they are giving is perceived as appropriate and it can lower their

credibility if the information they are giving is perceived as inappropriate.

After finding my academic article, I immediately knew I wanted to

translate it into some sort of celebrity gossip article. I thought it would be

perfect since I could discuss how a social media influencer did something

controversial that self-disclosed some information and I could go into how

the fans reacted. I ended up deciding to do a TMZ article since that is the

celebrity gossip company I am most familiar with and started getting more

familiar with some of their articles to understand how they are structured.

While reading the articles, I used Mike Bunn’s techniques from his article

“How to Read Like a Writer”. The main point of reading like a writer is

reading to understand how the piece was written rather than the content

given in the piece. This helped me understand the “most important writerly

choices” (Bunn, ) from the TMZ article such as the first paragraph that

summarizes the story, the second paragraph that gives background

1
Justin Kluger
Writing 2
information on the given celebrities, and lastly, the whole story itself with all

the juicy details.

Before I actually started writing, I had to figure out how I was going to

successfully translate an academic article into an easy-to-read TMZ article.

This was probably the most difficult part of the translation since the

audiences for these genres are completely different. My academic article’s

audience are people that are studying social media influencer fan

relationships, but TMZ articles are catered for people that are interested in

quick celebrity gossip. Because of this, I could not use a lot of academic

lingo and had to just summarize it rather than going super in depth. To

include as much information as I reasonably could into my TMZ article, I

decided to reference the academic article in the last paragraph when

discussing all the details of the fans reaction to Bryce Hall’s self-disclosure,

so I think it fits in pretty well with the rest of the article.

The actual writing of my translated article was pretty enjoyable for me.

I liked that there was a decent amount of freedom with this assignment

allowing me to let my creativity out. I wrote a story about Bryce Hall only

washing his bedsheets once every six months since I thought it would be a

funny, lighthearted celebrity controversy. Usually, TMZ articles are about

more serious and sad things like affairs, racist comments, or political beliefs,

but I did not want to make up a scenario like that. The Bryce Hall bedsheets

situation is perfect since not washing your bed sheets regularly is a joke

2
Justin Kluger
Writing 2
among college students since many of us do not even though it is pretty

gross not too. Also most college students are either fans or know of Bryce

Hall. This connected to the article since Bryce Hall revealing that he only

washes his sheets once every six months would be seen as relatable by his

college age fans making his self disclosure positive resulting in boosted

credibility. While it may be a more lighthearted approach, it does the job and

explains the article perfectly while being translated into a new genre. After

my first draft that I brought into class on Thursday, I saw that my

classmates' comments were mainly about how I did not include enough

information from the academic article in the translation so when I revised it I

made sure to directly cite the academic article and give some more time to

discussing the article's contents. After I completed my revisions, I made

sure to reflect on my writing. According to Taczak, reflection is a key part of

writing and can help writers “recall, reframe, and relocate knowledge”

(Taczak, ). Taczak also mentioned that reflection does not happen naturally,

so I made sure to read over my writing and really understand why I did what

I did.

3
Justin Kluger
Writing 2

Citations:

Leite, Fernanda Polli, Nicolas Pontes, and Paulo de Paula Baptista. “Oops,

I’ve Overshared! When Social Media Influencers’ Self-Disclosure

Damage Perceptions of Source Credibility.” Computers in human

behavior133 (2022): 107274–. Web.

Taczak, Kara. “Reflection is Critical for Writers Development.” Canvas

Modules (2022)

Bunn, Mike. “How to Read Like a Writer.” Writing Spaces: Readings on

Writing, Volume 2. (2010)