Untitled

The Routledge Handbook
of Translation and Media
The Routledge Handbook of Translation and Media provides the first comprehensive
account of the role of translation in the media, which has become a thriving area of
research in recent decades. It offers theoretical and methodological perspectives on trans-
lation and media in the digital age, as well as analyses of a wide diversity of media contexts
and translation forms.
Divided into four parts with an editor introduction, the 33 chapters are written by
leading international experts and provide a critical survey of each area with suggestions
for further reading. The Handbook aims to showcase innovative approaches and
developments, bridging the gap between currently separate disciplinary subfields and
pointing to potential synergies and broad research topics and issues.
With a broad-ranging, critical and interdisciplinary perspective, this Handbook is an
indispensable resource for all students and researchers of translation studies, audiovisual
translation, journalism studies, film studies and media studies.
Esperança Bielsa is Associate Professor at the Department of Sociology, Universitat

Autònoma de Barcelona, Spain. Her research is in the areas of cultural sociology, social
theory, globalization and cosmopolitanism. Her most recent books are Cosmopolitanism
and Translation (2016) and The Routledge Handbook of Translation and Globalization
(with D. Kapsaskis, eds. 2021).
Routledge Handbooks in Translation and Interpreting Studies
Routledge Handbooks in Translation and Interpreting Studies provide comprehensive

overviews of the key topics in translation and interpreting studies. All entries for the
handbooks are specially commissioned and written by leading scholars in the field. Clear,
accessible and carefully edited, Routledge Handbooks in Translation and Interpreting
Studies are the ideal resource for both advanced undergraduates and postgraduate
students.
The Routledge Handbook of Translation and Activism

Edited by Rebecca Ruth Gould and Kayvan Tahmasebian
The Routledge Handbook of Translation, Feminism and Gender
Edited by Luise von Flotow and Hala Kamal
The Routledge Handbook of Translation and Globalization
Edited by Esperança Bielsa and Dionysios Kapsaskis
The Routledge Handbook of Translation and Ethics
Edited by Kaisa Koskinen and Nike K. Pokorn
The Routledge Handbook of Translation and Health
Edited by Şebnem Susam-Saraeva and Eva Spišiaková
The Routledge Handbook of Translation and the City
Edited by Tong King Lee
The Routledge Handbook of Translation History
Edited by Christopher Rundle
The Routledge Handbook of Translation and Media
Edited by Esperança Bielsa
The Routledge Handbook of Conference Interpreting
Edited by Michaela Albl-Mikasa and Elisabet Tiselius
The Routledge Handbook of Translation and Methodology
Edited by Federico Zanettin and Christopher Rundle
For a full list of titles in this series, please visit https://www.routledge.com/Routledge-

Handbooks-in-Translation-and-Interpreting-Studies/book-series/RHTI.
The Routledge Handbook
of Translation and Media
Edited by Esperança Bielsa

First published 2022
by Routledge
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The right of Esperança Bielsa to be identified as the author of the editorial material, and of the
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ISBN: 978-0-367-02916-6 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-1-032-12647-0 (pbk)
ISBN: 978-1-003-22167-8 (ebk)
DOI: 10.4324/9781003221678
Typeset in Times New Roman
by Newgen Publishing UK
Contents
List of figures ix
List of tables x
Notes on contributors xi
Acknowledgements xvi
Introduction: translation and/in/of media 1

Esperança Bielsa
PART I
General theoretical and methodological perspectives 11
1 Media and translation: historical intersections 13

Anne O’Connor
2 Language, media and culture in an era of communicative change 28

Martin Montgomery
3 Media translation and politics in multilingual contexts 44

Esmaeil Kalantari and Chantal Gagnon
4 The global, the foreign and the domestic: was there a ‘global turn’
in journalism in the early 21st century? 58
Miki Tanikawa
5 Internationalization and localization of media content: the

circulation and national mediation of ready-made TV shows
and formats 74
Luca Antoniazzi and Luca Barra
6 Revisiting certain concepts of translation studies through the study

of media practices 91
Yves Gambier
v
Contents
7 The translating agent in the media: one or many? 108

Ji-Hae Kang
8 Translation, media and paratexts 122

Kathryn Batchelor
9 The multimodal dimension of translation 136

Ariel Chen and David Machin
PART II
Translation and journalism 153
10 A historical overview of translation in the global journalistic field 155

Roberto A. Valdeón
11 Journalism and translation: overlapping practices 169

Luc van Doorslaer
12 Translation in the news agencies 183

Lucile Davier
13 Translation in literary magazines 199

Diana Roig-Sanz, Laura Fólica and Ventsislav Ikoff
14 Fixers, journalists and translation 217

Jerry Palmer
15 News translation strategies 232

María José Hernández Guerrero
16 Journalism and translation ethics 250

Georgios Floros
17 Reading translated news 265

Claire Scammell
PART III
Multimedia translation 281
18 A connected history of audiovisual translation: sources

and resources 283
Yves Gambier and Haina Jin
vi
Contents
19 Film translation 302

Dionysios Kapsaskis and Josh Branson
20 Mapping the contemporary landscape of TV translation 319

Chiara Bucaria
21 Media interpreting 336

Pedro Jesús Castillo Ortiz
22 Translation and the World Wide Web 352

Miguel A. Jiménez-Crespo and Laura Ramírez-Polo
23 Video game localization: translating interactive entertainment 369

Xiaochun Zhang
24 Translation, accessibility and minorities 384

Pilar Orero
25 Audiovisual translation, audiences and reception 400

Elena Di Giovanni
PART IV
Translation in alternative and social media 413
26 Translation and social media 415

Renée Desjardins
27 Non-professional translators and the media 432

Michał Borodo
28 Alternative journalism and translation 446

Marlie van Rooyen
29 Subtitling practices in Islamic satellite television 459

Yasmin Moll
30 NGOs, media and translation 474

Wine Tesseur
31 A Deaf translation norm? 490

Christopher Stone
vii
Contents
32 Online translation communities and networks 501

Dingkun Wang
33 Wikipedia and translation 518

Henry Jones
Index 534
viii
Figures
2.1 The interactions of media, culture and language 30

2.2 Tweet from the then President Trump @realDonaldTrump on 14 July 2019 31
2.3 Tweet from Congressman Bernie Sanders @BernieSanders on 14 July 2019 33
6.1 Types of quality 102
6.2 The different stakeholders in AVT 102
9.1 Baked whole almonds package 137
9.2 Protein supplement powder 138
9.3 Breakfast cereal package 141
9.4 Protein snack bar 142
9.5 Couple on Kellogg’s package 145
13.1 Schematic representation of the main types of objects and the relations
between them 206
13.2 Map of the origin of translated authors, their original languages, and
the places of publication of their translations 207
13.3 Translated languages and translators in all the magazines compiled
within the project ERC Social Networks of the Past. Relationship
highlighted: languages translated by the Catalan writer and
translator Agustí Esclasans for La Revista. 208
13.4 Network of magazines, translators, and authors –as per the publications
addressed within the project ERC Social Networks of the Past 209
13.5 Place of publication and origin of Portuguese-speaking
authors in Sur, Alfar, and Boletín Titikaka 210
13.6 Place of publication and origin of Portuguese-speaking writers in
La Revista, La Gaceta Literaria, and Alfar (La Coruña) 211
33.1 A Wikipedia translation ‘banner’ 522
33.2 Wikipedia’s Content Translation Tool 529
ix
Tables
6.1 The 14 semiotic codes of a film 97

12.1 Illustration of lexical transfer in quotations 191
12.2 News dispatch showcasing different translational elements 193
21.1 Live interpreter-mediated interviews: descriptive framework of practice 339
31.1 Deaf magazines programmes presented in sign languages including news
broadcasts 494
x
Contributors
Luca Antoniazzi (PhD, Leeds) is a post-doctoral Research Fellow at the Department of the
Arts, Università di Bologna. He currently works on European audiovisual media circula-
tion and previously worked on film archiving. He has published in international journals
such as Information, Communication and Society, Museum Management and Curatorship
and The Moving Image.
Luca Barra is Associate Professor at the Department of the Arts, Università di Bologna,
where he teaches Television and Digital Media. His research focuses on television produc-
tion and distribution cultures, the international circulation of media products, comedy and
humour TV genres. He is the author of three books and the co-editor of six collections.
Kathryn Batchelor is Professor of Translation Studies and Director of the Centre for
Translation Studies at University College London, UK. Her research spans translation
theory, translation history, and translation in and involving Africa.
Esperança Bielsa is Associate Professor at the Department of Sociology, Universitat

Autònoma de Barcelona. Her research is in the areas of cultural sociology, social theory,
globalization and cosmopolitanism. Her most recent books are Cosmopolitanism and
Translation (2016) and The Routledge Handbook of Translation and Globalization (with
D. Kapsaskis, eds. 2021).
Michał Borodo is Associate Professor in the Department of English Linguistics at the

Kazimierz Wielki University in Bydgoszcz, Poland. His main research interests include
the translation of children’s literature, the translation of comics, non-professional/volun-
teer translation, translation and globalization, and translator training.
Josh Branson is a PhD student in Translation Studies at the University of Roehampton,

UK, and a member of the Galician Observatory for Media Accessibility (Spain). His doc-
toral research explores questions of originality and errancy in relation to cinematic acces-
sibility and translation with a focus on the involvement of filmmakers in these practices.
Chiara Bucaria is an Associate Professor at the University of Bologna’s Department of

Interpretation and Translation. Her research interests include audiovisual translation,
humour studies, media paratexts, and the interconnection between audiovisual transla-
tion and the dynamics of audiovisual distribution and circulation at large.
xi
Notes on contributors
Pedro Jesús Castillo Ortiz completed his PhD on ‘Interpreting in the Media and Liaison
Interpreting in Radio Settings’ at Heriot-Watt University (2015) and currently works at
the University of Granada. He organizes media interpreting workshops and works as a
freelance translator and interpreter, mostly in media and film festival settings.
Ariel Chen is a post-doctoral researcher at Örebro University. Her research interests lie in
multimodal critical discourse analysis and she has published particularly in the areas of
media localization and in the global marketization of healthy and ethical foods.
Lucile Davier is a Research and Teaching Fellow at the Faculty of Translation and
Interpreting (University of Geneva). She earned a joint doctoral degree in translation
studies and communication studies. Her current research interests include news transla-
tion, translation ethnography and convergent media.
Renée Desjardins is Associate Professor at the Université de Saint-Boniface (Winnipeg,

Canada) and the author of Translation and Social Media: In Theory, in Training and in
Professional Practice (Palgrave Macmillan, 2017). She has been researching and writing
about translation and social media for nearly a decade.
Elena Di Giovanni, PhD, is Associate Professor of English Translation at the University

of Macerata. A longtime audiovisual translation practitioner and scholar, her research
focuses on audience-centred research in AVT and on media accessibility, especially audio
description, from a participatory perspective.
Georgios Floros is Associate Professor in Translation Studies at the Department of

English Studies, University of Cyprus. He received a PhD from Saarland University
in 2001. His research interests include translation theory and methodology, translation
ethics, translation in other professional contexts, terminology in bilectal contexts, and
text linguistics.
Laura Fólica is a postdoctoral researcher in the ERC StG project ‘Social Networks of
the Past. Mapping Hispanic and Lusophone Literary Modernity, 1898–1959’ at the IN3-
Universitat Oberta de Catalunya. She is currently working on literary translation in Ibero-
American periodicals using digital tools on a large-scale approach.
Chantal Gagnon is Associate Professor at Université de Montréal in the Département

de linguistique et de traduction. This scholar’s research deals with relationships between
translation and questions of politics. In recent years, she has especially studied translation
of political speeches in Canada and ideologies in Canadian news translation.
Yves Gambier is professor emeritus and invited professor in several universities. He taught
translation and interpreting at the University of Turku (Finland) (1973–2014). He has
published in different subfields of translation studies, especially in training translators,
terminology, language for specialized purposes and audiovisual translation.
María José Hernández Guerrero is Professor of Translation and Interpreting at the

University of Málaga (Spain), where she teaches journalistic translation, among other
xii
subjects. Her current research focuses on journalistic translation, history of translation

and literary translation.
Ventsislav Ikoff is a postdoctoral researcher in the ERC StG project ‘Social Networks of
the Past. Mapping Hispanic and Lusophone Literary Modernity, 1898–1959’ at the IN3-
Universitat Oberta de Catalunya. His work is focused on applying digital methods for the
study of literary circulation and history, translation and cultural processes.
Miguel A. Jiménez-Crespo is a Professor in the Department of Spanish and Portuguese,

Rutgers University. He is the author of Crowdsourcing and Online Collaborative
Translations: Expanding the Limits of Translation Studies, published by John Benjamins
in 2017, as well as Translation and Web Localization published by Routledge in 2013.
Haina Jin is a professor of translation, film, and communication studies at Communication

University of China. Her main research interests include film translation, translation his-
tory and translated cinema.
Henry Jones is a lecturer in translation studies at the University of Manchester, UK and

co-editor of the Routledge Encyclopedia of Citizen Media (2020). His current research
interests include corpus-based translation studies, media theory and online translating
communities.
Ji-Hae Kang is Professor of Translation Studies at Ajou University, South Korea. Her
research focuses on translation in institutional settings, power and discourse in media
translation, and the transnational production and dissemination of knowledge. She is the
co-editor of Translating and Interpreting in Korean Contexts (2019).
Dionysios Kapsaskis is Senior Lecturer at the University of Roehampton, UK, where he

teaches translation theory and audiovisual translation. His interests and publications
are in the areas of comparative literature, translation and film. He is co-editor of The
Routledge Handbook of Translation and Globalization.
Esmaeil Kalantari holds a PhD in Translation Studies from Université de Montréal,

Canada. He defended his PhD thesis entitled On the conceptual and methodological aspects
of (political) journalistic translation research in 2019. His main research interests are jour-
nalistic translation and political discourse analysis.
David Machin is Professor of Linguistics, Zhejiang University, China. He has published

in the areas of critical discourse analysis and multimodality. His most recent books are
Doing Visual Analysis (2018) and Introduction to Multimodal Analysis (2020). He is co-
editor of the journal Social Semiotics.
Yasmin Moll is an Assistant Professor of Anthropology at the University of Michigan.

Her ethnographic research focuses on the history and production of Islamic televi-
sion in the Arab world. She has published on this research in Arab Media and Society,
Cultural Anthropology, Public Culture, and Media, Culture & Society, among other
journals.
xiii
Martin Montgomery has written extensively on topics in sociolinguistics, discourse ana-

lysis, and media and cultural studies, often blending different disciplinary perspectives. He
is currently emeritus professor at the University of Macau and visiting professor at the
University of Strathclyde. His most recent book is Language, Media and Culture: The Key
Concepts (2018).
Joss Moorkens is an Assistant Professor at Dublin City University and Funded Investigator
at the ADAPT Centre. He has authored over 50 articles, book chapters, and conference
papers on translation topics, is General Co-Editor of Translation Spaces, and sits on the
board of the European Masters in Translation network.
Anne O’Connor is a Personal Professor and Co-Director of the Emily Anderson Centre
for Translation Research and Practice in the National University of Ireland, Galway. She
is Principal Investigator of the ERC Consolidator Project Pietra and publishes on transla-
tion and book history, translation and materiality, and translation and religion.
Pilar Orero works at the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona. Her research interests are
in media accessibility, especially new formats and interactions. She is an active member of
standardization agencies such as ITU, ISO and ANEC.
Jerry Palmer is the former Professor of Communications at London Metropolitan

University and the former Visiting Professor in Sociology at City University, London. He
has written nine academic books and numerous articles on a range of subjects including
translation studies and Great War memoirs.
Laura Ramírez Polo is an Assistant Teaching Professor at Rutgers, where she coordinates
the Translation and Interpreting programme. She has more than 15 years of experience
in training translators and interpreters, as well as translating from English and German
into Spanish. She has also worked as a translator for the European Parliament and WIPO.
Diana Roig-Sanz is an ICREA Senior Professor and ERC StG fellow at the IN3-UOC
(Barcelona). Her research deals with sociology of translation and cultural history from
a global and digital humanities approach. She is the coordinator of the Global Literary
Studies Group (GlobaLS) and was visiting professor at the Oxford Internet Institute.
Claire Scammell is a translator/editor with ten years’ professional experience. Her doc-
toral research, sponsored by the AHRC and completed at King’s College London, looks
at reader response to translation strategies in global news. Her current research interests
include translation as intercultural communication and focus-group methodology.
Christopher Stone is a Reader in Interpreting and Translation in the Faculty of Arts,

Business and Social Sciences at the University of Wolverhampton. His current research
focuses on multimodality in sign language interpreting, exploring deaf peoples’ histories
and their interaction with lay interpreters and translators, and in-vision sign language
interpreting.
xiv
Miki Tanikawa (PhD) was a journalist with The New York Times and International Herald
Tribune for two decades, and served as contributing editor at the Economist Intelligence
Unit in Tokyo. Currently, he is associate professor at Akita International University and
heads the Global Communication Practices.
Wine Tesseur is a Marie Skłodowska-Curie and Irish Research Council postdoctoral fellow
in the School of Applied Language and Intercultural Studies, Dublin City University.
Her research expertise is languages and translation in international NGOs. She has
collaborated with a variety of NGOs, including Amnesty International and GOAL.
Roberto A. Valdeón is full Professor at the University of Oviedo, Spain, and a fellow of
the Academia Europaea. He is the editor-in-chief of Perspectives and the general editor
of Benjamins Translation Library. He has published widely on journalistic translation,
both in translation and journalism studies journals, and is currently guest editing a special
issue of Journalism.
Luc van Doorslaer is Professor for Translation Studies at the University of Tartu (Estonia),
the former President of CETRA (2014–18), the Centre for Translation Studies at KU
Leuven (Belgium), and Professor Extraordinary at Stellenbosch University (South Africa).
Since 2016, he is Vice President of EST, the European Society for Translation Studies.
Marlie van Rooyen teaches translation studies at the University of the Free State. She
serves on the editorial board of The Journal for Translation Studies in Africa. Her main
research interests are journalism and translation, the sociology of translation and non-
professional interpreting and translation. Marlie is also a trained radio journalist, trans-
lator and simultaneous interpreter.
Dingkun Wang is an assistant professor in Translation at the University of Hong Kong,

HKSAR, China. His primary research interests are fan translation in digital media and
Chinese-language subtitling. Other areas of interest include Asian cinemas and transmedia
storytelling.
Xiaochun Zhang is Senior Lecturer in Translation Studies at the University of Bristol,

United Kingdom. Her research interests lie primarily in video game localization and
audiovisual translation with a specific focus on fansubbing and media accessibility. Other
areas of interest include language technology and translation pedagogy.
xv
newgenprepdf
Acknowledgements
I would like to thank all contributors for their enthusiasm with this collective project and
for the quality of their chapters. At times, the search for general coherence has led me to
adopt an interventionist role, and I am grateful for how graciously and patiently most
authors have been willing to put up with this, as well as with the different stages and long
waiting that the production of such a big volume entails.
I am also very grateful to the members of the advisory panel on whom I have been
able to draw upon when I needed advice on commissioning chapters and on manuscript
evaluation: Mona Baker, Yves Gambier, Ji-Hae Kang, Dionysios Kapsaskis and Chris
Paterson. Special thanks also to Dionysios Kapsaskis for reading and commenting on the
introduction.
I have received financial support from ICREA, Catalan Institution for Research and
Advanced Studies, which provided me with the time I needed to edit the book.
I would like to acknowledge the following permissions obtained to reuse previously
published material:
An extract (pp. 62–63) from the chapter ‘Paratexts in digital, media and communication
studies’, Batchelor, K. (2018) Translation and Paratexts. London and New York: Routledge.
Reproduced by permission of Taylor & Francis Group, LLC, a division of Informa plc.
Gambier, Y. and Jin, H. (2019) ‘A Connected History of Audiovisual Translation: Elements
for Consideration’, Translation Spaces, 8(2), pp. 193–230. www. benjamins.com/catalog/ts.
Reproduced by permission of John Benjamins Publishing Company.
Parts of the chapter ‘Towards a Transnational and Large-Scale Approach to Literary
Translation in Periodicals’, in Fólica, L., Roig-Sanz, D. and Caristia, S. (eds) (2020) Literary
Translation in Periodicals: Methodological Challenges for a Transnational Approach.
Amsterdam: John Benjamins. https://benjamins.com/catalog/btl.155. Reproduced by per-
mission of John Benjamins Publishing Company.
Every effort has been made to contact copyright-holders. Please advise the publisher of
any errors or omissions and these will be corrected in subsequent editions.
xvi
Introduction
Translation and/in/of media
Esperança Bielsa
The digital age has not only brought together different media and what had previously
been separate modalities of communication (a phenomenon often described through the
concepts of technological or media convergence); it has profoundly altered the ways in
which we ordinarily interact with the media and each other. In the new cultural con-
figuration of our age, media are not just ‘extensions of man’ (McLuhan 1964) but, as
Manuel Castells pointed out, ‘extend the realm of electronic communication into the
whole domain of life, from home to work, from schools to hospitals, from entertainment
to travel’ (2000: 394). Indeed, the very distinction between the media and their content or
message, which underpinned Marshall McLuhan’s arguments in favour of the significance
of the former, has been redefined. These developments have transformed journalism and
the media industry, but also the translation industry and the social uses of translation, in
fundamental ways.
This handbook examines the role of translation and/in/of media, which has become a
thriving object of study within the discipline of translation studies in recent decades. So
called media, screen or audiovisual translation has investigated the transfer of multimodal
and multimedial products, ranging from films and television programmes to software and
video games, progressively expanding to reflect key technological developments and new
media uses. At the same time, news or journalistic translation has become an emerging
research area, shedding new light on the ubiquity of translation in the production and
circulation of news and the nature of translation practices in news organizations. In the
digital age we have come to interact endlessly and automatically with the media (Castells
2000). If contemporary globalization has been characterized by an exponential increase
of translation, there is no doubt that it is largely due to the unprecedented growth of
translation in the media, which has become one of the most significant types of transla-
tion of our time.
Contemporary media uses push for new forms of translation, and for the transformation
of translation rather than just the increase of its significance in quantitative terms. This
handbook is centrally concerned with capturing this change, as well as with accounting
for the specificities that shape translation in the media, such as the constant change and
ephemerality of texts, the blurring of the distinction between users and producers, and the
DOI: 10.4324/9781003221678-1 1
Esperança Bielsa
multimedia integration of written, oral and audio-visual modalities of human communi-

cation. Moreover, it also seeks to make visible how media and news translation question
the way certain key concepts and categories of translation studies (such as, for instance,
those of source and target text, or the distinction between author and translator) have
been defined and approached, and push for their reassessment. This need for theoretical
and methodological innovation emerges not just from the particularities of the media and
the forms of translation that proliferate in this context, but also from more general discip-
linary developments, such as the critique of methodological nationalism (Cussel 2021) or
of traditional notions of equivalence and transfer (see below).
In the last two decades, research on translation and/in/of media has been the fastest
growing area of translation studies, leading to the establishment of specialized under-
graduate and postgraduate modules and courses and offering a wealth of new approaches
to a multiplicity of practices and forms that expand the boundaries of the discipline.
However, the field is also currently characterized by fragmentation and lack of adequate
theorization. Audiovisual translation and news translation are currently separate
subfields, with little communication between themselves in terms of theories, methodolo-
gies and research. Empirical examinations of a multitude of practices and forms in spe-
cific contexts have tended to predominate in detriment of theory development. Perhaps
because of this, current research has often failed to successfully communicate theoretical
and methodological findings and their more general implications more widely within and
beyond the discipline of translation studies.
This handbook offers a substantive approach to both news translation and what I will
mostly refer to as multimedia translation, aiming to guide readers beyond the current
state of dispersion and fragmentation by providing basic perspectives and underpinnings
that are relevant for the study of all forms and types of translation in the media. To
this end, the volume is designed according to three main organizing criteria: establishing
new links between what are currently separate disciplinary subfields, emphasizing theor-
etical and methodological approaches, and the adoption of an interdisciplinary perspec-
tive. In relation to the first, as already stated, the intention is to offer a broad perspective
on translation and/in/of media that brings together multimedia translation and news
translation and seeks to create new synergies between them. This strategy is especially
prominent in Part I and Part IV of the handbook. Second, the handbook privileges the-
oretical and methodological approaches rather than empirical research on the multiplicity
of media contexts in which translation occurs to counter the current predominance of
descriptive accounts and to respond to the pressing need for comprehensive, more theory-
orientated accounts. Third, interdisciplinarity is unavoidable in research on translation
and/in/of media. While the interdisciplinary focus adopted in this volume is very much
orientated towards providing contextual background and perspectives that are significant
for research in translation studies, such an approach might also contribute to signal the
relevance of translation to researchers from other disciplines, like journalism studies and
media studies.
Conceptual and methodological issues

The title of this introduction alludes to issues of conceptualization that are ubiquitous
in any approach to translation and media. To start with, both concepts are currently
used in widely divergent ways, not just in everyday ordinary discourse but also in scien-
tific and scholarly constructions. This is perhaps an inevitable, common feature which
2
Introduction: translation and/in/of media
they share with other keywords of our time, such as culture or democracy. Raymond
Williams referred to culture, which initiated his groundbreaking account in Keywords, in
the following terms: ‘It was just a difficult word, a word I could think of as an example
of the change which we were trying, in various ways, to understand’ (2015: xxv). Media
is, unsurprisingly, one of the words Williams examines in his book. He notes that the
word medium was in regular use in English at least from the early 17th century in the
sense of ‘an intervening or intermediate agency or substance’, whereas from the 18th cen-
tury it already appeared conventionally used in relation to newspapers (2015: 151). The
more familiar plural form became widely used in the middle of the 20th century when
broadcasting as well as the press had become important in mass communications (masses
and communication are two related keywords that Williams also felt was necessary to
address in his book).
The first edition of Williams’ Keywords was published in 1976 and a second version
revised by the author in 1983. This was before the mass media turned into the multi-
media system we know today (a word on this in the next section). An early-21st-century
perspective does not only need to throw light on the transformation that has led from
the mass media to multimedia, but could also conceive of translation as a keyword of
the present. Thus, if Williams was writing today, he might consider adding translation,
alongside other concepts like technology or tradition, to his book. Translation certainly
fits into his notion of keyword because it is both ‘a difficult word’ and a word whose ambi-
guities express contemporary social changes the meaning of which we are trying to under-
stand. One of these ambiguities refers to the change between once prevailing notions of
translation as equivalence to increasingly elaborate critiques that point in the direction
of viewing translation primarily in terms of transformation. Another significant ambi-
guity is due to the growing use of the concept of translation in a considerable number
of disciplines in the humanities and the social sciences in a variety of different ways, and
generally with little respect for what the discipline of translation studies has long viewed
as ‘translation proper’.1 Finally, even without recourse to the proliferating meanings of
translation in other disciplines, ‘translation proper’ can hardly be seen to account for the
wide diversity of practices related to multimedia translation, which include, in addition to
the more restricted interlingual forms that are typically considered as ‘translation proper’,
intersemiotic, and intralingual forms. These significant developments will be discussed in
more detail in the final section of this introduction.
There is thus little consensus as to what translation means even within the discipline
of translation studies, and divergent and at times contradictory uses of translation as
transfer and translation as transformation coexist. Rather than pointing to inescapable
disciplinary one-way streets, these variations and contradictions attest to the dynamism
that the study of translation and/in/of media brings to this academic field. With refer-
ence to more narrow conceptualizations of translation in the media a similar multiplicity
prevails, and in this handbook notions of journalistic translation, news translation, multi-
media translation, media translation and audiovisual translation are alternatively used
to refer to similar phenomena. While the more specific notions of alternative and social
media are discussed in Chapters 26 and 28, I find it necessary to briefly justify the concep-
tual choices that underpin the structure of the handbook and this introduction, which are
the editor’s own and do not necessarily correspond to those of the contributors who are
responsible for individual chapters. One set of choices refers to the conceptual pair news
translation/journalistic translation. Even though it has come to extend the more ad hoc
notion of news translation and possesses obvious advantages in terms of generality and
3
Esperança Bielsa
range, I consider the notion of journalistic translation to be utopian as long as journalists

are not universally recognized as translation professionals within the discipline of trans-
lation studies, on the one hand, and translation is not seen as a valid topic of investiga-
tion in journalism research, on the other. This is why I mostly refer to either translation
and journalism or news translation in this and other publications. Another set of choices
is related to the alternative between audiovisual translation/multimedia translation (and
other widely used terms such as media translation and screen translation that will not
be discussed in this introduction). From a perspective that puts media at the centre, the
notion of audiovisual translation could be misleading because, while capturing the pre-
dominance of audiovisual culture in the 20th century –with the appearance of film and
radio first, and later television –, it fails to acknowledge the integration of written, oral
and audiovisual forms of communication that is characteristic of multimedia in the digital
age. Indeed, according to Castells, the new multimedia system has put an end to the sep-
aration between written and audiovisual modes of communication that was inaugurated
2,700 years earlier by the invention of the alphabet (2000: 356). This is significant for
translation studies, which has long been occupied with written and oral modalities of
communication and only more recently with audiovisual forms. In this context, it is neces-
sary to acknowledge that all types of translation, including audiovisual translation but
also more traditional forms such as literary translation, take place within a digital envir-
onment where the boundaries between written, oral and audiovisual modes of communi-
cation have become more porous.
In addition to the more general conceptual aspects and alternatives discussed in this
introduction, several chapters of the handbook address conceptual issues in substantive
ways. Chapter 2 considers key concepts that help to address the cognate areas of language,
media and culture. Chapter 4 discusses changing approaches to the global, the foreign
and the domestic, questioning journalism’s so called global turn in the early 21st century.
Chapter 6 analyses the concepts of text, authorship, translation and quality in light of
the fundamental change towards multimodal and interactive forms of communication in
the digital age. Chapter 8 centrally approaches the concept of paratext, demonstrating its
productiveness not just in relation with literary texts, but also for the analysis of a variety
of multimedia forms, including digital literature, transmedia storytelling, films, television,
videogames, as well as print and online news. And, as already indicated above, the some-
what porous distinction between alternative and social media is the object of reflection in
Chapter 26, while Chapter 28 approaches definitions of alternative journalism and what
distinguishes them from notions of radical or citizens’ media.
Even though methodology is a central concern in this handbook, there is no separate
part and only a single chapter exclusively dedicated to methodological aspects, which
provides essential perspectives on the multimodal dimension of translation (Chapter 9).
Rather, methodological issues are treated as part of more general approaches to substan-
tive topics. A number of chapters give a special prominence to methodological matters.
These include Chapter 13, which discusses how digitalization and big-data approaches
are changing the research methods used to examine translation in periodical publications;
Chapter 18, which advances arguments for a connected history of audiovisual transla-
tion; Chapter 21, which examines the existing variety of media interpreting practices and
introduces interdisciplinary methodologies such as critical discourse analysis to tackle
their inherent complexity; Chapter 33, where the methodological challenges posed by the
Wikipedia environment to researchers are approached; and Chapters 17 and 25, which
review the methods that are currently being used to analyse the reception of translated
4
news and multimedia products, respectively. Other chapters where methodological aspects
play a less prominent role also offer important insights regarding the need to reexamine
existing research methodologies through a consideration of the relationships between
translation and/in/of media. Appropriate examples are the reflections on the signifi-
cance of translations as material objects, and not just as vehicles for the transmission of
meanings and words, elaborated on in Chapter 1, or the approximation to the collective
nature of many forms of media translation offered in Chapter 7. Finally, while not directly
discussing methodology, Chapters 29 and 30 are examples of the significance of ethno-
graphic approaches for the study of translation.
Media in the digital age

A fundamental technological transformation has taken place at the end of the 20th cen-
tury. According to Andreas Reckwitz, technology –digital technology –has become, for
the first time, a culture machine. This means that
the leading technologies of late modernity are no longer used to produce machines,
energy sources, and functional goods but are, rather, engaged in the expansive and
pervasive fabrication of cultural formats with narrative, aesthetic, design, ludic, or
ethical qualities: texts and images, videos and films, phatic speech acts, and games.
(2020: 164)
While qualifying Castells’ approach to informational capitalism and the network society
(most notably by downplaying the role of information and emphasizing the prominence
of affect in the new digital configuration), Reckwitz’s account of what he calls the society
of singularities does not fundamentally call into question Castells earlier work. Both
authors have offered wide-ranging sociological conceptualizations of how the use of tech-
nology –of technological systems that have been structurally reorientated towards digit-
alization, computerization and networking –has reshaped in late modernity all realms of
social life, including work, leisure and sociality itself.
Indeed, Castells was the first to capture the wide-ranging social consequences and
effects of technological convergence, while also providing novel perspectives on the new
cultural configuration that was being created as a result, which he called the culture of real
virtuality to reflect on the significance of our constant and endless interactions through
and with the media (2000: ch. 5). From the point of view of the topic of this handbook,
his account is important because it provides historical and analytical perspectives on the
changing nature of contemporary communications, approaching the transformation of
the mass media into the multimedia system we know today as a key element of this change.
Castells analysed in detail two distinct developments: on the one hand, the diversification
of mass communications and their audiences in the 1980s, which were transformed by
increasingly personalized uses of television through recording technologies and the sim-
ultaneous multiplication and diversification of television channels; on the other hand,
the creation of a new electronic system of communication during the second half of the
1990s (the multimedia system) through the fusion of globalized and personalized mass
media and computer-mediated communications. The main characteristics of this new
electronic communication system are its global reach, its integration of all communication
media, and its potential interactivity (2000: 357). Significantly, this last key component,
interactivity, emerges not from the diversified and personalized communications media
5
Esperança Bielsa
(Castells prematurely addresses them as ‘new media’), which were still characterized
by one-way communication, but from computer-mediated communication: ‘Television
needed the computer to be free from the screen’ (2000: 371).
It is Castells’ merit to have grasped the nature and pervasiveness of this profound
transformation as it was taking place, when what he approached as the new multimedia
system was not yet a consolidated reality and he could only speculate on the social
dimension of the coming merger between thoroughly transformed media and computer
networking through the internet. For him, the internet –the universal, interactive com-
puter communication medium of the information age (2000: 376–377) –set television
free from the screen because it enabled the audience to speak up. The vantage looking
point of the present not only gives us a fuller perspective on the phenomenon of inter-
activity and communication from many to many that is characteristic of the digital age,
but also allows us to discern significant trends towards increasing objectification (the
internet of things) and automatization (the power of algorithms and big data), which
may end up jeopardizing this newly acquired power of users to speak up. However, it is
undeniable that the internet, which Castells approached as a flexible network of networks
where various interests and cultures can peacefully coexist, has reshaped contemporary
communications and profoundly impacted on all translation practices, including those
associated with traditional media and formats. The relationship between translation and
the World Wide Web is the object of detailed examination in Chapter 22. The prolifer-
ation of non-professional translation in the media, including fansubbing, activist trans-
lation and Web-based fan protests, is examined in Chapter 27. Chapters 32 and 33, in
turn, delve into virtual translation networks and communities, as well as projects of mass
collaboration such as Wikipedia, that most clearly have come to embody the internet’s
inherent interactive and participatory potential. The topic of interactive entertainment,
an important medium in contemporary culture that was remarkably underexamined by
Castells, is approached in Chapter 23.
In spite of the novelty and profound social impact of interactive multimedia, if we
examine the international circulation of media formats and content what emerges in the
digital age is not a departure or break, but rather the fundamental continuity of the global
patterns of communication that were established at the end of the 19th century, with the
creation of the modern journalistic field and the culture industries of cinema and later
television. This handbook is also centrally concerned with capturing this historical con-
tinuity, as well as describing the key role of translation in making possible the internation-
alization and the localization of media content. Chapters 4 and 5 deal with aspects related
to the domestication of foreign news and the international circulation of ready-made TV-
shows and formats respectively, which is mediated at the national level. In both cases
media products that circulate globally are tailored to the tastes, habits and cultural needs
of specific publics in different local settings. The significance of such forms of localization
as part of an ongoing process of constant material distribution (Pym, 2004) is now amply
recognized within the discipline of translation studies. Chapters dealing with the transla-
tion of journalistic and multimedia products in a more narrow sense are the core content
of parts 2 and 3 of the handbook, which provide historical overviews of translation in
the journalistic field and of audiovisual translation, as well as perspectives on transla-
tion in relation to a variety of media forms and contexts, including literary magazines
(Chapter 13), the practices of local interpreters or fixers (Chapter 14), the news agencies
as news producers and wholesalers (Chapter 12), film translation (Chapter 19) and TV
translation (Chapter 20). Key areas of interdisciplinary interest like media accessibility
6
(Chapter 24), journalism and translation ethics (Chapter 16) and reception (Chapters 17
and 25) are also discussed in detail in specific chapters.
Alternative and social media are not only significant in terms of their sheer social
impact and prominence in contemporary digital culture, as discussed above. By placing
new demands on translation, they offer ideal settings in which innovative practices can
proliferate. The diversity of uses of translation in alternative and social media is a key area
of interest for translation studies, where research that is not just descriptive in its intent
but also embraces the objectives of theoretical and methodological development can have
a lasting influence on the renewal of the discipline. The highly heterogeneous contexts
and forms of translation in alternative and social media, in contrast with the mainstream
where more uniform practices tend to prevail, is also interesting on its own right. In this
volume (in addition to chapters dealing with social media, virtual translation communities
and Wikipedia already mentioned above), these heterogeneous contexts and forms include
a Deaf translation norm that responds to the needs of deaf communities and individuals
(Chapter 31), the translation of community radio news in South Africa (Chapter 28),
the subtitling of Arabic-language preaching programmes in an Islamic satellite tele-
vision channel (Chapter 29), fansubbing and activist translation by non-professionals
(Chapter 27), or the translation practices of often unacknowledged media actors like
NGO’s (Chapter 30). In all these highly diverse contexts, what often comes vividly across
is the undeniable value of translation as essentially a process of transformation, not of
equivalence, an aspect to which I now turn in the final section of this introduction.
Translation and transformation

The uses of translation in the media in the digital age force us to revise traditional
conceptions of translation and may provide the opportunity to firmly establish the sig-
nificance of translation as transformation. Translation studies has been dominated by
approaches that privilege a view of stability and equivalence as opposed to one that
emphasizes transformation and change. Even though systemic accounts like polysystems
theory already fundamentally challenged a notion of translation as equivalence by
foregrounding the determining role of the translating context or system, in giving pri-
macy to the requirements of different functional systems they simultaneously occluded
the process of material transformation that leads from a source text to a target text. More
generally, although basic views of equivalence have been challenged and calls to reassess
translation in terms of the transformations it entails are increasingly heard, the exten-
sive implications of such views, which ultimately question deep-held notions about what
translation is and how it should be approached and understood, have not still sufficiently
penetrated within the discipline at large. Calling attention to the radical insufficiency of a
concept of ‘translation proper’ in relation to the diversity of practices and forms of trans-
lation and/in/of media can help bring much needed light on these matters.
A view of translation as transformation cannot be successfully maintained without
challenging at the same time widespread conventional notions of ‘translation proper’,
which often unwittingly accompany a conception of translation as equivalence. Roman
Jakobson’s distinction between intralingual translation, interlingual translation (‘transla-
tion proper’) and intersemiotic translation, although useful to delimit the scope of trans-
lation studies when it first emerged as an autonomous discipline, has recently come under
increasing scrutiny. On the one hand, poststructuralist critiques have sought to destabilize
the borders that a notion of translation proper takes for granted and to illuminate the
7
Esperança Bielsa
processes of bordering actively pursued (Derrida 2001; Sakai 2009). On the other hand,
the growing use of the concept of translation in a variety of disciplines in the humanities
and the social sciences has understood translation proper –often reductively seen as ‘just
translation’ or ‘simple translation’ –as a strictly linguistic operation while searching for
broader concepts (such as the pair ‘cultural translation’) that can more fully describe the
complex nature of the processes of change involved. Others have pointed to the pernicious
consequences that this has in relation to the lack of interdisciplinary engagement with the
conceptual and theoretical apparatus of translation studies (Dizdar 2009; Zwischenberger
2017, 2019). I’d like to highlight here another important aspect associated with notions
of translation proper: the inescapable implication that translation is (or should strive to
be, as much as possible) the same, as if it was a mere transcription, and a denial of the
inherent transformations it entails. In this view, ‘the proper place for the translator’s inter-
vention is outside the scope of the (proper) text’ (Dizdar 2009: 92), so that ‘a proper
translation would then be a perfectly equivalent translation that would take the place of
the original. It would turn into the/an original itself’ (ibid.). Just as the notion of proper
meaning leaves behind the inherent complexity of meanings and historical variations of
words that are inextricably related to fundamental social and political aspects (a key real-
ization that led Williams to undertake the study of keywords, as discussed above), trans-
lation proper takes away from translation its intrinsic social and cultural aspects. Like the
notion of proper meaning, translation proper is thus essentially insufficient if we want to
account for the social and cultural transformations that translation entails.
The predominance of limiting concepts of translation as stability rather than change
is not the only difficulty for the interdisciplinary investigation of translation and/in/of
media. Another significant cause is overoptimism regarding the possibilities for the circu-
lation of global news and/or other media products and their effects and, more generally,
a methodological globalism that imagines the world as a uniform and borderless space
(Clarke et al. 2015: 23). A widespread insistence on the hypermobility of information
flows in the digital age has led to the assumption that information can be automatically
received by audiences and to obscuring the key role that translation plays in the produc-
tion of intelligibility on a global scale (Bielsa & Bassnett 2009: 22–26). The global uni-
formity that is often simply assumed needs to be actively produced through mechanisms
like translation and adaptation of media formats and contents across linguistic and cul-
tural boundaries. Accounts of processes like the domestication and localization of media
products, of the methodological significance of paratexts or multimodality, and of the
multiplicity of practices and forms of translation and/in/of media offered in this volume
point in the opposite direction of a pretended global uniformity or intelligibility, pro-
viding rich reflections on the key transformative role of translation in the new media
landscapes of the digital age.
Translation in the media can rarely be approached as ‘translation proper’, because it
is intralingual, interlingual and intersemiotic at the same time. Moreover, the type of far-
reaching transformations that are usually involved in the translation of media formats and
content, which bear little relation to the intentions of the original author or text but seek to
facilitate reception by new audiences according to their needs (and which, due to ingrained
limiting views of translation proper, have given way to a variety of broader concepts such
as localization, adaptation or transediting), fundamentally challenge established notions
of equivalence and transfer, that is, notions that are still primarily based on views of
translation as the production of stability rather than change. A number of chapters in
the handbook closely describe these transformation processes in the fields of global news
8
and multimedia translation (including Chapters 1, 4, 5, 12, 14, 15, 23). Chapters 17 and
29 extend the domestication/foreignization debate to the analysis of specific strategies in
the translation of news and the subtitling of TV programmes. Chapter 3 examines the
relationship between media translation and politics, not just in the translation of polit-
ical information, but through a consideration of translation as a political activity on its
own right. Indeed, translation plays a key role in personalized, digitally mediated politics
and new forms of political mobilization that do not presuppose collective identification
and organization that have been conceptualized in terms of connective action (Bennett &
Segerberg 2012, 2013). Chapter 27 offers an illustration of how these digitally networked
actions can generate effective forms of protest by activist translators, volunteers and fans
who press for cultural and political change, undermining commercial mechanisms of pro-
duction and distribution of cultural goods. The far-reaching implications of pursuing a
notion of translation as transformation are centrally addressed in Chapters 11 and 19 in
relation to the fields of journalism and film studies respectively. The fact that these two
last chapters also pursue deep forms of interdisciplinarity is not a coincidence, as it is
precisely a notion of translation as transformation that enables their productive interdis-
ciplinary articulations.
The study of translation and/in/of media has the potential to transform the discip-
line of translation studies in deep and lasting ways, providing it with a theoretical and
methodological apparatus that is equipped to deal with the new social uses of transla-
tion facilitated by the appearance of multimedia at the start of the 21st century. Only
then will translation studies be able to provide the key insights that are needed on wide-
spread processes of linguistic transformation for the interdisciplinary study of media in
the digital age.
Note
1 There has been some attention to this proliferation of the use of the concept of translation in
other disciplines on the part of translation studies scholars (see Dizdar 2009; Valdeón 2018;
Zwischenberger 2017, 2019).
References
Bennett, W. L. & Segerberg, A. (2012) ‘The logic of connective action: Digital media and the person-
alization of contentious politics’, Information Communication and Society, 15(5), pp. 739–768.
doi: 10.1080/1369118X.2012.670661.
Bennett, W. L. & Segerberg, A. (2013) The Logic of Connective Action. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press.
Bielsa, E. & Bassnett, S. (2009) Translation in Global News. London and New York: Routledge.
Castells, M. (2000) The Rise of the Network Society. Second edn. Oxford: Blackwell.
Clarke, J. et al. (2015) Making Policy Move. Bristol: Policy Press.
Cussel, M. (2021) ‘Transnational and global approaches in translation studies: methodological
observations’, in Bielsa, E. & Kapsaskis, D. (eds), Routledge Handbook of Translation and
Globalization. London: Routledge, pp. 113–127.
Derrida, J. (2001) ‘What is a “relevant” translation?’, Critical Inquiry, 27(2), pp. 174–200.
Dizdar, D. (2009) ‘Translational transitions: “translation proper” and translation studies in the
humanities’, Translation Studies, 2(1), pp. 89–102. doi: 10.1080/14781700802496274.
McLuhan, M. (1964) Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man. Harmondsworth: Penguin.
Pym, A. (2004) The Moving Text: Localization, Translation, and Distribution. Amsterdam/
Philadelphia: John Benjamins.
Reckwitz, A. (2020) The Society of Singularities. Translated by V. A. Pakis. Cambridge: Polity.
9
Esperança Bielsa
Sakai, N. (2009) ‘How do we count a language? Translation and discontinuity’, Translation Studies,
2(1), pp. 71–88. doi: 10.1080/14781700802496266.
Valdeón, R. A. (2018) ‘On the use of the term “translation” in journalism studies’, Journalism, 19(2),
pp. 252–269. doi: 10.1177/1464884917715945.
Williams, R. (2015) Keywords. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press.
Zwischenberger, C. (2017) ‘Translation as a metaphoric traveller across disciplines’, Translation and
Translanguaging in Multilingual Contexts, 3(3), pp. 388–406. doi: 10.1075/ttmc.3.3.07zwi.
Zwischenberger, C. (2019) ‘From inward to outward: the need for translation studies to become
outward-going’, The Translator, 25(3), pp. 256–268. doi: 10.1080/13556509.2019.1654060.
10
Part I
General theoretical and
methodological perspectives
1
Media and translation
Historical intersections
Anne O’Connor
Introduction
At a time of widespread technological change and upheaval, it is unsurprising that in
recent years translation studies has turned its attention to the interaction and intersection
between translation and media. As the media landscape has rapidly evolved, questions
have emerged regarding the impact of media and translation on each other, and the signifi-
cance of the non-human agent in the production, circulation and reception of translations.
This chapter will examine how the intersections between media and translation have been
theorized and will highlight medial interactions with forms and processes of translation.
It will consider how the media of composition and the media of transmission might have
a bearing on the eventual form and impact of the translation product, and will discuss the
levels of agency attributed to media. I will employ the terms materiality and mediality to
describe the form of communication used to create, contain and transmit a translation,
and will use an inclusive understanding of media and media technology to encompass
(but not limited to) vellum, paper, analogue, digital and human forms of communication.
Theoretical background
The theoretical coordinates for understanding how the medium impacts on the role and
forms of translation go back to the 1950s and 1960s when challenges began to emerge to
the notion that the medium of communication was a mere container, a tool for storage
and transmission. Driven by scholars such as Harold Innis and Marshall McLuhan,
there was a questioning in this period of how media environments shape our experience
of the world. In arguing that ‘the medium is the message’ McLuhan proposed that the
media technology by which the content is stored and/or transmitted has the most signifi-
cant consequences for society and culture, and that it truly deserves our attention (1962,
1967). He made the influential assertions that the importance of the media went beyond
the content it carried, and that the technicity and mediality of the form shaped both
the transmission and the reception of the content. This questioning of communication
in relation to its worldly circumstances necessitated a consideration of the medium, its
DOI: 10.4324/9781003221678-3 13
Anne O’Connor
technical properties, and an exploration of the significance an object acquires from its
form. Increasingly, communication technologies were not perceived as neutral conduits
but instead as active processes and distinctive pervasive structures. From the 1980s,
Jerome McGann and D. F. McKenzie argued for the importance of ‘non-authorial textual
determinants’ and the necessity to consider the idea of a text as a complex structure of
meanings embracing formal and physical presentation (McKenzie 2002). McKenzie
ultimately made the foundational assertion that ‘forms effect meaning’, a prism of ana-
lysis which had a fundamental impact on media studies and which has become increas-
ingly relevant and discussed in recent years (McKenzie 1999). McGann in his work drew
attention to complex network of people, materials, and events involved in literary pro-
duction, arguing that literature is a collaborative art and social process, with input from
publishers, editors, designers and printers (1988). The significance of form, its agentive
role in the creation of meaning has been underlined by subsequent scholars who have
variously examined how the mind internalizes technologies (Ong 2013), and how technical
tools such as word-processing impact on authorship (Kirschenbaum 2016). There has
been a convergence around the notion that ‘any comprehension of a writing, no matter
what kind it is, depends on the forms in which it reaches the reader’ (Chartier 1989: 161).
Historians of the book, together with literary, cultural and media theorists have thus
made the argument that material carriers impact on the communicative process, in both
its creation and its reception (Cooren 2015; Gillespie, Boczkowski & Foot 2014; Kittler
1990, 1999; Pfeiffer & Gumbrecht 1994). It is a natural step then to ask what impact the
materiality of the communication medium might have on translation, and to question
how content, form, meaning and matter intersect in the translation realm.
Media and translation studies

Studies on the impact of the media of communication on translation have in recent years
begun to gather traction. In this field, Karin Littau has led the rallying call for attention
to the material forms of communication and translation, asserting that media ‘actively
shape our perceptions and consequently also our mindsets, not through the content they
carry, but through their material and technical properties’ (2016: 87, italics in the ori-
ginal). She has explored the applicability of this approach to translation studies, firstly
in an article in 2011 and then in a discussion paper in 2016, both published in Translation
Studies. In the 2011 article, Littau posed a number of questions relating to the impact
of media on translation: what role has media technology played in the history of trans-
lation? What kind of impact have media transitions had not just on this or that trans-
lation, but on translation activity per se? What kinds of practices of translation can be
associated with different media cultures and their particular hardwares? (2011: 262). In
addressing these questions, Littau used examples from oral, scribal and digital realms to
underscore her assertion that translation bears the traces of its particular technological
environment (2011: 277). A link is thus made between, for example, the scribal culture
of textual transcription of copying letter by letter, and the literalism present in word-
for-word translation practices. Influenced by scholars such as Kittler, Littau questions
how media determine our situations and argues (via Nietzsche) that writing tools work
on our thoughts:
14
If we take seriously the entanglement of the material and the ideational, it is just
as untenable to prioritize spirit over matter or subject over object as it is to down-
grade media technologies to empty shells, the sole function of which it is to carry the
fruits of the mind’s labours. Media are not merely instruments with which writers or
translators produce meanings; rather, they set the framework within which something
like meaning becomes possible at all.
(2016: 83, italics in the original)
Along with Littau, others in translation studies such as Mitchell, Cronin and Coldiron
have explored the interrelationship between translation and materiality, and increasingly,
translation scholars have come to appreciate that translations ‘acquire significance in
connection to the material page and the medium in which they are encoded’ (Colombo
2019b: 151). Attention has been drawn to the material channels of translation and the role
of technologies, forms, media and networks in shaping and informing multilingual cul-
tural exchange and societal practices (Coldiron 2015, 2016; Cronin 2013; Mitchell 2010;
O’Connor 2019). In his study on translation and globalization, Michael Cronin identified
the need to pay attention to translation and things (rather than just translation and texts/
people) and stated that it was impossible to conceive of translation outside of its object-
world (2003: 10). Cronin raised questions about how technology shapes us, about the
centrality of tools to translation and, like Littau in later publications, pushed for a view
of medial carriers as constitutive. The necessity for attention to be paid to ‘carriers’ and
‘techniques’ was highlighted by D’hulst in his discussion of ‘assumed transfer’ where he
argues that the clustering of transfer needs to address interrelations between the agents,
carriers, source and target poles, products and techniques (D’hulst 2012). This recent
research, with its focus on the material channels of translation, has thus highlighted the
importance of paying attention to the platform on which the interaction takes place; the
ethnographies of engagement specific to the medium (Hine 2015), and the role of tech-
nologies in shaping experiences, interactions and translation processes.
Nietzsche’s assertion regarding tools ‘working on’ thoughts has become a leitmotif
for Littau but the degree of this ‘working on’ is a point of divergence. Does it mean that
the tools influence, that they determine, that they impact, that they shape? What are the
differences between these various interpretations and the degree of agency given to the
media? Not many would argue with Littau that translations ‘bear the traces of their par-
ticular technological environment’ (2016: 90), or that the translator is ‘part of a material,
medial and technologized ecology’ (2016: 85). However, just as Raymond Williams critiqued
McLuhan’s ‘technological determinism’, arguing that his formalist approach to media was
unable to encompass and explain the input of power, politics, institutions and society; there
has also been a pushback against some elements of Littau’s argument on the impact of
media, and in particular its determining effect on translation. The most contentious points
relate to the proposition that media technologies organize cognitive and perceptual modal-
ities and that material objects shape practices. In the various responses to Littau’s article
published as forum papers in Translation Studies, some scholars have questioned the shaping
of translation by media technology. Armstrong, for example, says that she is less sure that
the history of technology
has shaped (i.e. acted upon) translation practices quite so explicitly as [Littau]
suggests. It seems more likely to me that the technologies reflect textual practices, and
15
Anne O’Connor
these practices –and their visual disposition on the page –remain remarkable con-
sistent through the centuries, although their physical support evolves through time.
(Armstrong 2016: 104)
Although there are many points of convergence, some divergences also emerge in the
work of Cronin who in his response to Littau pointed to extraneous political factors that
impinge on meaning (2017). Coldiron makes a similar point that cultural matrices need
also be emphasized (2016), and Bachleitner, while acknowledging the importance of the
medium, says that it is important not to forget the human agents and institutions involved
in the production of translation, asserting that media ‘do not develop and work by them-
selves in a mystical way; they are invented, developed, adapted and eventually exchanged
for other tools by human beings to serve certain purposes’ (2016: 108). These responses
echo the arguments which pushed for more emphasis on social relations in response to
McLuhan’s theories of media, and diverge like many media scholars on the degree of impli-
cation between humans and technology. The verbs that are used to describe the interaction
between media and translation give an indication of the stance on the amount of agency
perceived in technology: media are described variously as inflecting, shaping, catalysing,
influencing or constructing meaning. For example Coldiron in her discussion on trans-
lation and print culture examined the capacity of media to intersect with and catalyse
effects (Coldiron 2015: 17). Littau in her discussions favours the use of the verb to shape
(2011, 2016).
At the heart of these debates on the extent and limitations of medial determinism is the
perception of the human/object nexus. It is an issue that has been to the fore in material
culture studies with debates on the ‘agentive’ nature of objects and their ability to impact
on humans who created them. Thing theory for example, is founded on issues of how
objects can be enactive partners in creating meaning (Brown 2010). It has been common
practice in material culture to ‘read’ objects in the context of their changing situations,
trying to elicit the cultural encoding that takes place in this object. However, since the late
1990s, there has been a move away from seeing language/objects as ‘encoding’ meaning to
the view that language/objects are ‘agentive in the discursive co-construction of meaning’
(Burkette 2016: 318). New materialism, comprising composite subfields, including
among others, Thing Theory, Actor-Network Theory, New Formalism, Object-Oriented
Ontology and Posthumanism, has aimed, like Littau, to attribute a large degree of agency
to the non-human component. For new materialists, objects are not inert and waiting
to be brought to life through human agency. To apply this to translation studies: media
technology is not viewed as inert, and instead it is claimed that it exerts a (determining)
influence on form and meaning in the translational process.
For most scholars, however, the focus on the object does not necessarily have to be at
the expense of the human. Things can be understood as not only moulded by humans
but also co-productive within a network of human and nonhuman actors, conditioning
and facilitating human life and experience. There are of course differing perspectives over
the degree to which objects are considered as bounded entities with their own essences or
materials which are in constant flux. Key here again, is the amount of agency attributed to
objects and their definition as passive elements or else elements which can shape meaning.
In addressing this issue, Coldiron states: ‘To me the material and non-material aspects of
both translation and media seem to stand not in a binary and competitive relation, and
not only in a partly dialectical one […] but, rather, as fully interpenetrative and mutually
animating’ (Coldiron 2016: 98).
16
The critical notion of entanglement, which features strongly in material culture studies,
is perhaps useful here. Ian Hodder, for example, cogently proposes that entanglement
is a condition of being in the world, of linking humans and things, where both are co-
constitutive of the other (2012). Through assemblages and networks, entities are entangled,
often co-dependent and therefore an object cannot be studied in isolation. Hodder argues
that ‘human-thing entanglement comes about as a result of the dialectic between depend-
ence (the reliance of humans and things on each other) and dependency (a constraining
and limiting need of humans for things)’ (2011: 175). The interest in materiality is therefore
also an interest in relations and intersections, a questioning of the input of those who con-
tribute to the creation, circulation and use of an object. As Burkette has argued, ‘Not only
should the message and the media be considered discursive partners, the translator also is
part of the same ongoing cycle of co-creation’ (2016: 320). The entanglement proposed
by Hodder bears many similarities to Latour’s Actor-Network Theory (ANT) and can be
profitably applied to understanding human/object interactions in translation (Hou & Luo
2017). ANT attempts to move away from the dichotomies of subject/object and human/
non-human, to instead contemplate networks of determinants, or actants, encompassing
agency at human, societal, institutional, material and technological levels (Latour 1996,
2007). It is perhaps the non-linearity of entanglement and ANT that appeals to transla-
tion scholars as is seems more receptive to the multi-layered processes of meaning and the
hybridity inherent in translation. Studies of materiality and ‘transformissions’ allow for
considerations of the mutability of texts, through re-mediations, re-editions, re-creations,
where the text and its meaning are constantly being made and remade. Translations can
thus be viewed as entangled interactions which encompass physical, human and linguistic
vectors. What is important in understanding the interactions between media and transla-
tion is to assess the impact of each vector on the process of translation and the creation
of meaning. Meaning therefore does not just reside in the media/technology, but in the
processes enacted by its materiality.
A necessary and emerging element in the study of the media of communication is the
sensory engagement with that medium, namely how we interact on a haptic level with the
media –swiping, turning a page, touching, scrolling. The sensory encounters, assemblages
and phenomenological engagements with the translation process and product add fur-
ther dimensions to the materiality of translation. For Bodei the phenomenological sen-
sorial interaction with an object helps to create an understanding of the object/subject
dichotomy (2015). In material culture studies, the meaning of an object is not understood
to reside singularly in it, but also to draw from its circulation, its local adaptation, from
what people do with it, and from the affective and conceptual schemes whereby users
apprehend an object. The sensorial experience is thus considered pertinent to the com-
municative process: rather than focus on style or iconography alone, interest is paid to
the lives of objects: their audiences, users and their social careers, the places they go and
the different ways they are put to use (Meyer et al. 2010: 209). Littau, in arguing for a
media history of translation, used the example of the multi-sensory experience of Cayley’s
digital translation practice as part of the intersection of human, translation and form
(2011: 277). The focus on the sensory therefore places emphasis on the consumption and
use of the translation, how we engage with the surfaces and interact with the forms.
The result of these discussions has been the emergence of key questions relating to
media and translation: does the technicity of the media impact on translation processes?
Does it shape or influence translations? What are the possibilities but also the limitations
of the agency of media? Can translations be understood in relation to the media of their
17
Anne O’Connor
creation and circulation? These questions imply an engagement with the communicative
form which is not merely based on text and meaning. For this to happen, materiality
needs to be understood in terms of its physicality: technology, sensory engagement, media
infrastructure –the communicative moment embedded in a physical landscape. The next
sections will highlight selected moments of intersection between media and translation
where the medium of communication impacted on translation. The cataclysmic effects
of the printing press on communication patterns are widely known and translation has
always been sensitive to moments of material change in the media of transmission. Of
course, in the evolution of new media, there are never clean breaks; media is always over-
lapping and changing with manuscript traditions, for example, existing side-by-side with
print for many years, and previous communication media influencing modalities of new
media. Amanda Lanzillo has shown in a study of northern Indian publishing, at the inter-
section of Persian and Urdu, how artisanal practices were impacted by printing, not with
a transition from manuscript to moveable type, as happened in Europe, but instead with
a transition to lithography, which involved a redefinition of the role of the scribe, who
now wrote and prepared lithographic plate for printing (Lanzillo 2019). The following
examples will illustrate approaches taken to different communicative moments and forms,
highlighting changing processes and practices emerging in the light of technological and
medial developments, and identifying intersecting impulses flowing from media forms to
translations (and back again).
Early modern book production

Scholars of the early modern period have shown strong sensitivity to the intersections
between media and translation and in many cases have led the way in theorizing and
drawing attention to the material dimensions of texts. Armstrong has made the point that
those working between the later medieval manuscript culture and early print are more
‘attuned’ to the material and translational aspects of texts, possibly because of the smaller
number of texts to be studied and the gaps in historical information which need to be
gleaned from alternative sources (2016: 103). Indeed, this period has been the object of
study for models on book production and circulation as those working in the field attend
to material processes of creation and transmission (Adams & Barker 1993; Darnton
1982; Feather 2007). With the expansion of book history models to include translations,
new research has identified how translations benefit from being considered through the
material prism of book history and how they necessarily form part of models accounting
for the production, circulation and consumption of texts (Belle & Hosington 2017). In
examining texts as material objects, early modern scholars have followed theorists such as
McKenzie in taking into consideration a book’s ‘total form’ and have thus underlined how
the media form intersects with the communicative process.
In her book, Printers without Borders, Coldiron (2015) explored the intersections
between translation and textuality in the Renaissance, advancing discussions beyond
source text and target text binaries. By considering both the verbal and the material elem-
ents of the text, in ten case studies Coldiron presents a compelling picture of intersections
between translation and media in this period with resulting translation processes that
are, in her words, catenary, radiant, and compressed; patterns which ‘assume complex
transformission as a fundamental textual condition’ (2019: 208). She identifies the absence
of dyatic linearity and the multi-layered contributions from printers, translators, patrons,
through their presences and interventions in prefaces, typefaces, and mis-en-page. Their
18
mediation of the material objects, their input in the design elements of the text (including
title pages, page layout, illustrations, ornamentation) are, in Coldiron’s theory, elements of
the translational process. The traces of these interventions are to be found in the material
form of the translations, in the media of their communication and it is here that Coldiron
identifies how printing was a ‘co-process’ of translation. Previous to Coldiron, Guyda
Armstrong had fruitfully combined book history and translation studies to bring to the
fore material elements of various iterations of translations of Boccaccio into English
(2013). The extensive analysis of the Italian author’s fortunes in the English language was
not confined to the transfer of the original Italian text but instead highlighted the change
in the forms of translation while focusing on the material aspects of the publications as
different iterations of translations were created.
The study of the intersection between translation and print in the early modern
period received a substantial impetus with the funded research project Translation and
the Making of Early Modern English Print Culture (1473–1660).1 Led by Marie-Alice
Belle and Brenda Hosington, the project and its subsequent publications have reiterated
the significance of the form in transformations between languages and cultures (Belle &
Hosington 2017, 2018). The researchers on the project have been informed by Chartier’s
definition of the culture of print as the intersection between the material aspects of
the printed word and the social contexts of its creation, dissemination and reception
(Chartier 1994, 1995). In this consideration of translations as material objects, the ana-
lysis of format, layout and typography is an essential key to understanding how books
were created and consumed. Translation is not just framed as the transmission of ideas,
words and meaning from one linguistic context to another; rather it also conceptualized
as ‘transformission’ (Belle & Hosington 2019). In using a term coined by Randall
McLeod, these early modern scholars have extensively explored how a consideration
of translations under the rubric of transformission can fruitfully unpack different
layers of translations and move away from a linear binary of analysis. For Coldiron,
transformission ‘asks us in particular to consider material textuality as a co-factor in
translation, concomitant with verbal or linguistic factors’ (2019: 201), enabling us to
read a translation in more than one direction.
Medieval and early modern scholars have a strong tradition of work on the ‘marginal
spaces’ of books, and have regularly tracked intersections between media and translation
through a study of paratexts. Since the theorization of paratext by Genette (1997), this
aspect has been to the forefront of understandings of the relationship between transla-
tion and print, with paratexts used not merely to understand the cultural and historical
significance of texts, but also to analyse the interventions in the text made by translators,
printers and at times, readers. There has furthermore been a strong focus on blank spaces
and interrelationality by those working on manuscript culture (Daniels, O’Connor & Tycz
2020), while examinations of the use of space in print culture have unravelled layers of
different readings of texts (Smith & Wilson 2011). Early modernists who study translations
have underlined the limitations of Genette’s model and how early modern practices
complicate a unidirectional understanding of paratext (Belle & Hosington 2018: 9). In
aiming to provide a more nuanced, translation-specific approach to paratext, scholars
have studied dedications, title pages, footnotes, annotations and illustrations, together
with prefaces, prologues, and epilogues, questioning how paratexts can reframe texts, with
discursive and visual interventions (Batchelor 2018; Belle & Hosington 2018; Hosington
2015; Pellatt 2014). The shaping and framing strategies evident in paratext have revealed
not only the variability of liminal printed spaces, but also the ‘plasticity of the paratextual
19
Anne O’Connor
space’ (Belle & Hosington 2018: 4), and the instability of the material space. Paratexts can
thus be seen as refashioning the material they are presenting and framing intersections
between media and translation.
The contribution of early modernists to intersections between translation and mediality
has firstly been to emphasize the importance of examining translations in their totality,
and to consider changes made to material texts during their ‘transformission’. In doing
so, rich examples have been supplied of the interrelationship between text, translation and
materiality. These works have importantly emphasized the process of translation, how
texts were created and how they convey meaning. They have also highlighted the work of
a host of agents who have an input in creating a translation, including the interventions
of editors, printers and booksellers in reworkings of original texts and in the introduc-
tion of cultural and material changes. The emphasis by early modernists on paratext,
book format and design, together with a variety of components such as typography and
composition, have contributed to underlining the necessity for examining the material
dimensions as well as the linguistic aspects of texts. This work on non-authorial agency
has served to move from source/target binaries and view texts as multi-layered, evolving
creations. In studying how mediations happen at a linguistic, human and material level
they have demonstrated the importance when studying translations of taking into consid-
eration a totality of form and being able to ‘read’ the text in multiple directions.
Translation and industrial print

In the 19th century, the industrialization of book production introduced fundamental
changes to the production, circulation and consumption of books. The print runs of
books were dramatically increased as a result of technological innovations such as the
steam press and pulp, while transport improvements enabled greater distribution networks
and reach, with intercontinental markets increasingly more linked. The material changes
introduced to the book trade in this period, long the focus of literary studies, have recently
been studied by translation scholars to assess the intersection between translation and
material conditions of the media in this period (Colombo, Ó Ciosáin & O’Connor 2019).
How did a rapid pace of production, an ability to print multiple copies of a text and
an ability to place these works in international circulation impact on translations? Did
these material developments contribute to changes in the production and consumption of
translations and how?
From the 19th century onwards translators whose countries experienced an industrial-
ization of print, were located within international networks, and within larger production
units. The activity of translation itself at that point, however, could not be mechanized
and remained an artisanal trade. Even so, large-scale production had its effects, and in an
influential article on translation and book history, Norbert Bachleitner demonstrated the
existence of ‘translation factories’ as part of the massive increase in printed production
in German after 1820 (2009). The upscaling of production also contributed to an expan-
sion of print access beyond a learned elite and therefore, arguably, a greater emphasis on
readability, comprehensibility and fluency in the translated text (Bachleitner 2016). One
of the key material features of this era which impacted on translation was speed. There
was an increased speed in the production, distribution and consumption of books and it
is therefore a logical step to question the impact of this speed on translation. Littau has
argued for a link between the reading practices of the time and translation strategies of
fluency and readability, claiming that ‘fast reading presupposes not only literacy but also
20
a readable page and easily digestible prose’ (2011: 274). The intersections between reading
practices and translation practices at a time of rapid change in the medium of communi-
cation therefore give rise to questions of how this scenario shaped translation, and how
fluency, readability, intelligibility are intimately connected to the speed of production and
of books in this period.
The proliferation of book series was characteristic of the new large-scale productions
of industrial print with uniform editions, printed in similar formats, enjoying widespread
diffusion and popularity. Some recent studies have begun to investigate how the publica-
tion of translations in book series was impacted by this medium of communication, where
standardization and extensive circulation opened up new horizons for translation. Outi
Paloposki’s study of the impact that Tauchnitz, a German firm specializing in foreign-
language editions, had on Finnish translation practices and products provides an example
of how a book series can be influential in the circulation and distribution of texts (2019).
The popularity of the Tauchnitz book series with its Europe-wide distribution, had a
multi-layered influence on national and regional print cultures. Tauchnitz editions not
only introduced a wide range of new books in English to the Finnish market, but they also
provided material for translation into Finnish. The repetition of imagery and standard-
ization of layout formats were important elements of the presentation and advertisement
of translations which were to be sold in book series. As shown by O’Connor, stock images
used in religious translations were part of an extensive marketing practice intended to
use media to shape purchasing and reading practices (2017). Religious book series were a
vehicle for the large-scale selling of translations where standardized formatting and repe-
tition of imagery formed part of the translation product. Related and interlinked issues
include the pricing strategy of the text, the advertising, the type of paper used, and the
finishing, which are all indications of how the translation functioned in a mass market.
The materiality shows us the input of the printers in systemizing and often standardizing
books and their consumption. It is therefore important that scholars ask how the trajec-
tories of books were influenced by their inclusion in a format such as a book series or
collected works, as opposed to books which were published as standalone items (Ingelbien
2019; O’Sullivan 2009). For book series, questions must be asked about the impact of the
homogeneity of the material presentation on the translation product and indeed the trans-
lation practices.
Periodicals
A compelling, yet relatively underexplored, area of intersection between media and trans-
lation is that of periodicals. Since the 19th century, when periodicals experienced unpre-
cedented growth and expansion worldwide, they have carried, circulated and shaped
translations. Periodicals are incredibly prolific and varied, ‘playing a central role not
only in intellectual, literary and political history, but also in the formation of modern
communication and information systems and the entertainment industry’ (Beetham
1989: 96). Although attention has been paid to the translation content of periodicals
(for example, Alexander (1990); France (2010); Toremans (2017); van Doorslaer (2010);
Vandemeulebroucke (2009)), attention to the material form of the media of publica-
tion can lead to alternative understanding of the interactions between translation and
periodicals. As I have shown elsewhere (O’Connor 2019), periodicals can contain diverse
modalities of translations and a study of these modalities can lead to an expanded vision
of the forms of translation and how these are linked to their media of communication.
21
Anne O’Connor
Periodicals are a mutable form of publishing, highly responsive to external political,

cultural and market forces; they are also an ephemeral print product, designed for imme-
diate use. Translations published in these formats are impacted by the immediacy and the
speed of the publication, and by its mutable and variable format, bearing the imprint of
this specific communication medium, with its distinct format and dynamic modalities.
A variety of typologies of translation can exist in the periodical press, which are not
always evident in the book trade: translations can be present, for example, as anonymous
verse or prose translations; as insertions in review articles; as extracts; or as segmented
and serialized pieces published across issues. Experimental translation approaches are
often tried out first in periodicals and the publication format has over the centuries
carried pseudotranslations, unacknowledged borrowing, creative reinterpretations and
adaptations (O’Connor 2019). As periodicals expanded rapidly in the 19th century, they
reached new and growing audiences; translators worked within this developing frame-
work, adapting their translation work and addressing this emerging public. The speed of
the publication process, the serialization of content, the immediacy and diffusion of the
medium and the dialogue between journals are all elements which impacted on the types
and forms of translations which were published in periodicals. The mutable form of the
periodical allows for expanded translational presences and also for widened participation
in the translation enterprise. However, the forms of translation in this media carrier are
unfortunately largely invisible to subsequent histories of translation. Precisely because of
the ephemerality of the media of publication, translations which were published in this
material form have rarely been noticed or valued. Like the form that contains them, they
are more disposable.
The periodical thus forces us to think about the interaction between translation and
transient media forms. Colombo has argued for an adjustment in the privileged focus on
books in translation studies, to take account of more ephemeral forms of communication.
Her study of street literature aims to show the opportunities for a more rounded picture
of transnational book history which is inclusive of ephemerality and evolving iterations
of texts in their social and material realities (Colombo 2019a). The study of these forms of
translations presents two challenges: firstly fewer examples of these translations survive,
precisely because of their ephemeral nature and they therefore form part of the ‘blank
spaces’ of translation history (Santoyo 2006; van Doorslaer 2011). The second challenge,
however relates to the issue of value –if the media of communication is perceived as
disposable and ephemeral, it is less likely to be valued and studied. Just as scholars of
material culture have in recent times proposed the importance of studying items that
might be considered junk, disposable, non-élite, ephemeral, popular; so too is it important
for translation studies to address translations that appear in disposable, ephemeral forms.
Although their media form is more ephemeral, periodicals had the potential to reach wider
communities of readers and engage with them in a different manner to books. For literary
scholars, these ephemeral forms have been crucial to understanding how people accessed
and consumed words and how the form impacted on the literature it carried; for example,
the literature published in the so-called ‘penny dreadful’ periodicals, or serialized litera-
ture such as Dickens’ novels (King, Easley, & Morton 2016; Rubery 2010; Schoenfield
2009; Vann & Van Arsdel 1994). In the context of the media of communication, it is there-
fore important to consider the value associated with the material carrier and its mutability.
When translations are carried for example in a material form that is deemed to be of little
value (e.g. cheap paper and binding, a disposable periodical), they can subsequently be
viewed in themselves as being of little value and importance. However it is precisely the
22
materiality that gives us an understanding of this media’s function in terms of its con-
sumption and use; its diffusion in a ‘cheap’ format does not lessen its importance. Like a
mass-produced object kept in the family home, the media might have significance at levels
of community, dissemination and identity, and its materiality contributes to its meaning
as much as a refined, exclusive object.
Mediality, translation and the 21st century

As this has been a historical overview, the examples chosen have all been book/print-
based. However, it would be misleading to give the impression that these are the only
points of intersection between media and translation. In reality, audiovisual translation
and subtitling are a striking form of practice where the medium can be a determining
factor in translation choices (Pérez-González 2018). Audiovisual translation is a form
of communication which is heavily influenced by its media tools and by the material
characteristics of the form. Jones gives the example of how technological change can help
explain a shift from top-down industry-controlled translation, to more participatory and
open involvement: whereas the media environment of film initially limited participation
to an élite, successive technological advances have gradually empowered individuals in an
ongoing process of democratization (2018). Television, cinema and internet are all media
forms which have changed interactions and experiences, and their mediality has also
impacted on translation practices, as many chapters in this collection will illustrate. News,
web 2.0, social media, audiovisual and film media are now part of the communicative
ecosystem and so are intertwined with the translation mediaspace. Some of the clearest
examples of the impact of media tools on translation come from recent technological
developments and it is clear that Machine Translation, Computer Assisted Translation
and Translation Memory are radically changing both translation processes and trans-
lation outputs (O’Brien 2012). The history of these changes will provide a crucial new
chapter to be added to the historical moments touched on in the other sections in this
chapter. It is a chapter which cannot be fully accounted for without reference to the phys-
icality and materiality of the medium (O’Hagan 2016) and, as was identified by Olohan,
provides insights into the ‘dance of agency’ between translator and technology (2011).
Re-mediations also give a significant insight on the impact of form on translation: in
the passage from voice to text, from manuscript to print, from script to screen, from oral
to digital, for example, these re-mediations illustrate how each media form can impact on
translation in a changed material environment. The emergence of multimodal transla-
tion studies and (bio)semiotic translation theories, illustrate the emerging complexity of
modalities and materialities that fall under the umbrella of translation studies (Boria et al.
2019; Marais 2018). All of these areas will provide ample examples of the intersections
between media and translation in the future.
Conclusion
With current changes and disruption in the media ecosystem, and an increasing satur-
ation of that ecosystem with technology, the impact of these developments on all com-
municative efforts, including translation, cannot be ignored. In 2011 Littau claimed
that the focus on interlingual and intercultural translation had resulted in translation
studies being largely ‘blind’ to the extent to which mediality is an underlying condi-
tion of all cultural output and cultural transfer (Littau 2011: 277). In the intervening
23
Anne O’Connor
years, thanks in part to Littau’s efforts, there has certainly been an increased awareness
of mediality as an element of cultural production and societal transfer, and a greater
acceptance of media technologies as constitutive in meaning making, rather than mere
containers. Media, of course, have had an impact on translation since the first tools
were used to produce translations; evaluating and assessing this impact remains a fun-
damental part of an integrated approach to materiality, mediality and technicity in
translation studies.
Further reading
• Littau, K. ( 2011) ‘First Steps Towards a Media History of Translation’, Translation
Studies, 4 (3), pp. 261–281.
A foundational article in the field which brings together insights from translation studies,
book history and technology studies in order to examine translation in the media contexts
of oral, scribal, print and screen culture. It foregrounds many of the arguments which are
made in Littau’s subsequent forum discussion paper on ‘Translation and the Materialities
of Communication’ published in the same journal (2016), and provides probing questions
on the degrees of implication between materiality and translation.
• McLuhan, M. (1967) The Medium is the Massage, New York: Bantam Books.
In this book, which combines text and graphics, McLuhan sets forth his arguments on the
significance of the medium of communication, arguing that technologies are not merely
the containers of communication, but are also extensions of human senses, impacting
on how we perceive the world. The publication is a creative representation of the key
messages of McLuhan’s theories which proved so influential over the following decades.
• Coldiron, A. E. B. (2015) Printers Without Borders: Translation and Textuality in the

Renaissance. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
This study of Renaissance textuality demonstrates a new way of writing literary history
beyond source-influence models, with the author treating the patterns and processes of
translation and printing as co-transformations.
• Colombo, A., Ó Ciosáin, N. & O’Connor, A. eds (2019) ‘Translation meets Book
History: Intersections: 1700–1950’, Comparative Critical Studies, 16 (2–3).
This Special Issue of Comparative Critical Studies contains 12 articles each exploring
aspects of the intersections between translation and book history in the era of industrial
print. The collection addresses intersections between print media and translation while
situating the analysis within a moment of dramatic change in the technology of commu-
nication, thereby offering insights into materiality, technicity, textuality and translation.
Note
1 www.translationandprint.com/
24
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2
Language, media and culture in an
era of communicative change
Martin Montgomery
Introduction
It has long been recognized that translation takes place not simply between languages
but between cultures, and that the cultural context plays a crucial role in any act of trans-
lation. Increasingly, however, in an era of global communication and inter-lingual lin-
guistic flows, involving communication at a distance, translation also takes place not only
between one language and another, and one culture and another, but also between one
medium of communication and another.
Communication on a global scale poses important challenges to our understanding of
translation in the 21st century. Accordingly, this chapter explores some key conceptual
links between the overlapping areas of inquiry of language, media and culture on the
grounds that language, as many scholars accept, is constitutive of culture. And culture
itself has become increasingly mediated –or ‘mediatized’.
Although each of these three areas has distinctive disciplines or modes of inquiry
associated with it, such as linguistics, communication studies, media studies, anthro-
pology, and cultural studies, there is a growing sense that advances in our understanding
depend on multi-disciplinary or interdisciplinary efforts. And yet any attempt to engage
with these areas encounters not only a range of different methodologies but also the lack
of a common vocabulary that would enable scholars to talk to each other –especially
across disciplinary divides –when addressing common issues and problems. This chapter,
therefore, will consider what kinds of key concepts might hold together the cognate areas
of language, media and culture, as well as offering ‘tools for thinking with’ for translation
studies.
For we live in an era of profound communicative changes. Indeed, over the last two
or three decades there has been a revolution in the nature and configuration of media of
communication. As the last century gave way to the present, the World Wide Web was
implemented and the internet came online. Terrestrial broadcasting was replaced by digital
and the use of social media became widespread. Clearly, technological developments in
the media –such as the computerization, digitalization, and miniaturization of communi-
cative devices –have played an enormous role in these changes. In less than three decades
28 DOI: 10.4324/9781003221678-4
Language, media and culture
the capacity for sending and receiving messages in many different ways across enormous
distances has changed radically, effectively ending the tyranny of distance.
While the capacity to communicate has changed, so also has its character. In the long
history of communicative change we can distinguish at least three important phases: print
(preceded crucially by writing); broadcasting; and the new, digital media. Each phase, of
course, overlaps with previous phases and incorporates qualities from the past; but the
phases remain distinct from each other, defined in part, at least, by virtue of their different
technologies: the mechanical technologies of print, the electrical, analogue technologies
of broadcasting, and the electronic, digital technologies of the new media.
The characteristic kinds of technology at stake in these three phases, however, are
intimately bound up with different kinds of cultural and social arrangements that con-
stitute in each case the contexts of communication. Thus, around the technology of print
a publishing industry evolved to bring print communication to its audiences, who ultim-
ately tended to read in an isolated, privatized fashion.1 Broadcasting, on the other hand,
required significant investment in analogue equipment and technical expertise along with
an infrastructure of wireless transmitters to reach mass audiences, who often experienced
programme output in domestic settings. This in turn is very different from new media
where communication takes place in pairs or in networks, as well as to larger audiences,
in which actors produce as well as receive, often with no more than a hand-held device.
Very crudely, in the long evolution of these phases of communication the movement has
been from one-or-few-to-many to a situation of many-communicating-to-many, within
and between many kinds of communicative platform.
Partly in consequence, the interactions between texts are now so many and various,
not only involving long established practices of quotation, commentary, and summary,
but also newer practices of re-versioning for different platforms, re-cycling, re-tweeting,
to the degree that they challenge our received notions of ‘intertextuality’ and the related
concepts of allusion and multi-accentuality. Indeed, we may be said to have entered an age
of hyper-intertextuality. Against the background of these changes we might understand
translation, not just in terms of transfer between one language and another, or one code
and another, but as a specific case of intertextuality in a hyper-intertextual age.
The role of technology and mediated communicative form in this picture is complex
and many-sided, involving several layers or levels of determination. In order to begin to
explore them, we may sum up some key components schematically in Figure 2.1.
The diagram seeks to identify and isolate the minimal components of an account of the
shaping of text and discourse and the interactions between them in an age of hypertextuality.
The selection and configuration of these components is intended to recognize that com-
munication in a hyperintertextual age expresses, is shaped by and is determined by the
interplay of a variety of pressures and forces, in which technology, social relations, generic
predispositions,and so on, all play their part. Other traditions of research into language
and social relations (see, e.g., Fairclough, in critical discourse analysis, or Saville Troike
in ethnography of communication) may identify different components or configure them
differently. Precisely which components and in what arrangement may remain a matter of
debate. But as Labov has commented: ‘Formalism is a fruitful procedure even when it is
wrong: it sharpens our questions and promotes the search for answers’ (Labov 1972: 121).
In order to explicate the different components of this diagram we will illustrate them
with reference to a Twitter sequence from the then President Donald Trump. Here he is
tweeting about (unnamed) democratic congresswomen who he treats as having come ori-
ginally from outside the US (Figure 2.2).2
29
Martin Montgomery
Figure 2.1 The interactions of media, culture and language
Text and discourse: intertextuality and re-semiotization

At the centre of the diagram lie the twin concepts of text and discourse. For the sake of
argument it might equally have been possible to begin with notions of ‘language’ (in the
abstract), or ‘sentence’, or even ‘word’. The twin concepts of text and discourse, however,
better capture the notion of language as irredeemably embedded in situation or action, not
as the isolated word or sentence as an element in an abstract system, but as contributions
to a live interchange in a world of speakers and hearers, writers and readers, who are pre-
constructed as it were by historical circumstance, by identity and social structure. A text is
simply the realization (or instantiation) as a meaningful semantic unit of an act of discourse.
Immediately we can see the importance of the notion of discourse, for these short texts
by Trump make little sense without understanding something of their context. From the
outset these tweets were widely understood as referring to four individuals –all newly-
elected, relatively young, democratic senators who have been vocal critics of the Trump
administration –especially of its immigration policies –and the consequent creation
of detention camps along the Mexican border. Note, however, that though they have
aspects of identity ascribed to them (for instance, of gender, politics and provenance: viz.
‘Progressive’ Democratic congresswomen who come from elsewhere) to make them iden-
tifiable, the women are not explicitly named in the tweets: in effect they are identified,
without being named, on the basis of ‘what everyone knows’. (We will return to Trump’s
practice of ‘non-specific assertion’ at a later point.) These texts by Trump, therefore, work
against a background of shared knowledge often supplied by other texts, including texts
by the women themselves. It is this which informs the links of an intertextual chain or
sequence that includes actions and reactions by the women themselves. For one thing, the
four of them subsequently held a press conference in which they responded to Trump’s
tweets –in a classic discourse exchange of Challenge and Rebuttal –and this in itself was
widely reported. Trump’s tweets themselves were moreover re-tweeted with comments by
other users of the platform. And Trump himself subsequently commented in a press con-
ference on what he had tweeted.
30
<— Thread
Donald J. Trump √
@realDonaldTrump
So interesting to see “Progressive” Democrat Congresswomen, who originally came

from countries whose governments are a complete and total catastrophe, the worst,
most corrupt and inept anywhere in the world (if they even have a functioning
government at all), now loudly…..
1:27 PM • July 14, 2019 • Twitter for iPhone
72.9K Retweets and comments 193K Likes
Donald J. Trump √ @realDonaldTrump • Jul 14, 2019

Replying to @realDonaldTrump
….and viciously telling the people of the United States, the greatest and
most powerful Nation on earth, how our government is to be run. Why
don’t they go back and help fix the totally broken and crime infested
places from which they came. Then come back and show us how….
Donald J. Trump √ @realDonaldTrump • Jul 14, 2019

….it is done. These places need your help badly, you can’t leave fast
enough. I’m sure that Nancy Pelosi would be very happy to quickly
work out free travel arrangements!
Figure 2.2 Tweet from the then President Trump @realDonaldTrump on 14 July 2019
A couple of supplementary points may be made at this stage. Firstly, these texts are
mediated and it is the fact of their mediation that makes possible or facilitates their wide
circulation and interaction with other texts –hence their hyper-intertextuality. It is only
by virtue of their durability (their written –and digital –character) that allows them both
to persist in their original form and to migrate into new contexts (e.g. by ‘re-tweeting’).
Secondly, however, the durability of these texts enables their iterability and allows them
to re-circulate and become re-contextualized; and this in turn allows them to take on
new meanings: their durability and iterability allows them, in effect, as textual entities to
become ‘re-semiotized’ (Iedema 2001).3
Participation framework(sometimes referred to as ‘participatory

framework’)
The sociologist Erving Goffman developed the concept of participation framework
(1981) to open up the received view of the canonical speech situation as composed essen-
tially of a speaker and hearer. Especially, but not exclusively, in mediated communication
participants have available to them a range of different kinds of stance that they can
adopt within a communication situation: there is clearly, according to Goffman, a wider
configuration of parties or roles in communication than simply those of speaker and
31
Martin Montgomery
hearer. He distinguished, for instance, between different kinds of footing, which can be
adopted in the production or reception of a text (whether spoken or written). Hearers, for
instance, may include over-hearers as well as ratified participants. And the act of speaking
or writing itself may refer not merely to the one who utters the words (for Goffman, the
‘animator’), but also to the one who composes them (the ‘author’) and the one who bears
responsibility for them (the ‘principal’).
In relation to Trump’s tweets (above), it was significant that he was widely assumed
not only to be the principal behind them (and therefore responsible for them) but also
the author (the one who composes them) and the animator (the one who types and posts
them). Indeed, the name of the account –‘Donald J. Trump@realDonaldTrump’ –seemed
well-calculated to distinguish Trump’s tweets from parodic imitations. Note, however, that
at least two of Trump’s aides –Peter Costanzo and Dan Scavino –have had authorship
attributed to some of Trump’s tweets at different times. (This is hardly unusual: many
of Clinton’s tweets, for instance, were composed by Emmy Bengston during her time as
Clinton’s Deputy Director for Social Media.) Generally, it was assumed that Trump was
author, animator and principal of his tweets, partly on circumstantial grounds such as
their timing, but also on stylistic grounds –the distinctive use of capitals, occasional mis-
spellings, neologisms such as ‘covevfe’, nicknames (‘sleepy Joe’) or –in this case –the per-
sistent use of superlatives (‘the greatest and most powerful nation on earth’, ‘the worst,
most corrupt and inept anywhere in the world’). Most of all, perhaps, it was their habit-
ually belligerent tone (see Higgins & Smith 2016) and a tendency on Trump’s part to work
deliberately against the grain of political correctness.
The current example illustrates these tendencies in complex ways. The congress-
women were designated as ‘Progressive’ and as Democrat. In Trump’s lexicon the item
Democrat is only ever used negatively (‘The Democrats will open our borders to deadly
drugs and ruthless gangs’; ‘the Democrats are the party of crime…’; ‘radical Democrats
want to tear down our laws…’). So the phrase ‘ “Progressive” democrat’ seems manifestly
designed to be heard as an oxymoron, with scare quotes underscoring the irony of the
use of ‘Progressive’. They were also designated as coming from elsewhere, since –wrote
Trump –they ‘originally came from countries whose governments are a complete and
total catastrophe’. In fact, all but one were born in the United States, all are US citizens,
and as Congresswomen had a duty to scrutinize government policy. In effect, Trump was
challenging their right, not only to criticize government policy, but to be in the US at all.
In simple terms it is a challenge to ‘go home’ on the grounds that they don’t belong. When
Ilhan Omar’s name was mentioned by Trump at a subsequent campaign rally it was met
with chants from the crowd of ‘send her back, send her back, send her back’.
Cumulatively, then, Trump’s tweet, amounts in discourse terms not merely to
a challenge but to an act of verbal offence that flies blatantly in the face of the facts.
Following Montgomery et al. 2019, let us unpack a little more the nature of the verbal
offence. In order to understand better the nature of verbal offence it is necessary to refine
the notion of participation framework. To perform an act of verbal offence requires min-
imally five components:
a. An Offence Giver
b. A Target of Offence
c. An Offence Taker
d. A Public or Audience
e. An Offensive Message
32
Trump is clearly and deliberately the Offence Giver. Indeed, when challenged at a press
conference a day or two later he doubled down on his tweet: ‘These are people that if they
don’t like it here they can leave’. (Interestingly, he reflects on his original tweet that ‘I never
used any names’.)
The Target of Offence consists primarily of the four democratic Congresswomen,
though –as noted above –Trump does not identify them by name. Nonetheless, four
Democratic congresswomen –Ms Ocasio-Cortez, Ms Pressley, Ms Tlaib, and Ms Omar –
held a joint press conference together to reject Trump’s original tweet, taking for granted
that it had referred to them. Ms Pressley dismissed the president’s efforts ‘to marginalize
us and to silence us’. Ms Omar added ‘We remain focused on holding him accountable to
the laws of this land.’ Effectively, they rebut his challenge. In so doing, they assume the
position not only of Target of Offence but also of Offence Taker. The position of Offence
Taker, however, is not restricted to the ostensible Target, the four congresswomen. There
was a storm of reactions on Twitter from people immediately taking offence at Trump’s
original tweet. Here, for instance, is the Independent Senator, Bernie Sanders (Figure 2.3).
In this respect it is important to take account of the way in which the nature of mediated
communication opens up in Goffman’s terms ‘an array of structurally differentiated pos-
sibilities’ for recipients, especially so in the case of a social media platform such as Twitter
which allows for a named recipient for a tweet but also for a vast but non-responding audi-
ence, in addition to a variety of positions in between. Zappavigna describes the general
situation as a kind of ambient affiliation in which ‘virtual groupings afforded by features
of electronic text, such as metadata, create alignments between people who have not dir-
ectly interacted online’ (Zappavigna 2011). Equally as important as affiliation, of course,
is disaffiliation. By the time of his tweet in 2019, for instance, Trump had in excess of
70 million followers. Of these tens of thousands will have commented on his tweet and/or
retweeted it. And hundreds of thousands will have ‘liked’ it. Amongst these, however, we
find in Sanders an example of someone who retweets the original tweet and comments on
it –but certainly does not ‘like’ it. He –like many others –is an Offence Taker.
<— Tweet
Bernie Sanders √ @BernieSanders • July 14th 2019
When I call the president a racist, this is what I’m talking about
We must stand together for justice and dignity towards all.
Donald J. Trump √ @realDonaldTrump • July 14th 2019
So interesting to see “Progressive” Democrat Congresswomen, who

originally came from countries whose governments are a complete and
total catastrophe, the worst, most corrupt and inept anywhere in the world
(if they even have a functioning government at all), now loudly…..
Show this thread
Figure 2.3 Tweet from Congressman Bernie Sanders @BernieSanders on 14 July 2019.
33
Martin Montgomery
There exists, then, yet another layer of complexity in the participation framework for
this offensive tweet. In terms of uptake, the four congresswomen are widely assumed to
be the Target of the Offence, even though, as we have noted earlier, they are not identi-
fied by name. Equally, however, there are many who will take offence without ever being
directly addressed by Trump. Indeed, for Trump, this wide audience existing in a state of
ambient affiliation or disaffiliation contains as much the Target for his Offence as the four
Congresswomen themselves.
The fifth component of an act of offence is, of course, the offensive message itself. It
is not hard to see ways in which Trump’s sequence of tweets is offensive inasmuch as it
amounts to saying in effect: ‘you do not belong here; go back to where you came from’.
Its offensiveness is compounded by the recognition that those targeted by this statement
are all citizens of the US and three of the four were indeed actually born in the US.
The sequence constructs them as alien or foreign despite their unquestionable rights of
abode. It, thus, invokes a form of crude nativism but obscures it behind an objection to the
Congresswomen’s tendency to critique Government policy. At the same time, it invokes
a classic racist trope when applied to people of colour –‘you do not belong’. It will be
remembered that Trump was one of the prime movers of the ‘birther’ conspiracy in rela-
tion to Barack Obama which claimed he was ineligible for the presidency because he was
born in Kenya (it was alleged) and not in the US.
Communicative ethos
Every major revolution in communication which is predicated upon technological change
has attracted attention from researchers in terms of how the tone and set of communi-
cation is consequently altered in favour of a new dominant ‘key’. Each major change in
the technology of communication is credited with the potential for altering the dominant
character of communication around a different repertoire of attitude and value. The com-
municative ethos of oral cultures, for instance, is thought to be different from that of
print cultures. According to Walter J. Ong, for instance, oral and literate cultures differ
on many axes of comparison. Oral cultures by comparison with print cultures tend –
for instance –to be aggregative rather than analytic, additive rather than subordinating,
rooted in the life world, and agonistic. In terms of agonism they are more likely to practice
forms of verbal competition and display, such as ritual insults, verbal duelling and debate.
Furthermore, whereas for an oral culture learning or knowing means achieving close,
empathetic, communal identification with the known, writing separates the knower from
the known and thus sets up conditions for ‘objectivity’, in the sense of personal disengage-
ment or distancing (Ong 1982).
Eisenstein’s classic account of the development of print culture in Europe in the early
modern period identifies the printing press as an important precursor of the Renaissance,
the Reformation and the rise of modern science (Eisenstein 1979). Against this back-
ground, the rise of broadcasting in the 20th century seems to be associated with a rather
different communicative ethos –one of sociability. Scannell puts it this way:
Sociability is the most fundamental characteristic of broadcasting’s communicative

ethos … To describe the communicative manner and style of radio and television as
conversational means more than chatty mannerisms and a personalised idiom … It
means orienting to the normative values of ordinary talk in which participants have
equal status and equal discursive rights … The communicative task that broadcasters
34
faced was to find forms of talk that spoke to listeners, modes of address which
disclosed that listeners were taken into account in the form of the utterance itself …
[R]‌adio and television’s communicative style was first found in the development of
friendlier forms of address, a more informal discursive style as markers of a general
sociable intent that showed itself in most areas of programme output.
(Scannell 1996: 23–24)
Scannell’s account is heavily influenced by his explorations of the early history of talk in
broadcasting (see Scannell 2014) when the challenge for broadcasters was to find a par-
ticular voice and mode of address appropriate for reception in a domestic setting. More
recently, however, we can see a shift towards a different tone or key in broadcasting per-
haps most associated with the development of political and accountability interviewing
but spreading across to other genres of programming such as business (The Apprentice and
Ramsay’s Kitchen Nightmares), talk radio, reality TV, and talk shows (The Jerry Springer
Show and Kilroy) which may be summed up broadly under the heading of ‘belligerent
broadcasting’ (see, most especially, Higgins & Smith, 2016). The original communicative
ethos of broadcasting –sociability –seems to give way to its antithesis, in which an alter-
native manner of speaking is celebrated –one which cuts through evasion and obfuscation
in the name of immediacy, authenticity, and ‘hard talk’ (see Higgins et al., 2012).
These more recent developments in broadcasting may be seen as anticipating the rise
of incivility on the Web (see Krzyżanowski & Ledin, 2017, Montgomery et al. 2019).
Certainly, the emergence of social media and microblogging has been accompanied by
increasing concern with ways in which microblogging can be used aggressively to target
people and groups in a variety of ways, including bullying, verbal harassment, trolling,
etc. Indeed, it’s noteworthy that a specialized vocabulary such as ‘flaming’, ‘trolling’ and
‘cyberbullying’, has emerged specifically to describe some of these forms of incivility on
the Web. Granted that the communicative ethos of print culture, broadcast culture and of
web-based digital culture may overlap in certain ways, but overall the dominant motif of
each seems quite different. It is not easy to explain why these differences emerge but they
seem related on the one hand to shifts in the characteristic participation framework of
each (see above) and to the typical affordances of each medium. Trump, however, seemed
to be a president for the digital age (Ott & Dickinson, 2020) and in perfect alignment with
its dominant communicative ethos.
Communicative affordances
The notion of affordances (deriving from the work of the psychologist Gibson, 1979)
orients us towards the potential uses of technology and not just towards their inert
characteristics (Hutchby, 2001). The relationship between technologies and their char-
acteristic communicative potential is not given in advance: technologies do not have
their uses fully or precisely inscribed within them. Nonetheless, different technologies of
communication have clearly different communicative potentialities, even when they are
adapted in their use for ends that go beyond their intended potential and that could not be
fully imagined in their conception. Moving pictures may originally have offered possibil-
ities for the study of animal movement; their potential as a medium for telling stories was a
later discovery. Likewise, the early cell phone or mobile phone may originally have opened
up the simple affordance of mobility and context independence –of using a phone to
make voice calls without the restrictions of connection to a land line. Its capacity to send
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Martin Montgomery
and receive text messages, to store and organize data, to take pictures and circulate them
were all affordances discovered or added as later developments. Combined in a bundle
of affordances these constitute not just a mobile phone but, axiomatically and appropri-
ately named, a smartphone –with GPS navigation, and video photography, for instance,
powerfully supplementing the mobility and continuous availability of the mobile phone.
As a device the smartphone has provided the perfect support for developments in social
media, as represented by such platforms as Twitter, WhatsApp, Facebook, Sina Weibo and
WeChat. Each of these, of course, has slightly different affordances but –most fundamen-
tally –by means of ‘like’, ‘comment’, ‘re-tweet’ and metadata such as ‘hashtags’ they have
evolved the capacity to meet, create, or reinforce specialized audiences or virtual commu-
nities. Indeed, one way of summing up the transition from broadcast (terrestial) media to
social (digital) media is in terms of a shift from broadcasting as such to narrowcasting.
Thus in Trump’s tweets, reproduced above, we can see him creating a thread out a series
of three tweets which attracted almost immediately between 170,000 and 190,000 ‘likes’,
as well as in excess of 70,000 retweets. Trump’s Twitter account, now suspended provided
a powerful tool for the dissemination and circulation of his views within an intertextual
network of opinion.
Protocols of use
The adoption of communicative technology lies to a large extent in the hands of the user.
At the same time, however, conventions governing and guiding its use –either explicitly
or implicitly –are nearly always established. The early history of cinema in the United
States was subject to content restrictions summarized in the Hays code promulgated by
movie distributors in the 1930s. Maritime VHF two-way radio is governed by quite spe-
cific protocols of use governing the use of specific channels, the use of call signs, proforms,
end-of-turn signals, and so on. Twitter, for example designed an initial limit of 140 alpha-
betic characters for microblogging, raised (in 2017) to 280 characters. Sometimes protocols
of use take the force of law (such as the laws of libel and defamation governing published
material in certain jurisdictions); sometimes they are guidance issued by moderators (such
as those that accompany, for example, some online forums). The emergence of new com-
municative technologies (such as those underpinning social media) can provoke fierce
debate about the need for (or resistance to) regulatory frameworks (see Schlesinger 2020).
Facebook and Twitter have both been subject over the last half decade to much talk of
regulation, especially in areas related to hate speech, disinformation and fake news. In
response to growing concern, Twitter in 2018 published a set of ‘Twitter Rules’ which
include, for instance, the following:
Abuse/harassment: You may not engage in the targeted harassment of someone, or incite
other people to do so. This includes wishing or hoping that someone experiences
physical harm.
Hateful conduct: You may not promote violence against, threaten, or harass other
people on the basis of race, ethnicity, national origin, caste, sexual orientation,
gender, gender identity, religious affiliation, age, disability, or serious disease.
Suicide or self-harm: You may not promote or encourage suicide or self-harm.
It was on the basis of these protocols that in May 2020 Twitter took an unprecedented step
of limiting the public’s ability to view a tweet by Trump in which he referred to protesters
in Minneapolis as ‘thugs’ who dishonoured the memory of George Floyd (recently killed
36
by a police officer kneeling on his neck) and threatened to introduce ‘the Military’, con-
cluding ‘when the looting starts, the shooting starts’. These sentiments were, said Twitter,
in breach of its ‘Rules about glorifying violence’. Subsequently, Twitter took the more
drastic step after the storming of the Capitol of closing Trump's account, “due to the risk
of further incitement of violence”.
Especially in his tweets Trump often operated on the borderline on the edge of
incivility. In practice, he had a range of devices that he deployed to deflect charges of
explicit crude incivility. One such device was the strategic use of vagueness and inde-
terminacy. In the case of the tweets about the congresswomen, for instance, it is notice-
able –as mentioned above –that he does not identify them by their names. This is of a
piece with other cases of offense: ‘The president of the pathetic Club For Growth came
to my office in N.Y.C. and asked for a ridiculous $1,000,000 contribution. I said no way!’
We may call this a technique of ‘no-naming’ in which individuals may be identifiable
but by other means than their proper name. In this way Trump contrived to appear in
accordance with the protocols of use until after the storming of the Capitol they finally
caught up with him.
Social relations and institutions of production and reception

Communicative change associated with technological innovation finds its position
within, and often modifies, existing institutional arrangements for mediated communi-
cation –especially the relations of production. It seems evident, also, that wider changes
to the nature of the social relationships involved in communication are also at stake. The
consequences of the move from manuscript to printed text, for example, have been much
discussed –not only by McLuhan (1962). Eisenstein (1979), for instance, (as noted above)
regards the printed book as a pre-condition for the intellectual and social upheavals of the
Renaissance and the Protestant Reformation, not to mention the rise of modern science.
And in the 21st century the emergence of social media clearly raises profound questions
about the changing nature of social relations in the digital age. Some of these have been
touched upon earlier in sections on participation framework and communicative ethos.
But there are broader considerations at work in the changing dynamic of communicative
technologies, media, culture and society. In discussing early developments in the history of
writing, for instance, Goody & Watt (1963) comment that hieroglyphic and pictographic
forms of writing, where signs stand for words rather than sounds, are inherently complex.
Consequently.
it is a striking fact that –for whatever ultimate causes –in Egypt and Mesopotamia, as
in China, a literate elite of religious, administrative and commercial experts emerged
and maintained itself as a centralised governing bureaucracy on rather similar lines.
Their various social and intellectual achievements were, of course, enormous; but as
regards the participation of the society as a whole in the written culture, a wide gap
existed between the esoteric literate culture and the exoteric oral one, a gap which the
literate were interested in maintaining. Among the Sumerians and Akkadians writing
was the pursuit of scribes and preserved as a ‘mystery’, a ‘secret treasure’.
(1963: 314)
Significant power, therefore, accrued to the small minorities in society who had access to
the writing system: ‘ “Put writing in your heart that you may protect yourself from hard
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Martin Montgomery
labour of any kind”, writes an Egyptian of the New Kingdom: “The scribe is released
from manual tasks; it is he who commands.” ’ (Goody & Watt 1963: 314).
The introduction of the mechanical printing press to Europe and its adoption around
15th/16th centuries enables a drastic reduction in the cost of printing books and documents
and allows a much speedier creation and wider dissemination of printed material. Inevitably
this begins to spell the end of scribal culture and allows a gradual, if slow, spread of lit-
eracy over the following centuries to the general population. Literacy, indeed, becomes,
over time, the centrepiece of schooling, with universal literacy becoming a key goal in
sustainable development. The transition to print culture in the west underpins not only the
Renaissance, the Reformation and the rise of science, but also by the 19th century it has
become a major influence on the standardization of national languages, the rise of nation-
alism, the creation of nation states and the flattening of cultural differences within them.
Literacy, of course, requires explicit instruction –hence its central place within the
school system. But if the printing press becomes a dominant driver of social change
from the 16th to 20th centuries, the 20th century brings a very different medium of com-
munication to the fore –viz. broadcasting, first as radio then also as television. What
distinguishes broadcasting very sharply from the print medium is that the former can be
consumed without instruction. ‘Reading’ radio or television may depend upon owner-
ship of an appropriate receiver but does not require years of schooling. The skill of early
broadcasters, as Scannell has pointed out, lay in devising programmes that were imme-
diately accessible to a mass audience as if they were being addressed as individuals: ‘for-
anyone-as someone-structures’ (Scannell 2000). This is quite different from the framework
of production and reception associated with print.
Broadcasting does, nonetheless, depend upon continuous material investment –and in
the main on an elaborate infrastructure of studios, recording and transmission equipment,
as well as teams of trained professionals, performers and sound engineers to deliver its
product. At the same time, its most basic and general appeal rests primarily on the spoken
word –even in the case of television –as a long succession of scholarship has reminded us
(Hutchby 2005; Scannell 1996; Tolson 2006; Thornborrow 2015). It is for this reason that
Ong (1982) could claim that after centuries of print the electronic media were returning us
to a new, but transformed, era of orality.
Telephone, radio, television and the various kinds of sound tape, electronic tech-
nology has brought us into the age of ‘secondary orality’. This new orality has
striking resemblance to the old in its participatory mystique, its fostering of a com-
munal sense, its concentration on the present moment, and even its use of formulas.
But it is essentially a more deliberate and self-conscious orality, based permanently
on the use of writing and print, which are essential for the manufacture and operation
of the equipment and for its use as well.
Secondary orality is both remarkably like and remarkably unlike primary orality.
Like primary orality, secondary orality has generated a strong group sense, for
listening to spoken words forms hearers into a group, a true audience, just as reading
written or printed texts turns individuals into themselves. But secondary orality
generates a sense for groups immeasurably larger than those of primary oral culture
–McLuhan’s ‘global village’.
(1982: 133)
38
If the notion of broadcasting is so crucial to the media ecology of the 20th century, then
the notion of internet-based, networked social media may be the concept that best defines
the media ecology of the 21st century. Certainly, the underlying dynamic of mediated com-
munication changes vastly with the advent of new digital media. Whereas broadcasting
was essentially a form of mass communication operating on a model of few-to-many,
internet-based communication has become in the formulation of Castells (2013) a form
of mass self-communication.
It is mass communication because it reaches a potentially global audience through p2p

[peer-to-peer] networks and Internet connection. It is multi-modal, as the digitization
of content and advanced social software, often based on open source programs that
can be downloaded for free, allows the reformatting of almost any content in almost
any form, increasingly distributed via wireless networks. It is also self-generated in
content, self-directed in emission, and self-selected in reception by many who communi-
cate with many. This is a new communication realm, and ultimately a new medium,
whose backbone is made of computer networks, whose language is digital, whose
senders are globally distributed and globally interactive. True, the medium, even a
medium as revolutionary as this one, does not determine the content and effect of its
messages. But it has the potential to make possible unlimited diversity and autono-
mous production of most of the communication flows that construct meaning in the
public mind.
(Castells 2013: 70–71, emphasis in original)
Of course, while networked digital social media now occupy a dominant position within
the media ecology of our time, they do not so much replace broadcast (and print) media
as incorporate or integrate them into new, transformed arrangements. For one thing, as
Castells points out, ‘the Internet is increasingly used to access mass media (television,
radio, newspapers), as well as any form of digitized cultural or informational product
(films, music, magazines, books, journal articles, databases)’ (Castells 2013: 64). Or, as
Postill observes: ‘Our current media environments are a web of old and new media tech-
nologies, practices and actors interacting in emergent, non-technological ways. In such
systems, social and mass media feed off one another in recursive loops of “viral reality” ’
(Postill 2018: 761).
It is clear, nonetheless, that changes in the technologies of communication –from print
to broadcast media to digital media and the internet –have the potential to transform
social relations and in so doing radically alter the distribution and flow of power. Scribal
culture may have engendered a ‘priestly caste’ with privileged access to the ‘mystery’ and
the ‘secret treasure’ of writing, but the position of the priestly caste would inevitably be
dismantled with the advent of print culture. Print culture, however, engenders its own
hierarchies of cultural capital even if these become ultimately less concentrated and more
diffuse (Hoggart, 1957/2009). Broadcasting ushers in a new era with its own dynamic in
which ordinary life and the voices of ordinary people are drawn upon and represented to
a greater extent than before but under the rubric of institutions that are built around pro-
fessional elites –whether these be driven by commercial concerns or public service. With
social media, however, the axis of communication shifts from predominantly ‘vertical’–
from elites to the masses –to ‘horizontal’: from the masses to each other, or to virtual
communities of each other.
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Martin Montgomery
This might be seen most clearly in specific areas or genres of communication such as for
instance ‘the news’. Traditionally, since the late 18th century, the practices of news jour-
nalism have been identified with the ‘fourth estate’, whose capacity to wield influence (and
occasionally to call the powerful to account) rivalled that of Parliament and the Church.
Certainly, news journalism in the era of print culture –and subsequently as broadcast
news –came to play an important and established role in the public sphere (Habermas
1989). But with the advent of social media, alternative suppliers of news (for instance so-
called ‘citizen journalists’) have challenged the hegemony of traditional news outlets, not
only through an unravelling of the basic political economy of the news industry, but also
through adopting and offering news genres –for example, the blog and the micro-blog –
that sidestepped the constraints and codes of ‘legacy’ news providers. This is all the more
case in jurisdictions that lack a fully-fledged public sphere, such as the People’s Republic
of China, where close state control of the news media has prompted a lively and critical
blogosphere offering an alternative voice to official news outlets, despite efforts by the
state to police it (Xiaoping Wu & Montgomery 2019; Xiaoping Wu & Fitzgerald 2020;
and Montgomery et al. 2015).
There is indeed a growing sense that alongside ‘legacy’ news culture with its gatekeeping,
codes of practice, and professionalism, but declining sources of revenue, a counter news
culture has developed enabled by digitalization and providing a crucial component of the
mass self-communication described by Castells. In this environment, references to ‘main-
stream news’ are often derogatory (fake news, bias) whether coming from a left or right
political perspective; instead, selective consumption of news on the Web provides access
to sources of information thought to be less contaminated by the implicit biases of the
metropolitan elites and more in tune with the concerns of ordinary, especially young,
news consumers (e.g. Buzz Feed).
Indeed, to some there appears to be ‘an elective affinity’ between social media and
populism (Gerbaudo 2018), especially in their shared distrust of elites. As Gerbaudo
comments:
If social media has [sic] come to provide a suitable channel for populist appeals,
it is first and foremost because of the way in which it has [sic] come to be under-
stood as a platform for the voice of the people in opposition to the mainstream news
media, accused of being in cahoots with the financial and political establishment …
[The social web comes to be conceived of] as a space in which ordinary people and
‘amateurs’ could express themselves directly, bypassing broadcasters and journalists
alike.
(2018: 748–749)
It is something of a paradox that it is precisely into this space that Trump –sometimes
described, while U.S. President, as the most powerful man in the world –found his discursive
place. His tweets above, however, display classic populist motifs. Targeted at unnamed
‘Progressive’ Democrat Congresswomen, it constructs them for the most part as Them
(‘Why don’t they go back and help fix the totally broken and crime infested places from
which they came’) before switching finally to You (‘These places need your help badly’) in
the last short tweet. All this is in contrast to Us (‘Then come back and show us … how
our government is to be run’) –the people of the United States. The binary opposition
between Us and Them is then reinforced by clusters of positive and negative qualities.
We are members of the greatest and most powerful Nation on earth. They come from
40
elsewhere –‘from countries whose governments are a complete and total catastrophe,
the worst most corrupt and inept anywhere in the world’ –‘broken and crime infested
places’. The opposition between good governance versus bad governance is thus overlaid
onto the contrast between the homeland and the elsewhere, near at home versus far away,
and the fundamental contrast between Us versus Them. Buried amongst these funda-
mental binaries, however, is a less explicit structuring of values. The targets are women,
(‘Congresswomen’), and Democrats, whose fault has been ‘to loudly and viciously tell the
people of the United States how our government is to be run’. This economically fuses
a sexist trope (viz. when women speak out they are regarded as loud and unruly) with a
Trumpian right wing populist political trope (‘Progressives’ and Democrats are weak on
law and order).
Conclusions
Transformations in communicative technologies are likely to be accompanied by profound
changes, not only in the cultural context of communication, but also in the nature of the
acts of communication that take place in these settings. If, for instance, the characteristic
modes of broadcasting rested on showing and telling, then the characteristic modes of
the new, social media tend to be reaction and argument. To begin, however, to capture
what is different and characteristic about one phase of communication over another we
cannot afford to ignore what lies at the centre of nearly every act of communication: they
are founded on the word, whether it be spoken or written, embodied or disembodied, with
images or without. For language –either in itself or by implication –forms the basis of all
communication whatever the medium, whatever the technology.
It is for this reason that this chapter tries to bring together concepts related to lan-
guage, to media and to culture in the belief that only by thinking through the relations
between them will we be able to understand the enormous changes in communication
presently taking place at an unprecedented pace. For if communication is at the core of
this chapter’s concerns there is also, I believe, a growing recognition that only when lan-
guage, media and culture can be understood in an integrated way can we satisfactorily
address the major communicative issues of our time.
The domains of language, media and culture are distinct but the relationships between
them are complex, intricate and multi-directional and in some respects subject to partial
overlap. In this chapter we have tried to outline some important intermediary concepts
that help to articulate the ways in which language, media and culture interact with each
other. And we have done so by drawing on tweets from then President Trump as illustra-
tive examples. By using these recent examples from digital communication, we highlight
the increasing textualization of contemporary culture and, through the interaction of
one text with another, the continuous connectivity and the sheer overwhelming intertext-
uality of modern communication. At the heart of this hyper-intertextuality, of course,
are the processes of translation not just in terms of transfer between one language and
another, or one code and another, but as a specific case of intertextuality in a hyper-
intertextual age.
Further reading
• Cotter, C. & Perrin, D. (2018) (ed.) The Routledge Handbook of Language and Media.
London: Routledge.
41
Martin Montgomery
A comprehensive anthology of essays exploring various aspects of language and the

media mostly from a media linguistics perspective.
• Duranti, A. (2001) (ed.) Key Terms in Language and Culture. Oxford: Blackwell.
Contains definitive short essays on concepts such as control, genre, literacy, media, orality,
performativity, translation, voice, writing and many others, often from the perspective of
anthropological linguistics.
• Montgomery, M. (2018) Language, Media and Culture: The Key Concepts. London:
Routledge.
Seeks to provide a guide to the essential terminology of the overlapping fields of language,
media and culture.
Notes
1 Histories of reading note that even in the age of the printed book much reading in the European
context was communal even as late as the 19th century. See, for example, Jajdelska (2007).
2 This chapter was completed in 2020 prior to the U.S. Presidential Election which Trump
lost to Biden. As is well known, of course, Trump contested the result, declaring the election
to have ‘stolen’. For this reason he was ultimately banned from Twitter and his account
@realDonaldTrump was closed.
3 The closure of Trump’s account @realDonaldTrump in the event had real consequences in this
particular case for the long-term durability and iterability of his tweets which were erased with
the account’s closure. The implications of this in general terms are discussed below under the
heading of protocols of use.
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3
Media translation and politics
in multilingual contexts
Introduction
Most people gain an understanding of the political world, including its rights and wrongs,
through the information that comes to them from traditional or social media sources.
The media not only provide information about political matters but also set the ground
for particular interpretations of that information. The language used by the media to
represent political groups, and to describe specific events, tends to reproduce the dom-
inant ways to think and talk about those groups and events (Thornborrow 2005: 50). In
part, this political power of the media is also exercised by translating information in par-
ticular ways. As we are reminded by Christina Schäffner (2004: 120):
It is through translation that information is made available to addressees beyond

national borders; and it is very frequently the case that reactions in one country to
statements that were made in another country are actually reactions to the informa-
tion as it was provided in translation.
The growing influence of translation in the world of politics remains largely invisible. And
as research in translation studies has shown, translation is not visible in the media either –
think of Bielsa & Bassnett’s (2009) pioneering work on news translation. The relationship
between translation practices in the media and politics, however, has not gone unnoticed
in translation studies (e.g. Baker 2006; Schäffner 2008; Schäffner & Bassnett 2010).
Of course, the way we define politics has implications for our understanding of the
relationship between translation and politics in the media. In its narrow sense, politics can
be understood as actions and practices of different political actors, such as politicians,
formal political institutions and citizens who participate in the political process (Dunmire
2012: 737). If we adopt this definition, in a media context, translation is a means to over-
come linguistic obstacles in the process of ‘communication about politics’. The term
‘communication about politics’, used by media scholar Brian McNair in his work on pol-
itical communication (2018: 4), refers among other things, to communication initiated by
politicians to attain specific political goals, or by non-politicians (e.g. journalists or citizens)
44 DOI: 10.4324/9781003221678-5
to talk about political actors, activities or situations. In both cases, the print and electronic
media play an important role in transmitting political messages (McNair 2018: 33; Gade
et al. 2013). Without translation, however, the media can hardly function efficiently in the
multilingual world of political communication. Indeed, in the context of the globalization
of politics, that is, the ‘displacement of political capacities and responsibilities from the
national and/or regional level to the genuinely global level’ (Hay 2017: 289), political com-
munication across linguistic borders is essential for the propagation of political ideologies,
advancement of political agendas and expansion of knowledge concerning global polit-
ical processes and their local implications. Although translation is often ignored by media
scholars, it is indeed one of the main elements in the media that have enabled political
communication at a global level.
The relationship between politics and translation in the media can be also informed by
a broader definition of politics, that is, all ‘practices of governing’, as discussed by Adrian
Leftwich, a specialist in the politics of economic development (2015: 10). With such a def-
inition, the concept of governing is wider than that of government and refers to norms,
rules and expectations that govern behaviour in the society (ibid.: 9–10). Hence, analysing
the relationship between politics and translation in the media becomes an analysis of
translation policies, namely, the factors that govern translation practices in the process of
media content production.
The present chapter will discuss the links between media translation and politics (in
both senses mentioned above) in multilingual contexts. Among other things, we will dis-
cuss how media translation practices make communication about politics possible in
multilingual settings. We will also argue about translating political information in the
media as a political activity in its own right. Furthermore, we will tackle the question of
translation policies in media institutions, and the factors that have an impact on how such
policies are shaped.
Political communication, multilingualism and media translation

In light of the global context mentioned earlier, we could go as far as saying that trans-
lation plays a key role in establishing political communication. Such a role is first and
foremost observable in the news media, which constitute one of the most important com-
munication channels concerning politics in contemporary society (Falasca 2014: 584).
News media provide a platform for politicians to communicate with their global audiences
and also an opportunity for the public to make their voices heard at an international level.
News media make a substantial part of their content out of information sources avail-
able in a variety of languages, such as foreign-language news media outputs, politicians’
speeches, narratives of eyewitnesses, etc. While this production pattern makes news pro-
duction contexts highly multilingual, news outputs are generally presented in a mono-
lingual form so that they can be consumed in a given linguistic community. The contrast
between multilingual production processes and the resulting monolingual products serves
as a reminder that translation is an essential practice in the news media (on translation in
news media, see Bielsa & Bassnett 2009; Schäffner & Bassnett 2010; Baumann et al. 2011;
Conway 2011; Valdeón 2012; Davier 2017, among others).
The globalization of politics necessarily has an impact on news media and translation.
In fact, this phenomenon does not only reshape the very modes of political communica-
tion, it also gives rise to a hierarchy between languages in which these communications
take place. Indeed, English serves as a lingua franca in many international political
45
organizations. As noted by Melitz (2018: 4), ‘English tends to be at least one of the offi-
cial languages of international political organizations.’ Hence, news media professionals
covering international politics and working in a non-English environment need to be able
to understand English and to translate it. There are even English manuals that help inter-
national journalists to learn the basics of the language (e.g. Gandon & Purdey 2013).
However, this hierarchy between languages brings its share of dissatisfaction, as we saw
in September 2020, when the French section of the Association of European Journalists
reminded the European Union Commission (EC) that its increasing use of English-only
communication gave a competitive advantage to the Anglophone press (Tidey 2020). In
other words, English-language media did not have to translate a large portion of the EC
material, whereas media working with other languages did. With the speed constraints
imposed on the media profession, situations such as this reinforce inequities between
English-language media and other media.
When quoting a politician or an institutional release, news media are also bound
by the translation policies of a given political organization, and the languages spoken
by its leader. Indeed, multilingual institutions issue press releases in many or most of
their official languages, and excerpts of these translations are often found in the press.
Furthermore, these translations sometimes produce an artificial image of the multilingual
institution. For instance, within the European Union (EU) context, if a trilingual Belgian
president of the European Council (EUCO) delivers an important speech in English, it is
likely that an official translation will be available in many of the EU official languages. If
the speech of that Belgian politician is quoted in a French-speaking or Dutch-speaking
Belgian newspaper, the readers will not know in which language the speech was delivered
and they could get the impression that the speech was delivered in their mother tongue,
creating an illusion of proximity. The general idea of illusion in multilingual institutions
has been discussed by Koskinen (2000), and Gagnon (2013) has explored this theme in
printed news translation in Canada. If the print media can introduce illusions in certain
international or national contexts between a multilingual politician and the reader of his
speech, the same cannot be said about a recording of that speech in broadcast media.
Indeed, if the audience hears the politician’s voice, they will know whether the speech they
hear is a translation or not: the journalist’s translation will necessarily overlay the source
text, using, for instance, subtitles or voice-over technique.
Why does it matter if the audience can detect a translation when reading or listening to
a political speech? Because often, translation has a negative image. One example among
many: in 2005, the translation service of the federal government of Canada praised its
services with the statement ‘only you know it’s a translation’ (Translation Bureau 2005),
as if translation represented a flaw that should be hidden. Of course, the at times negative
discourse on translation does not escape politicians. This negative image perhaps helps
to explain why politicians with a poor command of English would rather speak the lan-
guage badly than use professional interpreters–see, for example, French-Quebec Premier
Pauline Marois’ speech in Scotland in 2013 (Lagacé 2013) or Italian Prime Minister
Matteo Renzi’s speech in 2014 (O’Sullivan 2014). Print journalists also seem to place a
negative value on translation. In fact, the work of Lucile Davier (2017: 292) on the press
coverage of a national referendum in Switzerland shows that when faced with a choice of
quotation, some press agency journalists selected the excerpts delivered in the language in
which they were writing, to avoid any transfer operation: non-translation strategies were
hence frequent among press journalists. By avoiding translation, however, these journalists
presented a more uniform image of the ideas conveyed in a given community. Of course,
46
broadcast journalists can also choose to avoid translation, but Kyle Conway’s work on
Canada’s broadcasted news has shown that translation is often used as a tool to maintain
a balanced coverage (2011: 80). However, Conway’s work also demonstrates that trans-
lation is not a neutral tool, and that in his Canadian corpus, the treatment of translated
speech was different from one linguistic community to another: Francophone journalists’
use of subtitles was more frequent than Anglophone journalists, who mainly used sum-
mary translation or voice-over technique (2011: 79). Hence, Anglophone journalists
allowed less access to speakers’ original statements, whereas Francophone journalists
allowed more, with various impacts on the viewers.
So far, we have discussed translation and political communications in news media
contexts, but other contexts are just as relevant. Indeed, translation also plays a role in
establishing political communication through non-news media content. For instance, a
film can communicate messages about various aspects of political systems, the behaviour
of political actors and the needs or demands of different groups of people (Haas et al.
2015). The political message of a film can reach audiences in different linguistic commu-
nities thanks to subtitling or dubbing practices, as two forms of media translation. This
issue has been dealt with by studies on subtitling political films and documentaries. Liang
(2017) has studied the Chinese subtitled version of The Iron Lady, a biographical drama
film that depicts the life of Margaret Thatcher as the first female British Prime Minister.
Liang argues that this film portrayed Margaret Thatcher as an authoritative figure with a
powerful political identity and that this image of a female political leader could support
the nascent trend for female political leadership in China. Indeed, a subtitled film or docu-
mentary may show its viewers everyday lives but it may also transmit political messages
in one way or another.
Translation is also practised by social media users to communicate about politics.
In this regard, let us bring up the example of translation on Twitter, one of the major
social networking services. Since its launch in 2006, Twitter has been increasingly used
for the exchange of political messages among citizens and politicians. As Graham et al.
(2016: 766) argue,
Twitter has quickly become an important online space for political communication
practices because it successfully connects ordinary people to the popular, powerful
and influential. It has been argued that its key features make it a potentially fruitful
space for developing a more direct relationship between politicians and citizens in a
networked environment. (e.g. Bruns & Burgess 2011; Graham et al. 2013)
Indeed, since its beginning, Twitter has offered a platform for political expression at
a global level. Politicians and citizens use Twitter to express their interpretations,
expectations and criticisms of political processes at home or abroad. Since users belong
to different linguistic communities, Twitter is a multilingual sphere of political commu-
nication. Hence, many users need translation either to get their own messages across or
to comprehend messages produced by others. There are several examples of translation
practices to make feasible Twitter-based political communication. According to BBC
journalist Zhaoyin Feng (2019), a group of Chinese political dissidents in the US run @
Trump_Chinese with more than 100,000 followers, among whom are individuals from
within China, who need to use VPNs to have access to Twitter. This Twitter account
contains Chinese translations of Donald Trump’s English tweets in order to spread
Trump’s messages in the Chinese community around the globe, particularly in China.
47
Translation activities of these political dissidents indeed have amplified the US President’s
voice in the Chinese-speaking community, but also have given voice to Chinese citizens
to express their opinions on the US–China political relations and tensions. As Zhaoyin
Feng points out,
@Trump_Chinese has become an outlet for the dissidents and dissatisfied. Every
time Trump criticises China on Twitter, the account gets a particularly large number
of comments and gains thousands of followers. In May [2019], Trump unleashed a
series of tweets, announcing a plan to impose 25% tariffs on $325bn (£267bn) worth
of Chinese goods. Chinese-speaking Twitter users passionately applauded his deci-
sion by commenting under @Trump_Chinese’s related posts. ‘Excellent job! Please be
more forceful!’ ‘Wise and correct decision!’
Another example is Donald Trump’s tweet in Farsi to communicate with people in Iran,
as can be found in a news article by Vincent Barone (2020) from the New York Post. In
January 2020, after the Iranian government claimed responsibility for shooting down a
Ukranian passenger airplane, killing 176 people, many Iranians came to the streets of
Tehran, the capital, to express anger against the government. Soon after the protests
began, the US President tweeted one identical message in English and in Farsi to support
the protesters: ‘I have stood with you since the beginning of my presidency […]. We are
following your protests closely. Your courage is inspiring’. When Trump tweets in Farsi,
while it is highly improbable that he knows the language, translation is involved in the pro-
cess of political communication in one way or another.
So far, our discussion on the links between politics and translation in the media has
shown that translation is a mechanism that facilitates communication about political
actions and practices. In the following section, we describe the behaviour of the individ-
uals who are involved in the process of translating political information in the media as a
political activity.
Media translation as a political activity

The provision of translated political information on the media is a form of polit-
ical action in its own right. When the individuals who work in (or exert influence on)
media companies or those who use the social media decide to translate political infor-
mation, they indeed decide to create awareness about specific political events, ideolo-
gies, norms, corruption or oppression in a target linguistic community. The Chinese
subtitled version of The Iron Lady, the Chinese-language version of Donald Trump’s
Twitter account and Trump’s tweet in Farsi are all outcomes of such decisions. Likewise,
in Radsch (2016), we find examples of Arabic-to-English translation practices in the
blogosphere by Egyptian citizens who want their narratives of political oppression to
be heard beyond the national boundaries of Egypt. The political awareness that trans-
lation practices bring about in the media can lead to change in the political landscape;
it can stimulate politicians to take action and catalyse or even create public pressure on
governments. In some cases, media translation of political information can resemble
translation with an activist component, as portrayed by Tymoczko (2000: 26): a sort
of speech act that can rouse, inspire and mobilize the audience, a means of political
engagement that can be effective in the path to achieve social and political change (on
this issue, see also Baker 2016, 2018).
48
In addition, translation in the media, like other types of translation activities, is a

process that involves making decisions on whether specific linguistic elements of the ori-
ginal information should be foregrounded or backgrounded, made explicit or implicit,
thematized or silenced, included or excluded, etc. (Gambier 2006: 9). As far as translation
of political information is concerned, such linguistic decisions are of political significance
because they can set the ground for particular interpretations of the translated informa-
tion and evoke specific responses on the part of the audience. The political implication of
translational decisions in the media has been discussed in the works of several translation
scholars (e.g. Schäffner 2010; Filmer 2016; Ameri & Khoshsaligheh 2018).
Holland (2006: 244–246), for instance, has examined CNN’s transmission of a speech
by the president of Indonesia with a simultaneous voiceover translation into English.
He argues that the Indonesian archipelago is famously diverse in ethnicities, languages
and religious beliefs. In this context, the choice of the Indonesian word ‘bangsa’ [nation]
by the president conveys a sense of unity to the audience. Yet, by translating ‘bangsa’
[nation] into ‘peoples’, the CNN interpreter places emphasis on the existing diversity in
Indonesia. Besides, Holland argues that, for many Indonesians, the phrase ‘international
community’ represents the US, its allies and multinational organizations, which, from
their point of view, interfere in the internal affairs of less powerful countries. Hence, the
president perhaps deliberately has avoided this phrase in his speech, using ‘teman-teman
di seluruh dunia’ [friends all over the world] instead (back translations by the author). The
Indonesian phrase chosen in the original speech, however, has been translated into ‘inter-
national community’, a linguistic choice that implies the importance of the international
community for the government of Indonesia.
Valdeón (2008) has compared Spanish BBC Mundo news (TT) with the English BBC
World reports (ST). Among the news pairs analysed is the one dealing with the US inva-
sion of Iraq. Whereas the headline of the English text ‘US hands over sovereignty in Iraq’
gives prominence to the role of the US in the country, the Spanish version ‘El poder pasa
a manos iraquíes’ omits the reference to the US and emphasizes the idea of Iraqi sover-
eignty. His research also shows that, in addition to the ideological shift in the headline, ST
references to the involvement of the UK in the conflict are omitted in the TT. Indeed, the
target text mitigates the role of the UK and its support for George Bush’s interventionist
policies, a fact that might have been perceived as imperialistic by the Spanish audience
or Latin-American news users, ‘who have endured a long tradition of interventionism by
their Northern neighbour’ (ibid.: 321).
In the Chinese context, Li (2020) has studied political TV documentary subtitling, a
topic that has only received a little attention in translation studies. One of the two docu-
mentaries in her study is China’s Challenges, with original narration in English and
subtitles in Chinese. The documentary explores how China copes with internal socio-
political issues. Li categorizes the ideological interventions on the part of subtitlers into
‘mitigating negative us’, ‘addition to positive us’, etc. Concerning the former category, her
analysis shows that, for example, when the narration says: ‘But with one ruling Party, how
to involve the people in the process of governance?’, the subtitle reads: ‘But how to involve
the Chinese people in the process of governance?’ (p. 11, back translation from Chinese
into English by the author; emphasis in original). Li’s research provides several examples
in which the subtitles do not convey negative or politically sensitive messages to Chinese
viewers, whereas the original does.
These studies give a concrete account of the political role that individuals may
play through altering political information in the process of media translation. In the
49
introduction to the special issue of the Italian journal Altre Modernità, dedicated to ideo-
logical manipulation in audiovisual translation, Díaz Cintas et al. (2016: III) remind us
that translators, as active agents in the transmission of values and ideas, are a dynamic
force for political evolution. Elsewhere, Díaz Cintas (2012: 285) maintains that the task
of translation scholars is, among other things, to investigate why ideologically motivated
changes in the process of media translation may occur, and for the benefit of whom. In the
following section, we will discuss the factors that can influence the translational behaviour
of individuals in media contexts.
Translation policies in the media

When looking into translational regimes, Reine Meylaerts (2011: 744) has stated that
there can be no language policy without a translation policy. Although her comments
mainly applied to societies or political organizations, it can also be applied broadly to
media institutions. Indeed, in their communication strategies, media necessarily need to
decide in what language(s) they are going to communicate their product, and how they
are going to go about it. To understand these (often unofficial) policies in the media,
translation scholars use a variety of techniques, including looking into the use of trans-
lation in television programmes in a particular country (e.g. Conway 2011; Haddadian-
Moghaddam & Meylarts 2014), on-site interviews with journalists (e.g. Conway 2011;
Bohn 2016; Davier 2017) and analysing the journalistic style guidelines written by certain
media (e.g. Gagnon et al. 2018: 223–225). In this section, we discuss the potential of the
concept of ‘institutional translation’ for describing translation policies in the media from
a theoretical perspective.
The concept of ‘institution’ has first been imported into translation studies by Brian
Mossop (1988, 1990) and elaborated further by Kaisa Koskinen (2008, 2011, 2014) to
describe translation in institutional settings. It is perhaps no accident that these two
pioneers on the question of institutional translation both came from officially bilingual
countries, where translation is more institutionalized than in most other countries. Mossop
and Koskinen knew firsthand that institutionally ingrained translation practices call for
investigation. Institutions can be understood as concrete (or formal) entities, such as asso-
ciations, government agencies, companies, etc. or as abstract (or informal) entities, such
as unwritten rules, social conventions, religion, etc. (Koskinen 2011; Leftwich 2015). The
institutions that Mossop and Koskinen have in mind are mostly concrete institutions, in
which a set of rules and instructions largely govern individual activities. The main tenet of
an institutional approach to the study of translation is that when translation is practised
in institutional settings, the ‘voice that is to be heard is that of the translating institution’
(Koskinen 2008: 22). Indeed, an institutional approach is concerned with the impact of
organizational, structural and ideological characteristics of a translating institution on
the process of translation (Kang 2009).
As an example of translation practices that are to a great extent institutionalized,
Mossop (1990: 343) refers to translation in newspapers and argues that decisions made
by translators in such cases are largely predetermined by the goals of the institution they
work for. This institutional view towards translation in professional journalism has been
also held by other researchers (e.g. Pan 2014). Kang (2007: 222) argues that ‘news trans-
lation at a media company may be subject to conditions and processes similar to those
described in accounts of other forms of institutional translation’. Also, there are sev-
eral studies that shed light on the institutional nature of translation in the news media,
50
although the authors do not use the concept of ‘institutional translation’ (e.g. Gagnon
et al. 2018; Chen 2011). For instance, Hajmohammadi (2005: 222) argues that the style
guide and internal policies of the Iranian news agency IRIB prohibit the choice of certain
words, expressions and structures in the process of news translation.
The constraining impact of institutional factors on translation practices in the media
has been also discussed in some of the studies on subtitling and interpreting on television.
For example, in search of the norms that govern the process of subtitling films and televi-
sion programmes in Swedish Sveriges TV, Pedersen (2011) refers to subtitling guidelines
in this public service broadcaster, since, according to him, these guidelines impose cer-
tain amount of control over the behaviour of practitioners. Also, in a study dealing with
ideologies influencing TV interpreting, Katan & Straniero-Sergio (2014) discuss the live
broadcast of Bill Clinton’s hearing in 1988 on the Italian television channel RAI 2 (the
US President was accused of having intercourse with the White House intern Monica
Lewinski). According to the authors, before the live broadcast, the news editor had asked
that, if Clinton were to speak explicitly about the details of the affair, the interpreters say
the following words instead: ‘the President is giving personal details about his affair with
Monica Lewinski’ (2014: 140–141).
In general, the process of content production in the media is generally subject to insti-
tutional constraints. As media scholars Branston & Stafford (2003: 183) point out, institu-
tional constraints in the media determine, among other things, how the production team
should work together and how they should be trained to think about quality, profession-
alism and audience. In this respect, translation practices, as part of the overall media
content production process, are often largely controlled by translation policies of media
institutions.
Media language policies in general and translation policies in particular are impacted
by a number of factors, including the scale of the media (local or global), the socio-
political context(s) in which the media function (e.g. democracies vs dictatorships, multi-
lingual supra- national organizations vs. monolingual national organization) or the
media’s financial resources (e.g. political organizations, non-profit organizations, activist
groups). Indeed, a newspaper from an officially monolingual English-speaking country
may not have the same policy about the use of languages and translation as, say, a news-
paper from a minority group in an officially multilingual country. Furthermore, media
institutions do not exist in isolation from other institutions in a socio-political con-
text. Hence, various aspects of content production in the media, including translation
practices, may be influenced by some of the powerful social institutions, among which are
the political ones. Leftwitch (2015: 11) describes how political institutions can influence
the workings of other institutions. He argues that, for example, a market, as an institution
that shapes how people exchange things, ‘may be governed by formal rules and regulations
which are not devised by the participants in the market but imposed by legislation, such
as laws governing […] working conditions or minimum wages’ (ibid.). Using this example,
Leftwitch (2015) shows that the influence of political institutions on non-political ones is
significant in shaping the patterns of governance in the latter.
Along a similar line of thought, Kalantari (2019) argues that political institutions may
exert influence on the news media, a fact that is important for the understanding of trans-
lation policies in the process of news production. He explains that a news medium may
be ideologically dependent on political institutions and, thus, may function based on edi-
torial policies which have been formulated accordingly. In such cases, ideological factors
that govern journalistic translation practices often originate from outside of the media
51
institution. He presents the example of some of the Iranian news media, such as ISNA
(Iranian students’ News Agency), which declare, in their ‘About us’ pages, commitment to
dominant political values in the Iranian political system. Kalantari (2019) argues that in
a country like Iran, where the freedom of the media in general falls below a critical point,
the news media often advocate norms and ideologies of leading politicians. This is an
imposed mission partly reflected in journalistic translation practices, which often involve
manipulating the political information sources that challenge national political norms
and ideologies.
Evidence of the impact of political institutions on media translation activities is also
found in some of the studies dealing with film translation. For example, Wang & Zhang
(2016: 2–3) argue that the Chinese Communist Party exercises an ideological control
over the translation of films and TV programmes through an intricate system of cen-
sorship taking place before, during and after each production. As a result, linguistic
elements that challenge communism or Chinese culture are toned down or eliminated in
translation (ibid.). From a historical angle, Mereu (2012) has studied the political inter-
ference in film translation by the Italian film commissions between 1927 and 1943. She
argues that during the fascist period in Italy, the regime had officially established a film
censorship system, which urged modifying films in order to suit its political and eco-
nomic agendas (2012: 296). In the case of foreign films, a control was exercised on which
films were imported, as well as on translation practices, to ensure the acceptability of
contents to the fascist ideology. According to Gutiérrez Lanza (1997), a much similar
official control on film translation was exercised in Spain during the dictatorship period
(1939–1975), a time when official guidelines conditioned the performance of translators
in order to prevent the dissemination of information contrary to the interests of the
government.
Undoubtedly, the way the media function is, and has always been, important for
political institutions, since the media often have the power to influence the minds and
behaviour of individuals. Communication scholar Art Silverblatt (2004: 36–40) draws
an analogy between the roles played by the media and institutions such as church and
school in society. The common functions he refers to include, for instance, presenting
information on past, present and future, providing access to groups and offering an
opportunity to exchange ideas. Silverblatt (2004: 40) makes this analogy to highlight the
power of the media and to argue that in countries operating on a state-run media own-
ership model, such as Iran and China, governments recognize the power of the media
and use it to support and advance their political agendas. State-owned media content
is, therefore, ‘prescriptive, telling its audience what to think and how to act’ (ibid.).
This is a characteristic that does not often apply to the media in countries that have a
private media ownership model (ibid.). What this implies for research into media trans-
lation policies is that an unequal weight should be given to ‘institutional’ factors and
‘extra-institutional’ ones, depending on the socio-political context in which the media
in question function.
The pertinence of an institutional approach when studying translation policies in
media institutions was discussed in this section. While the institutional framework brings
a unique and relevant perspective to the analysis of political translation in the media, it is
not without shortcomings, particularly with respect to the factors governing the produc-
tion of translation in social media. Indeed, when understanding institutions as ‘concrete’
entities, some of the specifics of social media are not accounted for. Let us remember that
Koskinen’s (2008: 22) definition of institutional translation includes cases in which ‘an
52
individual person acting in an official status uses translation as a means of ‘speaking’ to a

particular audience’. For instance, it is in many ways difficult to consider Donald Trump’s
tweet in Farsi as an instance of institutional translation, because during his presidency,
some of his tweet messages did not necessarily reflect the policies of his government. Such
an example shows the fuzziness of institutional boundaries. In a similar vein, it could be
said that Chinese political dissidents or Egyptian citizens’ translation activities do not
represent the acts of a ‘concrete institution’. Here, the concept of an ‘abstract institution’
would perhaps be more suited for an analysis of political translation in the media, but
research on the subject is scarce in translation studies.
Concluding remarks
This chapter has explored the relationship between politics and media translation in
multilingual contexts. Translation plays a central role in the production and dissemination
of political communications. In particular, translation practices in the media are of stra-
tegic significance for bridging the linguistic gap between senders and receivers of political
messages. Indeed, translation is used in media institutions to transfer political information
through both news and non-news media contents. As we have also seen in this chapter,
translation is being increasingly practiced beyond the boundaries of the traditional media
to provide political information in another language.
But this chapter also shows that the role of media translation goes beyond informa-
tion transfer. Indeed, we have seen that media translation involves political issues, and
may actually be considered itself as a political activity. For example, with the globaliza-
tion of politics, English-language media, which have less need for translation than other
languages, have an advantage over non-English media, which creates a hierarchy. In add-
ition, translation can literally transform a political landscape and bring about social and
political change, and in those situations, translators can become a force for change. Since
politics is closely related to the issue of policy, we have also explored policies related to
media translation from an institutional perspective. Whether formal or informal, trans-
lation policies impact the practices of media institutions. In some cases, when a country
faces restrictions on press freedom, these policies can lead journalists to manipulate cer-
tain information through translation.
The chapter presented here has taken into account the main questions pertaining to
politics and media translation in translation studies. However, this is a relatively new
sector of study, and much remains to be done. An interesting line of research in this area
would be to examine the growing use of machine translation in social networks such as
Facebook (Savage 2018), and its political and ethical implications. This type of question
is particularly relevant when we know that artificial intelligence is set to transform trans-
lation, but perhaps also journalism in the near future (GPT-3 2020).
Further reading
• Baker, M. (2013) ‘Translation as an alternative space for political action’, Social
Movement Studies, 12(1), pp. 23–47.
An examination of the linguistic behavior of activist groups of translators and interpreters

as part of their political agenda.
53
• Pérez-González, L. (2016) ‘The politics of affect in activist amateur subtitling: a

biopolitical perspective’, in Baker, M. & Blaagaard, B. B. (eds),Citizen Media and Public
Spaces: Diverse Expressions of Citizenship and Dissent. London and New York: Routledge,
pp. 118–135.
A case study on subtitling as a form of political intervention in public life.
• Conway, K. (2011) Everyone Says No: Public Service Broadcasting and the Failure of
Translation. Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press.
An excellent analysis of the role of translation in Canadian public television, pertaining

to specific political events in Canada.
• Schäffner, C. (2010) ‘Political communication: mediated by translation’, in Okulska,

U. & Cap, P. (eds), Perspectives in Politics and Discourse. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John
Benjamins, pp. 255–278.
An analysis of the role of media translation in the processes of political communication.
• Valdeón, R. A. (2020) ‘Gatekeeping, ideological affinity and journalistic translation’,

Journalism. doi:10.1177/1464884920917296.
An exploration of the constraining impact of political ideology on journalistic translation

practices.
References
Ameri, S. & Khoshsaligheh, M. (2018) ‘Voice-over translation of news programs on television: evi-
dence from Iran’, Hikma, 17, pp. 9–32.
Baker, M. (2006) Translation and Conflict: A Narrative Account. London and New York:
Routledge.
Baker, M. (2016) ‘The prefigurative politics of translation in place-based movements of protest: sub-
titling in the Egyptian revolution’, The Translator, 22(1), pp. 1–21.
Baker, M. (2018) ‘Audiovisual translation and activism’, in Pérez-González, L. (ed.), The Routledge
Handbook of Audiovisual Translation. London and New York: Routledge, pp. 453–467.
Barone, V. (2020) ‘Trump tweets support of Iranian protesters in Farsi’, New York Post, 12 January.
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4
The global, the foreign
and the domestic
Was there a ‘global turn’ in journalism
in the early 21st century?
Miki Tanikawa
Introduction
This chapter will introduce the debate within journalism studies on the globalization of
journalism, the nature of foreign news and processes of domestication of news. In so
doing, it will describe how in reality, the ‘foreign/global’ is often reported by accentuating
the well-known dimensions of the foreign cultures/societies while the cultural referents
arising from the readership country are inserted to promote easy reader comprehension,
familiarity and favourable social identity. ‘Global’ news narratives, so often touted by
globalization theorists, it is argued, are found to be a weak manifestation of news values,
designed mainly to satiate reader interest for a superficial understanding of the ‘global’.
The cultural slant arising from ingroup favouritism and outgroup derogation (Tajfel &
Turner 1986) is further evidence that news is not meant to elevate readers to a cosmopol-
itan height (Tanikawa 2019).
The globalization of socio-economic reality in certain dimensions of our lives is undeni-
able and we shall interrogate and diagnose the ‘global’ presuppositions of international
journalism among some scholarship. A close analytical observation of contemporary
media practices that is attentive to the motivation of the journalists/news organizations
in times of great economic challenge and distress (Pew Research 2020), combined with
empirical scholarship in our field, can shed light on how the ‘global’ angle has come to
gain currency within academic circles.
As an approach to operationalize the news slants in the cultural/linguistic realm, we will
briefly review the concepts, ‘culture peg’ and ‘culture link’ with reference to stereotyping
and news ‘domestication’, both indicating strong media propensity towards upholding
particularistic national-cultural prisms. We will examine how these journalistic writing
strategies have accelerated in leading Anglo-American news media such as The New York
Times, and The Guardian in the past decades, as well as in the leading Japanese daily, Asahi
Shimbun.
58 DOI: 10.4324/9781003221678-6
The global, the foreign and the domestic
One crucial piece of the puzzle is comprehending the logic of how the ‘domestic’
and the ‘national’ views/ideology fare prominently in newsmakers’ mindset in creating
ready-made, easy to consume, yet intuitively meaningful content to capture and retain the
audience at a time news organizations are facing the severest of competitions and unpre-
cedented technological challenges.
The ‘meaning’-orientation based on the worldviews of the audience, is among the most
dominant logic –and a crucial connivance –that drives news coverage by journalists who
are eager to appeal to the visceral sense of the mainstream core media consumers vital for
their survival, as will be elaborated in detail below. Inward and introspective tendencies
of the news media will probably continue and trump any superficial manifestation of the
‘global’ and the cosmopolitan sensibilities the idealists may portend in the globalizing
media coverage (Robertson 2010).
The rise of the ‘global’ perspective in the media and journalism

Following the emergence of globalization as the new paradigm for international commu-
nication (Sparks 2007; Straubhaar 1991) late in the last century, the study of international
media and journalism has spawned a slew of related sub-genres of study. Among them
is ‘global journalism’. Global journalism, on the one hand, refers generally to the study
of journalism as it is practised internationally and cross-culturally and may include com-
parative studies of journalism (Löffelholz & Weaver 2008; Obijiofor & Hanusch 2019).
In this broader rendering of the term, it is, for instance, a popular book title. Under
such heading, a comprehensive book about international journalism might touch upon
emergent ethical challenges regarding how citizen journalists in the Middle East face
constraints in exercising their freedom of expression in the Twitter space (Löffelholz&
Weaver 2008), for instance.
Some scholars have converged on ‘global journalism’ as a more specific formulation; it
is a news writing approach with a global outlook on the happenings of the world (Berglez
2008; Cottle 2009), a brainchild of the globalization phenomenon of the social world at
large. The concept is a meeting point of several strands of theories, ideas, and thought
currents but its central tenet tends to be optimistic, even praiseworthy, of the media
practices for breaking new grounds by foregrounding the ‘global’ in the production of
international news. As a new approach to categorizing news, it was a departure from the
hitherto overly dichotomous binary division between ‘domestic’ and ‘foreign’ news. The
global style of journalism is billed as reflecting and mediating the social reality in which
the world is going global.
Their analyses include identifying and viewing international journalism as conducted
by major English-language outlets (in some instances, non-English media) as exhibiting a
global perspective on the developments of the world, linking the common, civic, ground-
level views of the ordinary citizens, who have experienced, for instance, flooding in their
neighbourhoods stemming from sea-level rises in various geographic locations on the
planet. It is the kind of journalistic practice which: ‘makes it into an everyday routine
to investigate how people and their actions, practices, problems, life conditions etc. in
different parts of the world are interrelated’ (Berglez 2007: 151). It presents and represents
the citizen-centric outlook as constituent of a global consciousness that is ultimately
connected to the humanistic sense of belonging to a community beyond one’s own. This
strand of thinking was conceptually contiguous with the notion of global civil society,
59
Miki Tanikawa
and the intellectual movement thereof, emergent in the 1990s –following the end of the
Cold War –which envisions a common world framework for participation by global citi-
zens, especially in the non-governmental sphere.
This perception –that the world is today awash in news that transcends state borders –
emanates from the fact that liberal Anglo-American news sources such as The Guardian
and The New York Times, as well as television/cable networks including CNN and BBC
produced abundant coverage of international topics such as climate change, wars and
terror, immigration and border-crossings, drugs and trafficking, and pandemics, which all
have global and transnational ramifications. Asahi Shimbun, a leading Japanese daily with
millions of subscribers, displays similar news style and coverage with 29 foreign bureaus
outside Japan including in Johannesburg and Sao Paulo, one of the most extensive news
networks in the world.
This newfound media environment speaks to an increasingly interconnected world
and to the central position of the news media in the public constitution of global issues
(Cottle 2011: 78). In their process of wider signification, cultural integration and signifi-
cance, the world-wide news distribution has come to contribute to and constitute our
‘global consciousness’, these theorists argue. ‘We live in a world that has become radically
interconnected, interdependent and communicated in the complex formations and flows
of news journalism’, said Cottle (2009: 309).
In conceptualizing these news practices as global journalism, these scholars have turned
a critical gaze towards the status quo of pre-existing journalism scholarship. The conven-
tional understanding of international reporting –covering events outside of the domestic
space –needs rethinking. The borders of the nation-state have become porous, giving way
to the sweeping forces of economic, technological and cultural globalization, rendering
the general ‘domestic’ versus ‘foreign’ dichotomy in framing and categorizing news and
the attendant reality less meaningful. Yet, traditional news media and journalism studies
continue ‘to reduce news content to either domestic or foreign news’ argued Peter Berglez
(2008: 845), one of the leading authors of the concept. This critique parallels the gen-
eral movement in the social sciences away from the nation-centric framework of reference
(Beck 2005). Scholarship that does not embrace this view –that journalism has become
oriented towards the ‘global’ is exhorted to overcome their ‘methodological nationalism’
(Beck 2007: 286).
Global journalism was advanced not only as conceptualization of a news category but
it is forcefully argued as pertaining to a particular (newly emerging) epistemology defined
as the ‘global outlook’, Berglez (2008) argues in a counterpoint to the ‘national’ outlook.
The national outlook puts the nation-state at the centre of things when framing social
reality. The global outlook instead seeks to understand and explain how economic, polit-
ical, social and ecological practices, processes and problems in different parts of the world
are interlocked. ‘News information with a global outlook establishes knowledge of how
our lives in Copenhagen, Cairo, Brisbane and Mexico City are intertwined, causally and
dialectically speaking’ (Berglez 2008: 847). This epistemology is thus a newfound attitude
or system of knowledge acquired by the journalists (Berglez, 2008) –their ability to look
at the world beyond the existing framework of reference and to perceive and to interact
with the new, emerging social reality.
At this juncture, it is not surprising that many journalism and media scholars were
pleased to find a thread of argument within their field that paralleled those in related
but bigger disciplines such as sociology, political science and economics (Giddens 2003;
Scholte 2005). Such thinking –to place journalism in the context of globalization –was
60
even the duty of journalism scholars. Yet, it was a natural progression given that, since
the 1990s, progressive theories of politics and international relations have sought to find
alternative understandings of political practice and legitimacy and, crucially, a new way
to define political space and citizenship that encapsulates the ‘global turn’ (Chandler,
2009), thus leading scholars in sociology and international affairs to allude to the premise
that national/global media can play an important role in the creation of a cosmopolitan
imagination (Robertson 2010).
Media and journalism scholars began to dig in along similar lines. In the era of glo-
balization, social scientists must think beyond the existing levels of analysis, such as local,
state and international and consider the ‘global’ dimension, said Stephen Reese (2008) a
prominent media sociologist. Thus, actively considering the ‘global’ is a challenge for the
discipline. He stated:
The ‘global’ level is interpenetrating, spanning and connecting these other levels in
important new ways. A deterritorialized journalism transcends national boundaries,
and yet the ‘nation’ has been a fundamental conceptual category in the social sciences,
defining comparable units of analysis and fixing them as predefined containers for
our phenomena of interest.
(Reese 2008: 240)
The national comparative studies, he additionally argued, have been useful, but this
national container still leaves crucial social space unaccounted for. Transnational owner-
ship, non-national technological reach, extra-national diasporic communities, and supra-
national governmental forms have weakened the connection between journalism and
its traditional nation-state base, leading to increasingly global logics within journalism
(Reese 2008: 240).
Working from this conceptual, sociological plane of understanding, their analytical
approach, insights and projections appear to stand on firm grounds. As we shall see, how-
ever, when it is formulated as a specific journalistic practice (i.e. media content) and an
assessment of the epistemology of the journalists, it runs aground empirically.
Scepticism towards global journalism

Before even global journalism was theoretically advanced, many media scholars and
analysts have often asserted that the news media are a hindrance to the understanding
of the world of diverse cultures, religions, ethnicity and political systems. (Since Walter
Lippmann’s Public Opinion in 1922, there perhaps was never a time when media analysts
thought otherwise.) News organizations have a particular target audience geo-politically
and geo-culturally, and thus certain (national) cultural inclinations. The commercial
driver, which is only accelerating because of competition, changing technology, and finan-
cial struggles (Bagdikian 2004; Pew Research 2020; Weldon 2008), adds to this media pro-
pensity to work towards easily comprehensive frames of reference as a content strategy
(Fürsich 2010; Riergert 2011). It is likely that this inclination is stronger today in inter-
national reporting, as foreign news volume in the leading press has fallen (Riffe, Kim &
Sobel 2018), raising the likelihood that readers require greater contextualization (or rather
‘decontextualization’ from the plain facts on the ground) and cultural cues so their intui-
tive understanding is enhanced.
61
Miki Tanikawa
Journalists will turn information about complex matters occurring outside their daily,
lived spheres into simple cultural narratives or ‘stereotyped news stories’, so their readers
can easily grasp, swallow and digest. During the Cold War era, Bennett & Edelman (1985)
stated (in the context of American news about communism and the Soviet Union);
Recurring and stereotypical narrative accounts in the mass media can elicit powerful
responses of belief or disbelief in distant audiences without bringing those audiences
any closer to practical solutions for the problems that occasioned the stories in the
first place.
(1985: 156)
Drawing on this fundamental criticism and scepticism, international media scholars

have repeatedly voiced their criticism of news practices depicting the worlds outside their
own as the Other through repeated application of stereotypes and self-centred national
discourses.
Edward Said, the noted author of Orientalism (1978), has extensively discussed the
modern Western media as (re)producing the narrative of otherness, in a historical echo
of the colonial discourse of Western literary writings. In the 1997 edition of his book
Covering Islam, reflecting on the intervening 15 years since the first edition appeared in
1981, Said argued there had been intense focus on Islam in the American/Western media,
‘most of it characterized by a more highly exaggerated stereotyping and belligerent hos-
tility than what I had previously described in my book’ (1997: xi).
More recently and in the 21st century, newly arising geopolitical challenges have led
to new and prominent instances of (Anglo-American) media portrayal of otherness and
misrepresentations. Scholars examining the Western portrayal of Islam in particular
(Hafez 2007, 2011; Shaw 2012) have renewed their criticism of media coverage in the
early 21st century. Wars in Iraq in the early 1990s and the early 2000s and the events of
9/11 further amplified the tone and volume of the discourse and perceptions of Islam
as anti-democratic and as a menace to the West (Ahmed 2012; Ahmed & Matthes 2017)
which had persisted almost uninterrupted since the late 1970s (Esposito 1995; Said 1997).
‘Islamophobia’ well captures how the news media played a crucial role in disseminating
the (mis)understanding and (mis)perception that drove a wedge between the Islamic world
and the rest, with the implication of a ‘clash of civilizations’ (Kumar 2010).
Known misrepresentations of other cultures and civilizations by Western media
remained pervasive for other parts of the world too. Telling is the lingering ‘coups and
quakes syndrome’ in which the world turns its attention to Africa when a war, mass killing
or a devastating natural disaster hit the continent (Carruthers 2004; McPhail 2010). It is
as if such class of events mainly characterize what happens in much of Africa, contrib-
uting to the notion that Africa is a ‘dark continent’ where savagery, tribalism and ethnic
violence run afoul and is in desperate need of merciful Western aid and relief.
As the world well remembers such discrepancy in news coverage –human tragedies
being the main trigger for news reporting in the global South by the influential Western
media in the North while the West is characterized by a diversity of topical coverage and
human conditions –was extensively addressed on the world stage in the 1970s–1980s at
the UNESCO panel dubbed the McBride Commission, within the so-called framework of
New World Information and Communication Order (NWICO). The NWICO movement
was part of the broader effort to close the information gap between the global North and
the South but their goals never materialized.
62
One of the foremost critics, Hafez (2007: 25) argues that international reporting by the
influential media is far from embracing a global perspective, ‘The content of international
reporting is however often moulded by national viewpoints and stereotypes, that is, by
particularistic rather than global perspectives’ (2007: 26).
Some ‘upstream’ studies (newsroom studies) probing the journalists’ motivations for
news-making are revelatory (Baysha & Calabrese 2014; Clausen 2004; Dencik 2013).
Dencik (2013) and Clausen’s (2004) in-depth interviews conducted with TV producers at
the BBC and Japanese TV networks respectively demonstrate the influential broadcasters’
resistance to identifying with the global community. Rather, it is the state-driven, nation-
centric logic that persists in the process of news selection and news creation, trumping
the ‘global’ impulses and the agendas thereof, even as they initiate coverage of what they
term ‘global’ and ‘international’ news (global news for the British, international news for
the Japanese).
Dencik’s interviews with the BBC news staff showed that the public broadcaster’s
coverage of the war in Afghanistan and Pakistan, for instance, was motivated by UK’s
direct involvement in the conflict. Further, the hotspot coverage was connected to the
country’s historic colonial legacy in the region. At editorial meetings at NHK, the
Japanese public television, Clausen (2004) reports there was a continuous demand on
foreign news producers to justify the relevance of their news items in terms of viewer-
ship appeal (to the Japanese viewers). Dencik (2013) concludes: ‘developments in news
practices do not necessarily lead to new and challenging communicative contexts in
our understanding of the world, but rather may entrench and reinforce existing power
relations’ (2013: 119).
Bebawi & Evans (2019) in their study of foreign news and foreign correspondents have
articulated a similar point: foreign correspondents ‘are trained to focus on their audience
in the construction of the media message rather than focus on relaying what is happening
on the ground’, adding that it is not as if reporters are misleading the audiences but
‘rather that they are trained to tailor news discourses to appeal to their national audiences’
(2019: 52).
Biltereyst (2001) argued that local/national journalism runs strong amid the current
towards globalization, referring to widespread ‘domestication’, a journalistic approach to
cast international events occurring in far-away places in easily comprehensible national
frameworks. Such a common journalistic approach has been noted as a curious phe-
nomenon in the age of globalization due to its decidedly inward cultural orientations
(Alasuutari, Qadir & Creutz 2013; Clausen 2004) (see the later section on domestication
and ‘the culture link’ technique).
The media’s ability to understand and engage proactively with various ‘others’ –rather
than framing others to fit their pre-existing understanding and self-serving narratives –has
poor records, despite what might seem a changing global milieu towards greater social,
economic and cultural integration of the world (which is a reality to a large extent in the
21st century).
From a ‘global media ethics’ standpoint, the study of which has only accelerated in the
present century, mis-representation of others, especially a deep and systematic one, would
be a serious mistake as it could generate estrangement, demean other cultures and, worse,
spark wars and support unjust social structures (Ward 2010, 2011). This chimes in with
the seemingly paradoxical conclusion that ‘The era of so-called globalization therefore is,
in fact, not a time of increasing foreign news coverage in the mainstream media’ (Hafez
2011: 485). My own studies (Tanikawa 2018a, 2019) have confirmed this dilemma.
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Probing the enactment of stereotyping and domestication techniques

Given these polarizing scholarly positions, in 2015 to 2016 I set out to investigate empir-
ically to what extent leading world newspapers such as The New York Times and The
Guardian and a major Japanese daily, Asahi Shimbun, withfive million subscribers, have
engaged nationally oriented journalistic techniques in their news text over the past 30 years.
The literature generally critical of global journalism indicated that cultural/national
stereotyping (Hafez 2007, 2011; Said 1997) and domestication of news (Gurevitch
et al. 1991; Hannerz 1996) are the hallmarks of the culturally biased/state-centric media
representation of foreign cultures/societies upheld by influential news organizations.
Through my previous studies, I had operationalized the (national) stereotypical themes
and stereotypical expressions as the ‘culture peg’ at the story-level (theme of the article)
and word-level (words and expressions), respectively. The culture pegs observed in the
media are, among other kinds, such ‘objects’ as chocolate for Belgium, kangaroo for
Australia, vodka for Russia, flamenco and/or Andalusia for Spain, and favela for Brazil.
These objects often constitute the main theme of articles –inclusion of these motifs spawn
resonance for the readers as the journalist attempts to play off readers’ pre-conceived
notion of the foreign country/culture the journalists are reporting from.
If the article pivots around such objects/concepts, it constitutes a ‘story-level’ cul-
ture peg. The culture peg occurs at the ‘word-level’ if journalists insert such stereotypical
words and expressions as ‘kangaroos’, ‘vodka’, and ‘flamenco’ and ‘Andalusia’ in the con-
text of an Australian, Russian or Spanish article in which the main topic may not revolve
around those concepts but nevertheless works to plug readers perceptually to the target
culture. Journalists sprinkle the text with as many such stereotypical concepts associated
with the target culture when constituting the text of the article (see Tanikawa 2016, 2018a
for more). In an article about flamenco, for example, the reporter will fit in words such
as ‘Andalusia’, ‘gypsies’ and ‘bullfighting’ wherever she/he can in the text to boost the
readers’ feeling that they are reading about Spain.
Domestic cultural referents (domestication), on the other, were operationalized as the
‘culture link’ (Tanikawa 2016). Media articles often insert cultural objects from the home
(readership) country/culture to add familiarity and to strengthen the cultural connection
with the national audience (essentially similar to the aforementioned ‘domestication’)
where otherwise there would be much perceptual distance with the target foreign country/
culture. For instance, a New York Times reporter in Moscow may publish a story fea-
turing an American entrepreneur who built up a successful business in Russia. This would
exemplify a ‘story-level’ culture link. This can occur at the level of specific vocabulary if,
for instance, in the example of a Russian story in The New York Times, certain American
objects are mentioned in passing such as a ‘Starbucks’ store on the street of Moscow or an
American professor summoned to provide comments in regards to the story for analysis
and context.
In the content analysis investigating the frequency of appearance of such stereotypical
words/expressions (the culture peg) and the home cultural referents (culture link), a sub-
stantial growth was observed between 1985 and 2014, quadrupling on a per article basis
in The New York Times (Tanikawa 2017b, 2018b). High levels of growth were similarly
observed in The Guardian and Asahi for the culture peg: word pegs increased more than
two-fold in The Guardian and approximately 60% in Asahi Shimbun in the near 30-year
period. Similarly, for the culture link, substantial per article increase was recorded in The
64
New York Times and Asahi over the defined period. Due partly to the fact that sample
sizes were limited, growth in the use of the culture peg and culture link at the ‘story-level’
were rather inconsistent in the three-decade period.
Meanwhile, I found in another quantitative study that articles that employed the story-
level culture peg portrayed the ‘foreign’ countries about which the stereotype was mostly
negatively (Tanikawa 2019), while articles that employed the culture link tended to portray
the home society about which the culture link was in a positive, uplifting fashion. Both
tendencies were statistically significant. This trend overall dovetailed with the premise of
the social identity theory (Tajfel & Turner 1986), which states that individuals are drawn
to positive depictions of the groups to which they belong. By the same token, they are
gravitated to rather unfavourable portrayal of the out-group which they do not identify
with. Undoubtedly, journalists tweaked the content in such a way as to please readers and
to add ‘meaning’ to articles that otherwise appeared like an innocent coverage of a foreign
culture and society.
Thus, stereotyping of foreign cultures often entails negative description while domes-
tication implies portraying one’s own culture in a positive light. Indeed, ‘Media content
is distorted whenever international reporting more strongly reflects the national interests
and cultural stereotype of the reporting country than the news reality of the country
being reported about’ (Hafez 2007: 25).
The culture peg as connected to culture link

Through the following illustrations, I delineate how the above mentioned ‘culture peg’ and
‘culture link’ techniques intersect to create favourable (and unfavourable) social identities
for the readers about their own (and foreign) cultures drawing partly on samples from my
study (Tanikawa 2019).
In a typical soft but lengthy feature, The New York Times (15 May2016) ran an article
about the 500th anniversary of the German beer law that regulates the ‘purity’ of the
alcohol and some presumably growing local voices for the need to adjust the rule after five
centuries. (‘Beer’ in this case was the culture peg, or stereotype, about Germany.) The art-
icle revolves around an object that most American audience can associate with regarding
Germany, yet it depicts the local culture as stubbornly clinging to centuries-old rules and
tradition. The article then swerves to a US based entrepreneur who successfully brews and
sells his own branded beer in California, attempting to break into the German market to
breath fresh air into what appears to be a staid market by introducing the ‘American style’.
(The American entrepreneur is the ‘culture link’.) ‘Word-level’ culture pegs woven into
the text of this article included ‘Bavaria’, ‘dukes’ and ‘Chancellor Angela Merkel’. The
tone of the depiction of the local German culture is decidedly condescending while the
American businessman is portrayed as upbeat, brave and even heroic.
Similarly, an article on the Chinese president Xi Jinpin’s frequent invocation of ‘Chinese
classics’ (which is the culture peg) featured how he often cited the words of Confucius
and Mencius for wisdom in governing (The New York Times, 12 October 2014). It then
described how the Chinese president’s idea of the rule of law was different from Western
liberal concepts because it is not designed to circumscribe his power, thus comparing the
Chinese idea of rule of law with the West’s only in unfavourable terms.
Comparing one’s society favourably against others was a consistent pattern in the
Japanese press as well. An Asahi Shimbun article reported on the soaring levels of Chinese
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Miki Tanikawa
pollution (12 October 2014), which is a stereotype about big Chinese cities. Yet it contained
a crucial reference to Japan by noting how in Beijing on a particular day, the pollution
reading was four times the pan-Chinese pollution standards and nine times the criteria for
Japan, implying cleaner air conditions in Japan.
A similar style of reporting was in a feature article (Asahi Shimbun, 14 October
2014) about the ‘slums’ in Rio de Janeiro and the popular tours for holidaymakers in
anticipation of the 2016 Olympics in Rio. This story then quickly pivoted to describing the
growing popularity of Japanese restaurants which have popped up over the years in Rio.
Consistent with the principle of ingroup favouritism and outgroup derogation, a nega-
tive, staid (overly tradition-bound) or unfortunate circumstance in the foreign country
using the culture peg is often set against a positive portrayal of one’s own country/cul-
ture using the culture link, perhaps serving as an opportunity to showcase the super-
iority of one’s culture by way of a comparison. While taking many possible forms, the
‘meaning-creation’ which journalists work to craft in their stories, often occur by subtly
weaving in ingroup favouritism and outgroup derogation, which silently ‘triggers nods’ in
the audience.
A thread in the preceding discussions reveals a crucial journalistic tendency central
to content creation: journalists strive to produce relevance, meaning and identification
for readers, all crafted in an easy-to-grasp, ready to digest format –rather than attempt
to educate or enlighten the audience, especially in areas of complexity that stand outside
the province of people’s ordinary understanding (such as Islam for Westerners). Even the
most informed audience tends to hold this general reader attitude as they turn to news to
learn, not in their areas of expertise but beyond –a US economist, for instance, has as little
clue as to the workings of the Islamic religion as any ordinary reader and will cognitively
process information like a casual reader. Journalistic coverage will be highly selective and
arbitrary based on comprehension rather than sheer significance. Unsurprisingly, jour-
nalistic representations of the reality of politics, society and culture, especially of faraway
countries, ‘remain fragmented and often highly distorted’ (Hafez 2011: 483). I shall return
to these points later for more elaboration.
‘Global journalism’ explained. What led scholars to believe

in the global ‘turn’?
When did theorists of global journalism see a new kind of journalism appearing on the
horizon? What did they see in the news text that was different from news-reporting of the
previous era? Aside from the academic milieu described above, in which progression of
the globalization debate within the social sciences prompted media researchers to join the
scholarly bandwagon, it is useful to ponder what might have contributed to their percep-
tion of change in a more empirical, observational sense that the news style of international
reporting has come to embrace a global outlook such that it represented a departure from
the previous norm.
One plausible explanation is that globally-occurring phenomena such as market-driven
financial crises and environmental catastrophes affecting ordinary citizens in different
world locations were being reported as they occurred. It may be a simple case of scholars
observing media’s perceiving and portraying certain events that were either occurring in
greater frequency or reporting more dramatically than was the case previously, rather than
journalists gaining a new kind of knowledge (epistemology) and finding a new method of
delivery.
66
However, a related project conducted in parallel to the content analysis described above
(Tanikawa 2018a) showed that ‘global’ crises/events have always happened and the expan-
sive ‘global coverage’ spanning locations in two continents or more involving multiple
countries has actually contracted in 2014 compared to 1985 –for The New York Times
and The Guardian –despite the claims of the proponents of global journalism. It is still
possible that journalists reported with more graphic depictions and stylistic effervescence
than were previously known befitting the ‘age of globalization’, or to have done so in com-
bination with the journalistic techniques/modalities that will be discussed in the following
section, thus contributing to the scholarly perception that something has changed in the
journalistic representation of the world.
The rise of the ‘contextual/analytical’ approach and the ‘people’ orientation

of news
One strong journalistic/stylistic current, especially in the US press, is that, as some past
studies on news content have suggested, news-reporting has become more contextual
and analytical (Barnhurst & Mutz 1997; Fink & Schudson 2014) with close attempts
at identifying the inter-connection among different world occurrences and the logic
as to why the events transpired, rather than simply providing event descriptions. This
journalistic trend accelerated in the past ten to twenty years as on-line news media
have outdone conventional print media in speed in delivering simple, fact-based infor-
mation (Fink & Schudson 2014; Tanikawa 2017a), making it imperative for traditional
news organizations to ‘add value’ in different ways. This has led to the proliferation
of explanatory and analytical journalism (Forde 2007; Salgado & Strömbäck 2012;
Soontjens 2019; Tanikawa 2017a).
Interpretational/contextual methods include connecting the dots not only for events
but locations, (different) times, people(s) and topical foci (Barnhurst & Mutz 1997;
Tenenboim-Weinblatt & Neiger 2015), to seek broader contexts and to achieve multi-
dimensional story-telling, as newsmakers strove to make news events more dynamic and
theatrical. The ‘global’ thread could be observed more because journalists were increas-
ingly searching for the material spanning ‘time’ and ‘space’ for their interpretational and
analytical articles that generated greater meaning. This was a trend which Barnhurst
& Mutz (1997) had identified in the 1990s over the preceding decades as newspapers
competed with cable TV and the broadcast media before it, but the pace of change per-
haps picked up in the 21st century (see Tanikawa 2017a).
What the global journalism theorists were witnessing may be just a growing case of
journalism employing more analytical reporting and the stylistic vogue of showcasing
interrelatedness of the phenomenological events in the world, and thus were becoming
more ‘meaningful’ from the perspective of the Anglo-American/Western audience. One
crucial caveat is that contextualizing news to promote comprehension of the audience
could mean, as I have alluded to, ‘decontextualizing’ from the plain facts, so that the infor-
mation/message is consistent with the worldviews of the audience.
Concomitantly, on the point of how ‘people’s everyday experiences’ are highlighted,
related and inter-linked with one another internationally (Berglez 2008; van Leuven &
Berglez 2016), news has become more everyday oriented, or ‘everyman’ oriented along
the lines of ‘Everyman news’ (Weldon 2008). In her book Everyman News: The Changing
American Front Page, the journalist-scholar Michelle Weldon demonstrated that articles
in traditional mainstream press have become filled with personal narratives, stories and
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Miki Tanikawa
anecdotes and thus attained more personal, more inclusive, less distant, and more ‘related’
readership experiences.
It is a switchover from the informational style of reporting of the preceding newsroom
era that depended on authoritative voices of the experts and high-ranking government
officials (news was thus ‘distant’ from the readers) to a format/news approach that favours
human interest angles that rely more on the common reader as a source of information,
both for anecdotal and analytical purposes. This change, Weldon argues, begun before
the turn of the century but intensified after the events of 9/11 as reporters looked to
humanize the tragedy. This style and the narratives deployed across geographic coverage
added a civic flair to observing experts. Her lengthy book documented this new journal-
istic impulse, employing content analysis of more than 850 stories on 160 front pages from
20 American newspapers over 2001 and 2004, supplemented by a rich trove of interviews
and comments from front-line journalists and journalism scholars.
Weldon’s approach is not a critical one; she rather interprets her findings as a strategy
by the traditional news organizations to boost audience appeal. She in fact documents
the extent to which newspaper content has become a commodity and points out that in
order to survive, newspaper staffs had to focus on what readers seek in the stories they
cover. With the advent of the internet, readers no longer get their first-instance news from
the print newspaper but can obtain them from a variety of other places. This means that
newspapers have had to shift to a storytelling style, she says, that makes the print format
meaningful.
Arguably, embracing the story-telling style and making news ‘meaningful’ is the bane
of contemporary news-making practices, global or domestic, as consideration of mean-
ingfulness converts highly context-reliant foreign events and surrounding issues into sim-
plified, cliched and sanitized (and therefore, distorted) events as multitudes of preceding
scholars have demonstrated. Amid paucity of understanding (i.e. declining foreign news
volume), narrativizing what are inherently convoluted foreign news developments into
comprehensible forms that dovetail with the cultural prisms of the audience implies an
intense ‘narrative conversion’, as I will argue later.
While this down-to-earth approach has become a popular news writing style for better
or for worse, the everyman approach and its decidedly ‘human centred’ outlook perhaps
contributed to the analysts’ belief that (international) news is more geared towards civil
society as part of the burgeoning ‘global community consciousness’ and, simultaneously,
to having promoted a perceived cosmopolitan outlook –‘everyman’ in this context could
be seen as participants in the ‘global public sphere’.
Tying a ‘person’ focused news-reporting to a global civic orientation is obviously
misleading. Foreign news and feature coverage in which individuals are anecdotalized are
often employed as fodder for a stereotypical narrative with their descriptive details often
delivered with a patronizing tone. Many foreign features include accounts of individuals
suffering and agonizing –fleeing from war, terrorism and natural disasters as in Africa,
Middle East and Latin America. Persons portrayed as victims usually appear dismayed,
helpless, and desperate. When reporting on members of the ‘home’ audience, on the other
hand, victims of mishaps are usually described with great care, respect, sensitivity and
political correctness.
Both the analytical focus and the persons’ orientation promote audience appeal as,
repeatedly, they contribute to making the content more ‘story-like’ and ‘meaningful’. Both
approaches have a ‘vector’ to add value to the audience’ reading experiences. Making news
content oriented towards global openness, reflexivity and democratic consciousness –with
68
the aim of spurring cosmopolitan attitude in the audience –is not in line with its direction.
Since such information/message orientation does not make for intuitive content for the
mainstream audience, news actors will not place their fulcrum in those areas. The call for
journalism to ‘connect the “citizens of the world” to “a global public sphere” ’ (Lindell &
Karlsson 2016: 860) or to encourage information that orients readers towards serving the
citizens of the world rather than local audiences (Ward 2010) is not consistent with the
reality (or the ‘vector’) of the purpose of journalism in general.
The ‘global’ as a trendy thread

It is imperative that news organizations ground their coverage on popular themes –many
a trendy threads are often woven into news and feature stories. These include such broad
topics as climate change, health issues, aging (and life in old age), LGBT rights, travelling,
new technology –and globalization. The last has registered in popular consciousness in
the last ten to twenty years as it is phenomenologically evident to all –changes in the cli-
mate, economic impact, spread of pandemics (i.e. Covid-19), and the fact that more people
are travelling and experiencing the world first hand and by the same token, encountering
those who are visiting from abroad even when they stay put (Reisinger 2009), all have
contributed to the everyday sense that we inhabit and share the same planet.
Journalistically, the ‘global’ perspective itself can be an intuitive and resonant theme
for the audience, just as the above-described culture pegs and culture links and other
meaning-making devices can be. The ‘global journalism’ as empirically observed by
scholars (Cottle 2011; Robertson 2010; van Leuven & Berglez 2016) are mainly features
prompted by such thematic motivations. When authors comment that global journalism
is still a ‘weak manifestation’ (Berglez 2008; Dencik 2013) it is an indication that global-
ization is just one of several popular topics, threads, or frames, among others that are co-
present in the article as part of the multi-dimensional, multifaceted mix of news content.
Where the ‘global/cosmopolitan’ outlook reveals itself, it is often in the context of
an unfolding catastrophic event bringing untold suffering and human tragedies –the
Indonesian Tsunami in 2004, the earthquake in Haiti in 2010, and the tsunami/earthquake
in Japan in 2011 are prominent instances. Such development tends to create a ‘moment’
where all mankind can share in the plight of those sustaining the pain, the loss and the
suffering, triggering empathy and desire for help. (Wars and terror, on the other hand, may
have ‘two sides’, thus the empathetic response might be muted depending on the region of
the world.) Overall, the ‘global/cosmopolitan’ manifests itself as a marginal, fragmented
and only ‘interpretationally available’ news thread. When Simon Cottle argues that news
reporting of global crises can enter into the constitution and thereby extend and/or inten-
sify processes of ‘global enmeshment and a growing sense of globality’ (Cottle 2011: 79),
it is perhaps not an exaggeration. The global television and other media do provide a stage
upon which we witness injustices and suffering in parts of the world we never travel to,
providing us with synchronized visual experiences which also extend into repertoires of
shared (and lasting) memories (Robertson 2010).
Applying the aforementioned social identity lens, virtually all people in the world
can identify with the victims and thus are united in the moment as ‘we’ –as members
of humanity: the ‘they’ perspective recedes into the background temporarily. Once the
coverage enters the ‘feature’ phase (the second day, the third day stories), however, the
depiction of the tragedies and hardships starts to develop the ‘other’ angle, prompting
the coups-and-quakes type syndrome to surface in reporting. Indeed, many of the articles
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Miki Tanikawa
chosen as examples of global journalism with extended geographic reach and human
connections contained major news stereotypes within them (see Tanikawa 2018a).
More crucially, communication scholarship needs to remind itself of the crucial diffe-
rence with other social sciences. There are natural chasms between the ontological/material
and the epistemological/unmaterial. Mass media content may not only not mirror the
empirical reality but may project and protrude out in a fractured, or even inaccurate,
deviant direction, as it is concerned with cognitive, emotional, and value-laden spheres of
human activity –coupled with the vagaries and forces of national/cultural ideology.
Globalization perhaps does affects news organizations, as elegantly and conceptually
laid out by Reese (2008) above, as business entities: globalization of the economy and the
markets have restructured news organizations, the distribution of news content and other
business arrangements to promote efficiency and to secure survival.
Conclusion
The news media overall do not attempt or are even focused on correctly representing
reality, especially outside the sphere of their main audience. Stuart Hall’s study on culture,
language and meaning reminds us that the media, through which meaning is produced
and exchanged, create representations as central signifying practices –to yield shared
meaning for the audience (Hall 1997). The representations are constitutive of culture,
meaning and knowledge about ourselves and the world around us. If the media produce
‘shared meaning’ for the culturally similar ingroup (the mainstream audience) concerning
the outgroup (non-audience or non-mainstream audience), it shall entail narratives of
otherness or stereotypical representations (Tanikawa 2018b), the flip side of making the
‘foreign’ and the outside comprehensible.
News aim to deliver –and more so now than decades past –intuitively, understandable,
commercially viable categories of information and well-shaped discourses that are con-
sonant with audience’s value system. News and information that contradict core values of
a given national culture will rarely be presented (Fursich 2010) as such content will create
cognitive ‘dissonance’. A long-winged, complex and explanatory effort such as explaining
parts of the world the audience does not understand, which would demand intellectually
challenging, hard and nuanced understanding, and to work to promote empathy for
the Other, will largely be abandoned. Media content is specifically designed to serve the
opposite purpose –especially in times when there is a primacy of the consideration for
reader friendliness and instant marketability of the content.
The journalist’s job is, in essence, first selecting what to make a topic of –at which
point most of the world happenings are winnowed down to a select few (Bebawi & Evans
2019) –and when they do, translating and converting what could be a complex reality
on the ground to forms and shapes, stories and discourses that are cognitively and emo-
tionally in sync with the cultural prism of the audience. A dynamic narrative conversion
takes place, turning a set of information about a foreign society that is complicated and
context-dependent with all its cultural, social and historic contingencies into easily grasp-
able, intuitively readable and feel-good stories for the readers.
And at a more critical level, it is imperative for academic scholarship to critically review
and analyse journalism practice rather than to quickly move to celebratory assessments,
in a rash step to chime in with other academic disciplinary trends. A non-critical, non-
cautious evaluation of media news practices would not only be naïve but would cause
70
significant lapses on the part of scholarship to produce critical, well-informed, reflexive

and empirical assessments in the field of media and journalism. As amply noted, little can
be expected of the media industry to engage in a self-reflective process of introspection
and critical discussion at a time it is ever-focused on audience retention and economic
survival.
Further reading
• Said, E. (1997) Covering Islam: How the Media and the Experts Determine How We See
the Rest of the World. New York: Random House.
This work parallels Said’s widely acclaimed Orientalism by revealing the contemporary
media representation of Islam by the Western press, which is no less problematic.
• Bebawi, S. & Evans, M. (2019) The Future Foreign Correspondent. Basignstoke: Palgrave
Macmillan.
A good (and mostly balanced) combination of critical/scholarly inquiry and the insights
of a practicing journalist, which one of the authors is.
• Hafez, K. (2007) The Myth of Media Globalization. Cambridge: Polity Press.
One of the strongest and most well- researched critiques of media globalization –
countering the idea that the news media do not reflect nor have contributed to the percep-
tion of the globalization of the world.
• Weldon, M. (2008) Everyman News: The Changing American Front Page. Columbia
MO: University of Missouri Press.
Somewhat dated but well-documented book on how and why newspapers have transformed
in content and style, the changes of which are still ongoing.
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5
Internationalization and
localization of media content
The circulation and national mediation of
ready-made TV shows and formats1
Introduction: the debate about the globalization of media and culture

Economic internationalization has had a profound effect on the creative and cultural
industries, their products and their reception, although researchers disagree as to its
nature and degree. As early as the 1970s, media scholars were studying the intensification
of transnational business activity. Some political economists deemed it cultural imperi-
alism, a coordinated operation by major US cultural industries and the government to
expand their sphere of influence into emerging markets (Schiller 1976). The goals were
economic (more profit), political (US influence abroad) and cultural (rendering local cul-
tural systems compatible with or supportive of capitalist development). These processes
would have resulted in a slow yet inexorable process of cultural homogenization. These
theories started to lose popularity as critics exposed their limitations, primarily the idea
that Western domination of global culture was a ‘purposeful’, coordinated project.
Capital fragmentation and competition, the complexities of global policymaking, the
development of non-Western media power blocks, local industrial resistance and cultural
hybridization (rather than homogenization) were among the major issues marginalized by
the cultural-imperialist analysis (Tomlinson 2007). The word ‘imperialism’ is still in use,
though, and has undergone a revival in debates about large-scale ‘platform imperialism’
(Jin 2017) by mostly US-based global corporations.
Among the scholars who criticized these approaches, globalization theorists like
Anthony Giddens (2003) and Ulrich Beck (2000) were hugely influential. They described
the increasing interconnectedness of cultures and economies as a generally (but not
inherently) positive phenomenon. They envisaged a world where the classic modern
nation state was about to be surpassed; most of them saw this as an emancipatory pro-
cess, where nation states were the guardians of the old Western-centric order. These
scholars described a multi-centred world where blurring political borders would allow
different parts of the globe to become interconnected and interdependent, as political
74 DOI: 10.4324/9781003221678-7
Internationalization of media content
and territorial boundaries became less important. This interconnection might encourage
cultural diversity through hybridization, syncretism and new economic paradigms. Peter
Dicken (2011), for example, responds to ‘skeptical internationalists’ (Hirst & Thomson
1992, 2002) who argue that the dynamics of globalization are not that different from
the traditional internationalization of commerce that has been under way since the 19th
century. Dicken maintains that his analytical focus is on the nature not the intensity of
the economic exchanges that have recently developed among international economies.
A key concept in his account is the emergence of global production networks. More
than the mere exchange of goods and services or the exploitation of resources, dispersed
inter-firm and intersectional production characterizes the highly de-territorialized (or re-
territorialized) geography of the current economy. Telecommunications and media are
central to globalization theories, because it is through new technological infrastructures
that dispersed areas can communicate: ‘new technology […is] intimately bound up with
the globalization of media in general and television in particular which, it can be argued,
are laying the foundations of a global electronic culture’ (Barker 1999: 51). Digital
networks are the avenues via which global-media systems could shape a cosmopolitan
citizenry to promote the values of equality, inclusivity and liberal democracy (Bennett &
Segerberg 2012; Zuckerman 2013).
As we shall show, globalization theory has the merit of challenging simplistic imperi-
alist accounts, but it also has significant limitations. So what can we learn from the new
relationships between national and international media industries, their professionals and
practices, their codes and languages? Before addressing this question, it is important to
explore the main areas around which this wide-ranging debate could be based. Drawing
partially on the work of relevant scholars (see Parks 2007, and Lobato 2017), we can
identify at least three major (distinct yet interrelated) areas of inquiry: industrial organ-
ization and production practices; the geopolitics of infrastructure deployments; and new
consumption experiences (often regarding digital platforms). This chapter explores these
areas before focusing on the global circulation of ready-made TV shows and TV formats.
Television is still one of the wealthiest and most powerful media industry. Its economic
and cultural clout is instrumental in prompting broader changes in the cultural sector as
a whole, and the digital audiovisual platforms are reinforcing rather than challenging it.
Three trends and lines of inquiry

Media infrastructure studies, still an emerging strand of media research, provides important
contributions (Plantin and Punathambekar 2019; Peters 2015; Starosielki 2015; Parks &
Starosielski 2015) on the geopolitics of media industries and their material deployments
(i.e. the global highways of content circulation). By analysing the sociotechnical aspect of
such industries, they offer a complex account of the stratified nature of the infrastructure
and how it comes into being. In broad terms, they challenge certain conceptualizations
of globalization that marginalize the role of local political communities and nation
states in determining those arrangements, at least to some extent. Lisa Parks’ work on
Zambia ‘works to destabilize dominant discourses that posit ICT [Information and
Communication Technology] diffusion and adoption in rural Africa as a straightforward
path to “modernization,” “development,” and “global integration,” and instead points to
local political, economic, and cultural challenges to the Internet’s globalization’ (Parks
& Starosielski 2015:120; our emphasis). Similarly, Helga Tawil-Souri ‘shows how media
75
infrastructures and networks […] function as politically defined territorial spaces of con-
trol and are integral aspects of states’ territoriality, questioning assumptions about glo-
balization, communication, sovereignty, and borders’ (2015: 158). This approach has also
been crucial in challenging cultural-imperialist theories. Dwayne Winseck (2019), for
example, demolishes the ‘persistent myth of US hegemony’ over the global media infra-
structure, showing that the balance of this material deployment is shifting towards the EU
and the BRICS countries. This relatively limited infrastructural control puts into question
theories of its unchallenged media power but surely that does not mean we are heading
towards a post-American internet as the US still dominates the ‘codes’ and ‘contents’ of
the cultural industries.
More specifically related to television, the works of Joshua Braun (2015) and Ramon
Lobato (2017, 2019) illuminate the materiality of digital and internet-distributed tele-
vision and how it affects global circulation. Lobato’s work on Netflix is deep, detailed
and exhaustive; given Netflix’s international reach, it is particularly relevant here. Lobato
investigates different levels of international infrastructure and their socio-spatial organ-
ization, concluding that the geopolitics of the Netflix infrastructure, exactly as with the
‘old’ television, is shaped by a ‘fundamental vision of entertainment […] [as] personalized
experience built around the individual consumer/family unit […] enjoyed in private spaces’
(Lobato 2019:104). He notes, then, that Netflix puts most of its capital investment into
countries or regions whose infrastructure conditions are already compatible with this
vision. Lobato’s work provides further evidence to support those who still see lavish cap-
ital investment by major Western media companies as a big influence on infrastructure
geography and materiality (as linked to services and content) –despite the increasing
power of China and other countries.
Another far more developed area of inquiry that helps to understand the international
flows of cultural goods and media are global markets and the industrial organization of
production and labour. Jean K. Chalaby’s research (2016, 2019) is proving increasingly
influential as regards production. He used the ‘global value chain’ approach, which draws
on Gereffi and Karina’s work on globalization (2011), as a theoretical framework for the
analysis of media industries, arguing that a new paradigm in the television content value
chain is emerging as a distinctive feature of recent times, as ‘the TV industry began to be
coordinated on a global scale’ (Chalaby 2016: 54). In line with globalization theorists,
Chalaby sees two emerging trends: a territorial fragmentation and de-territorialization of
production; and a subsequent process of (global) reintegration at market level to allow
the efficient exchange of goods and services for commercialization. While reminding us
that some authors deem these dynamics vastly overstated (Flew 2016; Sparks 2007), he
contends that globalization is both a structural and a structuring reality that drives the
new investments that the major players are making to go increasingly global, thus disen-
tangling themselves more and more from traditional geopolitical forces such as nation
states.
Despite Chalaby’s compelling account, there is evidence that a single global market per
se does not yet exist; these internationally circulating materials are often produced in indi-
vidual Western European nations or the USA (Kuipers 2015). Although the major cultural
industries can reach growing numbers of countries, this international market is fragmented
into ‘geo-linguistic regions’ (Sinclair 2003), ‘geo-cultural markets’ (Hesmondhalgh 2019)
or ‘zones of consumption’ (Pertierra & Turner 2013). Groups of countries are increas-
ingly entering into free-trade agreements (e.g. NAFTA or APTA), so markets might no
76
longer necessarily correspond to individual countries, but nation states are still central
to the building of such spaces. As Flew and Iosifidis put it, ‘[i]‌n contrast to the power-
less state thesis, nation-states often actively promote globalisation of their national
economies, in order to enhance the global competitiveness of key national businesses’
(2020: 12). Undeniably, though, more global-media products are reaching international
markets and then following new national-mediation processes as they enter new coun-
tries, opening new interesting research avenues. Netflix has for example developed a new
Silicon Valley model of long-distance localization. Essentially, this means investing less
in in-country infrastructure (staff, offices, etc.) and more in data mining on its own traffic
or, where possible, analysing other audience-preference datasets. It ‘is not the same service
worldwide: catalogs, language options, and platform features change when accessed from
different countries’ (Lobato 2019:184).
This brings us to the final area of inquiry: analysing audience experiences of sym-
bolic forms, their features, reception and social ramifications. In this case, recent inter-
nationalization debates are inextricably linked with those on digitalization. They revolve
around ‘global abundance’ (Steemers 2016:140) and new audience habits and viewing
experiences in domestic spaces –essentially the ‘cultures of use’, as Graeme Turner (2019)
puts it –while encouraging media researchers to focus more on ‘binge-viewing’. Increasing
attention has been paid to the relationship between the quantity of materials produced
and their diversity, availability and consumption patterns. Some scholars stress that abun-
dance is not always good, as it can trivialize consumption and disorient the audience
(Marshall 2014). Others consider abundance a mere illusion, as interfaces can exert huge
control over the content that users decide to watch, thus drastically limiting their options
(Johnson 2019), via platform design, interface placement and questionable datafication
practices underpinning the recommendations (along with other industrial and editorial
practices). These powerful interventions speak volumes about contemporary digital users’
supposed autonomy and proactivity.
Within the broader debate about abundance, the question of media or cultural diver-
sity has become increasingly important. Diversity might be a vague, fuzzy concept
(Hesmondhalgh 2019), but this does not render discussion of it superfluous. Slippery con-
ceptual differences can be found in the various ideas of diversity, between the concepts
of diversity and pluralism, or diversity and multiplicity. Philip Napoli (2011) writes about
three specific forms of diversity. Source diversity refers to the individual and institutional
actors involved in the production and circulation of media products (e.g. diversity of com-
pany size or workforce composition). Content diversity concerns the types of product,
their experiential context and the ideas they convey. Exposure diversity deals with actual
consumption and the social groups involved (e.g. their gender or level of education). This
categorization offers a good conceptual framework, but measurement is still tricky in
practice (Turner 2020).
In sum, the extent to which the availability of international media content in the
contemporary digital environment and related media policies still have the potential to
bring people together through culture to create cosmopolitan citizens, to encourage the
circulation of innovative ideas, or to foster a more proactive, democratic viewership is
still a wide-open question and a fascinating field of inquiry. Within this broad frame-
work, the rest of this chapter examines two areas of international trade –ready-made
television shows and television formats –their cultural impact and the professionals
involved.
77
The international circulation and national mediation of ready-made

TV shows
A key factor in the media arena in recent decades has been the wide circulation of con-
tent –sometimes in its ‘original’ form, sometimes through replicated ideas and models.
Television is a crucial element, among others, in this circulation; similar dynamics apply
to cinema, popular music, videogames, book and magazine publishing, etc. Foreign shows
have been integral to various countries’ network schedules since television began in the
1950s, yet the latest changes have given it a further boost. On one hand, the expansion of
broadcasting hours and the proliferation of digital channels have increased the need to
obtain a supply of content for the linear channels in the traditional broadcasting arena.
On the other, the free or pay digital platforms’ on-demand catalogues push the impression
of an endless store of content with a broad, deep offering. On both fronts, TV series and
shows from other countries are cheaper than original productions and allow networks to
mitigate the risk with tried and tested titles.
The big annual television markets, whether of global reach or specialized in single ter-
ritories or genres, are the key shop window for producers and distributors to display their
content wares. Buyers sent from networks and platforms all over the world can observe the
trends, form relationships and map out purchases and agreements. The TV industry calls
this content ‘ready-made’, and its presence in each market is growing fast. But this is a
simplistic label: these are ‘precooked’ shows, ready to be positioned in a broader offering,
but only in part, and not without further work.
First, there are factors governing whether or not the professionals from national or global
media groups will select certain programmes: they take account of audience preferences and
tastes, the shape of the national market, and whether it already has similar titles. Concepts
like cultural proximity and cultural discount are useful, too. Coined by Straubhaar (1991),
the former refers to how close the source and target cultures are: the closer the source text is
to the target country from a social, cultural and political standpoint, the more easily it will
gain traction, become established and find success, even becoming an emblem of national
identity. The idea of cultural discount, propounded by Hoskins & Mirus (1988), quantifies
the difference, as an index of (missing) closeness: it is the perceived distance between a text
created in a given country and an equivalent coming from abroad. The copious flow of con-
tent, then, is modulated by considerations that can become barriers to entry. Moreover, the
chosen foreign television programmes are subject to ‘national mediations’ (Barra 2009, 2013),
with changes large and small based on the needs of the media industry and the target audi-
ence. These modifications are both textual, altering or overwriting some traits in the original,
and contextual, bound up with the different framing with which the ‘ready-made’ product is
destined to be presented to the local audience. And the two influences combine to produce a
different text (Antoniazzi & Barra 2020).
These TV shows, conceived and produced in one particular market (often the USA, but
the same considerations apply for any local industry), must go through a long sequence of
acquisition, adaptation, dubbing/subtitling, scheduling/release, marketing and promotion
processes before a foreign audience gets to see them. These production stages are neutral
or purely functional –in theory. But in practice, they shift the meaning, frame the new
target-audience culture and, ultimately, shape a different perception of the characters,
themes, content and mechanisms, finally impacting on the circulation and success of the
series or show. The reasons for these alterations can be found in the production processes,
the distribution routines (in a broad sense) and the many professionals involved in the
78
product and its adaptation to another cultural, linguistic and media context. The rela-
tionship is circular. On one hand, the target edition’s textual traits orient and influence
the networks’ and media groups’ decision-making about buying, scheduling and pro-
moting the series. On the other, these decisions influence the kind of linguistic and textual
variations required to the adapters. The process of constructing the national edition of a
TV show and planning how it will air is therefore a question of facing different needs and
competing interests in search of an acceptable, if not optimal, balance. As it plays out,
regardless of the original authors’ individual wishes, this can impact profoundly on the
consumption of the texts and on the meaning attributed to them (Barra 2012).
The journey to airing for a series made abroad in another language and influenced
by another culture, albeit in some cases a not-too-distant one, is complex and fluid, with
numerous stages involving various professionals, working environments and production
processes. The national-mediation chain for TV content comprises several interlinked
steps that proceed in parallel or overlap. The same person may have several roles; the same
role may be spread across several people; in time, some aspects may change while others
stay the same. But every stage more or less knowingly alters the meaning and leaves an
indelible mark, adding a national patina to the original text. We can map out the main
steps for the TV arena, which apply with the necessary caveats for other types of media
content. A first step in bringing a foreign television programme to a new market is to
acquire the license rights. As those who have attended annual meetings all over the world
will know (Bielby & Harrington 2008; Havens 2006), buying a programme entails signing
a licence agreement. This is a legal document that entitles the bearer to use the product for
a given number of runs in a set period, in exchange for a fee; other details, such as exclu-
sivity and the available platforms, are also specified. These agreements often cover not just
a single title (cherry-picking) but larger packages (volume deals, output deals) that frame a
programme acquisition within a broader supply strategy. Specific conditions for using the
title are laid down: the purchase decision by a broadcaster or other party impacts on how
the new version will be produced; the licence period can accelerate or slow the processes;
the permitted number of repeats can lead to a local life cycle based on the rarity of the
event vs. the abundance of chances to see it.
A second cluster of operations centres on the making of the national edition. The
aim is to smooth over the linguistic and cultural differences that would impair the target
audience’s appraisal. According to the country, it involves using subtitles, producing a
dubbed version, or (often, in recent years) doing both. Dubbing is more complicated. It
entails a series of specific steps, depending on custom or the contract, involving a real
parallel industry, often studied from a linguistic perspective (Orero 2004; Chiaro, Heiss
& Bucaria 2008; Díaz Cintas 2009; Díaz Cintas & Anderman 2009; Ranzato & Zanotti
2019), sometimes with a sociological approach (Kuipers 2015) or a media production
studies bent (Caldwell 2008; Barra 2012: 198–227). The international distributor provides
the broadcaster, and therefore the dubbing industry, with all the necessary material: a
copy of each episode, a transcript of the original dialogue, and the international sound-
track (with background noises, music and songs).
First, the dialogue transcripts are translated. Sometimes, this translation is just a
draft; sometimes, it is an almost definitive text; more often, it is a bit of both, offering
some early solutions to the adaptation problems. The dialogue for the voice actors is then
prepared, based on the translation. This must not be too literal; something different needs
to be created that feels credible and comprehensible to the viewer and fits snugly with the
timings dictated by the visuals. The dialogue writer watches the scene and tries out each
79
idea until an optimum solution is found. One of the adapter’s main tasks is to check the lip
synchronization, the match between the translated lines and the movements of the actor’s
mouth on screen. The lengths of each word, the pauses in the dialogue, the rhythm of the
speech, the position of the open vowels, the alternation between voices on and voices off
are all crucial elements. Other times, a simpler synchrony of expression is preferred, for
greater fluidity –taking account only of the speaking time and the characters’ expressions
and attitudes. This stage in the adaptation process is not only about translating into the
time patterns of another language: the utterances must be natural; the references, com-
prehensible; the atmosphere and style of the original lines must be maintained. Step three
is the dubbing. The voices of the various characters are chosen; then, the dubbers enter
the dubbing studio and record the dialogue in a new language. The core unit of work in
the studio is the dubbing session, where the voice actors can work on separate tracks or
in a group. In the former arrangement, only a single character’s lines are recorded for
each scene; in the latter, all the voices in the scene are recorded on the same audio track,
for a more cost-effective albeit lower-quality recording. Many professionals have specific
roles: the dubbing director oversees the editorial quality; the dubbing assistant checks
timings and synchronization; the sound engineer records and monitors the audio tracks
and starts to work on them. Lastly, to complete the local edition of the ‘ready-made’ pro-
gramme, the audio post-production finalizes the audio tracks and synchronizes and mixes
them with the sounds in the international soundtrack, while the video post-production
adds the frames, subtitles, signature tune and closing credits to the video track.
The various stages in the national mediation of TV content in global circulation also
include choosing which network in the media group that bought its license will screen it
and how it will be scheduled (Ellis 2000; Barra 2015; Bruun 2019). Each channel has its
own identity, which rubs off on the foreign shows. The season, the day of the week and the
time slot depend on the target audience. And the other titles on offer create a lead-in effect
and unified blocks of content. The same applies for the digital platforms, where the service
brand, the release date, the categorization, and the prominence afforded in the interface
all make a difference. Add to that the promotion and marketing for the programme, on air
and elsewhere (Johnson 2012; Grainge & Johnson 2015), which foregrounds some chosen
elements at the expense of others. This involves preparing video clips, press releases, spe-
cific publicity events, press conferences. Whether directly (via dubbing and subtitling)
or indirectly (acquisition, scheduling and promotion), then, each stage is about hope-
fully getting closer to the local viewers’ tastes, ‘betraying’ the original to an extent, and
adapting the product for practical editorial and economic ends.
A good example, for the timespan of these processes (ongoing for thirty years) and
their major impact on the text and its consumption contexts, is the Italian edition of
The Simpsons (Barra 2007; Ferrari 2011). As an animated cartoon series, the national
adaptation had to make fundamental changes to achieve similar comic effects to the ori-
ginal and simplify the domestication process, allowing a non-US audience to decode it.
Thus the names of regular characters changed: police chief Wiggum became Winchester,
and barman Moe Szyslak became Boe. Often the dubbing introduces an Italian regional
accent or remarks in pure dialect for certain characters’ voices, to convey the multilin-
gual aspect of the original. Place and brand names mentioned may be translated literally,
adapted imaginatively or left in English; ditto for the titles of songs, radio, newspapers,
magazines, films and TV shows. Another adaptation problem arises from the desire to
render references to essentially US situations and customs comprehensible to the Italian
audience. If an episode (or parts thereof) centres entirely on typical stateside events, the
80
tendency is to adapt as little as possible, for various reasons: comprehensibility, to avoid

distorting the original too much, and because drastic changes that also affect the visual
aspect would prove complex and unlikely to succeed. But when the reference is in dia-
logue or a joke, the adapter can choose to leave as is –asking a small cognitive effort
of the viewer but respecting the original text –or translate with an Italian equivalent.
Substitution is often the strategy, entailing varying degrees of impact and complexity, for
political and legal institutions, educational systems, major organizations, foods, units of
measurement, etc. Often, those working on the local dialogue dubbing take the liberty to
replace the original reference points with Italian analogues, inserting quotes, allusions and
references devised specially for the target audience.
The dubbed Italian edition is thus inevitably a different text, as the American traits
are replaced by numerous Italian ‘national mediations’ bound up with linguistic or cul-
tural factors, the different media industries, and so on. But that is not enough: I Simpson
is aired on a commercial network at different times from the US original, and over time
this has had contrasting knock-on effects on the adaptation decision-making. For the first
two seasons, the series was aimed at adults, to distinguish it from other animated cartoons
and to make it fit with its then late-night slot. So the liveliest characters, like Homer, Bart
and Nelson, use very colloquial speech in the Italian version, packed with dysphemisms
and swearing. And every opportunity was taken, regardless of the original script, to sneak
strong, rude language into the dialogue, to exaggerate its mischievous spirit. From season
three, however, with the move to an afternoon schedule for a younger audience of children
returning from school, the language changed and the vulgarity vanished. Matters actually
went to the opposite extreme. For even when the source script contained imprecations
that were germane to the storyline, the translators removed them, toned them down,
distorted them or left them unfinished in the characters’ mouths, in an act of quasi self-
censorship, knowing the network demands and the time slot when I Simpson would be
shown. Sometimes, although happily not always, the efforts of professional intermediaries
like adapters, dubbers and networks could turn a product that could be rather off-the-
wall –for its intrinsic nature and its ability to bring out interesting aspects of US life –into
a regurgitation of commonplaces and die-hard stereotypes. Yet they also contributed to
its success with the target audience, creating recurrent catchphrases, building character
popularity, and gradually nurturing a specific viewing habit. And if the impact of the
processes and professionals involved in the national mediation is very strong for ‘ready-
made’ television, it is even more so when the original TV programme is only a model, a
template from which to start developing an original production. This is very often the case
with television formats.
The international circulation and national mediation of

television formats
The international circulation of television formats has increased substantially in recent
decades and is today a vibrant, growing business. Tasha Oren and Sharon Shahaf write
that a TV format can be thought of as a ‘globally distributed container for locally produced
content’ (2011: 3). In the words of influential expert Albert Moran, formats can be under-
stood as intangible entities like a recipe: the format is a ‘set of invariable elements in a
serial program out of which the variable elements of individual episodes are produced’
(Moran & Malbon 2006: 20). Although the global circulation of formats is sometimes
seen as a defining feature of contemporary television, remaking content is nothing new.
81
Moran (2013) characterizes the history of content circulation in four phases, starting in
the 1930s. The contemporary paradigm, dating from the early 2000s, is defined by format
trading of unprecedented size and visibility, with the emergence of ‘mega formats’ like
Big Brother. Although Moran acknowledges that format production and trading are still
largely a European and US phenomenon, he argues that both have now become struc-
turally transitional, ‘a worldwide system’ (Moran 2013: 11). Another defining feature of
today's paradigm is the altered distribution strategies in various countries. Because of
piracy concerns and the greater financial rewards, distribution is increasingly on a one-off
basis to saturation release (one country at a time), accompanied by massive marketing
campaigns to boost the shows’ visibility. In the same period, the USA ceased to be the
major exporter of TV formats; it remained very active, also becoming an importer and a
crucial market (Kunz 2010; Esser 2010). Audiovisual industries in Europe and elsewhere
saw rising demand for their own formats, and they soon became strong exporters, espe-
cially Israel, the UK and the Netherlands, resulting in the emergence of ‘super indies’ (or
mini majors) heavily involved in format trading (e.g. Endemol, All3Media and Keshet).
Andrea Esser (2017) has shown, however, that many of these companies have now been
bought by US multinationals, which might affect the diversity of content, consumption
practices and production cultures. Timothy Havens (2006: 36) has demonstrated that
this boom was driven by the major television networks’ discovery that adapted imported
formats were successful even in prime-time slots, sometimes even more so than the more
expensive locally commissioned shows. Licensing ready-made international programmes
is cheaper than licensing a format and producing it, albeit rather riskier, and ready-made
content might not engage local audiences as effectively as adapted formats. Finally, those
who invest in formats can use data on previous commercial hits and flops in other circu-
lating markets.
The format-localization process usually entails four coordinated steps featuring con-
tinual negotiation among three key players (Splendore 2014; Zeng & Sparks 2017).
These are the format owner, the local broadcaster and the global companies with local
branches specializing in co-producing localized versions of formats, in line with the ‘pro-
duction bibles’. Drawing on Caldwell (2008), Splendore (2014) shows how the spectrum
of working relationships among these players can be understood as organized into four
basic phases: first, the research, where a broadcaster looks for a possible format in the
market by sending buyers to international showcase events; second, the pitch, where the
broadcaster and format owner discuss a potential licence agreement; third, project speci-
fication, where the three parties thrash out the fine detail (bible guidelines, promotional
strategies, scheduling, adaptations and other interventions on the text); finally, executive
production, involving casting, shooting, editing, etc. As some scholars have also noted
(Moran 2009; Zeng & Sparks 2017), these phases can be understood as commercial and
cultural negotiations within the national regulatory systems. This framework includes not
only international trade agreements, copyright law and censorship but also labour market
regulation and work associations.
As Giselinde Kuipers has noted, the acquisition phase is crucial in this complex con-
text, as the buyers determine the work that their colleagues will have to do later in the pro-
duction chain. Across the countries where research has been done, these people seem to
share a similar professional culture, as a sort of ‘transnational professional class’ (Kuipers
2015: 552). This culture strongly influences their decisions and choices. In acquiring formats
these workers take into account three variables. First, the ‘production value’ concerns the
characteristics of the show itself (its conceptualization, structure and characters). Buyers
82
then consider the programme’s compatibility with their audiences, and how well they
could potentially relate to the stories, mechanisms and situations (‘relatability value’).
Finally, the ‘innovation value’ is considered high when there is a good balance between the
stylistic elements that are familiar to the audience and those that are new. Decisions take
into account complex contextual and institutional variables.
Moran (2009), adapting his tripartite model from literary-translation studies, offers
useful insights into the choices required when ‘translating’ an acquired format for a
new audience. Three intertwined levels of decision-making determine the nature of the
end product: first, decisions about forms and styles, the poetics of television, involving
sound, mise-en-scène, shooting, editing and all the choices that shape the show’s audio-
visual aesthetic; second, intertextuality, relating to the codes and norms of both tele-
vision production cultures and cultures of consumption (see for example changes in
casting practices and, in turn, on the narratives of some adapted programmes); third,
the broader national culture and society, often leading to controversial decisions on
issues like religion, gender and language. At the end of this process, the show might
differ from the original (e.g. characters can be changed or removed) and/or include
unique features, as shown by several case studies on the adaptation of Sesame Street in
South Africa (Calbreath-Frasieur 2016) or other formats in Sub-Saharan Africa (Ndlela
2016). But major changes are also made in format adaptations with a lesser cultural dis-
count (Aveyard, Moran & Jensen 2016; Ellis, Esser & Gutiérrez Lozano 2016), involving
both scripted and unscripted titles.
Moran’s model also tells us that such cross-pollination processes may not only affect the
content but also operate at production level. Localization entails an intense, often tense
collaboration among different players, and there is evidence that this facilitates knowledge
transfer. Some researchers (Keane 2006; Kean & Zhang 2017) see these interactions as
triggers for industrial, cultural and political innovation. In some countries, format exchange
led to knowledge and technology transfer (Keinonen 2017) but the global landscape offers
ambivalent cases studies (Uribe-Jongbloed & Pis Diez 2017; Murakoshi 2016). Not every
government is willing to enact initiatives to ‘open’ their cultural economy. Chalaby &
Esser (2017), for example, show how interventions in some countries regarding intellec-
tual property legislation and its enforcement, along with other initiatives to support local
firms, are not effective and in some cases non-existent. This complexity and unevenness
makes it difficult for analysts to identify general format-trading trends. Cultural proximity
can work for or against a programme’s success, so that, as Graeme Turner (2010) notes, a
show’s popularity and cultural significance can be determined by unpredictable, ambiva-
lent interactions between local and foreign cultural formations.
For an example of this unpredictability, we can consider the Italian adaptation of
the cooking talent show format. The popularity of MasterChef Italia was quite unex-
pected, and the key to its success seems serendipitous. The show was created in the UK by
Franc Roddam in 1990 for the BBC, but it was its second incarnation in 2005, produced
and distributed by Endemol Shine Group, that achieved worldwide popularity. Robert
Appelbaum (2016) considers this new version one of the best cooking shows ever made,
especially the early Australian version: the balance and honesty of the judges, the informa-
tion about food, and in general the programme’s aesthetics and tone made it captivating,
informative and entertaining. The Australian show has also been considered an inclusive
‘celebration of diversity in the range of ethnicities […], its respect for the various cuisines
and personal histories on display’ (Turner 2020: 26). As Oren also observes, the show
was very absorbing, as ‘viewers also play at being experts’ (2013: 32) and enjoy critically
83
engaging not only with the dishes but also with the judges’ comments. MasterChef created
an emotional attachment to the participants and a sense of togetherness. The scheduling
strategy also gradually increased the intensity of these feelings. However, Appelbaum is
convinced that many localizations of the show followed not the Australian or UK version
but the MasterChef US model, where competition becomes a melodramatic rhetoric
of success and can topple into aggression. Participants are pitted strongly against one
another, and the judges, like Gordon Ramsey and Joe Bastianich (Phillips 2016; Marrone
2013), tend to pounce on participants. According to Appelbaum, this shift is taken to
extremes in the Italian version, as the programme becomes ‘a parody of itself’. He notes
that, even if the Italian edition offers extraordinarily high-quality cuisine, the competition
degenerates in terms of the humiliations inflicted on the contestants.
We both agree and disagree. The connection between the US and Italian versions is
obvious, as the tough Italian-American Joe Bastianich is a judge in both. In the early
seasons, his behaviour and aggressive attitude do not seem much different from the US
version, but he appears to soften his tone a little in later seasons. In a recent interview,
Bastianich said something interesting about the show’s success:
… when we brought MasterChef here [to Italy] everybody was saying ‘look,
MasterChef would never work in Italy; we are the country of culinary excellence,
and such a trivial programme would never work’. The irony about this love for
food, about the reverence for home recipes, the rules … […] you know … in Italy
food is part of the culture; you don’t joke about food. But when you do, … it makes
people laugh.
(Bastianich in Domenica In 2020; authors’ translation)
This sentiment was anticipated by comedian Maurizio Crozza, impersonating

Bastianich, making fun of his toughness, and also by an online video by satirical trio The
Jackal. So why is Bastianich talking about irony and laughter but not about competition,
success or how tough it is to run a restaurant? We think it is because the US model was so
surreal and over-the-top for Italian audiences that nobody took it seriously, enjoying this
unreal toughness as, as Appelbaum noted, a parody of a cooking show. Even if it might
have intended to play with Italy’s rigour about food culture, the show has acted also as
a take-down of some far more serious Italian cooking shows and the gravity with which
some Italians pontificate about food in everyday life. This effect was only partially inten-
tional, discovered along the way in a departure from the original format that has become
increasingly significant in recent editions. Jokes and lighter notes are now frequent; cruel
and angry comments, less so. Even the last judge to join the group, chef Giorgio Locatelli,
comes across as a gentleman rather than a grouchy restaurateur. Unexpectedly, the melo-
drama of competition that seems so engrained in the US version was taken as an over-
blown yet enjoyable ‘americanata’ (a send-up of America) and softened along the way.
After all, as Appelbaum acknowledged, US surrealism did not affect the quality of the
dishes and recipes or the precision with which they were made (a key element of the show’s
success).
Conclusions. Some future challenges in media circulation

On a macro level, the internationalization of media content concerns infrastructures
(which enable global circulation but are often locally regulated), markets (where some
84
countries and firms consolidate their power and where new content finds opportunities)
and audiences (whose complex expectations encompass both exposure to the ‘other’ and
the reassuring presence of the familiar). On a meso level, the global circulation of TV
products or other media is counterweighted by a rich national-mediation system made of
production chains, processes, practices, professionals, approaches and habits that trans-
form the original text for its encounter with the new target audience. And on a micro
level, the cases of the Italian edition of The Simpsons, as regards the ready-made, and the
Italian version of the global MasterChef format, a remake of the template in worldwide
circulation, show how the power of the brand and the global text and the more or less
in-depth local adaptations in substantially different kinds of television content are part of
the same ‘family’ yet relatable and able to highlight national traits. Then, it clearly emerges
how general yet slightly generic paradigms like cultural imperialism or globalization are
inadequate to explain the history and the contemporary situation of global media content
circulation. The reality is more nuanced, fluctuating and negotiated.
From this perspective, recent years have presented additional challenges: on one
hand, by expanding on and, to a certain extent, radicalizing long-term phenomena, as
the global trajectories of media content and models; on the other, perhaps, by introdu-
cing new elements that in time could lead to new models. One undeniable initial trend is
bound up with the unprecedented abundance of series, shows and other TV and media
texts with the ability to circulate worldwide. There is a quantitative dimension, associated
with the proliferation of channels and platforms, and hence the boom in spaces available
for ready-made content and formats. But there is also a qualitative dimension, for the
increase in titles also encompasses the sources and destinations: no longer just Western
but also including markets like Latin America (with the success of the ‘narconovela’),
Turkey (as local soaps became unexpected hits in Europe and Latin America), or South
Korea (with animations, drama series and formats remade in numerous nations, like The
Masked Singer). With this abundance and openness, the other side of the coin is the risk
of homogenization, confusion and content overload that overwhelms audiences rather
than enriching them. Paradoxically, in this context, national mediation, for good or bad,
acquires an even more vital, multifaceted role, providing order, organization and orien-
tation for viewers.
A second important trend regards the spread of on-demand services with global
reach, even if they operate differently in different countries. Netflix, Disney+ and
Amazon Prime Video, among others, have driven a greater global circulation of media
and television content –both ready-made, which requires only minor adaptation, and
the (more invasively tailored) formats that have worked elsewhere and become the
springboard for original national productions. The international dimension of these
services creates an unprecedented tension between the global and the local, as exported
content expands beyond national boundaries and is imported into many different
contexts via in-depth national-mediation processes. Both extremes are under greater
pressure, resulting in changes to still-unsettled models and production chains. On one
hand, the players’ international scale seems to reduce the power of the national and
local dimension, by centralizing at least some decisions and operations: acquisitions
are made centrally for many markets; localization processes are coordinated in parallel;
products are distributed on the same dates worldwide, with a linked, multi-pronged
promotional push. Global on-demand services are supplanting national broadcasters,
who are losing control some portions of the supply chain, and some professionals
overseen by the global corporation. At the same time, on the other hand, the national
85
and local dimension are unexpectedly re-emerging as they are crucial for making a
real connection with the local audience, ensuring the content’s success, increasing
penetration, boosting the platform brands, personalizing the user experience, and so
on. ‘Ready-made’ content, then, is offered to audiences with dozens of cultural and
linguistic options, in combinations of the original, several dubbed versions and with
subtitles. The scripted or unscripted TV formats, meanwhile, are available in many
editions, which may be directly comparable, and some programmes are developed to
cover the needs and serve audiences from several markets (as with Ultimate Beastmaster
and Criminal, both on Netflix). The licence contracts can also ensure that some content
is branded as ‘original’ or presented as a straightforward acquisition on the same plat-
form in different countries.
The picture, in short, is shifting. And, extending the useful observations by Lobato
(2019) beyond the digital platforms to the entire contemporary media scene and its socio-
political dimensions, it becomes clear how negotiation dynamics are playing out below
the globalizing surface of many on-demand television services, involving the national
audiences, industries and stakeholders. The revolution and disruption often marketed in
the non-linear world often stops at the borders, to take into account the social, cultural
and political factors before entering each market. The national–transnational tension is
perennial, and recent innovations do not resolve it, but result in new equilibria and a new
lie of the land.
Further reading
• Barra, L. (2009) ‘The mediation is the message: Italian regionalization of US TV
Series as co-creational work’, International Journal of Cultural Studies, 12(5),
pp. 509–525.
In this article the process of acquiring, repackaging, dubbing and programming foreign
content into the Italian television market is conceptualized. The process is labelled as
‘national mediation’ as it entails a complex process of negotiation between global and
local institutions, industries and professionals.
• Chalaby, J. K. (2015) The Format Age: Television’s Entertainment Revolution.

Cambridge: Polity Press.
This is one of the most thorough works on the long history and relatively recent growth of
TV formats and their trade. The concept of global value chain is used to understand the
complex network of relationships that allow formats to appear, circulate and be localized
in many parts of the world.
• Flew, T., Iosifidis, P. & Steemers, J. (eds) (2016) Global Media and National Policies.
London: Palgrave Macmillan.
This edited collection is an essential contribution to understand the relationship between

transnational media corporations and nation-states in contemporary society and the
connections between the public sector, cultural production and media consumption, with
interdisciplinary approaches.
86
• Lobato, R. (2019) Netflix Nations. New York: New York University Press.
This outstanding and timely research analyses and compares the diverse infrastructural,
cultural and business conditions that allow Netflix to penetrate and succeed in different
foreign contexts. With case histories from different countries, it is clear how Netflix means
different things in different regions.
• Pertierra, A. C. & Turner, G. (2013) Locating Television: Zones of Consumption.

London: Routledge.
This book is a major step forward to understand television as a relevant player in building
variations of modernity in different sociopolitical contexts. The stress is on the great
importance of contingency and empirical research to correctly understand contemporary
international cultures of television viewing.
Note
1 Both this chapter and the underlying research are a joint endeavour by the authors. Sections 1, 2
and 4 were written by Luca Antoniazzi; sections 3 and 5, by Luca Barra. This work is a product
of the wider research project ‘Distribution, Adaptation, Circulation. An Industrial and Cultural
Model of English-speaking Television in Italy (DAC)’, funded by Università di Bologna, Italy,
through an AlmaIdea 2017 grant (research period: 2018–20; principal investigator: Luca Barra).
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6
Revisiting certain concepts of
translation studies through
the study of media practices
Yves Gambier
Introduction
In the last few decades, the translation landscape has been transformed, with new tech-
nical tools, new user behaviours, new relationships with verbal communication (in par-
ticular with text production and reception) and new perceptions of translation –a task
long-considered as subaltern, invisible (at least in Europe) and today practised by a host
of people, whether qualified as translators or not. The transformation, such as in profes-
sional activities, transport, entertainment, information, etc., is still in progress, and within
this shifting landscape it is difficult to forecast even the near future. Communication,
encompassing oral and written interactions, is becoming increasingly multilingual,
multimedia, multimodal, multicultural, multipurpose and multi-authored, with impacts
on linguistics, culture, media, education, literature –and translation. Certain concepts
and approaches are today transdisciplinary, redefined by sociologists, semioticians,
philosophers, psychologists, anthropologists and theorists in media, cultural, communi-
cation, internet, literary and film studies. Conventional key terms such as language, dia-
lect, news, social media, culture (and its various forms: counter-, cyber-, emergent-, sub-,
youth-and visual-, to name a few), ideology, community, power, etc. require updates and
adjustments.
This chapter will first sketch out the impact of digital technology before recalling the
position of audiovisual translation (AVT) within translation studies (TS) –through the
metamorphosis of the name of this sub-discipline. In the next stage, we will consider
some of the implications of AVT for TS, especially by tackling the concepts of text, sense,
authorship, translation, translation unit, and translation quality. The current transition
period between a paradigm dominated by printed artefacts and a paradigm in which the
borders between categories are more and more blurred probably explains why TS is under
tension both theoretically and methodologically.
DOI: 10.4324/9781003221678-8 91
Yves Gambier
The impact of digital technology

Before revisiting some of the concepts in translation studies, we must try to define briefly the
impact of digital technology on the media, in their production, their distribution and their
reception. Media is here intended in its broad meaning –not only including newspapers,
audiovisual devices and products (TV, DVDs, CD-ROM, internet, mobile/smart phones,
tablets, movies etc.) but also advertisements (printed and online commercials, video-clips
etc.) and the different types of material in support of corporate communication, tourism
information, entertainment (e.g. videogames, webseries, webtoons etc.) and scientific
popularization (printed matter, brochures, leaflets, websites etc.). All those forms and
formats have been translated, localized and adapted for a relatively long time but have not
yet deeply questioned some of the traditional concepts of translation studies, based for
the most part on religious and literary printed texts.
In the 1990s, an important discussion took place on the possible convergence between
production and distribution as a result of mergers and alliances. Major American film
companies (Columbia, Fox, Warner, Disney, MCA/ Universal, Paramount, Metro-
Goldwyn-Mayer) tried to gain a hold over distribution circuits. On the other hand, the
integration of TV broadcasting companies and the film industry was changing both the
financial support and the management of distribution.
Thirty years later, after the emergence and development of the internet (the WWW
was opened to the public in August 1991) and digitization (the conversion of analogue
information into digital form), the film industry, TV companies, advertising industry,
game industry and the press are confronted with deep transformations. New technology
conditions the present and the near future, changing our relationship with objects, goods,
and jobs, as well as our connections with people. The messianic spirit of the digital revo-
lution is sometimes addictive, rendering us sightless and voiceless.
New demands, needs and formats are appearing: technology offers a better and more
varied range of services and programmes. Further, digitization actually accelerates the
convergence between production and distribution, with Netflix being the latest new eco-
nomic model in the industry. In 2007, Netflix allowed people to watch programmes on
the Web; in 2013, the company began to finance content (e.g. House of Cards) and, in
2016, it launched its first platform by subscription. Today, Netflix is in competition with
video-streaming, subscription video on demand (SVOD) and also TV on demand. Other
existing or upcoming platforms are Amazon Prime, Hulu, Disney+, YouTube/Google,
Apple, SVOD (managed in China by Tencent, Alibaba and Baidu), and other platforms
run in Japan, Germany and France (e.g. Salto).
All these changes are altering certain usages and habits, such as schedules arranged
by TV channels, timing organized by film distributors, binge watching and binge racing.
Technology, however, also has an impact on our daily life: digitalization (or the actual
process of change in industries and services) affects telecommunications, healthcare,
banking, financial markets and the media –impacting upon, for instance, all aspects of
movie-making: script-writing, shooting, sound production, editing, stunts, recreation of
style/housing/clothing, distribution, projection –and audiovisual translation, as different
software can be used today to improve the productivity of the subtitlers and adapters (in
dubbing).
Journalism is another domain under pressure. The first Wikileaks (July 2010) and the
new European Directive on copyright and related rights in the digital single market (April
2019) are two key events which signal some of the transformations in the newspapers and
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Revisiting translation studies
media groups. Besides, the hierarchy of the newsroom has been replaced by a digital setting
in which a constant flow of updated information circulates. Journalists can work for more
than one channel (weekly magazine, daily newspaper, website, application for mobile
phones etc.), with textual, visual and sound data. The editorial offices work according to
the consumption of information by readers who, today, can contribute, modify and format
the news by sending comments, images and video. Anybody can document an earthquake,
an air-raid, a demonstration, a misuse of corporate power etc., or add live text com-
mentary to a report on a sport event, enabling partial real-time audience involvement in
the media text. The press is in competition with information aggregator services (online),
24 hour news channels or news networks, and what has been called citizen or alterna-
tive journalism. This evolution spreads certain myths, such as the superpower of social
media, as if they were all reliable to the same degree, and the death of journalism because
of the so-called democratization of access to information. At the same time, the media
are criticized, and a certain discourse rejects journalism based on facts (see for instance
the polemics around fake news). The tyranny of responsiveness and immediacy and the
multiplication of sources of information can lead to journalism without journalists. The
transformations within that profession are not without analogy with the transformations
of translators’ work (Desjardins 2017; Davier & Conway 2019). In audiovisual transla-
tion too, (passive) consumers can become prosumers or active consumers, if we refer to
crowdsourcing and community translation (fansubbing, fandubbing, volunteer/activist
translation): the Web 2.0 has been a call for more interactive and dynamic internet use.
Users take on some of the power and responsibility of the conventional producers, such
as eyewitnesses using their phones to capture and disseminate news.
Much has been studied and written about what is said above regarding the new rela-
tionship between production and distribution, but too little has been discussed about the
transformations wrought by this technical change on the message and content.
Audiovisual translation: the ugly duckling?

Audiovisual translation (AVT) has discomfited translation studies (TS) since the 1990s,
though of course, cinema and television had not waited for the end of the century to be
disseminated internationally. Several factors underlie its emergence at that time: the 100-
year anniversary of cinema in 1995; language policy and language awareness, especially in
Europe where minorities were searching for new media in order to promote and reinforce
their language and cultural identity; and the booming of video, DVDs and digital tech-
nology. The names given to the practices involved reflect the changing perception of the
field. In the 1950s, film translation was the common label to refer to subtitling and dubbing,
and not to translating images. TV and video were not then popular. In the 1980s, language
transfer was introduced, focusing on language and neglecting the other system of signs of
the movies and TV programmes. Translators were very often working without watching
the audiovisual product and there was a division of labour between them (translating the
dialogues) and the technicians spotting the translated dialogues (not necessarily knowing
the source language). In the 1990s, the term audiovisual translation became common,
although with some resistance from certain English-speaking scholars because for them it
signified a particular teaching method known in the 1960s. However, AVT encompassed
film, radio and video media, underscoring the multi-semiotic dimension of all broadcast
programmes. In the professional milieu, versioning was used in parallel, as screen transla-
tion was used in different academic circles –covering all products distributed via a screen
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Yves Gambier
(TV, cinema or computer screen). Translation for the media was sometimes used for both
audiovisual and printed media, at a time when very few studies were carried out on news
translation. Multimedia translation was another expression which gained ground for some
time, referring to the multitude of media and channels used in global and local communi-
cation for different purposes (information, entertainment, education, advertisement etc.).
However, the term led to confusion since comics, theatre, cinema, CD-Roms, websites
and video games have not been researched to the same extent and do not share common
threads, as far as we know, apart from the fact they all are multi-signs. In that perspective,
printed media is omitted, even if it plays with layout, fonts and images. Clearly, the list of
terms is not closed (one can also find, among others, transmediatization, e.g. putting a text
into video, words into dance and vice-versa), even if AVT has frequently been dominant in
the last twenty years. This variety of terms reveals the vitality of the research field and the
diversity of practices: in just a few decades, the domain has increased from two conven-
tional modes (subtitling and dubbing) to more than ten (including intralingual subtitling
for the deaf and hard-of-hearing, interpreting, surtitling, etc.). This terminological his-
tory partly reflects the changing situation concerning the contribution of technology and
partly the expansion and increased specialization of AVT practice and research –working
with different codes and signs, for example audio-description or translating images into
words, live subtitling completed via interpreting, cueing and the use of speech recognition.
The variety of terms also reflects the difficulty of delineating the AVT domain and explains
the reluctance of TS to include AVT sometimes in spite of the fact that scholars were and
are dealing with questions of equivalence relations, translation strategies (between the
two poles domestication/foreignization), shifts, Skopos or the purpose of the translation,
processes, norms and so on. However, the study of the media in which subtitling, dubbing
etc. appear and the convergence between translating and interpreting in AVT make AVT
different from traditional forms of TS. It brings in other new disciplines such as film,
TV and other media studies, semiotics, borrowing methodologies from communication
and information studies, cognitive studies, sociology, etc. In other words, it brings in new
perspectives and challenges –AVT has gradually moved from the periphery to a more
central position in TS since audiovisual communication is more frequent than others, and
certainly more influential among people. Today, AVT can and should shake off its mar-
ginal theoretical status and aspire to influence different concepts of TS by pointing out
the variability of factors (parameters, constraints and preferences) involved in translation.
Implications for translation studies

A number of TS concepts should be rethought, revised and extended when they are applied
to media and in particular AVT. We have grouped them together into three subsections.
Concepts of text and authorship

When, in a conference, a literary translator, a subtitler, a conference interpreter, and a
localizer refer to ‘text’, do they mean the same thing? Do they refer exclusively to the con-
ventional text as a linear arrangement of sentences, or as sequence of verbal units? Does
the interpreter forget the orality, the speed of delivery, the mixture of impromptu dis-
course and the reading of the ready-made paper? Does the audiovisual translator forget
that his ‘text’ is maybe based on a novel (which may also be a translation), that he/she
has worked from a dialogue list, watched the dialogues embodied in moving images? The
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screen is not only full of linguistic elements. Subtitling is presented as a ‘text’ superimposed
on to images and sound whose function is to make it possible for the viewers to under-
stand a message that has been created using a multiplicity of codes. Does the localizer
forget that the source ‘text’ was never finalized when the translation started, the source
‘text’ was updated several times during the localization process? Does the website to be
translated apply the seven criteria of textuality (de Beaugrande & Dressler 1981): cohe-
sion, coherence, intentionality, acceptability, informativity, situationality and intertext-
uality? Webpages are largely decontextualized, read in discontinuity by receivers with
many different backgrounds and knowledge. In other words, the concepts of text and
sense made of written lexical and morpho-syntactical devices have to be revised or re-
defined according to the settings, the materiality of the ‘text’. From the historical process
of delineating words, creating paragraphs, punctuation and lay-out to the interconnections
between aural, oral, and visual modalities that are gaining far greater cultural prominence
today, the ‘text’ has gone through various shifts and translators have moved beyond text-
to-text translation.
For a long time, the linguistics of the 1970s–1990s (including narrative studies, text
linguistics and discourse analysis) worked on a so- called monomodal written text,
perceived as a dependant of a text prototype, a deep structure genre. The text-types were
very often defined in relation to Jakobson’s functions of language, for example Werlich’s
dominant contextual focus (1975) and/or based on language acts, rhetoric, intra-textual
configurations (de Beaugrande & Dressler 1981; Adam 1992). In translation studies, tax-
onomies have copied the same pattern (Hatim & Mason 1990; Trosborg 1997, 2000).
Reiss (2000, 2013) was one of the first to suggest a typology linked to the needs of the
translation, combining contextual and structural features. In all cases, the perspective was
functional and top-down, and the text remained exclusively verbal, with static categories
and conventionalized forms of text, until Reiss added a fourth category to her classifica-
tion –referring to audio-medial texts such a script for radio or television, broadcast news,
theatre plays, songs, operas, etc. –causing scholars in interpreting studies to seek out all
the parameters of an interpretation setting (Alexieva 1994). The trends in text linguistics,
dominated by textualist approaches (which were under the influence of Greimas, Todorov,
Barthes, Foucault, etc.), left space for the socio-cultural turn, when both the translation
and the translators began to be considered within a larger frame than just the types of text
to be translated. Little by little, new formats were disseminated thanks to new technology
(e.g. emails, websites, SMS (short message services), chats, tweets, blogs etc.) calling for
crowdsourcing and online collaborative translations (Jiménez-Crespo 2017). The usual
concept of ‘text’ and the interaction between text, author, reader, and translator began
changing. Today, conventions are revised now that we are facing hybrid forms of media
products: not only the interplay between orality and written code has to be reconsidered
(Ong 1982; Goody 1987; Gambier & Lautenbacher 2010), but the types and the diversity
of signs incorporated in communication must also be taken into consideration. As Pettit
(2009) claimed, ‘the Gutenberg parenthesis’ is to be closed. Literature itself has cyber-
formats, mixing text and media; poetry can be performed (see slam, rap), a public reading
or a visual exhibition (Lee 2013; Iribarren 2017). This transition from the ‘graphosphere’
into ‘the video-sphere’ (Debray1994, 2004) is also becoming obvious in translation and
interpreting, with the localization of videogames and the different modalities of AVT.
What could be the new concept of text? (Toury 2006).
There are differences between a text by Cicero and Virgil (to be read aloud during a
public event) and a text by Proust, between a literary text, annual reports and instructive
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Yves Gambier
texts even if they are all physically limited and semantically open, while hypertexts are
both physically and semantically open. One does read an electronic text additionally refer-
ring to an interview on YouTube, a public lecture, a map, as one does watch a film add-
itionally watching a video-clip, a trailer, rushes, etc. Two users can open a website with the
same webpage but can end their navigation after opening different links. Three decades of
the internet and Web, including audiovisual products, have transformed a concept which
was dominant for thousands of years. From now on, ‘texts’ are fluid, with other ‘texts’
and other systems of signs (fixed or moving images, graphs, colours, fonts, sounds, etc.).
A ‘text’ has become poly-semiotic or multimodal and exists in a permanent intertextual
relationship with other ‘texts’. While printed texts could always be dated, allocated to
an author or editor or printer, digital/audiovisual texts can be constantly updated and
offered in different versions (Pym 2004). There is a moving ‘start text’ but no strict source
text to refer exclusively to (Pym 2013). The same uncertainty exists in news translation in
which the absence of an identified source text is more frequent than not (Davier & van
Doorslaer 2018): the translation might be based, for instance, on the oral version of the
speech although there is a written text. To track back to a source text can be time con-
suming and make collection of a corpus difficult.
For Barthes (1964: 44–45), when studying the static image of an advertisement, the
interplay between verbal and visual elements was asymmetrical and hierarchical: the
verbal is first; the text is a ‘relais’ (relay) (text and image are complementary) and an
‘ancrage’ (anchorage) (the text directs the viewer-reader through the maze of possible
meanings of the image.1 Today, researchers on multimodality (Kress & van Leeuwen 1996,
2001; Tuominen et al. 2018; Kruger, forthcoming) underline the autonomy of the visual
signs. It is not the place to argue who is right but to observe that both approaches insist
on the importance of taking into consideration the multiple modes of sense-making. Let
us take the example of the multimodality of a film: 14 semiotic codes are part of the pro-
duction of meaning (Table 6.1).
To those 14 codes can be added ‘objects’ (with designer imprint or branding) which
participate in the funding of the movies and influence the viewers because of their emo-
tional and symbolic connotations. Consider drinks and cars in the James Bond films,
for example. All the codes are placed in a subtle relationship during the editing (mon-
tage). In the system of mixing signs, the verbal elements fulfil different functions: the
translators must take them into account before deciding what to omit, condense, or make
more explicit when subtitling the dialogues. When considering the list of codes, one can
also understand why the credits of a film are rather long: many professions work together
towards the production of the audiovisual product and its meaning.
The complexity of audiovisual products and programmes justifies in part why, to
date, so few corpora of AVT have been set up (Gambier and Jin 2019). Such complexity
is also reflected in the concept of sense or meaning. Sense results from the interaction
between signs on the screen, between those signs and the different stakeholders of the
film industry, and between them and the viewers. The conventional hierarchies between
producers and editors are shaken up when the ‘same’ film can be different after the work
in the cutting room, if it is planned for certain cultural audiences, certain age groups,
and/or certain conditions of showing (in a cinema theatre, as a video, in a DVD format,
for a flight audience or for TV channels). The final cut, with today’s new technology, can
depend on producers, film directors, parents, religious associations, ideological groups
(who prefer politically correct projection and bowdlerized versions). A film such as Eyes
Wide Shut (Stanley Kubrick, 1999) has not been distributed as a single version in the
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Table 6.1 The 14 semiotic codes of a film
Audio channel Visual channel
VERBAL - linguistic code (dialogue, mono- - graphic code (written forms: letters,
ELEMENTS logue, comments/voices off, headlines, menus, street names,
(signs) reading) intertitles, subtitles)
- paralinguistic code (delivery,
intonation, accents)
- literary and theatre codes (plot,
narrative, sequences, drama pro-
gression, rhythm)
NON-VERBAL - special sound effects/sound - iconographic code
ELEMENTS arrangement code - photographic code (lighting, perspec-
(signs) - musical code tive, colours etc.)
- paralinguistic code (voice quality, - scenographic code (visual environ-
pauses, silence, volume of voice, ment signs)
vocal noise: crying, shouting, - film code (shooting, framing, cutting/
coughing etc.) editing, genre conventions etc.)
- kinesic code (gestures, manners,
postures, facial features, gazes etc.)
- proxemic code (movements, use of
space, interpersonal distance etc.)
- dress code, including hairstyle, make up
etc.
USA, New Zealand, Australia, the UK or the Netherlands because of the alteration of
several sexually explicit scenes during post-production or because of the verses cited from
the sacred Hindu Scripture Bhagavad Gita. Rating systems are part of censorship. A film
such as Apocalypse Now (Francis Ford Coppola, 1979) is another example with alternative
versions, in particular regarding the ending: the 35 mm general release version is different
from the network television version, from the extended version released in 2001 and from
the final cut shown in April 2019 –the runtime fluctuating between 2h30, 3h20 and 3
hours, respectively.
What about the concept of authorship? In literary studies and TS, the author is often
perceived as a single individual. For a long time, the prevailing concept of authorship in
literary history focused on authorial intention and originality (Venuti 2018). This mascu-
linist construction implied translation as derivative, subordinated, imitation, and not as
an act of interpretation with differences in the changing reception of a foreign text. After
Barthes’ essay ‘The Death of the Author’ (1967), Foucault’s lecture ‘What is an Author?’
(1969), and the deconstruction questioning author-oriented literary theory and criticism,
authorship gave way to readership. As opposed to incorporating the intention and bio-
graphical context of a writer in an interpretation of a text, as if the author had exclusive
authority concerning his/her production, the meaning of a work was supposed to depend
on the reading and the readers. Nevertheless, the text was still considered a verbal work
and the author as unique. In AVT, the issue of authorship cannot be overlooked, since a
number of groups or institutions are part of the process (screenwriter, producer, director,
actors, sound engineers, cameraman, editors etc.). The list of credits at the beginning or
end of a film is always long, encompassing intellectual and manual workers (hair-dressers,
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Yves Gambier
carpenters, electricians etc.). This diversity of stakeholders manifests the diversity of semi-
otic signs in the meaning-making process. We may note here that in TS different voices can
be heard now in the translating process –no longer a simple face-to-face meeting between
the author and the translator but a complex network of agents (literary agent, publisher,
editor, copy editor, reviewer/reader, reviser, cover designer, proof reader, typesetters, critics,
librarians, booksellers etc.) (Buzelin 2007; Jansen & Wegener 2013a, 2013b; Alvstad et al.
2017). In relation to authorship and voices, one can mention authorship, translation and
copyrights (Basalamah 2007). From the Berne Convention (1896) to the new European
Directive dated 2019 (cited above), writers, artists, performers, academics, publishers,
data compilers etc., are all protective of their intellectual, moral and financial rights.
Their works can be translated, adapted, arranged, broadcast, reproduced, distributed,
performed in public but only under certain conditions in order to avoid plagiarism, pir-
ating, copies, etc. Within the film industry, one must realize the difficult definition of a
co-production with many agents from different countries and professions (and therefore
the difficulty of accessing funding) before understanding how sensitive the problem of
rights really is.
Concepts of translation and translation unit

In parallel with the concept of AVT, other labels challenge the traditional Western con-
cept of translation as a transfer and a search for equivalence. New practices, stimulated by
technology and users, co-exist and call for new denominations, such as:
• Localization, used first in the computing industry for software and websites and then in
the videogame industry.
• Adaptation, for a long time in use in competition with translation, as soon as the focus
is on the receiver and not on the source text, for example for comics, drama plays,
children’s books, advertisements, tourist brochures, etc. Those adaptations (or some-
times transadaptations) refer to texts with still images or music.
• Transcreation (Ray & Kelly 2010), used in marketing and the advertising industry,
mainly to underscore the creativity of international campaigns.
• Language mediation or how, in different multilingual and multicultural settings and
between people, a change of languages occurs, a kind of code-switching that is not
always controlled by a formally qualified translator or interpreter. Translanguaging
can relate to language mediation, when multilingual speakers, using their languages
in certain contexts, navigate complex social and cognitive demands, thanks to stra-
tegic employment of their languages. Such a practice can take place in schools, bi-or
plurilingual families, marketplaces in a multilingual city etc. English as a lingua franca
can be one of the languages in translanguaging.
• Transediting, used in the print media to make clear that journalists do not ‘translate’ but
look for accuracy of information over faithfulness to the source text (if any), keep in
mind the target readership and story readability, always under time and space pressure. In
a way, they emphasize the adequacy and relevance of their articles to the target readers.
In other words, they ‘transedit’ the foreign extracts and quotes embedded in news stories.
• Multilingual technical writing, used when one writes documents in several languages
from pieces of information or data (often available in English).
• Co-writing, for instance, of legal texts, when the two versions are equally and
legally valid.
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The list is not exhaustive and does not apply everywhere at the same time. Nevertheless,
it confirms that translation cannot be conceptualized by a monolithic and universal term.
This diversity occurs not only within a given framework (within transfer), it also occurs
with old terms in a geo-cultural area (such as mimesis, appropriation and imitation etc. in
England, France and Spain, for instance) and in the concepts used yesterday and today in
different spaces where translation is defined as explanation, substitution, metamorphosis,
‘turn around’ etc.
In interpreting, the changing practices in media settings (not only radio and TV but
festivals as well, for instance) –in simultaneous or consecutive mode or with sign lan-
guage –are also under scrutiny (Pöchhacker 2018). Distinctions can be made between
on-site interpreter-mediated communications and media content made accessible to the
broadcaster’s audience through interpreting. Another distinction can be made between
interpreting ‘on screen’ and ‘off screen’, with the physical presence of the interpreter or
only through his/her voice or gestures. Press conferences, interviews in news broadcasts,
chat shows and sports programmes, live reports of special events (such as results of a
foreign presidential election, public funerals of important people, earthquakes in remote
places etc.) are examples of relatively new practices.
In addition, one should not forget media adaptation or format licensing and remakes.
Game shows, reality shows, sitcoms etc. can be internationalized for multiple markets and
produced in a new version tailored to the new audiences.
In short, within the various media, translation can be understood in different ways,
because there are new types of texts, new type of relations between so-called originals and
target texts and because the translation process implies the producer of the source text,
the translator and the audience (users, readers, viewers). AVT, news translation and other
forms in practice contest the equivalence paradigm in TS and demonstrate why the term
‘translation’ can be misleading and rejected.
Very often, the lay person thinks of translation in the equivalence paradigm, or the
quest to convey identical meanings. The aim is to achieve a text in the target language
that is ‘of equal value’ (Pym 2009: 82). Such an approach assumes, for instance, that two
languages ‘do or can express the same values’ (ibid.), but a word or concept may connote
different meanings in another language or may be absent altogether, so the relationship
between the two languages is not necessarily symmetrical. Two words may also refer to the
same object, and this would not necessarily convey the intended meaning of the original
text. Loyalty to the source text may result in a text that is not easily comprehensible in
the target language. Some people would criticize a translation because certain words have
not been replaced –thus, the famous set phrase: ‘Traduttore traditore’ or the catchphrase
‘Lost in translation’, as if translation was an act of treason, an ineluctable failure. This
focus on the lexical similarity of texts, however, does not allow one to consider, describe,
and explain the translation decisions and the translated output. The distinction between
what is manifest (literal, direct, surface-level) and what is latent (implicit, connotative,
underlying) ‘misreads’ the process of translation, and relegates the translator’s act of
interpreting the content to a task of relative obscurity.
Within TS academic studies, however, the equivalence paradigm has been criticized
since the 1980s; translation theories and conceptual frameworks have shifted to include a
more contextualized and socio-culturally oriented conception of the translation process.
Translation has been reframed as a form of intercultural interaction. It is not languages
that are translated, but rather texts that are socially and culturally situated. Within this
‘cultural turn’ in TS, several perspectives in particular have contributed to the critique of
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the long-standing equivalence paradigm –descriptive translation studies (Toury 2012);

the Skopos theory (Reiss & Vermeer 2013); cultural politics (Venuti 2018), and the dia-
logic interactionism approach in interpreting (Wadensjö 1998), among others. Translation
is thus viewed as a process of re-contextualization, as a purposeful action. The entire
decision- making process is bound to considerations that involve the end- receiver.
Meaning is no longer considered to be a mere invariant in the source text but rather as
culturally embedded, with a need to be interpreted. Translation becomes not just a lex-
ical hurdle to overcome, but the result of connections between text, context and a myriad
agents. If scholars agree upon this broader definition of translation, which could become
an umbrella term for many practices (Schäffner 2012), why do we use a string of new
labels? Despite decades of academic and professional translation research, the traditional
parameters configuring the equivalence paradigm persist. When scholars translate survey
questionnaires, when foreign businesses discuss contracts, viewers watch subtitled TV
programmes, or when language teachers use back-translation, they all rely heavily on the
equivalence paradigm. Viewed from this perspective, translators are non-existent; they are
passive agents, with no voice, no empathy, no subjectivity, no reflexivity, no interpreting
skill, no intercultural awareness, and no qualifications, all in complete opposition to those
practices described above in which translators rely on the communicative and cultural
context, the objectives and functions of the translation and the target receivers. In our
transition period, digital technology is transforming texts and translation.
What about translation unit? When one subtitles or dubs, what does he/she translate?
The concept of a translation unit has been defined in various ways –sometimes as the
smallest verbal segment of utterance, sometimes as a unit of sense gathered from a small
number of words, sometimes as a functional piece of the text combined with elements
scattered in the text, sometimes as the whole text. All those definitions are based, expli-
citly or not, on the equivalence paradigm. The problems are multiple: is the unit in the
source text or does it emerge only in the act of translating? Does it depend on the context,
the translators’ competence (and their response to norms and their own creativity)? To
what extent is a translation unit delineated by the identification of a translation problem?
Or, better, by the decision of the translator to reword the source text from a given angle?
(Ballard 2010). Beyond this concept of a translation unit as a linguistic unit, within
product-oriented research, characterizing source-text–target-text pairings with a focus on
lexical items, some scholars from a process-oriented stance have defined the translation
unit as a textual segment acting as cognitive input –such a source segment varies as one
progresses through a text (from a single word, a word group, a clause, a sentence, etc.)
depending on the translation modality (written vs oral), the text type, the translator’s
strategy, and possibly the ready- made segmentations provided by computer- assisted
tools (translation memory software, concordancer etc.). Whatever the theoretical frame-
work is, the translation unit always refers to verbal production. But what happens when
the text is multimodal, when the meaning to be translated is dynamic, made of multiple
semiotic signs? Focusing on words and sentences can be methodologically convenient,
even if it seems pointless to define a single linguistic unit. Translation and interpreting
(encompassing localization, transcreation etc.) are based on a myriad of source segments,
as AVT for instance pinpoints. Semantic networks are more complex than reductionist
accounts referring to monolithic unit types, as neurocognitive work has shown: different
processing dynamics are associated with specific form-level and semantic features, irre-
spective of the size or the length of the units. Matters become more complex when non-
linguistic signs are mixed with linguistic elements. In other words, when one subtitles, the
100
source ‘text’ is not the dialogue or any other linguistic items on screen but all the signs
together: it is because of the interplay between verbal, visual and sound that one can decide
what to omit, condense, simplify or add in the subtitles, assuming that the viewers infer
from all the signs, and not only from the two lines at the bottom of the screen, the meaning
of a shot and sequence. When viewers watch a film, they have a holistic approach; when
subtitlers start their work, they have an analytical approach, maybe more systematic when
they are novices and more routine when they are professionals. In all cases, the rhythms
of the plot, the action, the dialogues and the subtitles must coincide, the rhythm being the
‘binder’ between all the signs. A subtitle that is too cognitively demanding at a moment
when the plot is progressing rapidly disturbs the viewers and their reception of the film.
The concept of quality

There are different views and models of translation quality assessment which presuppose
a certain conceptualization of translation. Most of them, based on a relationship between
source and target text or a relationship between textual features and their perception by
the translator, are framed within the equivalence paradigm.
Many approaches focus on text (as a verbal entity), neglecting the purpose and con-
text of the translation, as well as the different agents involved in the process, as if quality
were an intrinsic characteristic (House 2001) and not at stake in the relationship between
the commissioner, the client, the translator, the receivers and the text to be delivered (see
Gouadec (2010) about quality standards and good practices, based on the distinction
between the quality of an end product and the quality of the transaction, i.e. the service
provided). According to House, approaches to translation quality assessment can either
be anecdotal and subjective (see treatises, prefaces, notes written in the past), response-
oriented (such as Nida’s well-known ‘dynamic equivalence’ from 1964), or textual-based
(informed by linguistics, comparative literature or functional-pragmatic models). Insights
from psycholinguistics, translation process research and cognitive translatology have
been barely mentioned since House’s entry was first published in 1998, when think-aloud
protocols and other large-scale empirical studies were not yet fully acknowledged. Quality
grades combine elements relating to several domains (Gouadec 2010: 273–274): the
linguistic-stylistic-rhetorical criteria, the factual-technical-semantic criteria, and the func-
tional criteria (see below concerning some of these criteria).
Again, as with the concepts of text and authorship, quality assessment and control are
challenged by localization of software, machine translation, AVT, crowdsourced trans-
lation workflows, etc. The productivity of the translator and the type of material to be
translated have changed and are still changing. A long life-span text, a highly perishable
document, the raw output of a machine translation and a finalized and published text
cannot be assessed in the same way, with the same set of evaluation criteria (O’Brien
2012). In addition, quality can be assessed throughout the translation process: before
signing a contract (how would the translation be able to meet the requirements of the
commissioner?), during the work (to check that certain decisions are adequate for the pur-
pose of the translation), and after the project (is it necessary to revise the translated text?).
Quality (because it correlates with the time available to the translator and to the fees)
takes place when planning, allocating tools and resources, recruiting freelancers, ensuring
a return on investment and measuring the impact of change.
In other words, and clearly true of all the media sectors (news translation, AVT etc.),
quality depends on a collective organization, including the client (buyers: news agencies,
101
Yves Gambier
Expected Quality Quality Sought
client +/- translators’
satisfied performance
Perceived Quality Quality Obtained
Figure 6.1 Types of quality
Viewers (needs, expectations)
Translators Client / Commissioner
(working conditions, TV channels
competences, distributors
status of the working languages)
AVT agencies
(local or national branches of a multinational company)
Figure 6.2 The different stakeholders in AVT
TV channels, film importers and distributors, and end users: readers and viewers), the
language service providers (AVT companies) and the translators (staff, freelancers,
outsourced agencies, subcontracted translators and amateurs working online). Quality
has many different parameters: external (needs and expectations of the stakeholders)
and internal (related to organization, management and competences). This complexity is
summarized in Figures 6.1 and 6.2:
Beyond the set of linguistic criteria as exclusive evaluation criteria, AVT follows new
challenging criteria. Among them, accessibility is a key word in AVT, not only as a legal
and technical issue but also as a concept that shakes up the dominant way of assessing
the quality of a translation, the aim being to optimize the user-friendliness of AVT, soft-
ware, web sites and other applications. It covers a variety of features in relation to subtitles
including:
• acceptability, related to language norms, stylistic choice, rhetorical patterns, terminology.

• legibility, defined in terms of font, position of the subtitles, subtitle rate.
• readability, also defined for subtitling in terms of reading rates, reading habits, text com-
plexity, semantic load, shot changes and speech rates, etc.
In relation to dubbing, voice-over and free commentary:
• synchronicity, including lip-synchrony (appropriateness of the speech to lip movements),

syllable articulation synchrony, kinetic synchrony (utterance in relation to the gestural
102
and facial expressions), iso-synchrony (synchronization of duration of what is said to

what is shown in the pictures), and audio-or voice-synchrony (a voice, understood as
vocal type, tone, timbre, pitch of the voice, prosody, accent, that matches the personality
of the visible actor).
Common to subtitling, dubbing and game localization:
• relevance, in terms of what information is to be conveyed, deleted, added or clarified in

order to not increase the cognitive effort involved in listening or reading.
With such predominant criteria, the usual ones (accuracy, appropriateness and coherence)
become secondary and even minor if the time and space constraints have priority. This is
confirmed in reception studies dealing with different modes of AVT and using different
research methods (Di Giovanni & Gambier 2018).
With other multimodal texts, other criteria can be applied: for instance, playability in
video games, singability for songs, operas and musicals, and speakability, and actability for
theatre (Poyatos 1997; Snell-Hornby 2006: 85–87).
With news translation in written and electronic media, certain quality criteria can also
be specified, when the constraints are obvious (see section Concepts of translation and
translation unit): journalists are obliged to follow in-house style preferences; they cannot
help but rewrite, reframe, re-contextualize, summarize, cut, clarify, reformulate the news
with a readership in mind. Readability, comprehensibility, relevance are key criteria,
different from faithfulness and fidelity to the source text (if any).
Media and multi-semiotic ‘texts’ most definitely move away from the formal equiva-
lence paradigm and a purely linguistic view of translation.
Conclusion
Moving beyond text-to-text translation, scholars have begun to explore different kinds
of translation – text-to-image, text-to-music, image-to-text, text-to-dance, etc. For them,
the very terms text, translation and other similar forms have become inadequate for
describing the full range of interactions involving the production and transfer of meaning
in fluid genres.
TS are twisted regarding two sets of question:
1) Those coping with its scope and object of investigation: ‘translation’. But what does
it mean when many labels are supposed to describe the wide range of practices today
that are found in different cultural areas (see section Concepts of translation and
translation unit), and there is an on-going debate concerning whether intralingual
translation is part of TS (Mossop 2016, 2017; Karas 2016; Korning Zethsen &
Hill-Madsen 2016)? The proliferation of terms designating the linguistic-cultural
transformation for which ‘translation’ would once have sufficed is indicative of a
conceptual disruption, of the communication value being added to the nodes of
a burgeoning global-wide network and of the expansion of competences required
from ‘translators’.
2) Those questions relating to its status when a significant number of disciplines also
handle communication in its broad sense,2 such as adaptation studies, localization
studies, intercultural studies, transfer studies, knowledge management, internet studies,
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Yves Gambier
Web science and digital studies, and not forgetting that history, anthropology, law and
religious studies analyse social phenomena which emerge from semiotic interactions
between different social agents.
In translation studies today two paradigms are evolving. On the one hand, there is
the more conventional conceptualization of translation which has endured for centuries
through the paradigm of equivalence. It has evolved into the paradigm of the ‘cultural
turn’, oriented towards the recipient. This first changing paradigm exists concurrently
with another changing paradigm, one which reflects the platforms and mediums through
which the activity of translation is now carried out. In this sense, the paradigm of the
book (upon which the paradigm of equivalence is based) transforms into one that is
digital and of the Web (where the text to translate becomes multimodal). This double
clash of paradigms is happening now and explains tensions and contradictions in trans-
lation studies: a scholar can easily refer to communication, targeted audience and in the
same move try to apply (implicitly or not) the concept of equivalence in order to describe
what happens in the translation. This double clash also explains why TS has doubts about
its identity, hesitating between a fragmentation into ‘turns’ and a consilience of concepts
and methods (Chesterman 2017).
Further reading
• Boria, M., Carreres, A., Noriega-Sánchez, M. & Tomalin, M. (eds) (2020) Translation
and Multimodality. London and New York: Routledge.
This book examines how translation is reconfigured in contexts where several systems of
signs occur simultaneously.
• Campbell, M. & Vidal, R. (eds) (2019). Translating Across Sensory and Linguistic
Borders: Intersemiotic Journeys between Media. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.
Intersemiotic translation is considered here as an experiment challenging boundaries

between media, arts and types of signs.
• Elleström, L. (2014). Media Transformation: The Transfer of Media Characteristics

among Media. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.
This book analyses how the media industry is going through sweeping changes, with the
possibility of transferring media traits among different media types.
Notes
1 Other works by Barthes could be mentioned here: The Pleasure of the Text (trans. Richard
Miller, 1975) and his essays in Image-Music-Text, both published in New York by Hill
and Wang.
2 These disciplines are interrelated (partially) in principle but separated as academic disciplines, if
not as university departments.
104
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7
The translating agent in the media
One or many?
Ji-Hae Kang
Introduction
The authorial role of translators and the extent to which a translation act involves multiple
agents have been the focus of numerous scholarly inquiries in translation studies. Against
the lay image of a lone translator, consolidated by ‘myths of singularity’ (Cordingley and
Frigau Manning 2017: 4) which has historically served to create the imperative to char-
acterize translation as a singular act, researchers theorizing translation have elaborated
on the need to understand translational authorship and translation acts in collaborative
terms. In fact, a significant increase in the number of more recent research projects have
argued for ‘the normality, or indeed predominance, of collaborative translation’ (Neather
2020: 70), bringing collaboration to the centre of discussions on translation processes and
practices.
Against this background, the current chapter provides an overview of how the figure
of the translator in media translation has been discussed by translation scholars and how
collaboration among agents has affected media translation in terms of the ways in which
it is perceived and carried out. Collaboration among agents in the context of news trans-
lation and audiovisual translation has been treated as an important research topic by
researchers during the last two decades. However, the implications of collaboration have
become more salient and far-reaching recently, as the mode of collaboration has evolved
rapidly in response to the emergence of new media platforms and the fading of boundaries
between the public and the private, mass communication and interactive communication,
professionals and amateurs, and production and consumption (cf. Wahl-Jorgensen and
Hanitzsch 2009). Technological advances, coupled with the growing demand for instant
reach of information on a global scale, have enabled unprecedented volumes of news
texts and audiovisual materials to cross the borders of nation states and national markets
with extraordinary speed. This has been accompanied by translation practices which
are linked to new forms of interaction among different agents, i.e. producers, users, and
consumers of online information and content. Although professional and commercial
settings such as news organizations and commercial distributors of audiovisual materials
continue to be crucial institutional contexts in which media translation takes place (Kang
108 DOI: 10.4324/9781003221678-9

2020), media translation is no longer confined to media enterprises or cultural and cre-
ative industries (Pérez-González 2020). Participatory forms of organization ranging from
activist networks to fan communities have become notable sites of media translation, and
translators collaborating with other translating or non-translating agents in the process of
producing translated texts have become crucial agents in the media landscape.
Collaboration in media translation: professional and

commercial contexts
The term ‘collaborative translation’ refers to the act or process of translation carried out
by two or more agents who work together to accomplish a translation task. Although col-
laboration in the context of literary translation has been approached as ‘the act of sharing
authority over a work or some portion of it’ (Shillingsburg 1996: 173; cited in Cordingley
and Frigau Manning 2017: 4; emphasis in the original), as well as being viewed as joint
work between ‘a translator and the author’, ‘the author and a group of translators, each
working in a different language’ or ‘two or more translators working on the same text,
translating into the same language’ (Zielinska-Elliott and Kaminka 2017: 169), collab-
orative translation has generally been understood as two broad notions within the field
of translation studies (O’Brien 2011). In a narrow sense, it refers to co-translation or ‘the
act whereby self-identifying translators work together on the creation of a translation’
(Cordingley and Frigau Manning 2017: 24), the final product being the result of more
than one actor. In a broader sense, it refers to the process and product of collaboration
between a number of translating and non-translating agents. Both senses of collaborative
translation are relevant in the discussion of media translation.
In the case of news organizations, the translating agent not only interacts with other
agents in the process of doing translation work, in both senses of the notion of collab-
orative translation, but the roles of journalist and translator are also integrated within
an agent. Translation is frequently indistinguishable from other journalistic processes of
information gathering and news writing and editing, which neutralizes the distinction
between ‘translator’ and ‘journalist’, as evidenced by the use of such terms as ‘journalist-
as-translator’ (Conway 2008: 30), ‘journalist-translator’ (van Doorslaer 2010: 177), and
‘transeditor’ (Stetting 1989: 377). Of particular interest here is ‘transeditor’, a term first
used by Karen Stetting to describe ‘the grey area between editing and translating’ (Stetting
1989: 371) but used extensively by translation researchers to refer to the news translator
who engages in the act of editing the style, format and meaning of a journalistic text in
the process of transferring it into another language (e.g. Hursti 2001; van Doorslaer 2010;
Cheesman and Nohl 2011). Starting out from the position that ‘certain amount of editing
has always been included in the translation task’ (Stetting 1989: 371), Stetting goes on to
provide three categories of transediting: to clean-up poorly written manuscripts, to make
the translated text fit a new social context, and to conform to the conventions of the target
culture. Approaching news translation as transediting recasts the traditional role of the
translator in relation to both the author and the source text, as pointed out by Bielsa and
Bassnett (2009: 64–65):
Translators’ historical [sic] cultural and socio-economic dependence –their subor-

dinate position in the cultural field – has been theorized in terms of their ingrained
subservience ‘to the client, to the public, to the author, to the text, to language itself’
(Simeoni 1998: 11–12). Stetting already pointed to the more interventionist role of
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Ji-Hae Kang
the ‘transeditor’: ‘if the translator decides to take on the more responsible role of
“midwife” to see to it that the original intentions are reborn in a new and better shape
in the target language, the translator turns into a “transeditor” ’ (1989: 376). The
transeditor, challenging the secondary position traditionally attributed to the trans-
lator in relation to the writer, ‘is also likely to feel that her work is more rewarding, if
it is more independent and more on a par with that of the writer’ (1989: 377).
Bielsa and Bassnett’s focus here is on the news translator’s assertive role in reconfiguring
the source text in another language. However, the term is also problematized for implying
‘the existence of another form of translating news’ (Bielsa and Bassnett 2009: 64) and
thereby limiting the range of processes that would fall under ‘translation’. They argue that
despite the ‘the more interventionist role’ (2009: 64) taken up by news translators, those
engaged in transferring news stories in one language to another in news organizations
mostly identify themselves as journalists rather than translators. This connects to the
invisibility of the translation process in news production, which is described as ‘doubly
invisible’ (2009: 73) in that translation is simultaneously effaced at two different levels,
i.e. the level of integrating translation within journalism and the level of using a domes-
ticating strategy in the translation process. In fact, whether the term selected to refer to
the conflation of the role of a journalist writing a news story and the role of a news trans-
lator is called journalist-as-translator, journalist-translator or transeditor, the absence of
‘real’ translators in the newsroom is considered by translation scholars as highly para-
doxical: ‘because translating is everywhere, there are no formal translator functions’ (van
Doorslaer 2010: 181).
Studies on news translator’s relationality in other institutional and cultural contexts,
however, have yielded insights that are distinct from those that have been presented from
examinations of news agencies, where translation process is integrated with journalistic
work. Research projects on news organizations where international news is transferred for
local contexts, in particular, have shown that journalistic text production involves mul-
tiple agents working together to produce a news story, which is further subjected to the
editing process by an editor. In such contexts, professional translators are hired to fulfil
the role of translating journalistic texts (Kang 2007; Frías Arnés 2005; Schäffner 2005).
For instance, in a study of Newsweek Hankuk Pan, the Korean edition of American news
magazine Newsweek, the making of a translated text is described as a collective effort, and
the texts finally published are the ‘result of the collaborative work of people assuming
different roles and engaged in language transfer, cultural adaptation, proofreading,
revising, naturalizing, editing and other textual processes that are carried out repeatedly
and cyclically’ (Kang 2007: 238). According to this study, translating, revising and editing
are identified as separate processes, taken up by individuals fulfilling distinct roles, and
translators work collaboratively with others to enhance the quality of a translated text
and to ensure that the final text is reflective of the discourse of the news institution.
In fact, it is not just in the process of producing a translated journalistic text that col-
laboration among multiple parties is identified; the ‘principle of collective authorship’
(Bielsa 2007: 148) in news organizations is a defining aspect of news gathering and produc-
tion in general. Associated with accountability for the produced information and correct
application of the news organization’s norms (Bielsa and Bassnett 2009: 70), collective
authorship is a result of joint work of such agents as ‘a first author, editors, proofreaders,
a second author in a second language, investigators who have collected quotations and
information from sources in the field, the author of some quotes, etc.’ (Davier and Van
110
Doorslaer 2018: 242). One of the consequences of this is the frequent absence of the name
of the author in a news story. The absence of the name of a translator in a translated news
text is also considered customary and even natural. Translator’s anonymity and invisi-
bility are generally considered salient aspects translating journalistic texts.
In the case of audiovisual translation, researchers have pointed out that translation
is rarely regarded as an act carried out by a single translator. Translators of audiovisual
materials in the context of industry-controlled systems of production and distribution
work collaboratively with other agents, with translators possessing only ‘provisional
authority’ (Cordingley and Frigau Manning 2017: 2) as their work involves texts that are
dynamic and typically subjected to significant modification by revisers, editors, dubbing
adapters and others. The dismantling of the auteur and discussions concerning multiple
authorship in film theory are also pertinent to the discussion on collaborative transla-
tion of films (Meskin 2009). Textual modes such as film subtitles and video games are
generally characterized by fragmented authorship, which ‘play[s]‌an important role in
challenging the stability of the author category more broadly’ (Summers 2020: 37–38).
With regard to the translation of video games, multiple agents are also involved in the
corporate production of a translated text and the creation of a finished product (Bernal-
Merino 2006).
Reasons for collaborative work in industrial audiovisual translation (AVT) vary, ran-
ging from increasing production volume under tight deadlines to quality control (Kang
and Kim 2020). The need for speed is also underlined by O’Brien (2011: 18), who points out
that ‘clients want to have more content translated, into more languages, in a shorter time
frame and so it is no longer acceptable for one translator to work on a large volume of text
for a long period of time’. To respond to such conditions, an arrangement or system is set
up in which ‘translators work in parallel on smaller chunks of text and they are expected
to collaborate with one another’ (2011: 18). In the case of subtitling of films, for example,
translators in such countries as Japan are often asked to subtitle a film in just a week or
two to meet tight screening schedules (Kamiya 2004). Subtitlers in other cultures are com-
monly given even less time, especially when Hollywood films are released simultaneously
throughout the world, a situation which often entails translators working without a final
cut. Thus, co-translating is viewed as a way to improve translation quality and shorten
translation time under such conditions, and in these ‘tightly controlled enterprises … the
names of subtitlers tend not to be declared’ (Baker 2019: 456).
Recent research on collaborative AVT of films, however, has offered new perspectives
concerning the mode and function of collaboration in AVT in the context of media
enterprises. In a study of collaborative subtitling of a Hollywood film in South Korea, a
country with a dynamic domestic film industry and a high level of public interest in both
domestic and foreign films, Kang and Kim (2020) examine how collaborative translation
and co-translators’ identities are used as a resource in the film’s marketing campaign. The
2015 American action comedy film Spy, originally praised by the critics for its feminist
message, was publicized prior to its release in South Korea for its translation team, which
included a high-profile comedian and comedy scriptwriters, as well as a professional trans-
lator. The aggressive online promotional strategy led to a heightened public interest in
the film and its translation, which eventually led to an explosion of negative evaluations
of Korean subtitles by critics and viewers, especially for containing a sexist humour code
that reinforced negative gender stereotypes. The case study highlights how the function
of collaborative translation is being extended: in addition to facilitating the mediation
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Ji-Hae Kang
of foreign films, collaborative translation is being overtly commercialized to serve novel

marketing practices.
The issue of collaboration in film industry has also been examined from other perspectives,
including offering accessibility services to the media for audiences with sensory disabilities
(Romero-Fresco 2019). Romero-Fresco focuses on how the budget for translation and acces-
sibility in top-grossing Hollywood films typically account for only 0.1 to 1% of the budget
for making a film, although nearly 60% of the revenue from these films originate from
translated (subtitled or dubbed) or accessible (with subtitles for the deaf and audio descrip-
tion for the blind) versions of these films. Against the current practice of treating translation
and accessibility as an afterthought in the filmmaking process, the study emphasizes the
significance of developing a structure for collaboration between filmmakers and translators
that is based on the integration of AVT and accessibility as part of the filmmaking process.
The argument is made that collaboration between translators and the creative team is cen-
tral to transform the current industrial mode of subtitling, which relegates subtitling and
accessibility-related activities to the distribution process, with no communication between
translators and the creative team. The study also points out that the result of the current
industrial practice is the invisibility and low status of translators.
The discussion in this section has examined the figure of the translator in media trans-
lation in terms of the notions of authorship and collaboration. Collaboration between
translators, and between translators and non-translators, constitutes a crucial aspect of
news translation and audiovisual translation. In addition to the conventional functions
of providing speedy translation, exercising quality control, homogenizing writing
conventions, and controlling the discourse, among others, collaboration is being enlarged
to fulfil new functions related to creating further economic value for media products.
Participatory forms of media translation

In recent years, the development of digital technologies has enabled user participation on
the Web through large-scale online collaboration and social networking. Pérez-González
(2014a: 200) identifies ‘two conflicting yet complementary trends’ in relation to the chan-
ging global media ecology. One is the growing choice of channels available for distrib-
uting media content and the growing fragmentation of audiences, both of which have
contributed to the concentration of mainstream commercial media under the control of a
small number of powerful global corporations. The other trend is the increase in control
on the part of viewers over their user experience due to the affordances of new commu-
nication technologies which allow them to archive, annotate, appropriate and recircu-
late media content, thereby threatening the commercial interests of mainstream media.
Against this background, collaborative translingual activities carried out in online envir-
onments by groups of individuals who utilize participatory Web tools have become a not-
able phenomenon. These forms of online collaborative media translation are particularly
noteworthy for their connection to political activism, citizen media, fandom and other
forms of participatory practices (Jenkins 2006).
The ‘democratization of access to digital technologies’ (Pérez-González 2014b: 233)
has contributed to the‘demotic turn’ (Turner 2010: 1) in the translation of news and audio-
visual materials. The audiovisual domain, in particular, has been a critical site in which
‘collaborative technologies are contributing to the formation of transnational networked
collectivities, and hence re-defining the traditional boundaries of nation-based cultural
and linguistic constituencies’ (Pérez-González 2014b: 61). Cloud subtitling platforms such
112
as Amara, for example, offer tools that ‘are free and open source and make the work of
subtitling and translating video simpler, more appealing, and, most of all, more collabora-
tive’.1 Widely known for their use in the TED Open Translation initiative, Amara was also
used by the subtitlers and film makers of such activist collectives as Mosireen and Words
of Women during the 2011 Egyptian Revolution (Baker 2016).
In the case of news translation, emerging forms of collaborative journalism, in which pro-
fessional journalists and amateurs work together, have been posing a challenge to traditional
news media, obscuring the boundaries between professional and amateur, and between
news production, translation and consumption. Collaboration among agents in the context
of translating for citizen media, in particular, has become a recognizable topic of research
in translation studies. As citizen media engages with the ways in which ‘a collectivity is
enacting its citizenship by actively intervening and transforming the established mediascape’
(Rodriguez 2001: 15; emphasis in the original) networks or groups of professional and ama-
teur journalists/translators play a crucial role in producing documentaries and reports of
events and situations of conflict textually (e.g. via tweets about unfolding events) or visually
(e.g. via mobile phones or cameras) and in circulating and disseminating these contents.
Their impact on reshaping the ways in which news information and audiovisual materials
are produced and circulated transnationally, as well as transforming and redefining the prac-
tice of media translation, underline the need for more informed research on these emerging
forms of collaborative practice (Atton 2019; Gould and Tahmasebian 2020).
In his research on the emergence and consolidation of activist communities of translators
within the context of citizen media, Pérez-González (2014a) identifies two broad types of
activist translator groups. The first type is the stable groupings of activist journalists/
translators participating in long-lasting networks of amateurs and professionals, built
upon regular and sustained interaction between members. Their activities centre on trans-
lation and ‘re-mediation’ (Deuze 2006), mostly of written and audiovisual material via
various channels. The activist collectives Mosireen and Words of Women in Egypt are
examples of this type of community.
The second type is loose, temporary groupings of activists, which Pérez-González
(2010: 259) discusses in terms of ‘generative’ conceptualization of translation activism based
on fluid networks of engaged mediators whose collective identities are formed through ‘a
dynamic process of contextualization, involving complex negotiations of narrative affinity
among its members’. In a case study of the genealogy of a blog-based activist commu-
nity engaged in the subtitling of a televised interview, he argues that these collectivities
emerge through ‘negotiated appraisals of mutual affinity spaces’ (2010: 282) and the use of
technological tools that enable networks to be generated spontaneously. These networks of
activist translators ‘constitute ‘ad-hocracies’ that capitalize on the potential of networked
communication to exploit their collective intelligence’ (2010: 259). As the overall mediation
process requires appropriation and distribution online, as well as language transfer, col-
lective intelligence is particularly important in this form of interventionist practice.
The ways in which collaborative media translation is being enlarged to go beyond ‘rep-
resentational practice’ (Pérez-González 2014a: 58) and fulfil the role of ‘interventionist
practice’ is interrogated in Baker (2016), which investigates activist subtitlers of docu-
mentaries that provided an alternative record of events. Her research focuses on Mosireen
and Words of Women, two key collectives during the 2011 Egyptian Revolution, which
respectively produced, translated and circulated audiovisual materials. Within the context
of these collectives, which are loosely structured, non-hierarchical, inclusive and generally
uninterested in exercising control over their output, subtitlers lack visibility and exercise
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Ji-Hae Kang
low levels of agency. She points to such factors as ‘the contemporary culture of collabora-
tive and collective activist work, where those involved are rarely interested in being credited
as individuals’ (Baker 2019: 757) and the entrenched attitudes that regard translation as
secondary or derivative activity as possible reasons for the lack of translators’ agency and
their invisibility. Emphasizing that subtitling is an integral part of any collective political
project, Baker calls on these collectives to build subtitling into the filmmakers’ production
processes and to have filmmakers and subtitlers ‘renegotiate their position vis-à-vis each
other and the political project’ (Baker 2016: 17).
Baker’s analysis underlines the importance of tracing the agency and visibility of indi-
vidual translators collaborating with other non-translating agents in the activist communities.
Her emphasis is made against the background of some voices criticizing the tendency among
translation researchers to ‘view the individual translator as the single motor of change, thus
downplaying the collective dimension of both translation and activism’ (Boéri 2008: 22).
Baker (2019: 456), on the other hand, underlines that the technological advancement has
enabled individual activists to translate and disseminate information and contents among
users through various channels (e.g. YouTube) and ‘individual activist initiatives now merit
closer scholarly attention to offset the almost exclusive focus on collective interventions’.
More recent research on the interrelationship between collaborative media translation and
activism focuses on the broader role of the translator as a social and political actor, going
beyond textual interventions. In fact, activist translation research attempts to avoid the preva-
lent focus on content, paying attention instead to ‘practices, values, narratives, and forms of
individual and collective agency’ (Baker and Blaagaard 2016: 12). This shift is also evident in
another form of media translation that has flourished in recent years within the context of
amateur and community-based translation practices, which is fan-based media translation.
Understood as the translation of information and materials by fans, fan translation
is typically associated with fans’ motivation to ‘spread the love’ (Dwyer 2016: 151) of
particular films, TV dramas, songs, movie stars, musicians or sports teams. It engages
with specific topics (most notably, from popular culture or sports) and deals with specific
genres or text types (e.g. TV drama or shows, films, comics, video games, song lyrics, news
stories). Although fandom related activities may be carried out individually or collabora-
tively, fan translation generally takes place in the context of group formations, including
communities and collectives of different sizes and compositions that allow fans to connect
with other like-minded fans. Researchers’ views on collaborative fan translation are
diverse, ranging from considering it as a form of affective labour provided by amateurs
(cf. Hardt and Negri 2004) to describing it as an unregulated and peripheral, even illegal,
act (Dwyer 2019: 436). Fan AVT typically covers three categories of mediation, namely,
fansubbing, fandubbing and ‘romhacking’ (accessing a video game’s read-only memory
data to localize its spoken and written language components) (Dwyer 2019), but the most
widely adopted mode is fansubbing. Although it originated from fan practices related
to promoting the translation and non-commercial distribution of Japanese anime films
(Díaz-Cintas and Orero 2010), fan translation is now used to translate a wide array of
genres and text types across more diverse linguistic and cultural boundaries.
Pérez-González (2014b) describes fan translation as a form of interventionist prac-
tice in that it involves fans experimenting with and developing innovative subtitling
strategies that challenge restrictive conventions imposed by the industry. Although
fansubbing may be regarded as a case of aesthetic intervention, distinct from political/
activist intervention, which constitutes the other category of interventionist practices,
fan cultures and contemporary mobilizations are similar in that they both challenge
114
and undermine the established order. Fan AVT violates the conventions of industrial
AVT practices, which tend to prioritize the ‘self-effacing’ style based on the condensa-
tion of the diegetic speech under tight temporal and spatial constraints. Using diverse
or nonconventional fonts and colours in titles and adding translator notes are just a
few of the innovative strategies fansubbers use in the process of translation (Lee 2019).
In this respect, fan AVT ‘questions the current operation of global cultural industries
by providing a new model of content distribution and its organization based on con-
sumers’ voluntary work’ (Lee 2011: 1132).
Collaboration is a key feature of fansubbing and its rise to prominence has been
made possible by such factors as networking technologies and file sharing protocols.
Fansubbing activities take place in the context of virtual communities that ‘capitalize on
the affordances of networked communication to exploit their members’ skills sets or col-
lective intelligence’ (Pérez-González 2020: 104). As fansubbers are typically responsible
for technical as well as linguistic tasks, fan AVT activities require mobilization of distinct
individual skills and competences for task completion. By contributing their skills and
knowledge to fan AVT activities, fans engage in an act of self-representation that entails
building networks that enable them to enhance their affinity with other fans.
Recent studies on collaborative translation within the context of participatory fan
practices have shown how fansubbing is increasingly playing a complex role in the evolving
global media. Dwyer’s (2017) analysis of collaborative fan translation activities occurring
in the context of the global TV service Viki,2 for example, shows that affective community-
building by fansubbers is accompanied by ‘the blurring of the commercial and commu-
nity interest … increasingly prevalent within media industry practices’ (Dwyer 2019: 445).
Viki’s fansubbers are voluntary and amateur translators who translate without financial
compensation; however, their fansubs constitute a critical component of Viki’s business
model as they are monetized as part of a for-profit commercial service. Fan AVT is
solicited by Viki’s open call for crowd participation, but the channels are mostly managed
by volunteers themselves, consequently blurring the distinctions between top-down and
bottom-up mechanisms. The fan AVT activities are based on the collective appreciation for
Asian dramas (Korean dramas in particular), and its Website fosters community-building
via its comments feature, community discussion forums and private messaging between
contributors who are fans. The Viki case demonstrates that the collaborative nature of fan
AVT offers unprecedented visibility of fansubbing in the screen media marketplace and
empowerment of the audience/consumer, but also new models for market-based modes of
cultural production and exploitation. As such, it shows how ‘inevitable tensions between
profit-based commerce and the fan community’ (Dwyer 2016: 146) may play out.
The impact of technology and translation crowdsourcing

The ‘commerce/community tensions that inhabit fansubbing as a phenomenon’ (Dwyer
2016: 147) have become evident in a range of media translation activities collectively
undertaken by groups of amateur media translators. If the way Viki solicits fan transla-
tion (in the form of an open call for crowd participation) is considered, Viki’s translation
is an instance of ‘translation crowdsourcing’, defined by Jiménez-Crespo (2017a: 18–23)
as a mode of solicited translation which is web-based and initiated by companies or
other types of institutions. Jiménez-Crespo makes a distinction between ‘translation
crowdsourcing’ and ‘online collaborative translation’ on the basis of whether the form
of collaboration is top-down and solicited, or bottom-up and user-driven. In fact, an
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Ji-Hae Kang
increase in collaborative translingual activities utilizing web-based platforms which allow

multiple prosumers to interact simultaneously have led to the spread, and diversification,
of mass collaborative translation models. This is demonstrated by the emergence of such
terms as community translation (O’Hagan 2011), user-generated translation (Perrino 2009),
crowdsourced translation (McDonough Dolmaya 2012), wiki-translation (Cronin 2013),
non-professional translation (Pérez-González and Susam-Saraeva 2012), volunteer transla-
tion (Pym 2011), as well as collaborative translation.
A growing number of fan AVT activities and other media translation initiatives, all
performed through web platforms, are initiated by companies and for-profit organizations
(Kang and Hong 2020). While the popularity of translation crowdsourcing model in the
context of media translation has led to new opportunities for mediation, enabling con-
stituencies to have access to information and audiovisual contents, crowdsourcing has also
raised some professional and ethical issues for translators. Technological advances, instru-
mental in enabling the emergence of a dynamic participatory culture, have empowered the
translation crowd, consisting of amateurs and experts, to collaboratively complete tasks
and provide speedy access to information and products to language communities which
might otherwise have been denied access or which might have had to wait for prolonged
periods of time before gaining access. However, this mode of translation has the potential
to exploit translators. Furthermore, it problematizes the notions of translator expertise and
challenges the translation profession as it could lead to the deprofessionalization of trans-
lation (Neather 2020, O’Brien 2011). As more users are willing to participate in transla-
tion crowdsourcing without monetary compensation or with compensation below market
rates, and as companies are increasingly willing to utilize the translation crowdsourcing
model to fulfil their translation needs, the blurring of the boundary between professional
and amateur translation is intensified.
The factors motivating commercial companies to adopt a crowdsourced transla-
tion model are diverse, but the most significant motivator is economic, as the cost
of crowdsourcing is generally substantially lower than having translation done by
professionals. Jiménez-Crespo (2017b), citing Munro’s (2013) report, states that the cost
of a crowdsourcing initiative is only 20 per cent of that of using professional translators,
although DePalma and Kelly (2011) report that the cost of creating and managing a
crowdsourcing platform might be the same as the cost of using professional translation
services. Others have also pointed out that platform creation and maintenance is ‘a rela-
tively cheap solution’ (Anastasiou and Gupta 2011: 640) compared to professional trans-
lation services. Trained staff may be needed to implement a platform in the initial stages,
but less maintenance is needed for a basic crowdsourcing translation platform.
That the translators participating in crowdsourcing initiatives may be susceptible to
exploitation is now a serious concern for translation practitioners and researchers as
there is ‘no minimum wage, no labor regulation, no governmental jurisdiction’ (Rushkoff
2016: 50) in crowdsourcing. As an increasing number of users possess foreign language
skills and are willing to share their knowledge and skills to collaboratively solve problems
and circulate ideas, translation lends itself readily to crowdsourcing projects initiated by
commercial companies. In the mist of dramatic technological advancement and evolving
translation forms, what is increasingly clear is that the fuzziness of boundaries is making
it ever more difficult to identify the extent of the influence of commercial or industry-
related interests even in translation projects that claim to be self-initiated and not-for-profit
community translation (Munday 2012; Boéri 2020; McDonough Dolmaya 2011; Kang
and Hong 2020).
116
Conclusion
This chapter has outlined the complex interconnection between collaboration and media
translation practices, focusing on the modes and effects of collaboration in the context of
news translation and AVT in professional and commercial organizations, and extending
the discussion towards evolving forms of collaborative media translation associated with
political activism, citizen media, fandom and crowdsourcing initiatives. The chapter first
examined the distinct approaches to the figure of the translator engaged in media trans-
lation and the role of collaboration in professional and commercial translation contexts.
Second, it provided an overview of crucial features of collaborative media translation that
seek to challenge the aesthetic or political order in the new media landscape characterized
by decentralized models of distribution and consumption of information and audiovisual
content. Third, it considered how collaborative media translation relates to the rapidly
developing phenomenon of translation crowdsourcing, examining ethical and professional
issues related to mobilizing amateur translators for collaborative commercial initiatives.
The discussion in this chapter has shown that the authorial role of translators in col-
laborative media translation presents a complicated picture. Although existing research
on authorship related to media translation suggest collective authorship, authorial iden-
tity of new forms of media translation has not been sufficiently explored by translation
researchers. In connection to more conventional modes of news translation and AVT,
authorship has been a useful starting point to explore whether a single authorial identity
may be traced in translation and above the level of one language (Summers 2020). However,
as new and evolving subtypes of media translation that depend on multiple actors utilizing
collaborative technologies increase, the relevance of the notion of authorial identity in
discussions on diverse collaborative modes of translation may diminish. Furthermore, the
notion of authorship has the potential to distract us from thinking of media translation in
terms of non-representational practice or from considering the broader role of the trans-
lator as a social and political actor.
The discussion of translator’s agency and visibility, as well as collaborative translation
processes within various forms of organizations and groups, suggests that collaborative in
collaborative translation does not necessarily signal harmony or congruence in the process
of people coming together and sharing skills and ideas in the production of translated
texts. The possibility for tension, disagreement and divergence of opinion between
different agents and roles always remains. This is apparent in discussions of news transla-
tion and AVT in professional and commercial contexts, where interaction among different
agents involved in the production of translations is often affected by the top-down, struc-
turally defined and institutionally driven processes (Kang 2007). Even in the case of
participatory media translation, where networks of individuals are brought together by
common interest, affinity and like-mindedness, different expectations concerning visibility
and agency among agents may require negotiation and balancing of dissimilar outlooks
and tensions, as shown in Baker (2016).
This chapter has suggested that the notion of collaboration pushes translation
practitioners and researchers to rethink media translation. The focus of the overview
has been on the figure of the media translator in relation to organizational or group
formations, including communities and networks of different sizes and compositions,
and the involvement of both professionals and amateurs in the process of production of
translated information and content. Although media translation has been (and continues
to be) a crucial site of representational practice which prioritizes professional mediation
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Ji-Hae Kang
of information and audiovisual content across linguistic boundaries, technological

affordances have enabled translators, both professionals and amateurs, to participate in
transnational networks or communities with other like-minded individuals in quest of
promoting shared cultural and political values. This has brought non-representational
practice to the fore of the discussions on media translation. Furthermore, while the dis-
cussion of collaboration in this chapter has focused on human agents, there is scope to
examine the collaborative input of both human and non-human agents, and the socio-
technical systems that shape the translation process, such as in actor-network theory
(Buzelin 2005). As collaborative media translation continues to evolve, it raises complex
conceptual and theoretical questions, as well as immediate, real world concerns related
to the lived experiences of translators and the material conditions of their work. It is
hoped this overview will encourage researchers to further the development of know-
ledge on media translation and address the real-world issues related to collaboration in
translation.
Further reading
• Bielsa, E. and Bassnett, S. (2009) Translation in Global News. London: Routledge.
In this key text on news translation, the authors provide a theoretical and empirical
account of the role of the news translator within the context of global news agencies.
• Cordingley, A. and Frigau Manning, C. (2017) ‘What is collaborative translation?’,

in A. Cordingley and C. Frigau Manning (eds.), Collaborative Translation: From the
Renaissance to the Digital Age. London and New York: Bloomsbury Academic, pp. 1–30.
As an introductory chapter in a collection of articles interrogating collaboration and

authorship in translation, this text delivers an in-depth and critical analysis of the concept
of collaborative translation.
• Dwyer, T. (2019) ‘Audiovisual translation and fandom’, in L. Pérez-González (ed.). The

Routledge Handbook of Audiovisual Translation. Abingdon and New York: Routledge,
pp. 436–452.
This chapter offers an overview of fan audiovisual translation in terms of its origins,
developments and main issues, including the ways in which fans’ collaborative translation
activities have recently been objects of use or exploitation by other parties.
• Jiménez-Crespo, M. A. (2017) Crowdsourcing and Online Collaborative Translations:

Expanding the Limits of Translation Studies. Amsterdam and Philadelphia:
John Benjamins.
This monograph examines conceptual and practical issues related to diverse modes of
online collaborative translation practices.
• Pérez-González, L. (2014b) Audiovisual Translation: Theories, Methods and Issues.

Abingdon and New York: Routledge.
118
Providing a comprehensive overview of audiovisual translation as both practice and a

research domain, this text offers an illuminating account of the evolution of audiovisual
translation and the changing role, mode and effects of collaboration within the field of
audiovisual translation.
Notes
1 https://amara.org/en/about
2 www. viki.com
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8
Translation, media and paratexts
Kathryn Batchelor
Introduction
The concept of the paratext was originally developed by French narratologist Gérard
Genette in the 1980s. In an era in which the focus of literary criticism was on close readings
of texts (a poem, novel, short story, etc.), Genette’s key innovation was to argue that a lit-
erary work consists not solely of a text but also of a paratext, and that the paratext plays
an important role in determining how the text is received. Genette (1997:1) explains that
the paratext is, in broad terms, what ‘enables a text to become a book’, encompassing such
elements as ‘an author’s name, a title, a preface, illustrations’ (ibid.). In Seuils [Paratexts,
1997], Genette (1987) develops an extensive typology of paratextual elements, demon-
strating that apparently innocuous elements such as binding and typesetting, as well as
more obviously discursive elements such as prefaces, all influence the way in which a text
is read. Genette’s typology encompasses elements which are external to the text (epitexts)
as well as those which are attached to it (peritexts), thus extending to author interviews
and reviews and even to factual aspects such as an author’s gender. To allow the paratext
to extend to such elements, Genette relies on a functional rather than material definition
of the concept, describing the paratext as any element which conveys authorial commen-
tary on the text or influences the reception of the text in a way that is commensurate with
the author’s intentions (see Genette 1997: 3, 9, 407; and see Batchelor 2018: 7–24 for an
extended overview and discussion of Genette’s framework).
In recent years, the concept of the paratext has been shown to be extremely productive
in other domains, particularly those of digital literature, transmedia storytelling, film, tele-
vision, and videogames. Jonathan Gray’s (2010) book, Show Sold Separately– although
not the first to apply Genette’s term to audiovisual material (see Janin-Foucher (1989),
Mourgues 1994, Kreimeier & Stanitzek 2004 and Böhnke 2007) –was particularly influ-
ential. Like Genette, Gray’s argument hinges on the idea that paratexts play a crucial role
in how texts are perceived:
Given their extended presence, any filmic or televisual text and its cultural impact,
value, and meaning cannot be adequately analysed without taking into account the
122 DOI: 10.4324/9781003221678-10

film or program’s many proliferations. … Decisions on what to watch, what not to

watch, and how to watch are often made while consuming hype, synergy, and promos,
so that by the time we actually encounter ‘the show itself,’ we have already begun to
decode it and to preview its meanings and effects.
(Gray 2010:2, 3)
The indicative list of proliferations presented by Gray (2010: 1) is extensive,

encompassing ‘ads, preview, trailers, interviews with creative personnel, Internet dis-
cussion, entertainment news, reviews, merchandising, guerrilla marketing campaigns,
fan creations, posters, games, DVDs, CDs, and spinoffs’. Although Gray opts to label
such proliferations ‘paratexts’ and to speak of ‘paratextuality’ (Gray 2010: 6), stating
explicitly that he is taking these terms from Genette, his engagement with Genette’s
framework is limited to a couple of brief moments, and adopts the spirit rather than the
letter of Genette’s work. Crucially, Gray broadens Genette’s definitions of the paratext
to allow it to encompass material produced by a broad range of actors, dispensing
with Genette’s emphasis on a connection between paratext and authorial intention,
and instead outlining a typology that contrasts ‘viewer-created’ and ‘industry-created’
paratexts (Gray 2010: 143ff).
Another key alteration to the concept of the paratext within media studies concerns the
hierarchical relationship between paratext and text: whereas in Genette’s model, the text is
the core element and the paratext is seen as providing a threshold to the text (see Genette
1997:2), in conceptualizations by Gray (2010), Mia Consalvo (2007, 2017) and others, the
dynamic between text and paratext is much more fluid. In her study of game modding
and professional streaming on Twitch. tv, for example, Consalvo (2017:178) argues for
‘flexibility in when a game text (or any other media text) might become a paratext and
vice versa’. Some mods, for example, rather than maintaining the centrality of the game
for which they are produced, ‘become the focus of attention –the central texts –with the
game as the raw material from which creators shape new and very different play oppor-
tunities’ (Consalvo 2017: 179). In such cases, the dynamic between paratext and text is
reversed. This hierarchical fluidity has led some scholars to argue in favour of a shift away
from Genette’s key metaphor of the threshold and towards a view of paratexts and texts
as existing within a complex ‘media “ecosystem” ’ (Boni 2016: 217) or ‘universe’ (Jones
2008: 69). Such a move is also compatible with the fact that many media paratexts are not
encountered prior to an encounter with the text itself (in cases where such a distinction still
reasonably holds), but during a sustained period of engagement with the text: videogames
or television series are typically played or watched over extended periods, and the various
paratexts that extend or surround them (a website, discussion forum, review etc.) may
be encountered midway in the watching or gaming period (see Gray 2010: 40–45 for an
extended discussion of the theoretical ramifications of this issue and what he terms ‘in
medias res paratexts’). The concept of the paratext, as adapted and developed in these
ways by Gray and others (see, notably, Birke & Christ (2013); Desrochers & Apollon
(2014); Geraghty (2015); Kreimeier & Stanitzek (2004)), has had a significant impact,
extending scholarly focus to apparently peripheral phenomena that are extraordinarily
prevalent in contemporary society, and connecting in particular with research into partici-
patory culture, transmedia storytelling and branding.
In contrast, within the broad area of media studies as the study of mass communica-
tion, only a handful of publications draw on the concept of paratext and the term itself
has found minimal resonance. Scandinavian scholars Finn Frandsen (1992) and Yngve
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Benestad Hågvar (2012) have suggested that headlines, leads, section names and con-
tent taxonomies in printed news can all be considered paratextual, and Hågvar in par-
ticular has sought to connect paratextual media studies with the field of format studies, as
developed notably by Ledin (2000). Ulrich Schmitz (2014) formulates similar arguments in
relation to online newspapers, though as noted by Batchelor (2018: 67–68), demonstrates
some hesitation around whether online features such as category titles, headlines and
pictograms should be labelled ‘texts’ or ‘paratexts’.
In translation studies, as Batchelor’s (2018: 31–39) overview demonstrates, interest in
the paratext has been greatest amongst scholars working on literary texts, interconnecting
in particular with research into gender and translation, translator visibility, transla-
tion history, and translation censorship. Translators’ prefaces –potentially classifiable
as paratexts under Genette’s definition –have also been used to construct national and
regional traditions and histories of translation studies (Batchelor 2019: 402). The majority
of these studies focus on peritexts rather than epitexts, even though epitexts such as book
reviews play a crucial role in the circulation of translated literature (on the latter, see
Bielsa 2013). In the fields of audiovisual translation and news translation, take-up of
the notion of the paratext has been much more muted, as we will see below. This rela-
tive lack of interest may be down to the fact that the paratext, as originally conceived by
Genette, needs significant alteration to its definition and scope in order to be productive
for audiovisual and news translation. However, given the considerable theoretical work
that has been done in neighbouring disciplines to adapt the concept of the paratext to
audiovisual, digital and internet contexts, as explained above, the lack of engagement in
the field of audiovisual translation in particular is somewhat surprising. In this chapter,
I will first survey current scholarship on translation paratexts in audiovisual and news
translation. I will then discuss key theoretical and methodological issues that are pertinent
to paratextual research in the field of media and translation and sketch out some poten-
tially fruitful avenues for future research.
Current scholarship on paratexts in audiovisual and news translation

Publications that directly address the concept of the paratext or focus explicitly on
paratextual material are limited to a handful of article-length case studies, while refer-
ence volumes or landmark edited collections carry very few mentions of paratexts. Just
two of the 32 chapters in the recently published Routledge Handbook of Audiovisual
Translation (Pérez González 2018), for example, mention the term paratext, and these
chapters do so only briefly: Jonathan Evans (2018: 169), in his chapter on film remakes,
observes that ‘official remakes make clear their source text in paratexts, but unofficial
ones do not’, while Henry Jones (2018: 185), in his history of mediality and audiovisual
translation, notes that VHS technology allowed producers to begin to include ‘paratextual
content’ such as bloopers, deleted scenes, making-of documentaries and actor interviews.
Overviews of the field of news translation reveal a similar lack of take-up of the concept
(see e.g. Bielsa 2019).
This relative absence of the term paratext begs the question of whether the absence of
the term equates to a lack of interest in paratextual phenomena themselves, or whether
what have elsewhere been labelled ‘paratextual materials’ (see e.g. Pesce & Noto 2016: 3) are
being studied in media translation research under different names. A crude but neverthe-
less revealing cross-referencing of the indicative list of on-and off-line media paratextual
materials that have been the focus of scholarship in media studies (see Batchelor 2018: 59)
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with the index of the aforementioned Routledge Handbook of Audiovisual Translation

suggests that research interests in audiovisual translation do remain overwhelmingly
focused on subtitling or dubbing practices for films and television programmes themselves
rather than on the activities and elements which surround those core products and which
might be labelled paratextual.
However, some AVT researchers do extend their focus to these more peripheral elem-
ents, albeit without drawing on the concept of the paratext. Luis Pérez González’s work
on fan AVT is notable in this regard. In an article on amateur subtitling practices, for
example, Pérez González (2012: 344–345) discusses subtitlers’ use of headnotes to pro-
vide explanatory background information for viewers who might otherwise not fully
comprehend the subtitle. These headnotes function in much the same way as translators’
notes in literary translation, which have been considered under the label of paratext in
literary translation research (see e.g. Sardin 2007; Tahir-Gürçağlar 2011). In the same
article, Pérez González (2012: 345) discusses the hypertextuality that is a feature of
much activist amateur subtitling, noting that ‘broadcasts and films subtitled by engaged
mediators are often made available and distributed via hypertextual environments such as
dedicated websites’, which ‘foster recognition by acting as hubs of affective clustering’.
The community-building function of such peripheral elements is one of the key functions
of digital paratexts associated with e-reading and fan-fiction (see e.g. Birke & Christ 2013;
Hill & Pecoskie 2014); these hypertextual environments, with their rich range of partici-
patory materials which surround and extend the film, broadcast, or video game have been
intensely researched by scholars under the rubric of paratextuality (see e.g. Consalvo
2007). Other aspects highlighted by Pérez González, such as the font and colour variation
that form part of what he terms the ‘spectacularisation’ (2012: 346) of amateur subtitles,
could equally well be deemed to fall under the rubric of paratextuality, finding a close
parallel with the typographical choices that form part of Genette’s (1997: 34) original
typology.
Tessa Dwyer’s (2009, 2017, 2018) work on fan subtitling similarly investigates phe-
nomena which have been studied in media studies under the rubric of paratextuality,
without making reference to the term or its conceptual apparatus (an exception can be
found in Dwyer 2009, but here she is using paratext as a synonym for subtext, rather
than in the sense in which it is used by Genette or in media studies research). In her
overview of AVT and fandom, for example, Dwyer (2018: 442) notes the growing ubi-
quity of ‘transmedia extensions and storytelling’, such as ‘tie-in merchandising, books,
videogames, Alternate Reality Games (ARGs), mobisodes, webisodes, podcasts, and wiki
databases like Lostpedia’. Media studies researchers such as Jason Mittell (2015: 293) have
explicitly made the case that such extensions ‘can be usefully categorised as paratexts’, but
it is interesting to note that Dwyer references Mittell’s (2015) contribution without taking
up the term paratext itself.
In a similar manner, within news translation, scholars have paid attention to elements
which Frandsen, Hågvar and Schmitz have argued might be labelled ‘paratextual’, as noted
above, without for the most part drawing on the term paratext itself. For example, con-
siderable attention has been given to news headlines, as Roberto A. Valdeón (2015: 647)
notes, but Meifang Zhang (2012) is the only scholar to suggest that news headlines can be
considered to be a kind of paratext. Zhang (2012: 1–2) justifies this suggestion on the basis
that the primary functions of headlines –attracting and influencing readers –overlap
with Genette’s analysis of the functions of paratexts. While Zhang’s article is widely
acknowledged as an important contribution to explorations of stance and mediation in
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Kathryn Batchelor
headlines, her argument in favour of viewing headlines as paratextual rather than textual
elements has not given rise to much debate.
Within the field of audiovisual translation, the term paratext has proved rather more
popular, although the number of translation scholars adopting the term –or still less,
interrogating its value –remain relatively few in number. Yves Gambier (2009) was –to my
knowledge –the first to use the term in connection with audiovisual translation, arguing
in favour of an approach to AVT that takes full account of ‘context’, understood in its
broadest sense and encompassing, amongst other things, ‘la situation de distribution,
les effets de marketing… par exemple, des paratextes accompagnant la sortie d’un film’
(2009: 160) [distribution context, marketing campaigns … for example, the paratexts that
accompany a film release]. Gambier (ibid.) stresses the power of such paratexts to shape
audience perception, anticipating the argument that would be made by Gray (2010) one
year later: ‘ces éléments créent, préfigurent, orientent les attentes, les besoins, avant même
que le film sorte sur les écrans de la ville’ [these elements create, anticipate, and direct
expectations and needs, well before the film appears on cinema screens]. Gambier does
not explore this point in further detail, arguing instead in general terms for a shift towards
scholarly approaches that take context more fully into account, or even for an ‘economic’
turn in translation studies (ibid.).
Examples of what research into marketing paratexts of this type might bring to AVT
scholarship can be found in Chiara Bucaria’s (2014) study of promotional campaigns
surrounding US television series in Italy, as well as in studies on film title translation by
Bucaria (2010, 2020) and Jonathan Ross (2013, 2019). Focussing on the officially distributed
promotional content that accompanied the release of Glee and Breaking Bad, Bucaria
(2014) explores the connections between target country distributors’ investment in the
show and the quantity and quality of promotional paratexts produced, and demonstrates
that even the channel on which a show airs will have an impact on audience expectations.
Breaking Bad, for example, aired in Italy on AXN, a network that ‘traditionally invite[s]‌
association with a low-brow, probably gender-skewed viewership’ (Bucaria 2014: 306),
with the result that the show itself was framed as a ‘predominantly male-oriented, action-
packed series’ (ibid.). This stands in stark contrast with the brand identity of the channel
on which the show aired in America, AMC, a channel which is associated with ‘quality
television … characterized by narratively complex… writing and high aesthetic standards’
(ibid.). Although Bucaria prefers to retain a distinction between channel brand identity
and paratext, it would be within the frameworks developed by Gray (2010) and others to
consider channels themselves as influential ‘entryway’ (Gray 2010) paratexts.
Another key paratextual element analysed by Bucaria (2010, 2020) is the film title.
Drawing on interviews with Italian distributors, Bucaria (2020) argues that the transla-
tion of film titles into Italian is in reality not the result of a ‘translation process’ at all,
since all decision-making in this area is assigned to the distribution companies’ marketing
departments. A similar argument is made by Jonathan Ross (2019) in the context of a
discussion of translations of English film titles into Turkish; he notes furthermore that
in cases where the local distributor is allied to one of the ‘majors’ such as Warner Bros
or United International Pictures, much of the decision-making power lies with the ori-
ginal film-producing studio rather than with the Turkish branch (197–199). Such studies
emphasize the importance of incorporating analysis of agency and market priorities into
audiovisual translation research, chiming with Gambier’s (2009) argument in favour of
an economic turn in translation studies. Other research in AVT which explicitly references
paratexts includes Anna Matamala’s (2011) investigation of paratexts in dubbing, Carol
126
O’Sullivan’s (2018) study of the way in which AVT is represented in the paratexts of films,
and Batchelor’s (2018) context-oriented analysis of on-demand digital TV paratexts to
subtitled dramas in the UK. A framework for the study of interlingually subtitled films
incorporating consideration of paratexts has recently been proposed by Hannah Silvester
(2018), building on Gambier (2009).
Theoretical issues
The two fundamental questions facing researchers in translation and media with regards
to paratexts are, firstly, whether the concept of the paratext is needed, in the sense both of
being a useful conceptual tool and of having the potential to open up original perspectives
(or indeed entire areas of enquiry); secondly, how to define the concept of the paratext so
that it is adequate to translation media research.
To start with the second question, the issue of how to define the paratext is a thorny
one. As noted above, Genette (1997) combines a physical definition with a functional one,
ultimately delimiting and constraining the paratext by asserting its connection to authorial
intention or responsibility. In media and digital studies, where a physical definition is not
usually practicable, scholars have defined the paratext in functional terms whilst simultan-
eously broadening out the scope of paratexts to encompass material produced by a wide
range of actors, including fans and others not affiliated to the producers of the texts to
which the paratexts relate (see discussion of Gray 2010 above). Yet, as Amy Nottingham-
Martin (2014: 296) asks in connection with her effort to adapt Genette’s framework to
transmedia storytelling, ‘if paratextual boundaries can no longer be drawn according to
being part of a single material object (book-peritext) or linked to the author (epitext),
where is the line between paratext and context?’. Once broadened out in these ways, the
paratext risks ‘collaps[ing] into the vastness of “the context” ’ (Rockenberger 2014: 267),
such that, for example, a person who recommends a film to another in the course of
an everyday conversation might risk being labelled a ‘paratext’. Batchelor’s (2018: 142)
definition, proposed specifically within the parameters of a theory of paratextuality for
translation, attempts to address this issue by defining a paratext as ‘a consciously crafted
threshold for a text which has the potential to influence the way(s) in which the text is
received’. This definition allows researchers to maintain a distinction between broader
context or happenstance and paratext, but potentially gives rise to thorny difficulties of
its own, as Batchelor (2018: 143) acknowledges. An alternative solution to the difficulty
of defining paratext in a way that makes it sufficiently but not overly broad is to adopt a
Wittgensteinian approach to meaning, as famously illustrated in Wittgenstein’s discussion
of how to define a ‘game’:
How would we explain to someone what a game is? I think we’d describe games to him,
and we might add to the description: ‘This and similar things are called “games”.’And
do we know any more ourselves? Is it just that we can’t tell others exactly what a game
is? –But this is not ignorance. We don’t know the boundaries because none have been
drawn. To repeat, we can draw a boundary –for a special purpose. Does it take this to
make the concept usable? Not at all!
(2009: 37)
Using this as our model, we might explain paratexts by pointing to examples and declaring
‘this and other similar things are paratexts’, leaving debates over what does or does not
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Kathryn Batchelor
constitute a paratext to be undertaken on a case-by-case basis rather than in abstract gen-

eral terms. This is broadly the solution taken by Nottingham-Martin, and arguably also
by Genette (1997: 407) himself, who argues that ‘however indeterminable its boundaries,
the paratext retains at its centre a distinctive and undisputed territory where its “proper-
ties” are clearly manifest’.
While the study of paratextual materials has been shown to be crucial to a full
understanding of the ways in which texts themselves are received, it does not necessarily
follow that research into paratextual materials needs to draw on the term paratext itself.
As the above overview of the work of Pérez González and Dwyer demonstrates, it is per-
fectly possible to study paratextual materials and phenomena without having recourse to
the term paratext, in much the same way as scholars in literary translation studies have
not always drawn on the term or connected with Genette’s framework, or have used alter-
native terminology (see Batchelor 2018: 141–142). Even within media studies itself, where
paratext as a term has gained considerable traction, a range of other terms such as ‘over-
flow’ (Brooker 2001) and ‘paracontent’ (Bhaskar 2011) are used.
In my view, there are two distinct benefits to using the term paratext, although the
second, in particular, does not hold as strongly for journalistic translation research as it
does for audiovisual translation research. First, by grouping ancillary materials or phe-
nomena together under an umbrella term rather than treating each one in isolation, we
validate research into these apparently secondary and often ephemeral materials as a
recognized area of enquiry. This in turn encourages us to notice and consider as other
potentially valuable objects of study things which we might otherwise have overlooked.
This is a point which is made by Jonathan Gray (2015: 232) in a reflection on the popu-
larity of his 2010 book and of the notion of the paratext within media studies:
Why bother with the word ‘paratext’at all…? … My answer here is a practical one: we
need the word as a reminder –an insistence, even –to look at paratexts. … it’s all too
easy to fall back on a mode of scholarship that is centred and isolated on the work
itself … This can be dangerous scholarship if it effaces and erases so much of a text’s
imprint on the world.
Gray goes on to express the hope that the word paratext may one day become obso-
lete, with the habit of attending to paratexts and their influence becoming ingrained and
thus systematically included in research into ‘the work itself’. Within media studies, he
contends that that moment has not yet been reached; given the far more limited number
of studies that attend to paratexts in the domain of media translation, I would argue that
the need for the word paratext is even greater here.
Secondly, adopting a term which is now connected with a rich body of research in
closely neighbouring disciplines facilitates deeper interdisciplinary dialogue between
translation studies and media and digital studies, to the further benefit of all three discip-
lines. Thanks to the significant work done by media scholars such as Gray, this is an area
of enquiry whose theoretical underpinnings have been rigorously debated and developed,
and which can be further adapted to suit the material at hand.
Methodological issues
As we saw above, one of the basic insights of paratextual research is that the paratext
influences the reader’s or viewer’s reception of the text. Yet the range and physically
128
disparate nature of paratextual elements associated with films, television shows, video
games and journalistic texts make it impossible to assume that any given reader/viewer will
have come to a particular text via any particular paratext. Digital paratexts, in particular,
offer many different points of entrance: some viewers may access audiovisual material
through an official website, for example, while others may access it through a fan-created
video, or via an online review by another viewer or gamer. News stories are similarly
accessible through multiple channels, such as Twitter, embedded links in other articles,
or an online newspaper’s home page. In recent years, technological developments and
more specifically the personalization of on-demand television interfaces have rendered
the question of variability in paratextual experience even more pressing. Gray outlines
this issue in relation to Netflix, but it can also be seen to be relevant to other on-demand
services as they switch to sign-in only, personalized models (see Johnson 2017: 131):
We’re all getting potentially really different experiences of texts and of the textual
world based on what the various algorithms around us think they know about us. On
my Apple TV, for instance, when I log into Netflix, there is no category or menu of
Netflix Originals. […] the flow that Netflix gives me is not the flow that Netflix gives
you or someone else.
(Brookey & Gray 2017: 104–105)
Analysis of paratexts needs to take this variability into account. Researchers who have
adapted Genette’s more stable paratextual apparatus (which was designed for printed
literature in the pre-internet era) to the digital, internet-based contexts of today have
proposed a number of changes to Genette’s typology to make it more able to account
for such variation. Rather than categorizing paratexts according to the straightforward
temporal variables proposed by Genette, for example, researchers such as Nottingham-
Martin (2014: 293) have argued in favour of a more hypothetical model, asking ‘ “what if ”
the reader experiences the paratextual element before, simultaneously with, or after he or
she encounters the anchor-text’. Some critics have taken this a step further, suggesting that
researchers endeavour to distinguish between paratexts which are, in Gray’s (Brookey &
Gray 2017: 105) words, ‘loud’, rather than ‘quiet’, between those which cannot be avoided
and those which are less likely to be accessed by significant numbers of viewers. One
way of doing this might be to incorporate the study of flows to digital texts sites into
paratextual analysis (see e.g. Stewart 2010: 71) as a means of ascertaining which paratexts
(more/most) viewers or readers actually access.
As well as being numerous, many modern-day paratexts are also ephemeral, both in
the sense of often being short in duration, and in the sense of only being available for a
short period. Channel idents, for example, are typically shown on screen for just 15 to 25
seconds (Grainge 2011b: 91). However, as Charlie Mawer, in interview with Paul Grainge
(2011b: 94), points out, idents are likely to be watched thousands of times, bringing their
brevity into contrast with the amount of time in total that any one individual might spend
watching them. The second type of ephemerality is encapsulated by the bus shelter which,
in Gray’s (2016: 32) words, ‘over its lifetime may host hundreds of posters for movies but
each for no more than a week or two’. The ephemerality of these types of elements means
that historically far less scholarly attention has been paid to them than to ‘the more solid
and substantial film and television content’ (Grainge 2011a: 10).
Yet this lack of attention does not match the amount of finance typically invested
by production companies in these apparently peripheral elements (see Ellis 2011: 68),
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Kathryn Batchelor
and also has consequences for the validity of media scholarship, as Gray (2016: 32)
explains:
To some, the disappearance of ads, trailers, toys, merchandise, press coverage,

and more may seem wholly unproblematic. After all, textual analysis as a tech-
nique regularly fetishizes a solitary engagement with ‘the thing itself,’ excluding
the static and noise introduced by paratexts. […] But […] paratexts matter. The ads
that graced my hypothetical bus shelter did not just gesture at films: they created
meaning for them.
Gray illustrates this point with a discussion of Mad Men, showing that while many aca-
demic articles focus on it as a feminist text, many of the paratexts that currently surround
the show are reducing or even ‘outright destroy[ing]’ (Gray 2016: 37) the show’s feminism
by presenting the main actresses as objects of sexual desire. Gray (2016: 39) argues that,
given that ‘by and large, […] most libraries hold on to the product itself, not the paratexts’,
analysts trying to make sense of what a text like Mad Men ‘was and what it did in social,
cultural terms’ in the future will not be able to access all of the relevant material; he
concludes that the reliability of their analyses –and indeed any current efforts to analyse
media products from the past –must therefore be cast into doubt. A similar point is made
by Boni (2016) in relation to the paratexts of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, particularly
in light of the short-lived paratexts that were part of a ‘viral’ campaign.
Gray’s argument is as relevant for media translation research as it is for research into
non-translated content, and represents an important challenge for scholars seeking to
contextualize audiovisual products within their broader paratextual contexts. Archiving
strategies and research methods developed by scholars in the broad field of internet studies
will offer some solutions to the problems posed by web-based paratexts, whether industry-
or viewer-created (see e.g. Brügger 2011), and whether in relation to news websites or any
other kinds of websites, but the challenges of dealing with constantly mutating material
are significant. Like other scholars, translation studies scholars must also contend with
the physical locatedness of certain media paratexts: scholars researching the paratexts
that accompany the broadcast of an imported television series, for example, will need
to be physically based in the target culture region if they are to have a chance of gaining
access to many of the industry-created paratexts, such as adverts, that appear on the side
of buses, or in public places, or during advert breaks on national or regional television.
Unlike audiovisual products themselves, which are usually available in recorded format or
can be requested from the distributor, the paratexts that surround the products are usu-
ally fleeting and are not preserved for posterity; the researcher may not even be aware that
they exist in order to try and track them down. This kind of research thus becomes most
feasible either for researchers who are based in the target culture location (and even here,
there may be variation in the availability of certain paratexts depending on whether the
researcher is in a rural or city location, for example), or who are able to obtain dedicated
‘fieldwork’ time in a manner akin to those carrying out observational research.
Conclusion and future directions

The striking contrast between the relatively low level of engagement with the concept of
the paratext in translation media research and the proliferation of paratextual research in
relation to television, films and videogames indicates that there is considerable potential
130
for audiovisual translation research to be enriched through a more intense and sustained
engagement with the concept of the paratext.
Such an enrichment might benefit audiovisual translation research in the following ways:
• Increased focus on the promotional and ancillary materials that accompany the release
of imported audiovisual products, enabling fuller accounts of audience perception
• A more holistic approach to how viewers come to audiovisual products –for example
by drawing fan-created, viewer-created, and industry-created thresholds under one
umbrella, rather than considering them under narrower rubrics such as fan-subbing
• Greater attention to questions of agency, particularly to the networks involved in
importing audiovisual products, and to the power dynamics between different individ-
uals and groups
• Greater attention to economic factors relevant to audiovisual translation, notably the
connection between levels of investment, the quantity and quality of paratextual infor-
mation, and the success of imported films and shows.
It is undoubtedly also the case that scholars in media and digital studies, as well as
industry professionals (national and international distributors, marketing agencies etc.)
would benefit from dialogue with translation studies researchers, not least with regard to
the linguistic and cultural complexities that are pertinent to paratextual decision-making.
The potential benefits of developing a paratextual framework for journalistic and news
translation research are less clear. The lack of take-up of the term paratext by scholars
in communication studies as well as within translation studies itself may indicate that
the concept makes less intuitive sense when applied to news reporting, and also means
that the potential for using the term to increase interdisciplinary dialogue is less strong.
Nevertheless, all of the benefits listed above could conceivably apply: online news, in par-
ticular, is accessed via a wide range of thresholds, all of which not only influence readers’
and viewers’ decisions on whether to access the news item, but also their interpretations of
the news reports themselves. Many of these thresholds have yet to draw sustained schol-
arly attention and their power –and the power of the agents who produce them –thus
remains relatively uninterrogated. Having an umbrella term for such thresholds –rather
than focusing for example solely on ‘headlines’ or ‘leads’ –would offer similar opportun-
ities for considering reader/viewer experience in a more holistic way; questions of agency
and economic factors, whilst already a considerable concern in translation news research,
might be brought even further to the fore.
Another significant way in which paratextual research might enrich current transla-
tion studies scholarship concerns the domain of accessibility. The notion of ‘accessible
paratext’, coined by Pierre-Alexis Mével (2020) is of particular interest, since it seeks
to lay the foundation for a new kind of production practice rather than simply desig-
nating an existing domain of activity. Taking as its point of departure the observation
that many d/Deaf audiences perceive theatre as being ‘not for them/not in their language’
(Wilmington 2017), Mével argues for –and experiments with –the creation of audiovisual
paratextual material which foregrounds the integrated inclusiveness of particular theat-
rical productions by using a blended mix of semiotic systems within the paratext itself.
An example of an accessible paratext which explains and promotes creative captioning,
as used by a UK Midlands-based theatre company, Red Earth, can be viewed online.1
Projects such as this illustrate the potential for academic insights into the power and reach
of paratexts to be harnassed to bring about positive innovations in the creative industries.
131
Kathryn Batchelor
They also suggest that the ubiquity of paratextual materials that is seen as characteristic
of the 21st century digital and cultural landscape is not as much of a given as is assumed;
from the perspective of visually or hearing impaired audiences, the number and nature
of thresholds through which they access cultural products may be relatively limited.
Paratexts, then, undoubtedly represent a fruitful avenue for further research in connection
with translation and the media, not least in the rapidly developing field of media acces-
sibility. Interdisciplinary approaches, connecting translation studies with accessibility
studies and with the extremely significant body of paratextual research in the fields of
media and digital studies, will be crucial for opening up new topics and perspectives.
Further reading
• Batchelor, K. (2018) Translation and Paratexts. Abingdon and New York: Routledge.
Explores the relevance of paratexts for translation studies and proposes a framework for
further research. See, in particular, Chapter 3, ‘Paratexts in digital, media and communi-
cation studies’, pp. 46–73.
• Bucaria, C. (2014) ‘Trailers and promos and teasers, oh my! Adapting television paratexts
across cultures’, in Abend-David, D. (ed.), Media and Translation: An Interdisciplinary
Approach. New York, London, New Delhi, Sydney: Bloomsbury Academic Publishing,
pp. 293–313.
Case study of paratextual materials accompanying the Italian distribution of two hugely
successful American TV series.
• Gray, J. (2010) Show Sold Separately: Promos, Spoilers, and Other Media Paratexts. New
York and London: New York University Press.
Arguably the most influential attempt to adapt Genette’s framework to the study of film
and television. Essential reading for those looking to use paratexts in audiovisual trans-
lation research.
• Zhang, M. (2012) ‘Stance and mediation in transediting news headlines as paratexts’,

Perspectives: Studies in Translatology 21 (3), pp. 1–16.
Proposes viewing news headlines as a type of paratext. Draws on appraisal theory to

examine stance and mediation in global news headlines pertaining to four international
news events.
Note
1 See www.youtube.com/watch?v=MjEo3UL_Zl4&t=2s
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9
The multimodal dimension
of translation
Introduction
Communication is always multimodal and this has huge consequences for translation
studies. What do we mean by multimodal? Simply, any document which contains text,
will also contain other communicative features, such as choice of font, text alignment, the
colour of the paper and fonts. Contemporary documents and media tend to contain visual
features such as images, icons, drop-boxes, bullet-points and flow-charts. And language
also appears as part of film-clips, advertisements and memes, etc. Words will be integrated
with these features, placed alongside, or within, images, in drop boxes and in flow charts.
The meaning communicated, therefore, is not carried by just the words but by how the
features work together as a whole. And the meaning is also carried by the expectations the
reader/viewer brings with them to that particular typical configuration of communicative
features. Even in some cases, it may be very difficult to translate some concepts other than
at the multimodal level. This has huge consequences for translation studies, as we show in
this chapter. Using the example of food packages where products have been imported into
Taiwan and China by Western companies, we show that much of meaning communicated
would be missed if analysis dealt with language alone.
We can illustrate the nature of multimodal communication with the example of the
imported food package in Figure 9.1, purchased in Taiwan. We see that it is labelled in
English as ‘Baked whole almonds’. Below the English text we find Mandarin Chinese
which translates as ‘crispy baked whole almonds’, and with the Malaysian words ‘Badam
Panggang’ which translates as ‘roasted almonds’. From a multimodal point of view
there is more going on here in terms of the meaning that is being communicated to the
consumer than is taking place just in these words. To begin with the words are realized
through a tall, slim, font, which is slightly uneven, giving the impression of something
hand-written. In multimodality we would be interested in what meanings such a choice
of font communicates, in contrast to say a highly angular, blocky, heavy-looking font. In
this case the light, hand-written font communicates associations of lightness, of some-
thing natural rather than technical, personal and spontaneous rather than formal and
regulated. The words for ‘Baked whole almonds’ and their translations therefore also
136 DOI: 10.4324/9781003221678-11

The multimodal dimension of translation
Figure 9.1 Baked whole almonds package
carry these associations. The meaning of the translation here, we might argue, must also
take into account the choice of font and the ideas and values that it communicates.
The person buying this product, given the research which goes into addressing specific
market segments, may also understand it as being a good ‘healthy’ diet choice. In fact, it
is typical of a growing market in such food products that are marketed as healthy and
natural. Here nuts, along with grains, berries and other plant products, become rebranded
as having healthy properties and being loaded with notions such as ‘whole food’, ‘multi-
grain’, ‘energy boosting’, ‘rich in protein’. On this almond package we see ‘High in dietary
fibre’, and ‘0 mg cholesterol’. These kinds of food nutritional qualities comprise what has
been called a hodge-podge of health connoting buzzwords, often used to market foods
which are not entirely healthy at all (O’Niell & Silver 2017). The marketing of healthy
snacks has been part of this trend, where nuts have become one such typical product.
Research also shows that consumers have little real understanding of how things as
‘low cholesterol’ actually work. But such terms play a role in what has been called ‘clean
washing’, where products can use such terms to give the impression they are healthy (Low
& Davenport 2005).
In other words, part of understanding the meaning communicated by the translated
text must be placed in the context of the broader task of identifying the overarching
discourses communicated multimodally by an object such as a food package. The same
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translation of baked almonds found in a cookbook, or a cheap market stall, may not
carry the same discourses of ‘healthy diet’. And at present it is this kind of marketized
discourse of eating healthily which Western food marketing is now exporting to countries
like Taiwan or Malaysia.
Looking at Figure 9.2 below for a different kind of health-related food product, the pro-
tein supplement, also imported into Taiwan, we see a different kind of font. This is a more
angular, blocky, heavier typeface. In comparison to the slender, hand-written font of the
almond product, this appears more robust, technical, as you might expect from a product
which is marketed around building muscles. It also has a metallic shine, suggesting tech-
nology and science. Again, we can see that the Chinese script in the translation carries the
same qualities. We see this by comparing the Chinese script on the protein supplements to
the script on the almond package. The point is that in both cases it is not only the semantic
meaning of the word that is communicating the meaning but the letter forms.
Multimodally we can also compare the colours used on the almond and the protein
packages. The almond package is bright- white and glossy. Here the composition
emphasizes empty space with associations of something clean, simple and pure. The
Figure 9.2 Protein supplement powder
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protein package is darker with black and reds, associated with more sombre, serious
moods. Here we see that it is not only the font choice which is carrying the meaning of
‘almond’ or ‘protein’ and their translations, but the choice of colours. In the first case
the almonds become associated with something pure, clean and simple. The protein
supplements are more rational, scientific and serious.
In fact, in regard to the protein, research shows that there is no evidence that such
supplements aid muscle building (cf. Hansen et al. 2016). Clearly we need protein in our
diet, but we are able to get enough from a regular diet (Kreider et al. 2010). But it is the
meanings created through the choices of design in fonts and colours which help to com-
municate to consumers that it can make them strong, that it is backed up by science. And
these ideas are translated and introduced into other cultures, in part by design. These
new meanings, associated with healthy diet and fitness are communicated certainly in lan-
guage, but always at the same time multimodally.
It is these kinds of observations that comprises multimodal analysis. In the cases of
these two packages we can think of how it is not only words communicating the meaning
but the letter form, colour, and composition. In the rest of this chapter we provide an intro-
duction to the concepts that underpin multimodal analysis and then provide a detailed
inventory of some of the analytical tools that these concepts facilitate and show how these
can be applied to a number of other examples of health food packaging. These examples
are particularly useful in this case as, at the time of writing, they are part of a newer wave
of products which food companies are seeking to introduce into new territories such as
China and Taiwan. This involves new translation tasks as these health buzzwords need to
be communicated. But, as we see, to understand the ideas, values and identities which are
being used to sell these products, we also need to attend to the level of design. The latter
is sometimes based on the same forms that are used in Western markets and at other times
slightly adapted and modified, as are the concepts that are used in language.
Multimodality as a concept in linguistic analysis

In fact, multimodality is a large and growing field with many sub-fields. Each of these
has its own aims, purposes and procedures (Jewitt et al. 2016). But for the most part all
are inspired by two books which appeared in the 1990s: Kress & Van Leeuwen’s ([1996]
2006) Reading Images and O Toole’s (1994) The Language of Displayed Art. These books
were highly influenced by the systemic functional linguistics (SFL) of Michael Halliday
(1978), although the first, whose tradition the present chapter follows, was more interdis-
ciplinary, being inspired by semiotics, cognitive psychology and critical linguistics. What
was important for multimodality in the work of Halliday was that it was not a theory of
language that was simply about modelling linguistic grammar. Rather it saw language as
a system of choices, made up of smaller subsystems, which built up into a whole. When
people speak, they draw on this system of choices in different contexts, depending on their
communicative needs of the moment. For Kress and Van Leeuwen and O Toole, this basic
principle could be applied to all forms of communication. So, as we started to show in the
introduction above, it can be applied to choices involved in things like typeface and colour.
To communicate something technical, a designer may be able to draw on the meanings of
angularity and metallic colours, or to communicate some natural qualities, the meanings
of lightness and unevenness. How much like language other kinds of communication are,
such as typeface or colour, and how appropriate it is to simply take a model designed to
describe and analyse language and apply it to things like images and design, has been
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much debated and challenged (Ledin & Machin 2019). But nevertheless, the different
strands of multimodality which have emerged represent a shift and growing awareness
amongst scholars of language that meaning creation is always multimodal. Simply we
cannot understand how a school textbook, an advertisement, a local authority health
brochure, or any other form of communication, create meaning, if we ignore the different
resources which they harness. The overall aim of multimodality has been, therefore, to
create more predictive models in order to identify, document and analyse the different
kinds of building blocks of the different communicative features that we find.
Some basic principles and concepts of multimodal analysis
Semiotic choice
In Halliday’s social semiotic model of language, which was a huge inspiration for
multimodality, the analyst would be interested in making an inventory of the kinds
of choices available to speakers. It is these choices that we assemble together to make
a clause or sentence. To give an example in language, if we want to describe a person
there are a range of options available to us, each of which has the potential to create
different kinds of meanings. So we could make choices relating to body size or shape,
to religion or ethnicity, to the job a person does. We might deliberately avoid other
choices such as social class position or gender. Such words do not really ‘describe’ a
person in each case but allow us to use terms to ‘evoke’ things about them, and perhaps
to conceal other things. In other words, all such choices are loaded with meanings.
And these meanings reveal something of the nature of the social and political times
when they emerged. At different times, for example, different terms of ethnicity may
bring specific connotations, as might words for different occupations. In multimodality
we would see these available choices as semiotic resources to be used by speakers in
settings to attempt to fulfil their communicative aims.
In multimodality we approach other kinds of semiotic resources in a similar way. If we
want to represent a kind of food as natural and healthy, or as macho and high-tech, there
are certain kinds of available resources a package designer can draw upon. In Figure 9.1
we saw that choices of slimmer, taller fonts and lots of empty space can help to commu-
nicate that almonds are light and healthy, even though they contain a large amount of
fat. For the protein supplement in Figure 9.2 we see that the designer has chosen heavier
angular fonts and these can bring the association of something more substantial, tech-
nical and masculine. So each quality has the potential to communicate specific ideas,
depending on how it is combined with other choices. Van Leeuwen (2005) shows that fonts
can be approached in terms of a limited range of basic available choices such as narrow
versus wide, curvature versus angularity, heavy versus light. In multimodality we would be
interested in all kinds of choices made, such as in layout, colour, textures, shape and form
of a package. Each will contribute to the meaning created for the consumer. Later in the
chapter we provide some inventories of meaning for some of these features and qualities.
Semiotic material
This concept is important to remind us that individual semiotic choices are meaningful as
they form part of a material object. Such objects are not encountered by people in terms of
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the individual semiotic choices like fonts or colours but as a semiotic whole. And these objects
shape social organization and social interactions. They are part of existing ways of doing
things with which we are familiar. So a food package shapes activities and social interactions
in a different way than a school textbook or a monument, yet all will be comprised of semiotic
choices. This means that any semiotic material is meaningful in regards the context where it
is located. When we encounter information on a food package we have knowledge about the
kinds of things that are found on food packages. The terms and designs relating to healthy
bodies may be understood differently should we see the same words or images on a poster in
a doctor’s office than on a food package. In each case we bring different associations with us
as each is part of established social routines and institutional knowledge –the first medicine
and the second food marketing. Such an observation is important from the point of view of
analysis as it means that we cannot have a one-size-fits-all inventory for semiotic resources
but must consider their use in specific deployments on different kinds of semiotic materials.
Discourses
Semiotic choices come loaded with associations, which we can assemble together for the
needs of particular contexts, such as selling food products. These associations, or general
ideas that are communicated by the combination of choices, can be thought of as ‘discourses’
(cf. Foucault 1972). Discourses are knowledge or models of the world, of how things work
and why they are the way they are. One example of a discourse is that men are tougher, more
logical and less emotional than women. We see another discourse on the almond package
in Figure 9.1 and the cereal package in Figure 9.3. This is a discourse about nature, where
the natural can be used to suggest something simple, healthy and nutritional. So, a highly
Figure 9.3 Breakfast cereal package
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processed and factory manufactured product, such as the sugary cereal, can carry semiotic
choices to signify this discourse of nature. They are called ‘nutri-grain’ and carry icons which
show heads of wheat and a heart, the sunrise, natural wooded surfaces and a spoon. The
almond package uses the empty clean, white, space, and slim uneven fonts to suggest a similar
discourse of the natural as simple, uncluttered. It is such discourses which are used by food
producers to ‘clean wash’ products. In multimodality the aim is to draw out these discourses
by analysing the words, images and other semiotic resources used on such designs. In terms
of translation, what we see in the case of these packages is that discourses common in many
Western societies are being transported to the Chinese Mandarin speaking market. Yet to
understand the discourses being communicated the analysis must be multimodal.
Discourses can be thought of as being comprised of things like kinds of participants,
ideas, values, behaviours, settings, times, priorities (Van Leeuwen & Wodak 1999). The
protein supplement in Figure 9.2 communicates a particular discourse of masculinity.
This discourse involves a specific kind of identity: determination, strength, assured. It
includes the evaluation that this is a good thing. There is no sense here that putting all this
effort into how your arms appear is being self-indulgent, vain, or plain silly. It is a good
way to prioritize your time. In Western societies it is also now usual to see very similar
representations of women –also muscular, focussed, determined, go-getting, strong, what
has been called muscular femininity (Tiggemaann & Zaccardo 2018). Such shifts have
been associated with the rise of neoliberal ideas and values in Western societies (Ayo 2012)
where the self, careers, work-life, the home and the body itself, become a kind of manage-
ment project (Scott 2011). Many of the new kinds of food being marketed as healthy, such
as the protein supplement and the snack bars seen in Figure 9.4 are part of this manage-
ment. Meanwhile in these same societies the well-known, major causes of poor health,
Figure 9.4 Protein snack bar
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such as poverty and social marginalization, continue to grow. Again the point here is to
analyse how semiotic choices communicate such discourses.
Discourses and social practices

Discourses are not simply things found in texts and on food packaging. Discourses also
shape and give meaning to social practices. They form the material world which is mean-
ingful to us. For Foucault (1972) even our own bodies are made meaningful to us through
discourse, in the sense we saw communicated on the protein supplements. Here bodies
are to be focussed on, managed, and, as the packaging design shows, this can become a
technical process. Here also a set of social practices are shown where we invest much time
in gyms. The products, like the cereal and the snack bars seen in Figure 9.4 give us ways
to manage how our bodies look. People in offices, at who these products are aimed, are
encouraged to think about their bodies as they buy something for a snack or lunch –here
products that are not particularly healthy. These snack bars contain no less fat and sugar
than a common unhealthy snack. But the language and design suggest otherwise. The pro-
tein snack seen in Figure 9.4 is a product which is new to the Chinese market. And where
one of the authors lives in China, gym culture is uncommon, compared to Sweden, where
he formerly lived, where all young men seem to go to the gym. So it is not only discourses
in the form of ideas that are being communicated here, but social practices and forms of
social relations (Fairclough 1992). Discourses exist not only in language or visual com-
munication but are coded into all things which are part of culture. We live out discourses
when we act and interact. It is the semiotic resources which multimodality analyses, which
house, transmit and naturalize these discourses.
The shift to multimodal communication

Kress & Van Leeuwen (2001) have argued that the way we communicate in society is chan-
ging and this is one good reason why translation studies should embrace multimodality. We
often hear the comment that communication is becoming more image oriented and more
visual. But for Kress and Van Leeuwen what is actually the case is that different forms of
semiotic choices are now used in different ways than in former times. Previously, we tended
to use language and images in isolation, for example. Typography was considered a thing in
itself. Here, the emphasis was on ‘monomodality’. Books tended to keep images apart from
writing. And as scholars we studied things like ‘literature’, or ‘art’. But, and in part facilitated
by digital software, this has changed. Across the texts and documents that we encounter we
no longer find huge, dense, blocks of text. We find chunks of writing integrated into images,
graphics, text boxes, flow-charts, bullet lists, frames, etc. In such forms of multimodal com-
munication (the figures shown in this chapter showing such examples) the semiotic choices
are made in a multimodal fashion. The word ‘Almond’ is written in a tall-slim uneven font
and sits in clean, shiny white space. Formerly nuts such as almonds were highly inexpensive
in Western stores. But they have been rebranded as healthy as ‘whole foods’. The meaning
of this cannot be discovered in the Chinese translation on the package only through the lan-
guage, since it has been designed to communicate multimodally. And even the term ‘whole
foods’ itself as a direct translation would not have the same meaning in Mandarin Chinese.
And this goes for many of the documents we come across. Even formerly dry and functional
institutional documents now often carry graphics, images and flow charts, which help to
communicate the idea and attitudes of the organization.
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Integrated design
Ledin & Machin (2018) have argued that this shift to multimodal communication means
that analysis must fundamentally recognize how meaning is not so much created by the
different kinds of semiotic choices together, but that the roles formerly taken by language
have changed. In older documents we might find that things like connections, causalities,
temporalities, identities and the role of participants, were communicated in the running
text. But in the designs we now encounter every day these things can be communicated
symbolically using chunks of text, graphics, bullet points, frames, images, colours, etc. In
an institutional document a relation between two departments might be symbolized by a
dynamic-looking arrow, or rather by two circles which overlap. Or they could be placed
in two separate frames, each of which also contains stock photographs of office workers.
In these cases, what the relationship is between the two and the identity of each is rather
symbolized than explained in the running text. So while the language itself may carry
no clear traces of causalities, coordinations, work roles, etc, these things are nevertheless
communicated on the document. The aim of the document, of course, may be to suggest
harmony and collaboration. But again, if we were called to translate this document, we
would miss such things were we only to address the language.
We can see how this integrated design works in the example of the protein snack
package seen in Figure 9.4. This is in fact a product which has similar levels of fat and
sugar as standard unhealthy snacks. It is high in sugar which is why it can claim to be
a high energy bar as it contains a high number of joules of energy. Such products may
say that the sweetener comes from ‘natural’ sources, such as concentrated grape juice.
But it is nevertheless still sugar. On such packages we will not be told how the product
gives us energy or builds muscles. But this will be communicated through the icons, fonts
and colours. The protein snack packaging also carries a slightly rough texture suggesting
something less processed. How ‘less processed’ and building muscles sit together will not
be explained in language but their relationship is rather communicated by being integrated
into the design.
One of the advantages of this kind of integrated design, at least for the designer, is that
it can easily conceal actual relationships between the parts. So shortcomings, complexities
and contradictions can all be glossed over. This would all be missed should a translator
look only at the language.
Technologization
This term captures the way that all forms of communication are becoming increasingly
coded and deployed in systematic ways. We see this in the design of the almond package or
in the case of the protein snack bar. Colour, fonts, layout and texture have been carefully
coded. The term ‘technologization’ (Fairclough 1992) was originally coined to capture
how language was becoming increasingly controlled and codified, usually for political
or commercial objectives. We see this with the control and systematic use of language in
advertising, in how call-centre workers use regimented responses, or in the way that educa-
tion and learning become more codified. Ledin & Machin (2018) were interested in how
this technologization could be applied to the use of all semiotic resources. Documents
and media will now carefully deploy colour, fonts, images, graphic elements, and flow
charts. All this will be used, not to create clearer forms of communication, but to serve the
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Figure 9.5 Couple on Kellogg’s package
interests of commodification, marketing and other promotional work. Such documents

will be highly technologized in regard to how they deploy the potentials of integrated
design to shape the way that things like relationships, causalities, the roles of participants
are represented, as we see below in Figure 9.5.
Tool kit for analysing semiotic resources

The following sections of this chapter present four sets of tools for carrying out the kind
of multimodal analysis we have been talking about so far. We have been pointing to how
things like fonts, colour, textures and iconography can create meaning. Below we show
how in each of these cases we can identify a kind of profile of common available semiotic
choices and their meaning potential. The word ‘potential’ is important here as such indi-
vidual choices are never found alone, but as part of configurations which comprise semi-
otic materials such as a food package, a computer game, or an institutional document.
They should, therefore, be understood and analysed in terms of how they play a role in
these configurations and in the context and social practice of which they are a part. But
nevertheless, this process of breaking semiotic materials into components at this level is
useful as part of drawing out the discourses which they communicate.
Tool kit 1: Typographic meaning potentials

In this section we look at some typical features of fonts and their meaning potentials. In
other words, we can use this list to consider what kinds of ideas or discourses are being
communicated by fonts. The aim of analysis is to look for which of these features are pre-
sent in the case we wish to analyse.
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Weight: here we can think about how heavy or light a typeface is relating to thickness or
thinness which relates to meanings such as substantial, stable, daring versus less stable, less
robust, timid, insubstantial. Or the meanings can be the opposite where thickness means
clumsy, overbearing and thinness means subtle, mobile, light, discrete. In Figure 9.1 we
can see fonts that are quite slim and appear therefore quite light. This is part of the way
that the product communicates lightness in the quality of the product. In contrast, in
Figure 9.2 for the protein supplement powder we find heavier fonts as part of the associ-
ation of bulking up and gaining muscle.
Expansion: here we think about how typefaces take up space or not. Those that take up
space can appear as confident, bold or assertive. Negatively this could suggest arrogance
or pushiness. Those that do not take up space could be seen as economical or unassuming
or subtle. Negatively this could mean cramped or timid. We see the fonts for the protein
supplement in Figure 9.2 are more spread out confidently taking up space. In contrast, the
font used for ‘nutri-grain’ in Figure 9.3 is more subtle and gentle.
Slope: The difference here is between writing and print which carries associations with
the natural, handcrafted, informal, personal, or organic against the mechanical, formal,
mass-produced. We can see in Figure 9.3 that the font used for ‘Kellogg’s’ is sloping and
appears like handwriting. The suggestion here is something less formal, more personal.
We see the same quality in the Chinese script at the top of the protein snack following the
English text ‘Hello bar’. In contrast the font used for ‘Net weight’ at the bottom of the
Kellog’s box uses a type script and appears more formal and factual. In such designs we
can ask which fonts suggest something more or less formal, even on the same design. In
the case of the protein supplements we also see that the Chinese script leans slightly to the
right. This usually has the meaning of some kind of momentum. Here this relates to the
dynamic nature of the product.
Curvature: The difference here is between angularity and curvature. Angularity is
associated with the technical and also with harshness, whereas roundness and curvature is
associated with softness and the organic. In Figure 9.1 we can see that the fonts used on
the almond package carry curvature. Here we have a sense of a more natural nurturing,
product. In contrast the protein supplements in Figure 9.2 are angular and suggest some-
thing harsher and more technical. Here this is not about nurturing and the natural but
determined exercise routines and the science to build the body.
Connectivity: letters can touch or be spaced apart. Disconnection can mean fragmented
or atomization, or room to breathe or think, openness. Connection can mean intimacy,
unity, closedness. We can see on the almond package that there is some space between the
letters. In this case it helps to communicate airiness as the letters are not crammed in. The
spacing also suggests possibility and thinking in new ways –about health and diet. On the
Kellogg’s package we see that the letters of ‘Daily nourishing’ are closer together, helping
to bring a sense of certainty rather than contemplation.
Orientation: typefaces can be tall and vertically stretched or flattened and squat. Taller
letters can suggest aspiration, lightness, loftiness, elegance but also arrogance and appear
unstable. Squatter letters can mean heaviness, inertia but also stability/ strength and
groundedness. We can see in Figure 9.1 that the fonts used for ‘Almonds’ are tall and ver-
tically oriented. As well as a sense of lightness here we could say that there is also a sense
of something aspirational. Here a product which was formerly cheap, becomes marketed
as something slightly elite associated with aspiring to a healthier kind of lifestyle. The
empty, clean design also places this aspiration to something more modern and rational. In
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contrast, in Figure 9.2 we can see that protein supplement uses more horizontally oriented
fonts, which help to give a sense of the strength and durability of the bodies that the
powder helps to develop.
Regularity: typefaces can have irregular letters. This can be where one letter is simply
out of line. Or it can extend to where each letter of a word is of a different font and size.
Or different words in a sentence, or on a design can use different font qualities. Whereas
highly regular fonts can suggest formality and order, irregularity can communicate infor-
mality, fun, playfulness, chaos or anarchy. The font on the almond package in Figure 9.1
is slightly uneven suggesting something less formal, with some degree of spontaneity. This
same font would not have been suitable for the protein supplements in Figure 9.2, which
seek to foreground something more technological and predictable.
Flourishes: fonts can have different kinds of flourishes and additions which also
carry meaning potential. For example, they can have flourishes comprising large loops
suggesting some kind of expressiveness, or a love heart used for the dot over the letter ‘I’.
Fonts can also take the form of iconography or imagery. We can see one example of this
in the case of the almond package in Figure 9.1 for the brand name Sun Harvest where the
letter ‘v’ takes the form and colour of a ‘love heart’ icon. This can connote that it is good
for your heart since the product foregrounds being ‘low cholesterol’.
Toolkit 2: Colour meaning potentials

In this section we move onto a list of typical meaning potentials for colour. We must
remember that the way they are presented here is entirely artificial as we never encounter
a colour quality alone in this manner, but as part of colour as a whole and in a design.
But this inventory presents us with a way to carry out more accurate detailed descriptions,
so that we can better draw out the meanings being communicated. And, also important
here is that this inventory is, for the most part based on Western notions of colour and
meaning. Colours can have very different meaning potentials in different cultures and
translators would have to acknowledge this. For example, in the case of the protein
powders in Figure 9.2, the Chinese texts are in gold which rhymes with the electric glow
around the arm. In the Chinese context gold is strongly associated with premium, as for
emperors. In this way imported products themselves may carry the connotation of expen-
sive and high quality.
Brightness: brighter colours can suggest positive emotions, transparency, knowledge
and truth whereas darker colours can mean more serious or less positive moods, conceal-
ment, ignorance or lack of truth. We can see that the healthy snack package in Figures 9.4
uses bright colours for optimism. In contrast the protein supplements in Figure 9.2
use darker colours with a predominance of black. Here we have a sense of seriousness
associated with the seriousness of working out.
Saturation: colours can be highly saturated or diluted. Saturated colours can relate to
emotional intensity whereas diluted colours relate to more muted and gentle moods. On
the healthy snacks we see bright saturated colours. These sugar and fat rich products are
bright and emotionally lively. On the protein supplements seen in Figure 9.2 we also find
saturated colours, although these tend to be darker, such as reds and blues. In this case,
while they are more serious, we still find a sense of emotional intensity.
Purity: colours can be pure or more impure. Impurity can be where they appear as
contaminated, or they can be blends of different colours. Purer colours have often been
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used to represent modernism, certainty and truth, in particular where we find flat open
panes, as we see in the case of the almond package with its flat pane of white. Impure
colours, in contrast, can mean uncertainty or complexity. However, in some cases, such as
the protein snack, colours can be blended with white to give them brightness and almost
fluorescence. These hybrid colours are often used in more urban chic designs and used to
create different colours which share the same underlying palette.
Differentiation: is there a full range of colours or monochrome? Larger colour palettes
tend to give the sense of energy, fun, diversity whereas restricted colour palettes give a
sense of reserve, measure, thoughtfulness. We can see that the protein supplements in
Figure 9.2 use restricted palettes. Clearly these products are not communicating fun nor
playfulness. These are serious products, for determined workouts and based on science.
We could imagine the difference were they to carry a large range of colours. In the case
of the almond package in Figure 9.1 we see a dominance of a single colour, the bright,
almost shining, white. This brings a sense of measure. But then the fonts use three colours
to create some fun and energy to the product. Other brands of nuts might use a very
limited palette to foreground naturalness.
Luminosity: colours can be opaque or they can be represented with light shining
through them. We often find this used to suggest something magical, otherworldly or
for science fiction. We see an example of this on the image in Figure 9.2, where the body
of the man appears to be glowing. This relates to the high technology and science in the
product. It would be odd if we saw the cereal loops pictured on the Kellogg’s package in
Figure 9.3 glow in the same manner.
Toolkit 3: Meaning potentials of iconography

On many designs we find a range of images and pictures which comprise representations of
people, places and things. These too are part of the way that discourses are communicated.
While language may describe a thing or process, it may be in iconography that the iden-
tities of those involved are communicated. In this section we look at this in more detail.
Objects. We can ask what kinds of objects we find on a design. In the case of food
packaging we might find a machine or tool used in production, for example, on a bottle
of whisky, those associated with traditional distillery. We might find farm tractors, or
ploughs drawn by horses, suggesting something of smaller-scale production, despite the
actual industrial scale of the farming and processing. A set of cogs might be used on
a men’s deodorant to suggest simply something tougher and masculine. We might also
find animals such as birds to communicate lightness or monkeys on children’s snacks
to suggest fun and mischief. In Figure 9.1 on the almond package we see a drawing of a
molecule, used to suggests some kind of biological building block, presumably suggesting
some kind of science and nutritional quality, although this is never specified in language.
Clearly here this simple icon plays an important role in the discourse of healthy eating
that is being communicated here, imported from ideas used in Western marketing. On
the protein snack in Figure 9.4 we see a picture of cubes of mango and some pineapple.
In the product itself there is no trace of actual fruit apart from a flavour, but here these
elements connote something fresher and refreshing. In contrast, the protein powders in
Figure 9.2 do not reference fresh ingredients. As we saw from the analysis of the fonts and
colours, these products are more about something technical. In Figure 9.5, which shows
the side panel of the Kellogg’s package, we see a different representation of fruit. These
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look more like something you might see in a pastel-drawing, and as well as suggesting
healthiness, also carry meanings of gentle-ness and something whimsical. Also on the
Kellogg’s package, in Figure 9.3, we see a wooden spoon, using the meanings of the nat-
ural material, to point to nature and the hand-made. We could imagine the difference were
this a plastic spoon.
Persons. We can ask what kind of persons are depicted on all kinds of designs, including
food packaging. On European packages it is often usual to find a photograph of a farmer.
Even where the product is made by a huge corporation this can suggest something more
personal. On Fair Trade products we often see images of smiling generic peasants used
to represent authentic, honest labour. In products sold in Europe we might find stereo-
typical representations of Latin American or Chinese people for brands of ‘world-foods’.
In Figure 9.2 we see a man who is presumably the result of taking the supplements. He is
positively represented in a flattering pose, looking at his own arm as he carries out his exer-
cise. As noted above, this is a discourse where passing much time in the gym and spending
money on expensive supplements to build muscles, is positively evaluated, rather than seen
as something vain and self-indulgent. People can be represented in very different ways. On
the side of the Kellogg’s package seen in Figure 9.5, we see a healthy, happy couple eating
a Western-style breakfast together. Here the couple are represented as detailed drawings.
Such an effect helps to idealize the couple as they are rendered in a softened form, and in
the same gentle pastel drawn style as the fruit above them. The text above the drawings
states ‘delicious and nutritious, happily shared by the whole family’. Of note here is that
with the picture this represents a new type of ‘modern’ family, in contrast to the trad-
itional three-generations living together which was formerly valued as the highest type of
family. This can be linked to the new rising Chinese middle class, to whom this product is
targeted. Again, we can see the importance of placing the translation of words into the
overall discourses which are communicated multimodally.
On the back of the protein snack in Figure 9.4 we can see an even more abstracted
version of people, where in the circles we see different activities (from left to right: break-
fast, work, exercise, business trip). This kind of representation of people, along with the
fact that they are all placed in the same size circles, helps to suggest something simple, and
also that each action is of the same order, since they all look the same. Designs can use this
technique to load ideas and values onto products, but how they all relate and add up, and
whether indeed they are all of the same order is suppressed. And of particular importance
in this representation of different activities is that we find the business trip, carrying out
a regular fitness regime, also signalling the kind of people this kind of product is for, the
new middle class in China with a new set of values.
Settings. We can also look at these designs and ask what settings are represented.
Typically, on packaging in European countries, we find things like landscapes. This could
be alpine mountains to suggest rugged naturalness, which could be used for things like min-
eral water. We might find drawings of small-scale farms, with a winding river on a packet
of beef which is produced through intensive farming methods. These carry romantic ideas
of traditional farming and the natural landscape. We might find scenes such as a factory
or a whisky distillery from the 19th century. The Kellogg’s package in Figure 9.3 uses a
setting which suggests a scene of a sunrise in a field of wheat. This sweet-and-sugary, rela-
tively low-nutritional value product is loaded with the associations of nature, sunrise over
ripe farmland, the natural, spoon and dish and the pastel-style drawings which are gentle
and whimsical. We see fresh fruit in the bowl with the product, here importantly these
149
are blueberries which are sometimes marketed as a ‘superfood’. The English term ‘nutri-
grain’, translated in Mandarin Chinese used the term ‘LOHAS grains’ which stands for
‘healthy and sustainable lifestyle’. Importantly though the meaning of this, its association
with modern notions of the family and way of life, are also communicated multimodally –
on the side panel we see the couple in a setting more typical of Western representations
of breakfast. Here a couple sit together at a table. There is a table-cloth and a jug of
milk. Everything is white: the table-cloth, the milk, their clothing. This suggests some-
thing clean, pure, bright and optimistic. These meanings are part of what ideas and values
are loaded onto the healthiness of the product.
Emblems. Products often carry brand-marks and crests. Some of the meaning of these
can be communicated by their experiential associations, such as whether they are angular
or curved. A men’s deodorant might have an emblem which resembles jagged lightning.
A woman’s shampoo might have a crest which is formed from the shape of a soft wavy
line, suggesting wavy hair, but also carrying the meanings of softness and gentleness.
In Figure 9.3 we see that at the top of the Kellogg’s box there is a ribbon-type emblem
which says ‘since 1906’. The idea of ‘tradition’ is often used in food marketing to suggest
some kind of knowhow, expertise and also authenticity, as if the sugary product in the
package is somehow improved by this. The Mandarin Chinese translation of this is ‘hun-
dred years old breakfast expert’. At the bottom of the package we find a series of circles
which give the impression of being some kind of emblems or official stamps, also signi-
fying other kinds of legitimacy. One contains a head of wheat, another a heart. Together,
these connote something like ‘natural whole foods’ and ‘healthy’. Often packages carry
all sorts of stamps with health buzzwords which are by no means official, yet give the
impression of something which is officially defined and guaranteed. The protein snack
in Figure 9.4 carries an emblem in the shape of a seal and ribbon, which has the same
colour as the yellow in the design which translates as ‘nutritional snacks’.
Conclusion: doing multimodal analysis in translation research

Multimodality has the aim of revealing the meanings, values and ideas carried by any
instance of communication. It has its origins within a growing number of linguists who
became concerned that much of such meaning was missed by analysing only language.
And clearly, as we have seen in this introductory chapter it has much to add to translation
studies. At a simple level, it points to the importance of the context of where language is
deployed. And it also points to the way that concepts, ideas and values from one cultural
context are transferred to a new one in ways that are highly multimodal. Certainly, much
more research is needed to understand these processes.
Clearly how multimodality is used will depend on the nature of a project, the data
involved and the needs of the translation task. But most importantly it will be influenced
by the nature of the research question: simply what do we want to know? Multimodality
can become unwieldy given the complexity of the semiotic materials with which we com-
municate. The researcher must consider in such cases what it is that is necessary to analyse
in order to draw out the discourses which are carried in that instance. As we have shown
using the example of food marketing in this chapter, this meant taking into consideration
fonts, colours, iconography and textures as part of understanding the translation of the
language. For other cases, this may mean other semiotic choices. But in each case the task
150
should be to understand the broader discourses carried by any instance of communica-

tion, of which language is only one part.
Further reading
• Ledin, P. & Machin, D. (2020) Introduction to Multimodal Analysis (2nd edn).
London: Bloomsbury.
Offers an account of the basic concepts and tools in multimodality including those
introduced here, but also many others. Shows how these can be used in analysis of a wide
range of examples.
• Kress, G. & van Leeuwen, T. (2006) Reading Images: The Grammar of Visual Design.
London: Routledge.
This book provides the foundation to multimodality and is a must for anyone with an
interest in taking this further.
• Kress, G. (2010) Multimodality. London: Routledge.
Provides a fundamental insight into how to think about the world from a multimodal
perspective.
References
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conscious citizens’, Critical Public Health, 22(1), pp. 99–105.
Fairclough, N. (1992) Discourse and Social Change. London: Polity Press.
Foucault, M. (1972) The Archaeology of Knowledge. New York: Pantheon Books.
Halliday, M. A. K. (1978) Language as Social Semiotic. London: Edward Arnold.
Hansen, M., Bangsbo, J., Jensen, J., Krause-Jensen, M., Bibby, B. M., Sollie, O., Hall, U. A. &
Madsne, K. (2016) ‘Protein intake during training sessions has no effect on performance and
recovery during strenuous training camp for elite cyclists’, Journal of the International Society of
Sports Nutrition, 13, pp. 9–19.
Jewitt, C., Brezemer, J. & O’Halloran, K. (2016) Introducing Multimodality. London: Routledge.
Kreider, R B., Wilborn, C. D., Taylor, L., Campbell, B., Almada, A. L., Collins, R., Cooke, M. et al.
(2010) ‘ISSN exercise & sport nutrition review: research & recommendations’. Journal of the
International Society of Sports Nutrition, 7(7), pp. 2–43.
Kress, G. & van Leeuwen, T. (1996/ 2006) Reading Image: The Grammar of Visual Design.
London: Routledge.
Communication. London: Arnold.
Ledin, P. & Machin, D. (2018) Doing Visual Analysis: From Theory to Practice. London: Sage.
Ledin, P. & Machin, D. (2019) ‘Doing critical discourse studies with multimodality: from
metafunctions to materiality, Critical Discourse Studies, 16(5), pp. 497–513.
Low, W. & Davenport, E. (2005) ‘Has the medium (roast) become the message? The ethics of
marketing fair trade in the mainstream’, International Marketing Review, 22(5), pp. 494–511.
O’Neill, K. & Silver, D. (2017) ‘From hungry to healthy’, Food, Culture & Society, 20(1), pp. 101–132.
O’Toole, M. (1994) The Language of Displayed Art. Teaneck, NJ: Fairleigh- Dickenson
University Press.
Scott, S. (2011) Total Institutions and Reinvented Identities. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.
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Tiggemann, M. & Zaccardo, M. (2018) ‘“Strong is the new skinny”: a content analysis of #fitspiration
image on Instagram’, Journal of Health Psychology, 23(8), pp. 1003–1011.
van Leeuwen, T. (2005) Introducing Social Semiotics. London: Routledge.
van Leeuwen, T. & Wodak, R. (1999) ‘Legitimising immigration control: a discourse historical ana-
lysis’, Discourse Studies, 1(1), pp. 83–119.
152
Part II
Translation and journalism
10
A historical overview
of translation in the
global journalistic field
Roberto A. Valdeón
Introduction
This chapter aims to provide an overview of the centrality of translation during the emer-
gence and consolidation of journalism as a profession. Although communication and
journalism scholars have rarely considered the crucial role of translation in news produc-
tion, from the first periodicals and pamphlets to the current digitized news interlinguistic
transformations are essential for the dissemination of news content. In translation studies,
however, journalistic translation research has become a well- established subfield of
enquiry, as shown by the dozens of journal articles, chapters and monographs published
in the last twenty years (see Valdeón 2015 and 2020a, which present overviews of the
research published during the periods 2000–2015 and 2015–2020 respectively).
In contrast, historical studies are scarce. In an article that served to introduce a spe-
cial issue of Meta on ‘journalism and translation’, Valdeón (2012) provided a prelim-
inary survey of the importance of translation in the history of journalism, complemented
recently in Valdeón (2020b), tracing it back to the early modern period. The 17th cen-
tury was a time when information about the wars in Europe was much sought-after, as
discussed in a collection of articles edited by Dooley & Baron (2001). This chapter draws
on some of the publications used for Valdeón (2012) complemented with a variety of
other historical sources that may throw additional light on the role of translation in the
physical and interlinguistic movement of information from the 17th century onwards.
It also aims to problematize the issues explored by journalism scholars, with a view to
open future avenues of research for translation scholars, as well as highlight the challenges
arising from the difficulty in finding source and target texts. This problem has already been
noted by researchers studying contemporary news translation, but it becomes a greater
challenge when attempting to locate periodicals from the 17th and 18th centuries, let alone
to identify source and translated texts.
DOI: 10.4324/9781003221678-13 155

Roberto A. Valdeón
Journalism and translation from the early modern period

to the 19th century
Although some authors believe that the birth of a prototype of newspapers can be traced
back to the 15th century (Espejo 2011), Rantanen (2007), pointing to a combination of
factors such as the growth of cities, the widespread use of the printing press and the mobility
of printers, posits that the early 17th century can be considered the beginning of the first
newspapers.1 These replaced or co-existed with hand-written newsletters (the earliest can
indeed be traced back to at least 1472 in Germany, Høyer 2003: 452), which diplomats and
merchants had relied on for information before the invention of the printing press (Infelise
2010). Undoubtedly, the printing press was instrumental in the gradual popularity of
early-day newspapers across the continent (Espejo 2011). In Italy, the first news-type
pamphlets were called avvisi a stampa (notices) or reporti (Nussdorfer 1998: 449), while
gazettes became more popular from the mid-16th century onwards (Infelise 2010: 53–4).
In Spain these publications were called relaciones de sucesos (Ettinghausen 1984; Espejo
2011). One of Spain’s first Gacetas was published in Seville in 1618 (Díaz Noci 2012: 409),
while Madrid, Barcelona and Saragossa became important news centres in the 17th cen-
tury. Díaz Noci (2012: 411) mentions the case of Francisco Fabro Bremundán, a news
printer of French origin who ran a translation office in the mid-17th century and edited
the Relación o gazeta de algunos casos particulares and later the Gazeta Nueva.
In England, the early pamphlets providing transcriptions of parliamentary speeches of
the 1580s were later complemented with or replaced by the so-called corantos of foreign
news, where the word ‘coranto’ referred to ‘current’ events. The oldest coranto available
today was published in 1621 in London (Rantanen 2007: 849), although it should be noted
that the term ‘coranto’ did not specifically refer to printed pamphlets but also to manu-
script ones (Dahl 1939). For this reason, early journalists have been called ‘coranters’
(Couvée 1962) or ‘gazetteers’ (Luyks 1964). Fox argues that, although corantos were
probably addressed at the higher strata of society, the lower classes may have had some
access to foreign news, often by word of mouth (1997: 598). While in England translated
foreign news was the staple diet of the corantos, in Spain the relaciones published domestic
news and foreign news that were ‘appropriately mistranslated as accounts of successes’
(Ettinghausen 1984: 4), pointing to the centrality of translation as a gatekeeping mech-
anism: the sources included Dutch corantos, Italian avvisi and private letters. On the
other hand, Spanish relaciones were translated into other languages pointing to the multi-
directional nature of translation. For example, Spanish accounts of Philip III’s visit to
the English College of Valladolid, and of the Prince of Wales’s trip to Spain in 1623 were
translated into English in the first decades of the 17th century (Ettinghausen 1984: 16).
In line with this, in his study of the pamphlets and/or newspapers published in
Amsterdam, Antwerp, Frankfurt, Berlin and Hamburg in 1624, Couvée found that their
news originated not only in the region where they were published but also in other parts
of Europe. This meant that these news texts required some form of mediation or transla-
tion to make them accessible to the new audiences. In addition, Couvée claims that while
some reports originated from the same sources and then underwent some transform-
ations to meet the expectations of the new readership, in many other cases the available
versions in Dutch and German were almost identical (1962: 24), even if they often needed
some adaptation. German newspapers were the basis of many of the corantos published
in the Netherlands, particularly concerning news from Eastern and Southern Europe.
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History of journalistic translation
Sometimes this involved using a specific text, complemented with material from other
German-language sources (1962: 27). Amsterdam was indeed a major centre for this type
of publications as a result of the influx of refugees fleeing religious or political persecution
in other parts of Europe (Hoftijer 2001: 252). These individuals could translate corantos
as well as books into other languages in order to be exported throughout the continent.
In the second half of the 17th century, Huguenot refugees, for example, translated and
published newspapers and periodicals such as the Nouvelles de la République des Lettres,
which later served as a model for other French periodicals in Rotterdam and The Hague
(Hoftijer 2001: 259).
In Russia, news sheets were called kuranty. The name points again to the fact that these
newspapers were translations of foreign texts, often Dutch corantos (Franklin 2019: 139).
Kuranty were used to tell Russians about life and events in other countries (Maier &
Shamin 2014). But this was not the only way in which translation was used in Russia. In
the 18th century, translations were commissioned as propaganda by Russian ambassadors
in order to disseminate news of Russia’s military victories (Tyulenev 2012: 193–194). This
reflected the Russian interest in creating the image of the country as a military power.
Translation between other language pairs was also crucial in the dissemination of
news in other parts of Europe. Writing on the reporting about the Sabbatai Sevi (a self-
proclaimed messiah that became a significant figure in the Jewish tradition and beyond),
Maier & Waugh (2010) show the importance of translation in the second half of the 17th
century in at least two ways. On the one hand, news from the Middle East might have been
reported in Europe and, therefore, would have required translation, although, Maier and
Waugh claim, some of the information might be considered fake (2010: 144). On the other
hand, German reports about the topic were translated into Russian, even though some
of these translations were classified and were restricted to the Tsar and his closest circle
(Maier & Waugh 2010: 147–148). However, news on the topic appeared in the kuranty,
the Russian version of the Western news pamphlets, the source of which was the Oprechte
Haerlemse Courant, highlighting again the many languages into which a news text was
translated.
The above shows the strong connections between journalism, translation and power,
albeit in different ways. Displaced individuals for political and religious reasons were at the
base of the expansion of translated news stories across the continent, but the connection
between translation, journalism and power did not stop there. The early press was a site
of conflict and also a reflection of the relationship between governments and translation
practices. While in the Netherlands newspapers enjoyed more freedom, the monarchies
of Sweden (Høyer 2003), England (Ries 2001), France (Depezay 2010) and Spain (Espejo
2016) exerted considerable influence on the press and, therefore, on the translation of for-
eign news. This meant that Dutch newspapers were published in Dutch, but also in foreign
languages, such as English and French, and then exported to other nations.
The prominence of translation in news production continued in the 18th and 19th
centuries. For example, Hernández Guerrero (2019: 383) points out that newspapers in
Spain acknowledged the use of translations, while Høyer (2003: 456) reminds us that
in Scandinavia news publications followed the English pattern well into the 18th and
19th centuries. In Denmark, for instance, the Berlingske published translations of foreign
Gazettes as well as original texts. In fact, it seems that translators were ‘among the first
newspaper personnel to be employed on a full-time basis’ (Høyer 2003: 457), although
these newspapers sometimes opted for the label ‘foreign correspondents’ rather than
157
Roberto A. Valdeón
translators to give the impression of reports authored by eyewitnesses. In the United

States, Cole & Hamilton (2008) have shown that reports of the French Revolution by
Philadelphia-based newspapers General Advertiser and Gazette of the United States were
in fact based on English newspapers, in turned translated from accounts published by
French papers such as the Moniteur, or translations of French and Dutch papers already
published in London (2008: 35–6). Later, as journalism was gradually professionalized
in the United States, international events continued to be translations of texts published
by foreign media.
Translation, movement and periodicity

The long distances that news had to travel to reach vast and varied European audiences
point to the importance of another type of movement in news dissemination. ‘Translate’
comes indeed from Latin ‘translatus’, meaning ‘carried over/moved from one place to
another’. In the early modern period interlinguistic transformations of source texts
were characterized by another crucial movement: the physical transportation of the
news. Postal services were, thus, instrumental in creating a European news network
that spread information across the continent as a result of the strengthening postal
links between Flanders, Spain, France and Italy (Ettinghausen 2001: 199–200), and
also between the Nordic countries (Høyer 2003: 452). It is also noteworthy that the
distances between the places where news events originated and the publication centres
affected the regularity and value of information, e.g. it took weeks for the news to travel
from France or Germany to Spain, but only a few days from Brussels to Amsterdam
(Díaz Noci 2012: 413). In addition, as translation was also required, this meant that a
long time would elapse since the publication of the original source texts and the target
versions. Maier & Waugh (2010: 150) recall the case of a series of reports about Jewish
unrest in the Middle East in the 17th century:
The most frequent datelines are Constantinople, Smyrna, or the intermediary

transit point Livorno. Once the news had arrived in the latter city it predictably
would reach Haarlem in 22 to 25 days. A story datelined Smyrna, 16 January 1666,
was printed in Haarlem on 16 March and arrived in Moscow nearly 50 days after
that. In other words 108 days elapsed between its origin and its translation into
Russian.
On the other hand, while periodicity is associated with the birth of journalism, this
was not a prerequisite for continuity, as many papers were not published periodically
even though they remained in operation (Couvée 1962: 28; Díaz Noci 2012). Another
important feature of these early newspapers was the fact that printing had to be approved
by political or religious institutions. For example, the Teutsche Kriegs-Kurier needed to
abide by the Holy Roman Empire’s censorship laws (Schultheiß-Heinz 2010: 122), and
maybe for this reason the names of the news writers were rarely printed, while in France
newspapers were dependent on the state’s approval, which has led some scholars to use it
as an example of the absolutism that characterized the French political scene at the time
(Espejo 2011: 194). Spanish and Portuguese news translations were also affected by royal
censorship, so news pamphlets were often introduced into the countries illegally (Díaz
Noci 2012: 414).
158
Topics and strategies

Thematically, wars featured prominently among the main news events disseminated via
translation (Ettinghausen 1984: 3; Schultheiß-Heinz 2010; der Weduwen 2018). This did
not mean that the same event would give way to exactly the same content in different
languages. As the news pamphlets were targeted at different audiences, even if informa-
tion came from the same source, adaptations, additions and omissions were a common
feature. For instance, Schultheiß-Heinz (2010) discusses a significant example: the reports
on the abduction of a French agent in Holland published by the French Gazette, the
London Gazette and the German Teutch Kriegs-Kurier offered different narratives for
different audiences. Apart from war and conflicts, other topics of interest included trade,
news from the royal courts and sensational news (Schultheiß-Heinz 2010: 124).
As regards translation strategies, notwithstanding the abovementioned additions and
omissions, the tendency in the early days of journalism was a rather literal rendering of
the source texts, unlike contemporary news, which tends to undergo substantial changes
to cater for the new readership. As the publication of newsworthy events was more com-
plex than it is now, literal translation contributed to the rapid dissemination of foreign
texts, particularly in relation to wars (Brownlees 2010: 234–235). Once again, we have
to bear in mind that the transportation of news texts and their publication in translated
form required considerable time, which, in turn, meant that other journalistic genres were
sacrificed. Nevitt (2005: 59–60) records the publisher’s preface of a translated version of
a coranto, where the selling point was the absence of an editorial. It was claimed that, as
the original text contained so much information, there was no space available for editorial
matters:
Gentle Reader, if euer you will be pleased, now is the time: for you shall not haue
a word of preamble. Nor circumlocution: For the Letters and Dutch Corantos are
come so thick into our hands this weeke, that we can spare you no wast[e]‌paper, if
we would.
But literal translations did not mean that translators or journalists remained completely
faithful to the original corantos. Doodley (2010) has shown that, even in the case of
word-for-word translations, figures and names were often changed in the target texts
for no obvious reason, while Nevitt (2005: 56) mentions that certain news events were
exaggerated to create a state of mind, for example, if the article warned of an alleged
threat by a foreign enemy. Renowned authors involved in the dissemination of news and
information such as Ben Jonson soon realized that many of the original sources, coming
as they did from the Low Countries, were unreliable (Nevitt 2005: 56), which led him to
alter the texts or to warn his readers of the veracity of the reports.
Translation and the professionalization of journalism

As discussed in the previous section, in the early modern period, news reporting was in
the hands of literary authors, printers, and translators, some of whom were political or
religious refugees fleeing persecution. This trend continued until the mid-19th century
when the demand for printed news and the technological advances led to the consolida-
tion of journalism as a full-time profession and the gradual replacement of the amateur
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Roberto A. Valdeón
approach of the previous decades. Although the institutionalization of journalism as

such did not become apparent until the mid-19th century, with the emergence of various
national associations of journalists across Europe (Høyer & Lauk 2003) and the creation
of the International Federation of Journalists in the early 20th century, journalism grad-
ually became an established activity which required training to progress. The first schools
of journalism were opened at the University of Missouri and at Columbia University
in New York City, while in Europe the first school was founded in Germany. As a con-
sequence, translators and authors were replaced by a new brand of professionals who
hardly regarded themselves as translators. This trend has continued until the present day,
as journalists rarely believe they translate because, they would claim, news production
does not involve translation ‘pure and simple’ (Bielsa & Bassnett 2009: 15).
In Britain, the expansion of the press was partly the result of several concurring
processes, such as the right to report about Parliament and the reduction of the heavy taxes
on newspapers (Matheson 2000). In the 18th century, as newspapers became successful
enterprises, news writing gradually involved a number of professionals with different
functions. For example, in the second half of the century The Times of London employed
editors, reporters and translators (Barker 2000: 101). However, it seems that as journalism
became a full-fledged profession, translators were gradually replaced by journalists, who
would be in charge not only of writing and editing news articles, but also of translating
news from abroad. Haig (1960: 232) noted that in 1793 the owners of one English news-
paper decided to fire the translator, whose functions were then handed over to the editor.
As Haig points out, probably the most pressing duty of the editor was translating news
from the continent. Although this might be considered anecdotal, it is telling of the gradual
disappearance of translators from news companies, which might have led to the situation in
contemporary news production as journalists translate but claim they do not.
Despite the above, translation occupied a central position in news production in the
late 18th and 19th centuries as translation agencies emerged and reinvented themselves as
prominent news institutions. The professionalization of journalism was indeed related to
translation. Admittedly, the company that best exemplified the symbiosis between trans-
lation and journalism is Bureau Havas, founded by Charles-Louis Havas, which offered
newspaper-clipping and translation services to governments, embassies, banks and other
institutions. Havas was founded in 1832 as a translation bureau and became a news agency
in 1835. The strong links between translation and journalism at this stage can be seen in
the fact that Havas translated British, German, Spanish, Italian and Russian newspapers
and sent the translations to other European cities, originally by using a pigeon service,
later by means of the telegraph (Rantanen 2007: 851). Havas, together with Reuters and
Wolff, formed the triumvirate that dominated news production in Europe for much of the
19th century and beginning of the 20th century, and the three of them could trace their
origins back to the translational activity. Havas, Reuters and Wolff were indeed the major
players in the second half of the 19th century. In fact, until the beginning of World War
I, the big three agencies functioned as a cartel (Tworek 2013: 731; Allen 2016: 748) that
negotiated deals with smaller national agencies. This necessarily meant that translation
was part and parcel of the news production business across Europe, although little has
been researched in this respect, even though language and translation were crucial for the
expansion of Havas and Reuters outside Europe.
Translation was indeed central in the publication of various national and local
newspapers in other parts of the world. In Spanish-speaking America, translations were
160
crucial before and after the independence of the former Spanish colonies. Translation
scholars (Bastin & Iturriza 2008; Navarro 2011; Navarro & Poupeney Hart 2019) have
studied the role of translation in Latin American periodicals at that time. Navarro (2011)
and Navarro & Poupeney Hart (2019) have stressed the importance of translation in the
Spanish versions of foreign articles published in Latin America, particularly from Britain,
the US and France, in periodicals such as Gaceta de Caracas and Gazeta de Guatemala.
These and other newspapers appropriated source texts in English and French in order to
support the pro-independence movement.
After World War I, the dominant position of the big three changed with the appearance
of new nations and new languages participating in the news production industry. Havas
and Reuters established alliances with smaller national agencies whereas Wolff was
restricted to the German territory. In this new situation, as new markets and new com-
panies now played a role in the news production business, translation remained central. In
addition, the big three were transformed. In 1940, Havas was nationalized and, in 1944,
it became Agence France Press, or AFP (Palmer 1998: 189), while the German agency
became a tool of Nazi propaganda first and, eventually, disappeared after the demise of
the Nazi regime (Wilke 1998: 50).
On the other hand, in the Unites States the Associated Press (AP), founded in the mid-
19th century, and the United Press, created in the 1900s, were competing for the news pro-
duction and distribution market. Initially, AP started an alliance with Europe’s big three.
The negotiations that took place in the early 20th century between AP and the European
triumvirate affected smaller agencies in countries like Italy and Spain (Allen 2016: 751).
At the end of World War II, AP was already providing a global service, from Sweden to
India, from Korea to Egypt (Allen 2016: 758), and by the end of the 20th century, AP had
8, 500 foreign subscribers as well as services in five languages, while many more languages
were used by its foreign subscribers. For its part, AFP had 12, 500 clients and used six
different languages (Boyd-Barrett 1998: 30). The restructuring of the major European
agencies and the expansion of US-based ones throughout the 20th century indubitably
affected language and translation, but this remains largely un-or under researched.
Another important area where journalism and translation have historically gone hand
in hand is the activity of foreign correspondents, who, some claim, have existed since
the early 17th century (Couvée 1962: 30). However, it is not until the 18th century that
newspapers started sending journalists abroad. The reliance on foreign correspondents
for foreign news increased as the financial situation of the news companies improved, par-
ticularly from the 19th century onwards (Barker 2000: 106). Although the role of trans-
lation in these contexts also remains largely unexplored, some authors have stressed the
function of translators and interpreters in such contexts. Palmer (2008: 819), for instance,
recalls the case of Polish journalist Ryszard Kapuscinski (1932–2007), who worked for the
Polish news agency and covered most of the African continent. Given the large number
of languages spoken in that vast area, Kapuscinski surely had recourse to linguistic
mediators of some sort in order to have access to news content. For their part, Newman
& Houlbrook (2013) recall the 1927 case of John O’Connor and Frank Stewart, the first
being the alleged killer of a British woman in Calais, the latter an interpreter who had
apparently met the former. In fact, it was a story of deception in which the interpreter and
the criminal were the same person. But it is also a story of the close relationship between
language, translation and journalism, of how stories are created, spread and manipulated
as a result of the attempt to attract readers and advertising (2013: 640).
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Roberto A. Valdeón
In the past decades, despite the restructuring of media corporations and the gradual
reduction or elimination of foreign correspondents (Hess 2005: 128; Erickson & Hamilton
2007: 138), reporting from abroad remains an important part of the profession. One such
a case is war correspondents, who would be unable to do their jobs without the assistance
of local interpreters or fixers, whose mediating role involves more than providing and
translating information (Palmer 2018). In this sense, Palmer posits that journalists attach
great importance to the accuracy of the translations provided by local interpreters to
the extent that some correspondents will even test the fixers’ linguistic abilities to ensure
that their own reporting will be reliable (2018: 1336). This serves to highlight the notion
of trust as central to the journalism profession, and also serves to establish another link
between translation and journalism: the intersection between language and ethics is cru-
cial for journalists and translators, as has been for translation and journalism researchers.
Contemporary journalism
Despite the widely held assumption that journalists are not translators but editors (Bielsa
& Bassnett 2009: 81), translation remains a decisive factor in the news production process
in our globalized world, not only in relation to adaptation and editing procedures, but
most notably in connection with the multilingual nature of many contemporary major
news corporations. The BBC comes immediately to mind, as its World Service has been a
Babelian centre of news production. Podkalicka (2011) has proposed the term ‘translation
factory’ to describe the use of translation in contemporary news media such as the BBC.
In her study, Podkalicka discusses translation in relation to the concepts of dialogue and
network, and claims that the factory metaphor was widely accepted by BBC writers, who
produced, reproduced and transedited news texts (2011: 144). Paradoxically, Podkalicka
posits that until the 1990s this ‘Fordist’ factory practice involved the hiring of translators
rather than journalists in order to preserve the impartiality of the news. Later, factory
translation, she claims, was replaced by a more dialogical relationship among the various
agents involved in the translation of news texts into the many languages provided by the
corporation (29 at the time of writing). Although this dialogical process remains somehow
controversial, it has also allowed the BBC to invest money in translation and expand its
language services (Podkalicka 2011: 150).
This translation-factory-turned-dialogic model applies to many other major players in
news production such as Europe’s Euronews, Chinese CGTN (which broadcasts in languages
such as English, French, Spanish, Arabic and Russian) and, to a lesser extent, national
media such as The New York Times (which has services in Chinese and Spanish) and Spain’s
El País (with versions in English and Brazilian Portuguese). The initiators and function of
these ventures vary enormously. For example, a news outlet like the Vietnam News is funded
by the Vietnamese government to disseminate Vietnamese news and culture abroad (van
Leeuwen 2006), while the Spanish version of The New York Times, a private news corpor-
ation in a democratic country, translates articles from its English version for a Hispanic and
Latin American readership, usually providing links to the original texts and, thus, signalling
the translational nature of the articles available in Spanish. This outlet used to provide its
readers with both translated articles and original material until September 2019. From that
date onwards only translated texts are published, thus signalling another key feature of
news companies: economic issues have an impact on their publishing decisions. As regards
the Spanish service of The New York Times, as it was not considered financially viable, it
162
has been limited to translations. Since 2019 on the other hand, in a country like Indonesia,
where English functions as a lingua franca, news reporting in English is common, e.g. the
Jakarta Post is published only in English whereas the Jakarta Globe and Tempo combine
translations with original material (Carpenter & Ekdale 2019).
The examples mentioned above demonstrate that in contemporary journalism lan-
guage and translation have become both a problem and an opportunity. The challenges of
contemporary multilingual societies are exemplified by institutions such as the European
Alliance of Press Agencies (EAPA), (Boyd-Barrett & Rantanen 2000). On the other hand,
satellite, cable and internet providers underscore the fact that technological advances are
the cornerstone of international expansion for news organizations aiming at reaching a
diverse readership in a variety of languages. For example, US’s CNN offers internet ser-
vices in Spanish and Arabic besides English, while, at the time of writing, the television
and internet news provider Euronews offers information in 12 languages. Non-Western
corporations such as Qatar’s Al-Jazeera has an English-language service and has plans for
services in other languages, while China’s CGTN offers information in several European
languages, as mentioned above. As regards the former, paradoxically, translation was
central to the debate on what the English version should broadcast or post: the staff of
the original Arabic centre believed that the English service should be a translated ser-
vice (Figenschou 2011: 366–7), while controversies concerning the propagandist nature of
both remain frequent.
On the other hand, there have been attempts to counterbalance the power of the
larger Western media companies. One such attempt was an initiative by the so-called
Non-Aligned countries to set up an agency catering for its members. Established in 1975,
the Non-aligned News Agencies Pool (NANAP) tried to supplement the news flow of
the major agencies with complementary or alternative views (Splichal 1984: 229–230).
Coordinated by Yugoslavia’s Tanjug, NANAP started with 40 participating agencies in
1976, which rose to 87 in 1981 (Crain 2011: 368), transmitting news in four languages and
providing information to third world countries. NANAP disappeared in the second half
of the 1990s as a consequence of severe financial difficulties (which no doubt involved
significant translation costs) and of the political turmoil in the former Soviet bloc, which
resulted in the demise of the communist regimes (Crain 2011: 369) including Yugoslavia,
the original leader of the project.
Operating alternative news corporations such as the Inter Press Service (IPS)
International Association, a non-profit organization with headquarters in Rome, also
rely on translation. IPS is an example of a news company aiming to counter-balance the
hegemony of Western news media, and to promote international pluralism and partici-
pation by providing news features, analyses and commentaries, and by covering issues
such as human rights, democracy, natural resources, and so on (Giffard 1998: 193–194).
Founded by Mario Savi in 1964, IPS was conceived as a bridge between Europe and Latin
America (Bielsa & Bassnett 2009: 50). Originally, IPS provided services in English and
Spanish as well as translations of a selection of articles into languages such as Bengali,
Dutch, Mandarin and Urdu (Giffard 1998: 194). At present, the internet service of IPS is
available in 12 languages, mostly European, but also in Arabic and Swahili.
The ever-increasing thirst for information has pushed traditional and new news com-
panies to gradually incorporate sources that would have been unthinkable not so long ago.
Social media have become battlefields in which politicians, news writers and the general
public participate to various extents. In some cases, they have replaced traditional media
(Poell & Borra 2011; Veenstra et al. 2015). Poell and Borra, for instance, have studied the
163
Roberto A. Valdeón
way in which social media became platforms of alternative journalism during the 2010
Toronto G20 protests. Although these researchers do not really care to analyse how lan-
guage and translation engaged with these media in order to provide alternative views of
the G20 Summit (in fact, Poell and Borra are far more interested in suggesting that these
media were used by activists who ‘have rightfully taken protest reporting in their own
hands’, 2011: 709), this new brand of reporting could only occur via translation.
In addition to alternative media, and not unconnected to them, fake news has become
a major problem in the 21st century. The need to combat the spread of false information
that can affect everything from the US presidential election to the Brexit referendum in
the UK has been recognized by independent projects such as FactCheck in the US and
StopFake in the Ukraine, which monitor news by carrying out fact-checking activities.
The latter is of particular interest. Initially created to refute Russian propaganda about
the Ukraine, StopFake functions on a voluntary basis, including the provision of trans-
lation services (Haigh, Haigh & Kozak 2018). StopFake aims to identify erroneous infor-
mation, e.g. whether a photograph actually corresponds to the news event being reported
and whether information in a given language has been mistranslated into another one
(2018: 2064). At the time of writing, StopFake was available in 13 languages including
those of former communist countries such as Russian, Romanian, Bulgarian and Czech,
but also in Western languages (e.g. English, French, Spanish, German and Italian).
Concluding remarks
From the rudimentary translations of the corantos to the complexity of voluntary trans-
lation in projects like StopFake, interlinguistic transformations have always been part and
parcel of the journalistic activity. And yet research specifically aimed at analysing transla-
tional processes, the function of the translational activity and the historical role played by
translation in news production from the perspective of journalism/communication studies
has been scant. The underlying reason for this lack of interest might be related to the
different conceptualization of ‘translation’ in the two disciplines. In fact, in a study of
the use of the term ‘translation’ in communication journals (Valdeón 2018), I have shown
that scholars conceived translation in a very restricted way: while translation scholars tend
to use ‘translation’ as an umbrella term encompassing various types of transformations,
not necessarily linguistic, in journalism studies the discussion often amounts to word-for-
word translations (2018: 261). This supports the findings of previous research conducted
by other scholars (Bielsa & Bassnett 2009; Hernández Guerrero 2009).
As already mentioned, another important challenge for researchers interested in the
history of journalistic translation, particularly during the 17th and 18th centuries, is the
availability of periodicals from those periods. The preservation of some of these texts in
Europe’s National Libraries can contribute to the study of the role of translation in news
production, although the main difficulty to explore news production during this period
is indeed the fact that most of these periodicals are lost. Der Weduwen (2018: 2), for
instance, mentions that, in the case of Dutch and Flemish newspapers in the early modern
period, it is estimated that only between 1 and 3% of the issues have survived. However, a
project such as Europeana Newspapers can prove useful to probe not only into the history
of journalism but also into the links between language, translation and news production.
This digitized collection includes a searchable database of four million newspapers from
around Europe.
164
As authors have called for an interdisciplinary approach to study journalism and its
history, specialized academic disciplines such as periodical studies, which explores the
appearance, history, evolution and features of periodicals, can bring disciplines together.
For example, drawing on their experience as collaborators of the European funded pro-
ject called ‘Agents of Change: Women Editors and Socio-Cultural Transformation in
Europe, 1710–1920’, Schelstraete & van Remoortel (2019) have proposed a model aiming
at studying periodicals from a pan-European perspective, which means trying to explore
this type of publications across languages and cultures. In fact, the project involves ten
languages including English, French and Spanish, but also Swedish and Greek, showing
that translation was part of the production process of periodical publications.
To conclude this chapter, I would like to point out that the publications recommended
for further reading highlight the lack of more extensive studies into the role of trans-
lation in the history of journalism, but also underscore the existence of research
opportunities.
Further reading
• Bielsa, E. & Bassnett, S. (2009) Translation in Global News. London: Routledge.
Chapter 3 provides a historical overview of news agencies, with particular reference to

the European big three (i.e. Havas, Reuters and Wolff) and the creation of US-based
Associated Press and United Press International.
• Couvée, D. H. (1962) ‘The first Coranteers –the flow of the news in the 1620s’,
International Communication Gazette, 8, pp. 22–36.
This seminal article does not only provide one of the first overviews of the birth of jour-
nalism in Western Europe by comparing the content of newspapers published in the Low
Countries, Flanders and Germany, but also hints at the importance of translation in news
production in the early part of the 17th century.
• Dooley, B. (ed.) (2010) The Dissemination of News and the Emergence of Contemporaneity
in Early Modern Europe. Farnham, UK/Burlington US: Ashgate.
Although this edited collection does not focus on translation in journalism, many
contributions discuss the role of translation in news production during the early modern
period. Of particular interest are the chapters by Schultheiß-Heinz and Maier and Waugh.
• Valdeón, R. A. (2020) ‘On the interface between journalism and translation studies: a his-
torical overview and suggestions for collaborative research’, Journalism Studies, 21(12),
pp. 1644–1661.
This article explores the historical connection between the two disciplines and summarizes
some of the main contributions to the history of journalistic translation in both fields. It
also reviews the most popular research approaches and makes a number of suggestions to
promote collaboration among researchers.
165
Roberto A. Valdeón
• Espejo, C. (2011) ‘European communication networks in the early modern age’, Media
History, 17(2), pp. 189–202.
In this article, Espejo discusses various European periodicals, including Spanish relaciones,
Italian avvisi and Dutch corantos and proposes a new theoretical model that looks not only
at print media but also at other types of pamphlets resulting from both the aspirations of
certain political groups and the needs of states to impose their own narratives.
Note
1 This ‘Eurocentric’ view, however, has been challenged by Yangming He (2015), who posits
that the so-called chao-pao and xiao-pao were the first news periodicals to appear. These were
published during the Southern Song Dynasty in Hangzhou, China. As He’s work focused on
periodicals reporting on court issues and produced in a specific area, translation might not have
been relevant.
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11
Journalism and translation
Overlapping practices
Luc van Doorslaer
Introduction
Although most news consumers may not explicitly experience it as such, international news
production is obviously the result of a series of text transformation processes, and in most
cases including one or more translation stages. Many language users will understand ‘trans-
lation’ in the sense of its traditional usage, that of ‘translation proper’, i.e. between two
different languages. However, over the past decades, the discipline of translation studies has
also investigated related forms of textual transition, such as intralingual and intersemiotic
translations. When phenomena such as rewriting, localizing and recontextualizing belong
to the object of the study of translation, it is clear that many daily journalistic practices can
be approached from a translational research perspective. From this point of view, journal-
istic authoring and journalistic translating are practices with many similarities. A subfield
of translation studies called news or journalistic translation research has thoroughly
investigated the overlapping features of the practices and functions of journalism and
translation. This contribution will shed light on the development of that research angle, as
well as on the attempts to stimulate interdisciplinary research on the topic.
Conceptual and disciplinary importance

As is the case for many branches of the humanities, the object definition of ‘translation’
in translation studies is not exact. In popular use, the term is associated with equivalence,
focusing on non-change (of meaning) and, as such, limited to linguistic transfer only. Over
the past decades, however, the discipline of translation studies has extensively shown that
this popular use is a construct considerably narrowing the much more complex trans-
lational reality that integrates forms of extra-linguistic change in abundance. Although
there is an ongoing tendency within the discipline to prefer concentrating on equivalence
and traditional translation practice (see for instance Mossop 2016), generally, the pri-
mary trend in translation studies is to extend the object of study based on the centrality
of change. ‘[T]‌he broadening tendencies illustrate a gradual development from a retro-
spective focus on non-change […] to an approach that privileges dynamics and variation
DOI: 10.4324/9781003221678-14 169

Luc van Doorslaer
via expanding types of change, such as modal, cultural, media-related, social, and techno-
logical’ (van Doorslaer 2018: 221).
In this sense, recent research often refers to the old yet broad three-fold categorization
of translation, as suggested by Jakobson (1959). Already, more than 60 years ago, he
distinguished between interlingual translation (‘translation proper’), intralingual transla-
tion (rewording or rewriting) and intersemiotic translation (adaptation). For a long time,
research in translation studies almost exclusively focused on the first category (the afore-
mentioned popular usage) and, only recently, more and more attention has been paid to
intralingual and intersemiotic forms of translation, also as a consequence of the tendency
to acknowledge and include change in translation research. Although intralingual trans-
lation has long been under-researched, ‘the studies which have been carried out so far
point to the fact that the similarities between intra-and interlingual translation by far
outweigh the differences’ (Zethsen 2021: 140). When translation accepts forms of change,
it is also inevitable that diverse forms of adaptation (both inter-and intralingual) become
the object of study. ‘Just as there is no such thing as a literal translation, there can be no
literal adaptation. […] This newer sense of translation comes closer to defining adaptation
as well’ (Hutcheon 2006: 16).
In this disciplinary context, it is understandable that research about news transla-
tion [in a slightly broader sense, also called ‘journalistic translation research’, covering
‘not only informative texts, but also interpretative and argumentative ones’ (Valdeón
2015a: 654)] has mainly flourished over the past two decades. Translation proper is rela-
tively exceptional in journalistic newspaper practice, where many articles are rather the
result of rewriting (interlingually or intralingually) and partly recontextualizing or local-
izing. In journalistic text production, translating and (re)writing are, to a large extent,
merged in one process that is at the same time creative and re-creative. Distinguishing
between the two practices involved in this integrated process is hardly possible; particu-
larly, when dealing with globalized news flows, their translational character is obvious.
Only the narrowest possible use of translation and a belief in the full equivalence between
languages, create the illusion that interlingual transfer can still be totally separated from
the rewriting activity.
Drawing on a descriptive and research-based view on translation, however, a consid-
erable part of such journalistic practices falls within the extended object of translation
studies. A disciplinary evolution may have led to a development in the conceptualization
of translation. Nevertheless, this does not mean that the popular and traditional use of
translation has disappeared. The broader and change-oriented concept, as used in con-
temporary translation studies, has only minimally reached other disciplines, as becomes
evident from a book publication explicitly investigating the disciplinary border-crossing
content of the translation concept (see Gambier & van Doorslaer 2016). Despite the still
dominating essentialist and linguistic view of translation, there is also a partial object
overlap and exchange with more adjacent fields, such as transfer studies (see Göpferich
2010) or adaptation studies (see van Doorslaer & Raw 2016). The continued traditional
and narrower view of translation certainly remains dominant in more practical journal-
istic environments, such as newsrooms, where ‘the word ‘translation’ is not taboo, but
is understood as being limited to situations of ‘literal’ […] interlingual transfer’ (Davier
2014: 61).
Conceptual differences in nuance, but simultaneously disciplinary common grounds,
have also been illustrated by research in journalism studies on representation and framing,
170
on the one hand, and by research in translation studies on cultural translation, on the other.
Journalists select and deselect elements of their source text(s) as part of a framing and
reframing activity, which implicitly or explicitly also includes the shaping and reshaping
of the audience’s perspective. This representation process demonstrates many parallels
with the translational act, if conceptualized as a changing activity. This is most clearly the
case in examples of cultural translation, a concept originating from anthropology, for the
interpretative transition process that explains phenomena of a cultural reality to members
of a different cultural community. This is a daily practice, not only for journalists (espe-
cially when working at the international desk) but also for translators. Conway (2012)
observed how this kind of research in communication studies is closely related to that of
translation studies, as follows:
Communication scholars, for example, have examined how journalists explain how
immigrants and other newcomers experience the community to which their readers,
listeners, and viewers belong. In other words, they have described journalists’
efforts to engage in cultural translation in the anthropological sense, as a form of
explanation.
(2012: 24)
Interdisciplinary attempts
Despite such potential commonalities, and the obvious interdisciplinary potential of
news translation research, it is insufficiently explored and mainly remains a one-way
interest, often deplored on the translation studies side: ‘[…] media studies continue to
be predominantly blind to its key mediating role in intercultural communication and
still largely apply a monolingual lens to the study of news production and transmis-
sion’ (Bielsa 2016: 200). Whereas, in the past 20 years, journalistic translation research
has put itself on the map as a subarea of translation studies, the interest in journalism
studies research regarding the importance of language, let alone translation, in journal-
istic news processes, has remained very limited. The primary exception is a special issue
of Journalism (2011) that dealt with transcultural journalism and the politics of trans-
lation. Although the special issue editors refer to only a very small part of the, at that
moment, already existing research on news translation, they nonetheless show a genuine
interest for the potential added value of those new approaches and insights from trans-
lation studies.
Media Studies has been quite slow to wake up to issues of translation […]. It could
be argued that all forms of representation are forms of translation. Certainly Hartley
(1992) makes a strong case for news production being seen as the ‘translation’ of
events into the meaning-system and values of news organizations. As global news
organizations proliferate and as international stories become part of daily news
coverage –whether adequately so or not –interest in not only linguistic but broader
cultural translation is starting to develop. […] a focus on translation opens up and
reframes some of the key issues in journalism theory, including concepts such as gate-
keeper, manipulation, adaptation, trans-editing, mediation, news management, and
media framing theory.
(Baumann, Gillespie & Sreberny 2011: 135–136)
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Luc van Doorslaer
Seven years later, the same journal published an article that can also be partly read as
a follow-up, maybe even as a test for the interdisciplinary ambition, as expressed in
the 2011 special issue. Subsequently, a translation studies scholar, Roberto Valdeón,
published his research, ‘On the Use of the Term “Translation” in Journalism Studies’
(2018), based on a corpus of 186 texts, published between 1994 and 2016, in journals
such as Communication Studies, Media History, Journalism and Journalism Studies.
He arrived at the conclusion that the attempt of the 2011 special issue to bridge the
gap between the disciplines had no substantial impact in journalism studies and that
the interest in translation remained negligible. ‘Given the minor role of translation
in the publications of the corpus, the instability and lack of conceptualization of the
term, the interaction with translation scholarship is practically non-existent’ (Valdeón
2018: 266).
As mentioned above, the lack of scholarly replies from other disciplines is mostly
related to the narrow perception of translation as a purely interlingual equivalence prac-
tice. Nevertheless, some researchers are more optimistic about the inevitability of schol-
arly collaboration. Matsushita (2019: 20), for instance, referred not only to the growing
demand and impact of international news but also to the attention to social contexts in
research, and the complex networks in which translators play a specific role. Furthermore,
over the past years, several conference panels with an explicit interdisciplinary aim have
been organized, such as in Germersheim (Germany, 2013) and Aarhus (Denmark, 2016),
and even an interdisciplinary workshop in Geneva (Switzerland, 2014) that ‘deliberately
reached out to invited researchers from disciplines such as linguistics, communication
studies and journalism studies’ (Davier, Schäffner & van Doorslaer 2018b: 156–157). The
authors of the article, who were also the organizers of the panels and the workshop,
described it as a gathering seeking traces of translation in the news process, from different
disciplinary points of departure, and with interesting common grounds, mainly at the
methodological level (see the section ‘Methodological focus’).
‘Traditional’ topics in news translation research

Most of the topics that were later developed in news translation research were already
touched upon in the main publications resulting from the news translation project based at
the University of Warwick (UK) between 2004 and 2006 (Conway & Bassnett 2006; Bielsa
2007; Bielsa & Bassnett 2009). The latter was based on ethnographic research in news
agencies, considered ‘as vast translation agencies, structurally designed to achieve fast
and reliable translations of large amounts of information’ (Bielsa & Bassnett 2009: 135).
The typical topics for this subarea of research also returned in Valdeón’s (2015a) study,
as a contribution offering an extensive overview of most researches in the subfield, until
that moment. To a certain extent, through its explicit overview character also expressed
in the title (‘Fifteen Years of Journalistic Translation Research and More’), this article
symbolized the establishment of news translation or journalistic translation research as
a separate specialization within translation studies. Valdeón does not limit his sources to
the scholarly articles of the 21st century, but combines his approach with a historical com-
ponent about news translation in the history of journalism. The institutionalizing value
of Valdeón’s contribution is, for instance, demonstrated through the explicit intertextual
reference to his title, when Davier, Schäffner & van Doorslaer (2018b) titled their first sub-
heading ‘Twenty Years of Research into News Translation’ (p. 155).
172
Maybe the most salient feature but, simultaneously, a paradox when studying journal-
istic translation, is that the translation activity is only explicitly visible or mentioned in
very exceptional cases. Especially when reading international news, it is obvious that the
journalistic text has gone through probably more than one interlingual transformation
and/or filter. Nevertheless, the end text usually presents facts that can have happened all
over the world in the target language without mentioning, let alone problematizing, these
linguistic changes. The underlying (and meanwhile, long superseded) presupposition is
that languages are nicely equivalent structures that are always able to express equivalent
content, meaning that translation is no more than a technical language transfer –trans-
lation at its most narrow, unproblematic and linguistic presentation, as explained above.
If translation is conceptualized more broadly, then this translation perspective also holds
true for journalistic text production of local news, as it is the result of intralingual trans-
lation in the Jakobsonian sense of rewritings.
The invisibility of the translator in literature (Venuti 1995) is a rather relative phe-
nomenon, compared to the almost absolute invisibility of both translator and translation
(including multilingualism) in newsroom settings. Many news translation scholars have
noticed, illustrated, and contextualized this in the most explicit of ways, supported by
case studies about press agency newsrooms (Bielsa & Bassnett 2009; Davier 2014). Davier
additionally points to the risk that ‘[a]‌udiences may not be aware of the potential biases
inherent in interlingual/intercultural processes because of the textual quasi-invisibility of
multilingualism in the end product, which is sold as “objective”news’ (2014: 67).
This constructed objectivity belief is indispensable for the journalist’s credibility,
an essential value for many journalists in Western societies. Such journalistic norms of
ethics mainly correspond to the ‘detached watchdog’, one of the four types of journalists
distinguished by Hanitzsch, and is characterized by ‘the relatively high regard the journalists
in this group pay to their social position as detached observer’ (2011: 485). Although it is
important to know that Hanitzsch’s worldwide research project has shown that the other
types are much more dominant in different parts of the world,1 he describes this profes-
sional context as ‘the most “prototypical”milieu of western journalist’ (2011: 485). The
perceived quality of being detached and ‘objective’ is undermined by a more complex
and problematized concept of translation. When translation is reduced to its narrowest
possible content of so called ‘literal’ translation, the interlingual activity can more easily
be presented as only a minor part of the total journalistic text production process. This
process is, in translation studies’ terms, extremely target-oriented and domesticating, a
‘strategy that values fluency and hides its very intervention’ (Bielsa & Bassnett 2009: 73).
Seen from this perspective, the invisibility of translation in journalistic text production
expresses dominant conceptions of translation in the journalistic field, while also resulting
from the need for strengthening journalistic values.
Depending on the situation and the text type, newspaper journalists may apply
different approaches to translation. Hernández Guerrero (2009), in her Spanish-
language book, introduced the difference between stable and unstable sources in news
translation research –later elaborated upon by Valdeón (2015b) in English. Stable
sources are texts of which the ‘content and integrity are respected, and they are faith-
fully reproduced’ (Hernández Guerrero, as translated in Valdeón 2015b: 443), whereas
unstable sources are much more easily changed, adapted and rewritten by journalists.
Examples of the former category would be opinion articles or editorials; most other
news texts rather belong under unstable sources. Valdeón also assesses this distinction
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Luc van Doorslaer
as too binary, especially in our modern media world where texts are transformed for
different media and audiences. The permeability of these two categories is also shown
in Van Beers (2017), who studied the translation processes in and for Project Syndicate,
a media organization providing commentaries and opinion articles on global topics and
distributing them to subscribers. The authors of the opinion articles are often inter-
nationally famous scientists or (former) political leaders, which makes such texts exem-
plary cases of stable sources. Nevertheless, in her Dutch-language study, Van Beers
shows how several Belgian newspapers (as subscribers of Project Syndicate) largely edit
these texts when translating.
This example of supposedly stable sources is a fine illustration of a concept that has been
used abundantly in many research articles about journalistic translation –‘transediting’, a
term coined by Stetting (1989). ‘A certain amount of editing has always been included in
the translation task’, writes Stetting (1989: 371), stressing that it is not only about inter-
lingual transfer in the narrow sense but also adapting and localizing. Although her com-
posite term does not specifically deal with journalistic translation only, several of her
examples come from that field, which also explains why it has been so successful in news
translation research. Despite its relative popularity, Schäffner (2012) observes that the
term was introduced at a moment where translation was still generally considered solely
a linguistic transfer. A few decades later, however, considering the large amount of evi-
dence from empirical research in translation studies, distinguishing between translation
and transediting is also reductive:
[…] the term transediting was useful at the time it was introduced in its own con-
text. However, if transediting is used as a substitute to and/or in opposition to the
term translation, there is the danger that translation continues to be understood in
a narrower sense of a purely word-for-word transfer process. As any translation,
news translation, or media translation more generally, is a textual and a sociocul-
tural process which involves transformations. New forms of online media and new
actors (blogs and fan translation, as cases in point) just add to the already existing
complexity.
(Schäffner 2012: 881)
Besides this term for a combination of practices, another composite term was introduced
for stressing the combined expertise of practitioners. Van Doorslaer coined the term
‘journalator’ for describing ‘a newsroom worker who makes abundant use of translation
(in its broader definitions) when transferring and reformulating or recreating informative
journalistic texts’ (2012: 1049). His aim was to highlight the ubiquitous presence of trans-
lation in newsrooms, and to make that presence more visible in the function name. The
concept has been expanded in a couple of publications focusing on the amount of transla-
tional work in many journalists’ daily work. Based on her own experience as a former jour-
nalist for Japanese newspapers, and the conviction that the term reflects well the reality of
the Japanese media landscape, Matsushita (2019) made it one of the central concepts in
her book-long study of translation practices in Japanese newspapers. Based on interviews
and observation, she created typical profile descriptions for these functions, such as ‘a typ-
ical journalator for a major Japanese newspaper company tends to have at least five years
of experience covering domestic news in Japan as well as a strong command of English
or other languages useful in covering international news’ (Matsushita 2019: 56). Filmer
174
(2014) discussed the blurring of boundaries between journalists and translators through
an ethnographic study about translating British journalists. Despite the strong evidence
favouring the need for greater professional language skills and cultural awareness, in par-
ticular for foreign correspondents, her observations also confirm the relative reluctance in
the journalistic world for reflecting on the complexity of translation. ‘[… A]s operators
across international media fail to acknowledge the pivotal role of translation in the distri-
bution and making of news, the advent of the “journalator” is still a long way off’ (Filmer
2014: 154).
Such findings illustrate that an exclusive focus on either the activity or the actor is too
limited an approach for news translation research. Conway (2008), for instance, advocated
an approach that connects the actors to the larger social context and directs attention
to the dialectical nature of the relationship of the translator or journalist to the larger
social context: translators and journalists, through the texts they produce, have an
impact on the very context that shapes their texts in the first place.
(Conway 2008: 33)
In practice, this interaction is even more complex because of the mediating position of
the specific institutional context and the medium for which the journalist works. However,
from a thematic point of view, this two-way interaction between the journalist and his
context is often studied in matters of political or ideological content. The manipula-
tive power that can be exerted through translation often relates to framing practices, as
studied in communication studies (see also Valdeón 2015b). An oft-quoted case study is
Schäffner (2008), where the author investigated several cases of political communication
(briefings, interviews) and how they are represented in different-language newspapers and
magazines. Her conclusion was that translation plays an essential role in the ways voices
are mediated, because
the (amount of) information selected for publication in the respective print media
reflects the topics and political issues which are of particular relevance to the country,
or more precisely, to the political group(s) which the newspaper is more or less openly
lending its voice to.
(2008: 22)
An interesting illustration in this regard has been provided by Spiessens & Van Poucke
(2016). They used discourse analysis for linking framing with interlingual translation, in
this case of the Russian news website InoSMI that translates articles from Western media.
In their analysis, they not only concentrated on textual devices but also included visual
strategies through the study of pictures. Although InoSMI is certainly not a typical propa-
gandistic news outlet, the data clearly revealed a pattern of Western coverage (on the
sensitive topic of Crimea) that was reframed through selective appropriation, shifts, and
omissions in translation. Discourse analyses like these offer convincing data that show
the central position of translation in reframing and localizing, yet they do not reveal the
underlying motivations and power mechanisms. Additional relevance for news transla-
tion research could be offered by garnering further knowledge about the impact of the
actors involved. To what extent are such reframing activities the (conscious or uncon-
scious) decisions of the translators/journalators, following a bottom-up dynamics? Or is
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Luc van Doorslaer
it rather the result of a top-down translation policy imposed by authorities at a higher or

intermediate organizational level?
Over the past decades, journalistic translation research has undoubtedly contributed to
the broadening of the object in translation studies. It is a field that contains obvious reality
checks and challenges for traditional and century-old dogmas about translation. As the
journalistic production process is almost always based on several source texts that are inter-
and/or intra-lingually rewritten and recontextualized, this multi-source situation contrasts
with the traditional presentation of one source text and one target text. Such a working
procedure, where a multiplication of source texts is combined with stages of rewriting and
transformation, ‘problematizes the existence and status of the source text as commonly
understood in a “normal” translational relationship’ (van Doorslaer 2010: 181).
Nonetheless, apparent certainties in traditional perspectives on translation are not only
undermined in news translation by the multi-source situation, consequently, the (mainly
romantic) view of ‘originality’ as well as the concept of unique authorship are eroded, if
not subverted by newsroom reality. Ideas about literary translation, particularly about
religious or ‘sacred’ texts such as the Bible –for a long time the main object of study
in such reflections –necessarily relied on the status of originality and uniqueness. Since
Romanticism, the concept of originality has gained a central position in Western art and
thinking in general, inevitably leading to a secondary or derivative view of translation as
being non-original and the translator as being a non-author. This hierarchical thinking
was reflected in the choice of the non-equal terms ‘original’ and ‘translation’. The intro-
duction of the (nowadays, widely used in translation studies) terms ‘source text’ and
‘target text’ have already replaced this hierarchy and cultural connotations by positioning
both texts at the same ontological level, something that news translation does beyond the
point of illustrating. It not only defies the single source text normality but also fundamen-
tally challenges the ideas of originality and the single author. A journalistic text is ‘only
rarely the product of one person’ (Schäffner 2012: 876) but an element in a longer chain
of text and content production and reproduction –a description that comes fairly close to
many features of the use of translation in the broader sense.
Methodological focus
The combination of several of these characteristics in news translation not only makes
it a highly challenging research object for translation studies but simultaneously explains
why conducting research on this object is often fundamentally difficult. When interlingual
translation is not mentioned or acknowledged in newspapers, the researcher finds it diffi-
cult to even identify a traditional source text-target text relationship and apply compara-
tive methods. When several sources are used for creating a new target text, both through
intralingual and interlingual reproduction, the researcher is unable to exactly highlight
the rewriting or rewording stages. When the exact sources are not explicitly mentioned,
the researcher is hardly able to trace them and reconstruct the full production process.
Moreover, for online versions of newspaper articles, we can nowadays additionally state
that when target texts have several versions because they are corrected, updated, or infor-
mation is added, the classical one-on-one text relationship is complicated even further.
Although news translation research, until recently, mainly dealt with newspapers, in this
quickly changing context, the term has gradually started seeming anachronistic. In the era
of digitization, news is less and less presented and consumed on paper.
176
Presently, every attempt to structure according to media type must account for the
growing impact of the media convergence phenomenon. This is all the more true when
dealing with the very divergent and ubiquitous forms of translation in the modern media
world. In a recent book focusing on the effects of convergence of journalism and transla-
tion, the editor’s note stated that the phenomenon is also ‘obsessing researchers’ (Davier
& Conway 2019: 3), because of the former relatively clear boundaries between the media
that have disappeared. Furthermore, in times of convergence, multiplatform jour-
nalism increasingly blurs the exact trajectories of text production and reproduction. Very
different forms of organizational and economic collaborations between media owners
and producers are associated with convergence, akin to journalistic exchanges between
different platforms and formats, multiplying forms of cross-media collaboration and jour-
nalistic cross-over products. Newspaper websites are directly connected to social media
platforms and mobile applications, nudging them towards a growing need to include more
audio-visual content, such as their own video material or podcasts. When research talks
about contemporary ‘newspapers’, the term has to be understood in this extended and
multimedia-related cross-over meaning, including the growing importance of image and
sound. This situation of cross-media connectivity particularly affects research and the
applicable methods.
Considering all this, it does not come as a surprise that journalistic translation research
has recently started paying more explicit attention to methodological issues. Although
this tendency can be noticed in several individual articles, the issue title ‘Methods in news
translation’ was the exclusive focus of a special issue of the journal Across Languages
and Cultures (Davier, Schäffner & van Doorslaer 2018a). Based on their experience in the
field, the editors more and more felt ‘that the wealth of approaches available within trans-
lation studies […] needed to be supported by methodological rigour and systematicity’
(2018b: 157). Because of the specific characteristics described above, it is clear that trad-
itional text-based analysis, let alone comparison, all too often has reached its limits for
research in this subfield. Formulating hypotheses about translation, retranslation, and
rewriting processes is possible, but testing them is often not rewarding because of too
many uncertainties about individual choices or institutional constraints. The special issue
reflects on those insights and presents several case studies that focus on newly applied
methods and methodological issues.
Despite the relative success of news translation research over the past two decades,
it is justified to ask about the extent to which researchers are adequately equipped to
deal with these new circumstances and challenges. One of the main findings (or lessons)
of the special issue is the growing need and tendency to include additional methods for
overcoming the limitations of traditional textual analysis in the field. Such methodo-
logical triangulation for collecting and analysing data from the same study object should
ensure sounder and more valid conclusions. Text, discourse, or corpus analysis are then
complemented by participant-or context-oriented methods, such as interviews or obser-
vation. However, particularly qualitative methods, such as interviews, also have their
limitations, as the interviewees are often interested parties (e.g. translators or journalists).
Matsushita & Schäffner’s (2018) contribution is a prime example of this. On the one hand,
the journalists they contacted were able to shed more light on the differences in the multi-
lingual versions they were studying. On the other hand, however, some of the interviewees
admitted that their memories about the exact working procedure were only approximate;
one of them did not even remember at all.
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Luc van Doorslaer
The complexity of the corpus and the traceability of texts, especially when multilin-
gual, is in itself a methodological issue in news translation research. This is what Caimotto
& Gaspari (2018) illustrated when they suggested the concept of ‘comparallel corpora’
that was already used in an earlier paper by Gaspari. It was an attempt to overcome the
limitations of the distinction between comparable and parallel corpora, acknowledging
that a perfect correspondence of textual units cannot always be established when working
in an area where transediting is ubiquitous.
[…] approaching JTR [journalistic translation research] by focusing on the com-

parison between a clearly recognizable source text and the corresponding target text,
even if heavily modified, is likely to significantly narrow down the number of poten-
tial research projects. The strict separation between parallel and multilingual corpora
seems to be hardly applicable to the reality of some kinds of translation, particularly
in the news and journalistic domains, as well as in increasingly popular scenarios of
shared authoring, collaborative translation and cross-linguistic editing, most notably
on Wikipedia.
(Caimotto & Gaspari 2018: 212)
A similar problem was encountered by Davier & van Doorslaer (2018) when studying
multilingual news environments. They suggested that collecting ‘multilingual compar-
able corpora with a transparent set of comparability criteria’ (Davier & van Doorslaer
2018: 253) may assist in the case of unavailability of parallel corpora, especially when
triangulated with other data from the field.
Besides product-and participant-oriented studies, as illustrated above, there are also
methods with a more specific process orientation, for instance, for investigating the jour-
nalistic text production process. One of them is ‘progression analysis’, as introduced by
Perrin & Ehrensberger-Dow (2008). It gathers data for the researchers about the involve-
ment of translation in journalistic text production before, during, and after the actual
writing stages. Besides interviews and participant observation, they also include keystroke
logging as a method for collecting additional data. Finally, different aspects of recep-
tion are still understudied in this subfield. Although politicians and other professional
communicators are often well aware of the effect of audience design, studies focusing
on the corresponding reception side are relatively rare in news translation research, also
in multilingual versions (see Holland 2006). One of the exceptions is Scammell’s (2016)
PhD, a reader-response based investigation about foreignization of culture-specific items
and quotes in news dispatches as well as its reception by the readers (see also Scammell’s
contribution in the present Handbook).
Conclusion and future perspectives

At the beginning of the 21st century, our text production and consumption patterns
started to profoundly change because of the transition to a digitized society. The aes-
thetic paradigm of originality, dominant since Romanticism, has been relativized due
to the rapidly growing impact of transmedial forms of text production and reproduc-
tion. Appreciation is growing for the value of offshoots, spinoffs, rewritings, co-writings,
adaptations, recontextualizations, etc. (see also van Doorslaer 2020). Furthermore, rela-
tivizing the value of originality automatically affects the position of the translator, or at
least leads to a repositioning of the traditional perception of the translator’s work. In a
178
complex system including chains of interacting text productions that are transmedial and
multimodal, the translator’s activity and products are elements contributing to sequential
authoring stages.
In this sense, research on the function and position of (interlingual, but also
intralingual and intersemiotic) translation in news production retains a high top-
ical value, as they have always problematized the boundaries between journalistic
authoring and translational rewriting. Questioning the absoluteness and originality of
the author inevitably upgrades the stature of other text producers, such as rewriters,
adapters, localizers, and translators. In news translation research, these boundaries,
just as those between creation and re-creation, were always more blurred than, for
instance, in research on literary translation.
In a few contributions examining the relationship between translation and cosmo-
politanism, Bielsa confirmed this view on translation ‘as much more than the linguistic
transfer of information from one language to another’ (2014: 292). News translation
research is an eminent example illustrating the need to problematize simplistic notions
of translation in a globalized world. ‘Translation is indeed key to the cosmopolitan
vision. However, a naive appeal to translation obscures that it can also be used to
abolish the foreign, to render it falsely familiar, and thus contribute to flattening the
earth’ (Bielsa 2016: 209). This conceptualization of translation and translation flows in
21st-century media could add value to the abundant research on news flows in media
studies, since both are full of inequalities related to not only political and economic but
also cultural and linguistic power relationships. As mentioned earlier in this contribu-
tion, journalistic translation and rewriting practices are not only adopted by individual
journalists, they are also affected by top-down institutionalized policies imposed by
(media) authorities. Whereas news translation research, until now, has largely focused
on product-oriented, and to a lesser degree, on process-oriented studies, a sociologic-
ally oriented approach could open new research avenues. Such a focus on institutional
actors, their networks, and their attitude towards translation could shed new light on
the relationship between news and translation flows.
Further reading
• Gambier, Y. (2021) ‘Approaches to a historiography of translation studies’, in van
Doorslaer, L. & Naaijkens, T. (eds), The Situatedness of Translation Studies: Temporal
and Geographical Dynamics of Theorization. Leiden: Brill, pp. 17–33.
Although this chapter does not explicitly deal with news translation, it creates a frame-
work for a historiography of the discipline that could indicate the role and position of
journalistic translation research. Furthermore, it stresses the relevance of a media history
for translation studies.
• Orengo, A. (2005) ‘Localizing news: translation and the “global-national” dichotomy’,

This paper demonstrates the value of applying the localization theory to the study of trans-
lation in news. When considering news texts as global products, journalistic translation inev-
itably impacts different local and media versions. Within a localization context, newspapers
readers or media consumers, in general, have an identity that is both political and linguistic.
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Luc van Doorslaer
• Perrin, D. (2013). The Linguistics of Newswriting. Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John

Benjamins.
Although drawing less on a translation studies approach, this book observes the field of
newswriting from a linguistic perspective. The production of media texts is approached as
a socially relevant field of language use.
• Pym, A. (2004). The Moving Text: Localization, Translation and Distribution. Amsterdam
and Philadelphia: John Benjamins.
Within translation studies, this is probably the first published book that fundamentally
questions the boundaries between text-modifying activities, such as localization, and
translation, and connects this to the distribution of texts in time and space.
Funding
This work was supported by the University of Tartu Astra Project Per Aspera, grant
number PHVLC19917.
Note
1 The other types Hanitzsch outlines are the ‘populist disseminator’, the ‘critical change agent’ and
the ‘opportunist facilitator’ (Hanitzsch 2011).
References
translation: interrogating the BBC World Service’, Journalism, 12(2), pp. 135–142.
Bielsa, E. (2014) ‘Cosmopolitanism as translation’, Cultural Sociology, 8(4), 392–406.
Bielsa, E. (2016) ‘News translation: global or cosmopolitan connections?’ Media, Culture & Society,
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12
Translation in the news agencies
Lucile Davier
Introduction
The news agencies offer crucial services of news gathering and news alerts to media outlets
(Boyd-Barrett & Palmer 1981: 566). By subscribing to a wire service, media outlets share
the costs of the gathering and distribution of news but depend on the agencies for inter-
national and sometimes even domestic news (Boyd-Barrett & Rantanen 1998: 19). The
difficulty for scholars to gain access to this type of news organizations (Boyd-Barrett &
Palmer 1981: 22) and the relative invisibility of agency journalists (Lagneau 2002: 59) may
partly explain the small number of studies about news agencies in general, and in transla-
tion studies in particular.
Most news agencies are wholesale or business-to-business (B2B) organizations pro-
viding news to other media outlets, commercial clients and government agencies (Boyd-
Barrett & Rantanen 1998: 6) although the trend of distributing news to private customers
is growing (Boyd-Barrett & Rantanen 1998: 4; Bielsa & Bassnett 2009: 54), as shown
below. Their business models rely on subscriptions by media and non-media organizations
(e.g. government offices or multinational companies). Non-media clients represent a great
source of income and financial stability for the news agencies (Boyd-Barrett & Palmer
1981: 383).
From a historical perspective, news agencies were the first multinational corporations
(Boyd-Barrett & Rantanen 1998: 1). From the perspective of translation studies, it is par-
ticularly interesting to note that Agence Havas, the precursor of Agence France-Presse
(AFP), initially specialized in the translation of the foreign press (Bielsa & Bassnett 2009).
After presenting the news agencies and their function in the 21st century, this chapter
explores the research conducted in the discipline of translation studies, describes the
characteristics of translation in news agencies and the consequences of these characteristics
for translation studies.
DOI: 10.4324/9781003221678-15 183

Lucile Davier
News agencies in the 21st century
Global, transnational, national and alternative news agencies

Boyd-Barrett and Palmer’s seminal book (1981) classifies news agencies into global, trans-
national and national depending on the extent of their network of bureaus. Although
Associated Press (AP), AFP and Reuters were categorized as global news agencies in 1981
(Boyd-Barrett & Palmer 1981), Boyd-Barrett & Rantanen (1998) specified almost two
decades later that the global influence of Reuters –notably because of its financial news
service –was greater than that of its former competitors. In addition, AP and AFP have
developed strong ties to the countries where their headquarters are located (the United
States of America for AP and France for AFP) (1998: 19). There are still few south-
south exchanges, although these communication flows are increasing with the growth of
the Chinese Xinhua (Lisboa & Aguiar 2017). The global agencies also have television
agencies: AFP TV, Reuters TV and APTN (Associated Press Television News) (Boyd-
Barrett & Rantanen 1998: 4).
According to Boyd-Barrett & Palmer (1981), the transnational agencies distribute
their news dispatches globally, but their news-gathering networks are more limited (e.g.
to a specific region of world): they have fewer foreign bureaus and subscribe to a global
agency. The German Deutsche Presse-Agentur (dpa), the Spanish Efe or the Japanese
Kyodo News are examples of these ‘significant regional players, with particularly strong
activity in certain markets’ (Boyd-Barrett 1998: 20).
The national wire services organize their news-gathering networks around the national
territories they cover, so they have few foreign correspondents, buy the wire from larger
news agencies and have no significant distribution network abroad (Boyd-Barrett &
Palmer 1981: 414). The global agencies also subscribe to the wire of national agencies to
widen their news-gathering networks (Boyd-Barrett & Rantanen 1998: 4). Aguiar (2016)
further classifies the national agencies into private (e.g. the Russian TASS), statist (e.g.
the Chinese Xinhua), modernizing (e.g. the Indian PTI) and unique (e.g. the numerous
Brazilian agencies).
Some authors have also investigated alternative news agencies, such as the Pan-African
News Agency (PANAPRESS) and Inter Press Service (IPS), which are perceived by
media practitioners ‘as being successful in challenging mainstream perceptions about the
developing world’ (Joye 2009: 16). However, the editorial quality and objectivity of IPS is
seen at times as ‘threatened’ by its ‘dual identity’ as a ‘news agency as well as a develop-
ment player’ (Joye 2009: 16).
The role of news agencies in the mediascape

The agenda-setting role of news agencies seems undisputed among scholars, although the
development of social networks may change this dynamic (see below). Newswires (and
particularly the global agencies) contribute to determining which topics become news, or
setting the news agenda (Boyd-Barrett & Palmer 1981; Mathien & Conso 1997; Paterson
2005; Joye 2009; Boyd-Barrett 2016; Lorenz 2017): ‘Their news selection decisions are
often followed by other journalists. In turn, issues that are ignored by news wholesalers
are seldom considered by other news media’ (Lorenz 2017: 949). This role is even stronger
as far as online media are concerned (Paterson 2005; Boyd-Barrett 2016).
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There are only a few studies about the actual influence of newswires on other media
outlets, and the results of these studies are not comparable. In a small-scale study,
Paterson (2005) followed one major news story about Iran covered by the three global
news agencies (Reuters, AP and AFP) and various online news providers (ABC Online,
BBC Online, CNN Interactive, MSNBC and Yahoo). He was able to demonstrate that
‘43 to 60 percent of “original” content actually originate[d]‌in the newsrooms of AP and
Reuters’ (Paterson 2005: 160). Lewis, Williams and Franklin observe that nearly half of
the news stories in the five most prestigious London newspapers ‘appeared to come wholly
or mainly from agency services’ (2008: 5). More recently, a quantitative study of online
and print Dutch media shows their increased reliance on agency copy between 1996 and
2013 (Welbers et al. 2018).
News agencies are also blamed for their uncritical use of public relations material, such
as press releases –a phenomenon called ‘churnalism’ by Davies (2009). Lorenz (2017)
investigated this phenomenon among journalists covering the European Union in Brussels,
Belgium, and discovered that correspondents of international news agencies are less likely
to incorporate public relations material in their stories than correspondents who work
independently. Furthermore, public relations documents from European institutions are
churned (or copied) more frequently than documents from lobbyists and NGOs. Forde
and Johnston explored the circulation of communications from media releases through
the Australian Associated Press to Australian media organizations and concluded that a
news agency, ‘the most pervasive and trusted news source –can become the de facto dis-
tributor of public relations material’ (2013: 113).
News agencies in the internet era

The internet has revolutionized the media landscape in many ways, blurring the traditional
retail/wholesale distinction, threatening traditional sources of revenue, foregrounding
multimedia content and widening the available sources of information through social
networks.
Some agencies’ websites have made their content directly available to end users –such
as Reuters in 2015 (Scammell 2018: 95) –threatening the place of other agencies as B2B
news providers. However, while the distinction between wholesale and retail organizations
is no longer absolute, ‘many agencies persist primarily or significantly as news wholesalers’
(Boyd-Barrett 2016: 164).
News agencies are still thriving in spite of negative predictions because they have
diversified their sources of income by providing services such as financial news, media
monitoring, video news, press release dissemination, weather forecasting, news and spe-
cial interest databases and IT media solutions (Boyd-Barrett 2010). Meanwhile, some
news agencies benefit from state financial support (Boyd-Barrett 2010: 19), including a
global agency such as AFP (Lagneau 2010). Financial support can be indirect –with gov-
ernment offices that are subscribing to the wire as in the case of AFP (Lagneau 2010) –or
direct –for instance with Xinhua, which is placed under the control of the Communist
Party (Aguiar 2016: 50). Contrary to expectations, in the era of the internet, news agencies
have ‘considerably augmented their client and user bases’ (Boyd-Barrett 2010: 21) since
newspapers and broadcasters have fewer local bureaus and correspondents.
Broadband connections have improved for reporters and agency clients, increasing the
quantity of multimedia services (Boyd-Barrett 2016: 166). More multiplatform journalists
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Lucile Davier
produce this multimedia output. As a case in point, Reuters, dpa and Australian Associated
Press (AAP)1 have multimedia or convergent newsrooms where the same journalists work
across platforms (Boyd-Barrett 2010: 28–29). One recent study underlines the risks of con-
vergence –if the same journalists produce text, pictures and videos –for the delivery of
accurate information (Sànchez Marín et al. 2017).
Although there are very few studies on news agencies’ use of social networks, the results
of these studies converge: social media are integrated in the processes of news gathering
and, to a lesser extent, news distribution. Boyd-Barrett (2010) and Griessner (2012) note
that AP uses social networks (including Facebook, Google, Twitter, Wiki and Yahoo) ‘first
and foremost as a tool for newsgathering’ (Griessner 2012: 16). AFP’s strategy seems to
be similar: social networks are used to ‘cover hot-spots from which agencies were absent’
(Nicey & Palmer 2012: 120). AP is available on social media to reinforce its credibility
and brand presence although it does not interact much with users (Griessner 2012: 31)
while AFP management encourages its journalists ‘to use social networks as a tool to
interact with the general public’ (Nicey & Palmer 2012: 113). In the absence of more
recent research on this subject, it is impossible to predict changes to these strategies.
In the coming decades, Boyd-Barrett envisages the following evolutions: the intensifi-
cation of multilingual and multimodal services (2016: 167); further convergence ‘towards
the standard Anglo-American classic model of journalism’ (2016: 167); the development
of ‘point-of-view journalistic narratives’ (2016: 169); and continued threats to financial
sustainability (Boyd-Barrett 2010).
What does translation studies research into news agencies reveal?

Research projects have been scattered and isolated, comprising a few studies into global
agencies, such as Reuters and AFP, several publications about national news agencies, and
diverse scholarly perspectives (product-, process-and reception-oriented approaches).
Product-oriented approaches look at (multimedia) texts, while process-oriented approaches
are ‘concerned with questions of how translations are produced, by whom and in what
contexts’ (Holland 2013: 336) and reception-oriented approaches focus on how audiences
receive translated news stories (Davier 2019: 72–73).
Corpora including agency material

To begin with, some translation scholars have included news dispatches in their research
data without specifically dealing with translation in newswires. For these scholars, news
dispatches rather provide a form of comparison with other forms of media materials. An
article by Valdeón (2007) compares the online Spanish services of three anglophone media
organizations (the BBC, CNN and Reuters), and more specifically the effects of some
translation strategies. This article uses critical discourse analysis to contrast headlines but
does not look at the particularities of translation in the news agencies. In a different con-
text, van Rooyen & Naudé (2009) look at reports published by the South African news
agency Sapa as source texts that are translated from English and edited for radio news in
Afrikaans. Harding (2011, 2012) includes texts from the state-controlled Russian news
agency RIA-Novosti. Here, again, the author is not interested in the wire texts for them-
selves but as a means of contrasting the official discourse of the state with that of alterna-
tive websites (Kavkazcenter and Caucasian Knot) reporting on the Second Chechen War.
186
These examples show that news dispatches published by news agencies with a business-
to-customer (B2C) model can be used by scholars in the same way as any other types
of publicly accessible media materials. It makes sense to distinguish these studies from
research that treats newswire reports as a different type of news item and takes into con-
sideration the characteristics of agency discourse.
Product-oriented research
The majority of research into news agencies is oriented towards text analysis, with a focus
on norms, gatekeeping and translation strategies. The first contribution to this area of
research –to the best of my knowledge –is strongly anchored in descriptive translation
studies and compares news items ‘provided in English by international news agencies and
their Finnish translations’ (Vuorinen 1999: 74). In the tradition of descriptive transla-
tion studies, Vuorinen compares source and target news texts (especially direct quotes) to
reveal translation norms held by source text producers and translators (1999: 73).
Two scholars are interested in gatekeeping (among other concepts) –in other words, the
influence of translators on the selection of news texts. Hursti (2001) explores gatekeeping
at the Finnish News Agency (FNA) before turning to a transfer analysis. Song compares
the gatekeeping patterns of private newspapers with the output of Yonhap News Agency
in South Korea through a quantitative source text–target text analysis (Song 2017) and
one in-depth interview with a representative of Yonhap (Song 2013).
Other publications concentrate on translation strategies, translation techniques or
shifts (Hursti 2001; Comăneci 2012; Al Duweiri & Baya Essayahi 2016; Talebinejad &
Shahi 2017; Scammell 2018), depending on their conceptual framework. On the one
hand, Al Duweiri & Baya Essayahi (2016) apply the translation techniques defined by
Hurtado Albir (2001) (amplification, compression and elision) and try to find regu-
larities depending on the genre of different news dispatches. On the other hand, some
scholars come up with their own classifications, such as: permutations, reformulations,
omissions, additions, recontextualizations, exaggerations and clichés (Comăneci 2012);
foregrounding, different lexicalization, understatement, shift of polarity, addition, dele-
tion and replacement (Talebinejad & Shahi 2017).
Scammell (2018) also focuses on translation strategies but especially in two key sites of
translation: quotations and ‘culture-specific concepts’ (Pedersen 2007). In these sites, she
uses the domestication–foreignization dichotomy (Venuti 1995) to evaluate the dominant
norm in Reuters (domestication, on the basis of her analysis) and update the Reuters
Handbook to invite more foreignizing strategies. With ‘foreignization’, she means the
limited retention of foreign language that would not hinder the readability of the news
dispatches but ‘help to enhance the translator’s understanding of the information they are
translating, by giving them access to the original language in addition to an English trans-
lation’ (Scammell 2018: 90).
In her unpublished PhD thesis, Scammell (2016) uses a product-oriented approach
with the unique addition of an investigation into reader reception. She organized six focus
groups of four people for two hours each, had them read a published and a foreignized
news report, and asked her participants about their reading experience and translation
awareness. Her reader- response investigation reaches the conclusion that controlled
foreignization does not have a negative impact on reading ease and shows the potential
for cosmopolitan openness (see Scammell’s chapter in this handbook).
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Lucile Davier
Product-and process-oriented research

The scarcity of research about news agencies is explained by the difficulty of accessing
these media outlets, where individual journalists are often overshadowed by the name
of their organization. Most scholars thus gained access through personal contacts or
sociological or ethnographic fieldwork (Hursti 2001; Baya Essayahi 2005; García Suárez
2005; Hajmohammadi 2005; Bielsa & Bassnett 2009; McLaughlin 2011; Davier 2014).
For instance, Hursti (2001) worked as a journalist for both Reuters in Finland and the
Finnish news agency; García Suárez collaborated with the transnational Spanish Efe
(2005); and Hajmohammadi was a senior translator at the Iranian news agency IRIB
(2005).
A few older publications are difficult to classify, but they appear in this section because
their authors were able to integrate practical information gained through their professional
experience in the news organization under investigation. Baya Essayahi (2005) presents a
prescriptive view of the production and translation process used by the Spanish agency
Efe for its international Arabic service (1994–2003). Hajmohammadi focuses his study
on the recruitment and evaluation of translators at IRIB, where translators ‘render news
materials from an assortment of foreign languages, including English, French, Arabic,
and German’ into Persian (2005: 217). His article observes the inadequacy of the skills
acquired during translator training at Iranian universities to meet the needs of the agency.
In their seminal work about translation in the news agencies, Bielsa & Bassnett (2009)
investigated two global news agencies (AFP and Reuters) and an alternative news service
(IPS). In addition to two weeks of fieldwork at the Montevideo bureaus of AFP and IPS,
they visited the London headquarters of Reuters where they conducted semi-structured
interviews and analysed the transformations that occurred in translated news dispatches.
The product-oriented part of their study overlaps with the findings of the publications
presented in the previous section. They were the first to uncover the main characteristics
and challenges posed by translation in newswires.
McLaughlin (2011) conducted longer fieldwork: four weeks at the Paris bureau of
one of the biggest three global agencies, where she collected a corpus of news dispatches
written in English and accompanied by their French translations. McLaughlin’s work on
syntactic borrowing in French lies ‘at the boundary of linguistics and translation studies’
(2011: 120) and considers translation as a ‘channel by which innovative syntax can enter
the language’ (119).
An unpublished PhD thesis (Comăneci 2012) analyses the flow of international news
from news agencies towards Romanian newspapers. Despite the strong focus on text
analysis comparison, Comăneci visited the most prestigious Romanian news agencies
and newspapers for the qualitative part of her work and organized interviews based on
questionnaires with five journalists employed by the news agencies Agerpres and Mediafax.
I combined field observations (one week per site) and interviews (25 in all) at two news
agencies in Switzerland (Davier 2017): the global AFP and the Swiss national Keystone-
ATS (formerly ats). While McLaughlin used her fieldwork to collect her corpus, I compiled
a corpus of news items that were written two years before my field visits. This trilingual
French–German–English corpus underwent a macro-analysis, and a sub-corpus, a micro-
analysis. I triangulated these methods because many of the hypotheses I had formulated
while reading and comparing the versions in two languages proved false when I discussed
them with journalists (Davier 2017).
188
For the time being, research into news agencies focuses more on global news agencies,
but new studies on national news agencies through participant- oriented qualitative
methods have more recently been conducted (Davier 2017). Reception studies are to
be developed –either through research with the journalists who read and select news
dispatches as part of their work or with the public that consumes them.
What are the characteristics of translation in news agencies?

Although they were conducted on diverse subjects, the review of these studies shows
common ground about the values that guide the work of journalists, the relative absence
of translators in newswires and the coexistence of seemingly contradictory practices
(rewritings and literal translation).
Journalistic values
Journalistic values appear quite similar across the investigated contexts. The importance
of the accuracy of information is unquestioned, no matter what the cultural or profes-
sional background: it is the first and most decisive criterion. The time pressure and quest
for cost-effectiveness are also clearly acknowledged in almost all cases (Hajmohammadi
2005: 219; Bielsa & Bassnett 2009: 63; Davier 2017: 130). An exception is noted by Bielsa
and Bassnett in the alternative agency IPS, which corresponds to the ‘minority model’
according to their analysis (2009: 82). Nevertheless, the fact that IPS journalists and
editors have more time to translate news dispatches does not mean that they have no time
limitations. Time constraints go hand-in-hand with the spatial constraints inherent in the
genre of the news dispatch (Bielsa & Bassnett 2009: 64; Davier 2017: 131; Talebinejad &
Shahi 2017). Furthermore, four authors highlight the importance of tailoring the news
dispatch for the audience (Hajmohammadi 2005: 219; Bielsa & Bassnett 2009: 101; Davier
2012: 95). Nonetheless, this requirement is not as strong as it is for media selling their
stories directly to the end customers since:
agency dispatches are destined for other journalists rather that the general public: to
radio, television and newspaper editors who might decide to pick up some informa-
tion and transmit it to their audience after having adapted and modified it to suit their
particular needs and style.
(Bielsa & Bassnett 2009: 88)
Language quality and readability also matter to the editors albeit less so than accuracy
and speed (Bielsa & Bassnett 2009: 83; Davier 2017: 130–131).
Journalists instead of translators

Most observations converge on the fact that news agencies do not hire translators as a
rule (Bielsa & Bassnett 2009: 57; Davier 2017: 146). However, these observations are sub-
ject to exceptions, for instance in an alternative news agency where in-house translators
sometimes choose the texts themselves and have more time to translate than in the global
news agencies (Bielsa & Bassnett 2009: 82) or in the international Arabic service of Efe,
where editors used to check and edit the output of translators (Baya Essayahi 2005). In
the majority model described by Bielsa & Bassnett (2009), journalists function, from a
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translation studies point of view, as ‘natural’ or ‘non-professional translators’, that is

any bilingual individual presumed to be able to translate without any formal training
(Antonini 2011). This is the case at Reuters, AFP and Keystone-ATS, where journalists
are not trained nor given specific guidelines on how to translate, as exemplified in the
following: ‘we really learn on the job, it’s “learning by doing”, and actually we don’t think
about our practice a lot’,2 confessed a senior editor at Keystone-ATS (Davier 2014: 62).
The absence of translators can be explained by the lay understanding that journalists
have of translation as lexical transfer (Bielsa & Bassnett 2009: 1; Comăneci 2012; Davier
2014). If translation is conceived of as literal, it is considered to be a simple task that
does not require specific training, and journalists do not tend to acknowledge their diffi-
culties or look for help when they face a problem, which poses risks for accuracy (Davier
2017: 170). This representation also confines translation to communications of lesser
importance, such as soft news, non-urgent stories and smaller audiences that cannot jus-
tify the employment of a full team of reporters (Davier 2017: 169).
Major rewritings and lexical transfer

This situation results in contradictory practices of translation. First, translation is text-
ually invisible (Bielsa & Bassnett 2009; Davier 2014). In my corpus of 344, 850 words
(Davier 2017), equivalents of ‘translate’ (traduire/übersetzen) only occur four times and
never refer to translations taking place in the news dispatches. Second, journalists avoid
translation, understood in a narrow sense, to the extent possible because they do not enjoy
literal translation: ‘Well, it’s a job no one of us really likes doing’,3 confessed a Keystone-
ATS journalist I interviewed in 2011 (and this is one example among six others). Another
senior journalist commented that people ‘make up’ excuses such as ‘there’s nothing new’
or ‘it’s badly written’4 to avoid translating.
This negative perception of translation I observed in the newswires gives rise to a phe-
nomenon I call ‘deselection’ (Davier 2017: 290). In terms of selecting sources of infor-
mation for a story, journalists may avoid a quotation that would need to be translated
and substitute it with, or ‘reselect’, a quote in the language in which they are writing.
They argue that reselection is faster and more tailored to the needs of their audience
(Davier 2017: 292). Scholars in applied linguistics corroborate this phenomenon (Jacobs
& Tobback 2013; Perrin et al. 2017).
Third, translation implies major textual interventions, such as additions, deletions,
(Hajmohammadi 2005: 221) changes in the order of paragraphs, changes of title and lead
(the first paragraph of a news dispatch) (Bielsa & Bassnett 2009: 63).
Apart from these important rewritings, several scholars note that quotations tend to
be translated in a word-for-word fashion (Bielsa & Bassnett 2009; Davier 2017; Scammell
2018). Table 12.1 illustrates the recontextualization of a phrase from a press release in
two AFP news reports and its literal transfer from German into French, and French into
English:
It is very likely that the press release from which the quote originates was drafted in
German first, then translated within the political group before being disseminated in both
languages and reaching AFP. In fact, the quote in the French AFP report is a copy of
the press release, while the English translation can be traced back to the French original
at the level of the phrase (the only syntactic shift being the change of position of ‘in
Switzerland’).
190
Table 12.1 Illustration of lexical transfer in quotations
Press release by the Ansinnen islamistischer Kreise, einem an der Scharia orientierten
group Comité Rechtssystem auch in der Schweiz zum Durchbruch zu verhelfen,
d’Egerkingen werden damit zurückgewiesen.
[back translation: The attempts by Islamist circles to impose a legal system based on
the sharia in Switzerland as well are stopped.]
Les tentatives de milieux islamistes d’imposer en Suisse aussi un
système légal fondé sur la sharia sont ainsi stoppées.
[back translation: The attempts by Islamist circles to impose a legal system based on
the sharia in Switzerland as well are stopped.]
AFP in French Il s’agit de ‘stopper les tentatives des milieux islamistes d’imposer en
Suisse un système légal fondé sur la charia’, a indiqué un communiqué
du groupe qui rassemble des représentants du plus important parti du pays.
[back translation: The aim is to ‘stop the attempts by Islamist circles to impose a
legal system based on the sharia in Switzerland’, said a press release by the group,
which brings together representatives of the most important party in the country.]
(in news items published on 3 May 2007 (15:18), 14 May 2007 (23:20), 15
May 2007 (07:13))
AFP in English The group, including more than half of the Swiss People’s Party’s (SVP)
parliamentarians, said in a statement that a ban would help stop ‘attempts
by Islamist circles to impose a legal system based on the sharia in
Switzerland’.
(in a news item published on 3 May 2007 (13:24))
This apparent contradiction between forms of strong rewriting and lexical transfer is
justified by a narrow conception of translation, as the following explanation by a senior
journalist at AFP illustrates (Davier 2017: 144): ‘this means that one has to be extremely
faithful with translation when one deals with quotations, uh … and not confined to this
precision when one… one explains’.5 If journalists conceive of translation as lexical
transfer, they will avoid it in favour of rewriting when they think they have the freedom to
do so and fall back on unidiomatic transfer when they feel compelled by the form of the
original (quotes, in their case).
Most scholars agree that journalistic values such as accuracy of information, speed and
readability govern translational phenomena in news agencies. Translation is not valued
as an activity on its own right. Therefore, translators in news agencies are the exception
rather than the rule, and translations are hidden so well that thorough detective work is
necessary to reveal them.
What are the consequences of these characteristics for translation

studies?
These characteristics of translation in news agencies have profound conceptual and theor-
etical consequences for translation studies.
Problems with the terms translation, source, target and text

The observed translational phenomena question traditional understandings of transla-
tion (Bielsa & Bassnett 2009: 11 and 123). They even ‘resist the definition of translation’
191
Lucile Davier
(Bielsa & Bassnett 2009: 132) to the extent that authors have crafted many competing
concepts, such as transediting, adaptation, recontextualization or localization, which
do not necessarily aid theorization (Bielsa & Bassnett 2009: 63; Davier et al. 2018: 159;
Davier 2019: 70).
The fact that there can be several source texts and even several target texts (Bielsa &
Bassnett 2009: 85; Comăneci 2012; Davier & van Doorslaer 2018) forces researchers to
redefine translation or to broaden its definition (Davier 2015) as it is impossible to work
with basic concepts such as source, target, author and text. As seen above, the uncer-
tainty surrounding the source (such as whether one news dispatch was used as a model
for the other, whether elements were integrated from several sources or whether there
was a relay) and the target (whether parts of a news dispatch were used by other media
and translated into another language) questions the usefulness of these categories (Davier
2017: 208). The collective authorship in newswires (Bielsa & Bassnett 2009: 64; Davier
2017: 29) makes it necessary to revisit the individual concept of author inherited from the
literary field.
There is an additional problem: as Scammell (2018) argues, translational elements
appear more visibly in quotations and culture-specific concepts rather than in full texts.
Thus, it would be more meaningful to compare text segments since the unit of transla-
tion is rarely a complete news dispatch (Davier 2017: 208; Davier & van Doorslaer 2018).
When scholars are unsure about the source, they could refer to the segments as ‘first’ and
‘second’ segment or segment in language A and B.
Based on the analysis of a trilingual corpus of 1,186 news dispatches issued by two
different newswires, I note that a news item is a verbal patchwork consisting of quotations,
translated quotations, culture-specific concepts, text copied from a press release (translated
or not, in the agency or beforehand), translated explanations, text written from scratch
and background information copied from the newswire’s archives (Davier 2017: 208).
Table 12.2 showcases this patchwork.
Instead of comparing both texts as a source text and a target text, which is meaning-
less because the scholar does not know whether one was used as a model for the other or
both were written in parallel, I suggest analysing different elements that may have been
translated at the different levels of paragraph, sentence and phrase (Davier 2017).
The first quotation in Table 12.2 (a ‘great surprise’) was doubtless translated from
French into English since it was authored by the Swiss Francophone television channel
(TSR). The last quote in both stories comes from the same press release that is explored
in Table 12.1, so it is clear that the French version was copied from the press release
(and was probably translated from German into French by the political group) while the
English version was translated at the AFP bureau from French into English –and is thus
an instance of a German–French–English ‘indirect translation’ (Assis Rosa et al. 2017).
The underlined background paragraphs were probably copied from the AFP archive
in French and English (without translation), as identical occurrences found in other
dispatches in the corpus attest. Within these paragraphs, culture-specific concepts refer-
ring to Swiss realities (the Francophone television channel and a right-wing political
party, signalled in bold-face type) are treated differently in French and English. While the
Swiss original of ‘télévision suisse romande’ is kept as such in French, it is generalized and
explained as ‘Swiss public television’ in English for an audience assumed to be unfamiliar
with the multilingual landscape of Switzerland. One of the political parties behind the
192
Table 12.2 News dispatch showcasing different translational elements
AFP news dispatch in French AFP news dispatch in English
Les Suisses en faveur de l’interdiction des Exit polls show Swiss will accept minaret
minarets (sondages sortie urnes) ban: Swiss television
AFP AFP
Sunday, 29 November 2009 –13:12 (Paris time) Sunday, 29 November 2009 –13:10 (Paris
time)
GENÈVE, 29 nov 2009 (AFP) –Les Suisses se sont GENEVA, 29 nov 2009 (AFP) –Exit polls show
prononcés dimanche par référendum en faveur de that Switzerland will accept a far-right call
l’interdiction de la construction de minarets, selon for a blanket ban on the construction of
les sondages sortie des urnes annoncées par la minarets, Swiss public television reported
télévision suisse romande (TSR). Sunday, describing the result as a ‘great
Les commentateurs de la TSR ont qualifié ces premiers surprise.’
résultats de ‘grande surprise’. Une heure après la Partial results from the poll which closed
fermeture du scrutin à midi (11H00 GMT), la TSR at mid-day (1100 GMT) indicated that
n’était cependant pas en mesure d’avancer un the German-speaking canton of Lucerne
pourcentage pour le résultat de ce référendum. accepted the ban, while French-speaking
La droite populiste helvétique a appelé les Suisses à cantons Geneva and Vaud voted against.
interdire la construction de minarets, accusés d’être
le ‘symbole apparent d’une revendication politico- The Swiss People’s Party (SVP) –Switzerland’s
religieuse du pouvoir, qui remet en cause les droits biggest party –had forced a referendum
fondamentaux’. under Swiss regulations on the issue after
[Back translation: GENEVA, 29 Nov. 2009 (AFP) – collecting 100,000 signatures within
Swiss citizens voted on Sunday in favour of a ban 18 months from eligible voters.
on the construction of minarets, according to It claims that the turrets or towers attached to
Swiss Francophone television (TSR). mosques from where followers are called to
TSR’s journalists have described these first results as prayer symbolise a ‘political-religious claim
a ‘great surprise’. One hour after the poll closed at to power.’
midday (1100 GMT), the TSR was not able to
communicate a percentage value for the results.
The Swiss right-wing populist parties had called on Swiss
voters to ban the construction of minarets, blamed for
being the ‘apparent symbol of a political-religious claim
to power that challenges fundamental rights’.]
Note: Background paragraphs are underlined. Culture-specific concepts are signalled in bold-face type.
vote is translated intra-linguistically with a functional equivalent into French from France
(journalists would not qualify it as ‘populist’ in Switzerland) and with a calque plus an
explication into English (‘The Swiss People’s Party (SVP) –Switzerland’s biggest party’).
The remainder of both stories was probably written from scratch with some discussion
among journalists inside the AFP bureau.
This example shows that comparing two full texts is not productive for analysing
the translational phenomena at play at the level of text segments. It also suggests that
translations can (and should in some instances) also be studied as texts on their own
right, without being compared with an original (Bassnett 1998; Davier & van Doorslaer
2018: 245–249).
193
Lucile Davier
Problems with domestication and equivalence

Translation in the news agencies (and even news translation in general) also challenges
fundamental concepts such as domestication, equivalence and skopos theory, which have
limitations in this context (Bielsa & Bassnett 2009: 93).
Three authors refer to the classical domestication–foreignization dichotomy (Venuti
1995). While Bielsa and Bassnett argue that ‘the dominant strategy is absolute domestication,
as material is shaped in order to be consumed by the target audience’ (2009: 57), Scammell
criticizes the status quo, which ‘obscures the journalist’s intervention and distances the reader
from the foreign source language and context’ (2018: 93). In her reader-response experiment,
she demonstrates that readers would be open to foreignization strategies which do not ‘com-
promise the goal of clear and concise reporting’ (2018: 94) since the foreignized reports she
presented in her focus groups ‘did not generate any negative feedback from the participants’
(Scammell 2016: 223) except for foreign words inserted in headlines (2016: 221). Although
these studies seem to agree with each other, they do not refer to the same unit of translation.
The strategy described by Bielsa and Bassnett (2009) is a general one, which applies at the
level of texts or even the whole production of news agencies. However, Scammell’s proposal
(2018) works at the level of phrases or sentences and means to introduce foreign words. Her
definition of foreignization is more restrictive than the one intended by Venuti (1995), which
includes a resistant ‘choice of foreign texts’ (1995: 41), ‘foregrounding the linguistic and cul-
tural differences of the source-language text’ (1995: 308) and ‘transforming the hierarchy of
cultural values in the target language’ (1995: 308).
Equivalence has been abundantly criticized in translation studies for being a prescrip-
tive and circular notion (for an in-depth discussion of this broad topic, see among many
others Chesterman (2016) [1997]). In the news in general and news agencies in particular,
major textual interventions and the textual invisibility of translation (see above) defeat
linguistic equivalence in that there is ‘no identified source text’ in many cases (Davier &
van Doorslaer 2018: 245). Equivalent effect has also been challenged in translation studies
in general because understanding is individual, difficult to evaluate and ‘[r]‌eading is not
merely passive reception’ (among others, Hu 1994: 428). In addition, news dispatches are
adapted to the needs of audiences that diverge dramatically (if one thinks for instance of
the English-speaking readership of AFP in Asia and the Middle East versus its French-
speaking audience in France). Therefore, equivalence or equivalent effect is all the more
meaningless in journalistic translations that must respond to the different needs of
different readers.
Translation research in news agencies has deconstructed theories and concepts that are
already criticized in translation studies (domestication and equivalence) as well as funda-
mental concepts such as translation, source, target and text. However, there will likely be
new theoretical proposals. As a bridge concept between different branches of translation
studies, indirect translation, broadly understood as a translation of a translation, may
open new conceptual doors and help overcome the fragmentation of the field (Assis Rosa
et al. 2017: 113).
Conclusion
News agencies bear a special significance for translation studies since they were among the
first multilingual and multinational companies. News agencies were created as extensive
194
networks of bureaus and correspondents to collect and distribute news dispatches across
the world, a role they still fulfil today. While many scholars acknowledge their agenda-
setting power, some find fault in their churnalism practices. News agencies are still thriving
in spite of the media crisis, but some questions about their future remain: Will other
agencies open their content directly to the end user as Reuters has done? Will convergent
multimedia newsrooms become the rule? Will social media play a greater role in news
gathering and news distribution? Many of these aspects are still under-researched from
both a journalistic and a translation perspective.
To understand translation in news agencies, it is essential to know the characteristics
of newswriting and their cultural variations. However, this knowledge is not enough.
Understanding how journalists view translation sheds light on their practices. If main-
stream European and North American journalism equates translation with lexical transfer
(which is probably a widely shared perception of translation), it is likely to keep translation
invisible and avoid it. As a consequence, journalists risk replicating linguistic and cultural
proximity.
The researchers investigating translation in news agencies (even from a process-
oriented angle) have not yet described the changes induced by convergence nor tackled
the risks entailed, in part because they examine media ‘before they took on conver-
gent forms’ (Davier & Conway 2019: 3) or consider ‘pre-convergence frameworks’
(2019: 2). In other words, the existing studies leave ample room for further research to
consider the visual output, such as photographs, infographics or video clips, accom-
panying traditional plain-text news dispatches, and the news gathering and dissemin-
ation practices of news agencies on social networks. Research into translation in news
agencies needs to dialogue with audiovisual translation and social media translation
(Desjardins 2017).
Finally, research into news agencies has outgrown all established concepts of translation
studies, which is why theoretical studies exploring new concepts such as indirect transla-
tion (Assis Rosa et al. 2017) –or importing them from other disciplines –would be very
welcome.
Further reading
• Boyd-Barrett, O. & Rantanen, T. (eds) (1998) The Globalization of News. London: Sage.
An edited volume that gives a complete introduction to the issues of newswires from
around the world with a media studies angle.
• McLaughlin, M. (2011). Syntactic Borrowing in Contemporary French: A Linguistic

Analysis of News Translation. London: Legenda.
At the crossroads between contact linguistics and translation studies, this book is the
first analysis of the ways in which translation in the news agencies can lead to syntactic
borrowing in French.
• Bielsa, E., & Bassnett, S. (2009). Translation in Global News, London: Routledge.
A seminal book based on extensive fieldwork in three global news agencies (Reuters,
Agence-France Presse and Inter Press Service) that identifies the fundamental questions
posed by translation and includes textual analyses in Spanish, French and English.
195
Lucile Davier
• Davier, L. (2017). Les enjeux de la traduction dans les agences de presse, Lille: Presses
universitaires du Septentrion.
A contribution that builds on Bielsa & Bassnett’s (2009) book and integrates fieldwork in
two news agencies based in Switzerland (Agence-France Presse and Agence télégraphique
suisse) with textual analysis of a French–English–German corpus.
• Scammell, C. N. (2018). Translation Strategies in Global News: What Sarkozy Said in the
Suburbs. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.
A critical discussion of the domesticating–foreignizing dichotomy with an application to

a corpus of Reuters’ news dispatches.
Notes
1 It has to be specified that AAP, Australia’s only news agency, closed in June 2020. See McGuirk,
R. (2020) ‘Australian Associated Press to shut down after 85 years’, Associated Press, 3 March
2020, https://apnews.com/c9d2809aaa0e8fa47c629723444d7b51 [accessed 27 March 2020].
2 Original: ‘[…] on est vraiment formés sur le tas, learning by doing, et puis on réfléchit assez peu
en fait sur notre pratique’.
3 Original quotation: ‘Also bei uns ist es eine Arbeit, die macht niemand wirklich gern’.
4 Full original: ‘Alors là, c’est vraiment le royaume de la mauvaise foi. Les gens, ils disent: « Oh,
bah non, on traduit pas, parce que…» Voilà, on peut inventer tout ce qu’on veut, que y’a rien de
nouveau ou que c’est mal écrit, ou j’en sais rien, quoi…’.
5 Original: ‘[…] c’est-à-dire qu’il faut être extrêmement fidèle en traduction dès l’instant où l’on
manipule des citations, euh… et ne pas être enfermé par cette précision de traduction dès l’instant
où on…où on explique.’
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13
Translation in literary magazines1
Diana Roig-Sanz, Laura Fólica and Ventsislav Ikoff
Introduction
Translation history and literary translation, on the one hand, and periodical publications,
on the other, have been extensively analysed within the fields of translation studies, com-
parative literature, and media studies, with numerous conferences and publications taking
literary translation and the periodical as objects of enquiry. However, the relationship
between both fields still remains underexplored, and nationalistic approaches and dis-
ciplinary boundaries have precluded the development of further conceptual and meth-
odological insights regarding literary translation and media. This chapter highlights the
innovative theoretical and methodological issues intrinsic to analysing literary translation
in periodical publications at both small and large scales –whether using digital tools or
not –shedding light on its qualitative implications for research. It also discusses how
digitization and big-data approaches are changing the research methods being used when
analysing translation in periodical publications. To do so, we briefly present a case study
related to the Spanish-speaking world’s literary journals at the beginning of the 20th
century.
Current perspectives on translation in periodical publications

Considered within a sociological perspective, periodicals have helped build modern
cultures and circulate literary works. They have also promoted international cultural
exchange, cultural flows and channels of literary transfer. Journals travel across borders
and offer alternative ways of transferring literature and ideas, while boasting faster
channels of publication than books. Likewise, the collective authorship of the journal
and its format allow us to understand its international identity and relationship to foreign
cultures and literatures in a clearer way: not only through translation, but also through the
review of foreign literature and cross references to other international journals. Finally,
the dynamic character of the journal implies that each journal may act as a node for the
creation of a transnational network that allows for the circulation of texts and publishing
models (Stead 2016, 2018; Vaillant 2019).
DOI: 10.4324/9781003221678-16 199

Roig-Sanz, Fólica and Ikoff
In this vein, periodicals have attracted the interest of scholars in the sociology of lit-
erature who have highlighted the specificity of the ‘journal’ form, in both the literary field
and in the history of publishing. Periodicals have also been seen as alternative means of
publication (Verdaasdonk 1989) and as weakly institutionalized networks in the literary
field (Aron 2008), that is, as ‘formations’, as described by Raymond Williams (1981). We
can distinguish these ‘formations’ from ‘institutions’ based on the promptness with which
they are created and dissolved and the way in which a formation integrates a small group
of people (Sarlo & Altamirano 1983; De Marneffe 2007). Among the specificities that
define periodical publications is the fact that journals, by definition, tend to be program-
matic (Tarcus 2007) and seek to take part in their here and now. On a European scale, the
study of the so-called ‘little magazines’, for example, brought to light an underexamined
resource that could illustrate the new features of the modernist avant-garde (Brooker
2005, 2013). In this respect, multiple articles in collective volumes analyse European lit-
erary and cultural magazines, both the well-known (e.g. Criterion, Mercure de Franceand
La Revue Blanche) and the lesser known (e.g. Der Wahre Jacob, Ileana and Le Spectateur
catholique). Although said articles stand as vibrant examples of the current literature in
this field (Stead and Védrine, 2018), literary histories still tend to relegate periodicals to
the periphery, underestimating their contributions and function in structuring the trans-
national literary field. In addition, the periodicals’ syntax –that is, how the textual and
visual material is presented –can matter more than the content itself (Sarlo 1992). This
is why their iconic and material aspects are so important from a semiotic perspective (Viu
2019; Szir 2016, 2017).
The relevance of translation in periodicals has also been analysed from the perspective
of translation and media (Bielsa & Bassnett 2009; Hernández Guerrero 2009; Schäffner
2012; Valdeón 2005, 2009; Van Doorslaer 2010), but this approach often focuses on
news media, translation in journalistic periodicals, or the role of journalist-translators
in our global world. Considering the contributions of the history of translation (Pym
1998; O’Sullivan 2012) and the sociology of translation (e.g. Casanova 1999; Heilbron &
Sapiro 2002; Heilbron 1999, 2010; Roig Sanz & Meylaerts 2018; Sapiro 2006; Wolf 2007),
literary translation is understood as a historical product that serves a specific function
within the target culture (e.g. Hermans 1985; Lefevere 1992; Toury 1995) and as a form
of cultural transfer (e.g. Espagne & Werner 1987; Espagne 2013) that challenges the
source-target binary, that is, the idea that cultural transfers are binary rather than tri-
angular or multidirectional. Briefly, the 2000s have seen a growing number of studies
on literary and cultural transfers between Portugal–Spain (for example, Sáez Delgado &
Isasi 2018) and between the United States and Europe. But it is a simplification to con-
clude that networks and mechanisms of export and import functioned without a third
party, as it is shown by trilateral and broader constellations such as France–Germany–
Russia or Georgia–Germany–The Netherlands. However, the transnational orientation
of European cultural history has mainly focused on Western literature (Joyeux-Prunel
2014), within an Eurocentric perspective, and in spite of the awareness of overcoming
these binary and triangular relations (Michel Espagne insisted on that in 2013) most
studies are still framed in that way. In the case of Ibero-America, research on cultural
transferts also tends to be very local and is usually limited to a single national context or,
again, to binary or triangular national relations in which Europe always plays a role, such
as the case of Brazilian translations in Argentina through the mediating role of France
(Sorá 2003).
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Translation in literary magazines
In this sense, the study of literary translation in periodicals allows us, on the one hand,
to capture a less-canonized literary history that often forgoes book publishing, while,
on the other, since magazines are collective projects, they allow us to gain a privileged
view of the intellectual networks in which translation has existed as a cultural practice.
Nevertheless, the analysis of translations circulating in literary or cultural periodicals
remains fragmented, is often subject to national frameworks, and has been less explored
through the historical lens. Certainly, in Europe and North America, a growing interest in
the field of periodical studies has become palpable since Sean Lathan and Robert Scholes
foresaw the rise of the field in PMLA, the Modern Language Association Journal (2006).
Numerous conferences, research networks, and societies, such as ESPRit, the European
Society for Periodical Research, have been created since. In the Spanish-speaking con-
text, Latin America specifically, the field emerged thanks to the pioneer contributions
of Rivera (1995), Sosnowsky (1999), Romano (2004) and Sarlo (1992), who saw Latin
American magazines as key manifestations of modern culture. Periodicals have also been
considered as historical documents (Beigel 2003), cultural networks (Pita & Grillo 2013),
and as devices of exhibition (Rogers 2019). Furthermore, methodological issues around
the complexity of this material have also been problematized in Latin American scholar-
ship (Delgado 2014; Elyzalde 2007, 2010).
In short, literary translations in periodicals often yield heterogeneous and highly unstruc-
tured data. For instance, one may consider the myriad ways of presenting translators, some-
times credited and sometimes not, and their relationships with source texts, which are not
always carefully referenced and can even be mediated by a third and often unacknowledged
foreign language (Pieta 2014). Another issue stems from where literary translations appear
in the different sections of a journal, sometimes marked as such and sometimes not, thus
making them detectable only for researchers in the field of translation studies (Wilson
2019: 64). Moreover, translation in periodicals may either include or exclude a theoretical
discourse on the translation –for example a ‘Translator’s note’ explaining the translation’s
goals and strategies. Finally, literary and stylistic approaches to translation often dissociate
translations from the contexts of their publication. Suffice it to say that translations are
often analysed in their textual dimension as objects that are independent of any graphical,
paratextual, literary, political, social, historical or cultural context. This narrow approach
is usually limited to the analysis of translations by renowned writers who also practised (or
practise) translation themselves, thus setting the focus on the writer/translator and not on
the publication as a whole. This reinforces the canonization of ‘the select few’ but does not
consider the flow of translations or the implications of the transfer of foreign literature in
periodical publications. That said, an increasing number of researchers are also taking con-
text into account (Guzmán 2019; Stead 2019) to establish which translation appears in which
journal and what the relationship between a given translation and the literary trajectory of
the author might be, as well as his or her habitus, among other issues. Furthermore, in recent
years, big data, technological improvements, and a transnational shift in the humanities have
yielded new approaches to the study of periodicals.
A big translation history

Undoubtedly, the large digitalization of periodicals hosted in National Libraries
all over the world, as well as the growing use of big data and machine learning tools,
have prompted all kinds of collaborative, large-scale, and high-profile digital research
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projects. These include research on periodicals such as the Impresso project, led by Martin
Düring and Maud Ehrman at the Digital Humanities Laboratory (DHLAB) at the
Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, the Institute of Computational Linguistics,
at Zurich University, and the Centre for Contemporary and Digital History (C2DH),
at Luxembourg University, or Revistas Culturales 2.0, led by Hanno Ehrlicher at the
University of Tübinguen.2 Historical periodicals and literary translation are the focus of
MapModern–Social Networks of the Past. Mapping Hispanic and Lusophone Modernity,
1898–1959, which we will discuss below.3
On a methodological level, research on literary translation and historical periodicals
faces points of criticism from both periodical studies and literary translation in periodicals.
Periodicals have specific characteristics and their own logics and dynamics. Thus, studying
periodicals on a large-scale poses the challenge of not losing the specificity and dynamics
of each journal. In this respect, we identify several methodological constraints. The
first constraint has to do with the heterogeneity of the periodical genre, which includes
newspapers and magazines, literary supplements, weeklies, etc. This confronts us with
challenging differences, not only at the literary level (e.g. different genres or different levels
of attention among translated authors), but also in terms of aesthetics. There may also
be significant differences in ideology, formats, periodicity, economic resources, and types
of readers for each periodical. The heterogeneity of the periodical genre also implies that
machine learning tools may work better with daily presses than with smaller magazines
and literary journals. Certainly, newspapers’ larger corpora make them easier to automa-
tize when using deep learning tools. The second main constraint has to do with national
approaches to building digital periodical catalogues and collections, which are mostly
hosted by national libraries. These catalogues often contain journals from a single country
and rely on national philological criteria for literature, often overlooking the transnational
character of multilingual publications like Creación/Création. Revista internacionalde arte,
with texts in Spanish, French, English, Italianand German; or Disk, RedD and Pásmo,
with texts in Czech, Germanand French (see Ehrlicher 2020 and Forbes 2020, respect-
ively). Other methodological constraints include the quality of current digital tools for
Optical Character Recognition (such as Transkribus and Tesseract), and their capacity
to read digital documents in languages other than English, as well as the difficulty of
extracting metadata from source material, cleaning it, and then elaborating databases and
visualizations as tools for data exploration using machine learning and data mining. We
might add the fact that there is no common standard for cataloguing historical journals’
content, or unique identifiers like the International Standard Serial Number (ISSN) for
periodicals published before 1975. Periodical studies also face issues with how to store
and preserve datasets in shared infrastructures, such as EUDAT Collaborative Data
Infrastructure, and with how to transition from a quantitative to a qualitative perspective
for a large corpus of periodicals and select samples for close reading.
Within this framework, this chapter takes the term ‘big translation history’ (BTH),
coined by Roig-Sanz & Fólica (forthcoming) (see also Hitchcock 2013), which we define
as a translation history that can be analysed computationally using a big amount of
data. These notions challenge the nature of our objects of research, and we define them
with the following criteria: (1) large-scale research (geographical and chronological);
(2) massive data that is understood using a twofold approach: with big data, but also with
little data, which can often prove more effective than having more but less relevant data
(Borgman 2015) within a wide range of often-heterogeneous sources; and (3) the use of
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computational techniques as part of the research process and for the production of know-
ledge, rather than its mere presentation (Drucker 2014). At the intersection of translation
history and computational technology, ‘big translation history’ aims to develop a new and
innovative research field in translation studies (the study of translation history in the age
of big data), which has already been developed in literary studies (Moretti 2000, 2005;
Jockers 2013). It also seeks to explore both theoretical and methodological questions, as
well as case studies addressing a translation history that can be analysed computationally
with a large amount of data.
Certainly, applying BTH to the periodical field can be more challenging in some
specific contexts. In the Ibero-American case, periodical digitization projects remain
scarce and are promoted with different driving forces and budgets. For example, the
digital library ‘Biblioteca Digital del Patrimonio Iberoamericano’ was launched by the
Spanish National Library to include digital objects from the Spanish-speaking area, but
digital libraries from Latin America are underrepresented in comparison to the Spanish
National Library because they do not upload their digital objects. In this sense, we
would like to briefly highlight different projects studying literary translation in historical
Ibero-American periodicals. By exploring modernist and avant-garde periodicals form
Ibero-America with data visualizations, Hanno Ehrlicher seeks to understand period-
ical publications as mediums for cultural translation. For example, when it comes to the
Spanish La Gaceta Literaria journal specifically, he combines quantitative and qualita-
tive analyses in order to study the periodical’s ambition to construct a global community
from an Ibero-American perspective (Ehrlicher 2014, 2020). Focusing on Mexico’s mod-
ernist journals, Marina Popea (2020) has also built a database of translations published
in Revista Azul and Revista Moderna, which she has explored with statistical techniques
and data visualizations. Within a quantitative approach, she measures features such as
length, position visibility, and clarity of translation and translator identification, allowing
for a systematic characterization of the phenomena throughout the early 20th century.
With this in mind, we will now briefly explain how to proceed within a BTH perspective,
drawing from our experience working with historical periodicals and literary translation
in the European Research Council Starting Grant project ‘Social Networks of the Past’.
Literary translation in Spanish-language periodicals at the beginning of

the 20th century
The Social Networks of the Past project combines literary translation and periodical
research in the study carried out by Laura Fólica, who analyses literary translation in
Ibero-American periodicals (1898– 1959) using digital tools and a large-scale, trans-
national approach to shed light on unnoticed texts, mediators, and networks (Roig-Sanz
& Fólica forthcoming, 2021). This research seeks to problematize methodological nation-
alism and move toward transnational studies that take linguistic diversity within nations
into account, alongside the transnational character of languages such as Spanish and
Portuguese. The large-scale spatial work involved in general categories such as ‘Latin
America’ and ‘Ibero-America’ do not necessarily imply the existence of a homogenous
or monolingual identity. Quite the contrary, BTH grapples with the tension between the
general space and the historical-political circumstances conditioning each of the national
case studies. In this respect, the Social Networks of the Past team has proposed building
a relational database of Ibero-American journals from 1898 to 1959. Due to its linguistic,
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historical and cultural ties, the geographical focus on Ibero-America, which includes Spain,
Portugal, Braziland Spanish-speaking America, provides an exemplary object of research,
as it allows us to analyse the revitalization and marketing processes of specific cultures
and literatures that overcome the nation-state paradigm. The comparison between Spain,
Portugaland Latin America, and the idea of considering them as a relatively coherent
constellation, promotes the evaluation of intra-and international networks and tests geo-
graphical concepts with different channels of transfer when it comes to the migration of
people and texts.
The research proposes 1898 to 1959 as the time period for the exemplary case study.
Beyond their differences, Ibero-American countries did share contemporaneous historical
and cultural developments throughout the period: for example, the professionalization
process of the writer, the rise of cultural periodicals, and the market growth in publishing.
The Cuban War of Independence (1898) implied the loss of the last remnants of the
Spanish empire in the Americas, but also coincided with the development of the Spanish
publishing industry, which sought to expand its market in Latin America. In 1959, after
the Cuban Revolution, Latin America experienced an important socio-political trans-
formation, and Cuba became an important meeting point for both Latin American
and world-wide authors with close ties to socialism. At the end of our period of study,
the 1950s ushered the consolidation of local publishing markets in Latin America (e.g.,
1955 to 1975 in Argentina), due to the growth of Latin America’s pool of readers. The
market also witnessed the dawn of the so-called Latin American boom, the unprecedented
international success of Latin American, Spanish-speaking authors.
We have consulted with experts in library science regarding literary and cultural
magazines’ state of conservation in Ibero-American print-media libraries and have come
to realize that their preservation in such libraries is unfortunately scarce, given their loss,
material wear and tear, lack of preservation systematization on behalf of institutions, and
dispersion among public and private collections. The state of preservation is even poorer
when it comes to these same sources’ digitalization, not only due to technical limitations
in, for instance, scanning, but also because of copyright legislation (which tends to pro-
tect works for 70 or 80 years after the author’s death, depending on the national law in
each country), which is even more difficult to define with magazines, given their multiple
authorship. As such, most of the digitized magazines available for public consultation
did not emerge until the early 20th century. Likewise, we know that institutions priori-
tize press digitization as well as satisfying specific research-group requests, as per each
institution’s internal priorities.
Given this general context, and with the goal of conducting systemic, rigorous, and
honest research with the data at hand, we have chosen to work with digital print-media
libraries (which often depend on national libraries), whose data is available online –
including metadata and digital objects, despite their sometimes disparate quality. We have
chosen to build a diverse corpus available for download including: (1) metarepositories
such as the Digital Library of Latin American Heritage (BDPI-Biblioteca Digital del
Patrimonio Iberoamericano), which combines holdings from 17 institutions but preserves
periodic presses from 12 institutions, and the Ibero-American Institute of Berlin, with its
significant collection of Latin American magazines; (2) print-media libraries and digital
collections from national libraries such as those in Spain, Portugal, Uruguayand Mexico,
which preserve a significant amount of digitized magazines; and (3) specialized research
projects, such as ‘Revistas de la Edad de Plata’ (Spain) and ‘Anáforas’ (Uruguay), which
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compile a robust amount of data stemming from a relatively small number of magazines.
As such, even if material accessibility would stand as a central criterion for any corpus
built upon a massive amount of data, we have strived to secure diversity among our
sources in order to guarantee better data representativity.
The following steps help clean and standardize the collected data in order to build
a common database with our metadata on the gathered titles. The goal is to establish
the following: unique and unequivocal magazine titles (eliminating duplicates); dates and
places; number of available issues and places of publication; link to the original digital
object for subsequent download.
For translations, and for any article in general, it is worth noting that preserved or
identifiable information remains scarce and is never present in the metadata of biblio-
graphic records; as such, for study and detection, we must actually look to the texts them-
selves, once digitized by our database’s print-media libraries, using Optical Character
Recognition. Having ‘OCRed’ our digitized magazines, our first experiment involves iden-
tifying all of the referenced or mentioned persons in the given text. At that point, we can
detect markers that might be attributed to translation (for instance, finding mentions of
a translator, foreign authors or names, a language of origin, or publication in a foreign
language), in order to discern which texts published within the corpus’s magazines are
translations.
Given that, in literary studies, the ‘author-function’ has historically held more sway
than in other texts of anonymous authorship (news, science, and didactic texts, among
others), we use this data to discover which of the identified texts are translations. As such,
we first aim to massively detect foreign author names (in this case, those who do not write
in Spanish or Portuguese). To this end, we cross-reference the detected names using nat-
ural language processing methods like entity name recognition with authority files, for
example –drawing from open-access sources such as VIAF (Virtual Identity Authority
File), Library of Congress, Library of Spain, Library of Portugal, and National Library
of France, among others. Once the authors have been identified, we may confirm their
‘foreign’ character using their place of origin or language of habitual expression, thus
inferring whether or not the mentioned works are translations.
After establishing a translation corpus, we may ask quantitative research questions
(Which authors are more/less translated and from what languages? How many texts have
been published in bilingual versions? Which types of texts appear with a mention of the
translator? Are there internal references to other authors, or is there even intertextuality
or text reuse?) and explore relational or geographic visualizations, allowing us to cast light
on translated text networks or on authors in a broad sense (translators, illustrators, etc.).
Thus, to illustrate the kind of exploration we might conduct, we present a few examples
using the provisional data we have collected in our relational database (on the virtual plat-
form Nodegoat.com, owned by the Dutch company Lab1100), to be enriched with the
work we are currently carrying out at large-scale with the above-mentioned print-media
libraries. Our relational database’s structure, with its categories and subfields for each
entry, considering periodical publications as the centre, is as follows (see Figure 13.1).
Using nodegoat’s functions and having designed the data model as well as collected
and selected the data, we might take on a network and geographic-visualization analysis
of the space-time locations pertaining to the magazines in our database. For instance,
we may analyse La Revista, La Gaceta Literaria, Proa, Sur, Alfar, Martín Fierro,
Contemporáneos, Boletín Titikaka and Nosotros. Sharing data with projects undertaking
205
Figure 13.1 Schematic representation of the main types of objects and the relations
between them.
similar tasks would be of enormous interest as a way of advancing research of this kind.
Our project has established a collaboration agreement with the University of Tübingen,
in Germany, specifically with the group led by Hanno Ehrlicher, who directs the above-
mentioned project Revistas Culturales 2.0. (Cultural Magazines 2.0), allowing us to enrich
our database with several of the mentioned magazines and identify dispersed translations
in the Ibero-American cultural press. The following visualizations4 illustrate certain
aspects of interest, such as the diversity of translated authors in the selected corpus.
Using our geographic visualization (Figure 13.2), we may gauge the global scope of the
origins of translated authors published in the magazines we are currently working with
(four Argentine magazines, Proa, Martín Fierro, Nosotros and Sur; the Mexican magazine
Contemporáneos; Boletín Titikaka from Perú; the Madrid-based La Gaceta Literaria and
the Catalan La Revista).
Besides directionality (with more authors transiting from the United States to
Argentina), this graph helps corroborate that French originals circulate the most among
publications (from French into Spanish or Catalan). That is, when selecting their ‘foreign
authors’, our publications first fixed their attention on France and then on the United
States and/or England, followed by Italy. Besides the Francophilia in receiving coun-
tries, we must not forget that, at the time, Paris was still the ‘world capital of literature’
(Casanova 1999) and a site for international consecration, with writers travelling to the
French capital in order to gain translation and subsequent visibility in other geographic
areas –including their own places of origin.
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newgenrtpdf
Figure 13.2 Map of the origin of translated authors, their original languages, and the places of publication of their translations
207
Figure 13.3 reinforces the idea of French domination above all other languages
in the early 20th century. We may observe that in the periodical press analysed here,
French stands as the most translated language –the nodes represent the authors and
translators associated with each language. Often, multilingual mediators can be found at
the intersections of various linguistic relations. For instance, Agustí Esclasans i Folch, a
Catalan writer who published at La Revista, translated from French, Italian, English and
Latin (relationship highlighted).
Figure 13.3 Translated languages and translators in all the magazines compiled within the
project ERC Social Networks of the Past. Relationship highlighted: languages translated by the
Catalan writer and translator Agustí Esclasans for La Revista.
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Likewise, the network analysis we propose allows us to detect author and translator
networks around the magazines of study (see Figure 13.4 below). This figure may be
interpreted as a network of affiliation among translators and magazines; however, this is
not necessarily a social network, given that the translated authors may or may not have
been active participants in the translation and publication of their works in magazines –a
fact that would appear more obvious when it comes to deceased authors, but is not limited
to them. Nonetheless, this network provides a useful way of showing the degree to which
various Hispanic magazines and mediators espoused (or lacked) a shared vision of world
literature. We highlight the sheer number of relationships between Martín Fierro, Alfar,
Sur, Contemporáneos, La Revista, La Gaceta Literaria and Nosotros.
Lastly, mapping with a decentralized perspective –one of the main goals of the project
Social Networks of the Past –also allows us to analyse the way many editors attempted
to reinforce their local positions through the international, offering an extensive editorial
catalogue geared toward the international by publishing various translations and reviews
of foreign literature and creating highly international networks. Figure 13.5 shows the
places of origin of the authors published in the selected magazines. In this sense, it is
worth noting that in the Latin American magazines publishing Lusophone literature, the
few published authors were always Brazilian: six poets in the magazine Alfar, one art-
icle on Cláudio de Sousa in Sur, and three poems in Boletín Titikaka. The Argentine
magazines translated the texts to Spanish, while Boletín Titikaka published them in the
original language.
Meanwhile, in the Iberian Peninsula (Figure 13.6), La Gaceta Literaria published the
most Lusophone writers –more than half in the original language. In La Gaceta Literaria
Figure 13.4 Network of magazines, translators, and authors –as per the publications addressed
within the project ERC Social Networks of the Past
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Figure 13.5 Place of publication and origin of Portuguese-speaking authors in Sur, Alfar, and
Boletín Titikaka
we may find translations of Brazilian writers, while in La Revista and in a publication

from Alfar’s early stages we only find writers from Portugal. La Revista translated all texts
to Catalan and never included texts in the original language.
One detail that is worth noting and that is hard to see in the visualization is the volume
of texts: in the Madrid magazine, we may find about 70 contributions by Lusophone
authors and/or texts about Lusophone writers; in La Revista we only find 9, and in Alfar,
from A Coruña, only three texts were published. The two lines connecting Madrid to
the Atlantic, to the west, and to Africa, to the south, reach the birth places of Antero de
Quental, in Ponta Delgada in Azores, and of José Sobral de Almada Negreiros, in São
Tomé and Príncipe, which did not gain independence from Portugal until 1975. In short,
this project (and the ones mentioned above) is an inspiring example of periodical and
translation research using digital archives within a digital-humanities approach.
Conclusion
The specific features of literary translation in periodical publications and the growing
interest in both fields point to a pressing need for a suitable and interdisciplinary theoret-
ical and methodological approach. This chapter stresses the urgency of securing a more
developed conceptual focus on the process of literary translation in periodical publications
from a transnational perspective, as well as a methodological discussion on the creation of
interdisciplinary teams for collective research and data sharing.
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Figure 13.6 Place of publication and origin of Portuguese-speaking writers in La Revista, La

Gaceta Literaria, and Alfar (La Coruña)
As stated above, this chapter raises methodological issues for transcending linguistic
frontiers –and also looks at a broad geography of literary translations in periodical
publications, combining experience with large-and small-scale analysis. It draws attention
to the activities of lesser-known periodical publications and mediators (translators, but
also critics, editors etc.). It has also aimed to gather qualitative results through the use
of various quantitative models, treating metadata as a relevant and unexplored source
of information. Finally, this chapter has sought to highlight the benefits of combining
inputs from the sociology of translation, cultural mediation and social network analysis,
and the digital humanities. In the near future we hope to add discourse analysis and topic
modelling by taking on close and distant readings as well. Evidently, there is still much
work to be done in this thriving field of research; for example, a gender perspective for
literary translation in periodicals is still needed, as is an examination of the different ways
of measuring the real or relative impacts or ‘successes’ of a given publication.
We also foresee and try to respond in our research to the following challenges, that have
to do with theoretical, methodological and epistemological questions:
1. How to combine sociological and hermeneutical approaches. We aim to add nuance

to the antagonism between sociological and hermeneutical approaches and to set a
good example for the development of a synthesis of the two for the study of trans-
lation in periodical publications. As agents located in a social space and as labora-
tories of artistic and literary creation, journals facilitate experimentation with
different approaches in order to question the functioning of literary spaces and the
interactions between geographical-linguistic spaces. The strategies applied to create
personal identities within the local space, and the roles of translators and publishers
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in the creation of journals and discourse on foreign literature –and, by way of reflec-
tion, of the national literature (Chevrel 1977; Chevrel, D’hulst & Lombez 2012) –
have been approached from both a sociological point of view and an aesthetic and
cultural perspective.
2. How to combine qualitative and quantitative approaches. This chapter questions
the methods, goals, and limits of conducting quantitative analysis for translation in
periodicals, considering the specific features and intrinsic heterogeneity of literary
and cultural periodicals. Likewise, it also underlines the importance of combining
quantitative and qualitative approaches to promote critical thinking from both
perspectives and avoid biased interpretations in large-scale analyses. At the same
time, it recognizes the need to accept imperfect and incomplete data.
3. Is the digitalization of journals and the creation of digital catalogues changing the
way we do research? We have proposed a case study to show how the digitalization of
literary journals has changed archives, compelling us to abandon national approaches
to literary history. We have also pointed out various projects in digital newspaper
libraries and repositories, as well as digital repositories from national libraries, such as
Biblioteca Nacional de España, Biblioteca de Catalunya and Biblioteca Nacional de
México, that need to be revisited in order to detect inconsistencies as well as a potential
lack or dispersion of the data. In general, library archives do not record the contents
of periodical publications exhaustively. In most cases, they merely provide the name of
the publication, the number of issues available, and the names of the authors of each
article. As such, even though many magazines are digitized, conducting a detailed,
large-scale and automatic analysis of literary production in a given timeframe remains
challenging, and without quality-control analysis, it is next to impossible. Likewise,
image processing is still challenging, and we may need to re-OCR some of our histor-
ical documents if the quality is not sufficiently good. On the other hand, as we do not
yet have a standard for organizing data for these types of queries, we face a heteroge-
neous and often incompatible software field, in the sense that there are many tools, and
they impact on digital scholarship. In this sense, creating better, freely accessible tools
for exploring digital periodicals is a must (Ikoff & Martínez 2020).
4. How does the shift towards big data change translation studies? This chapter has
also put forth some thoughts on the use of data mining and big-data approaches to
support conventional research, allowing scholars to save time and effort by conducting
more thorough searches and better managing information. It also considers new
modes of presenting and creating historical documents. In this respect, we do believe
that this will allow scholars to revise analytical frameworks, assumptions and theor-
etical positions with the availability of more data and newly revealed patterns and
connections on a large-scale. Digital methods enable us to ask specific questions that
might not be asked otherwise and allow us to analyse large amounts of data on specific
issues. Certainly, we still need to gain a better understanding of key research concepts
such as ‘digitalization’, ‘large-scale content analysis’, ‘data-driven analysis’, ‘machine
learning’ and innovative tools to code or explore humanities data, such as TEI (Text
Encoding Initiative), annotation, Stylometric, GIS (Geographic Information System)
tools, Elastic Search, Google Ngram and even databases (Ikoff & Martínez 2020), as
applied to the study of literary translation in periodical publications. This big transla-
tion history perspective will not only allow us to ask methodological questions arising
from our own research practice, but will also encourage empirical studies based on
212
cases located in very different geographical spaces and periods, allowing us to iden-
tify common features and theoretical questions that extend beyond the singularity of
each corpus.
Further reading
• Fólica, L., Roig-Sanz, D. & Caristia, S. (eds) (2020) Literary Translation in Periodicals.
Methodological Challenges for a Transnational Approach, Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John
Benjamins.
The book highlights innovative theoretical and methodological issues to analyse literary
translation in periodicals on a large scale and from a transnational approach, providing
several case studies from Europe, Latin America and Asia in the 19th and 20th centuries.
• Guzmán, C. (ed.) (2019) ‘Translation and/in periodical publications’. Special issue of

Translation and Interpreting Studies 14 (2).
This issue analyses periodicals as a key means to understand the entanglements between
translation and (cultural) history, in multi-region and multi-language case studies.
• Stead, E. & Védrine, H. (eds) (2018) L’Europe des revues II (1860–1930): réseaux et
circulations des modèles. Paris: Presses de l’Université Paris Sorbonne.
The book offers a wide range of case studies based on the concept of ‘network’ exploring
the modalities and mechanisms of the international circulation of aesthetic, ideological,
cultural and graphic models in Europe.
• Tarcus, H. (2020) Las revistas culturales latinoamericanas. Giro material, tramas

intelectuales y redes revisteriles. Buenos Aires: CEDINCI/Tren en Movimiento.
This book provides a history of the field of literary and cultural periodicals in Latin
America, and discusses the material turn and a network approach in periodicals studies.
• Willson, P. (2019) Página Impar. Textos sobre la traducción en Argentina: conceptos,

historia, figuras. Buenos Aires: Ethos traductora.
This history of translation in Argentina analyses the materiality of translation in popular

magazines, such as Caras y Caretas, among other topics, relating translation to the edi-
torial and cultural fields.
Notes
1 This chapter is published within the framework of the ERC Starting Grant project “Social
Networks of the Past. Mapping Hispanic and Lusophone Literary Modernity” (1898–1959)
(Grant agreement No. 803860), led by Diana Roig-Sanz.
Hereby the authors attest that John Benjamins Publishing Company has granted us permis-
sion to reprint parts of our co-authored introduction article: ‘General introduction’, in Fólica,
L., Roig-Sanz, D. & Caristia, S. (2020) Literary Translation in Periodicals: Methodological
213
Challenges for a Transnational Approach, pp. 1–17, that is the original source of parts of this
chapter. Please find the book in the following link: https://benjamins.com/catalog/btl.155
2 See also the following European and American projects: the Journals and periodicals in Halle
during the Enlightenment (1688–1815). Network and Topic Modelling (in German Die halleschen
Zeitungen und Zeitschriften der Aufklärungsepoche (1688– 1815) –Netzwerkanalyse und
TopicModeling de la Universidad de Halle); the WeChangEd project led by Marianne Van
Remoortel at Ghent University; the CIRCE project led by Carla Gubert at the Università degli
studi di Trento; Numapresse-Du papierà l’écran. Mutations culturelles, transferts génériques,
poétiques médiatiques de la presse française, funded by the French Agency for Research;
Medias19, led by Guillaume Pinson and Marie-Eve Thérenthy at the Université de Laval and the
Université Paul-Valéry, in Montpellier, respectively, or the Recovery-Recovering the US Hispanic
Literary Heritage at the University of Houston. In the Ibero-American zone (Spain, Portugal
and Latin America), the project AhiRA, led by Silvia Saíta at the University of Buenos Aires,
also stands out.
3 See also the French research project TSOcc-Traduire Sous l’Occupation, led by Christine Lombez
at the Université de Nantes.
4 All figures are the result of the following sources: data from ERC Social Networks of the Past,
grant agreement no. 803860, a project directed by Diana Roig-Sanz, and data from the pro-
ject Cultural Magazines from ‘Modernismo’ to Avant-Garde, funded by the German Research
Foundation (DFG), grant no. 327964298, directed by Hanno Ehrlicher. All figures have been
prepared by the authors using nodegoat®.
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14
Fixers, journalists and translation
Jerry Palmer
Introduction
The term ‘fixers’ refers to people who assist reporters and correspondents, most com-
monly in foreign news reporting; they perform a variety of tasks, prominent among which
is translation.1 The fact that translation is only one among an array of tasks is central to
understanding the fixer’s role, and in particular the range and articulation of the trans-
lation practices used, which derive from the professional context in question. It has been
suggested that the term is inappropriate in the context of journalism; this may be due to
its derogatory American origins (see the Merriam-Webster dictionary) or to the sense
that it underestimates the journalistic contribution the fixer makes (e.g. Plaut & Klein
2019a: 1696; Palmer 2019: 2). Nonetheless, its use is well established in professional prac-
tice. Examples of widespread usage include a contacts website called ‘WorldFixer’2 and
the adoption of the English word in other languages (see e.g. Hachey 2018; Bourdon
2013: 147; Mojica 2015; Klein 2017: 151–153).3
While the fixer has been an established part of international newsgathering for many
decades, until recently public knowledge of this function has been limited, and use of
the term itself is still largely restricted to professional jargon. Although there is a well-
established literature about foreign correspondents, the research literature about fixers
is limited; it consists mostly of English language texts and focuses primarily on English
language media. In 2000, Hannerz noted that the ‘critical importance of local helpers
in foreign news tends not to be acknowledged’ (2000: 154). Writing in 2006, Tumber
and Webster noted that little research had been done into their role (2006: 106), a claim
repeated by Plaut and Klein in 2019: ‘the relative invisibility of fixers in both public dis-
course and media analysis is glaringly obvious’ (2019b: n.p.; see also Palmer, 2019: 2).
Murrell notes that many journalists who have worked with fixers say little if anything
about them in written accounts of their working life, although more recent writers pay
them more attention (2015: 29). Analytic studies by journalists and media academics date
from after 2000 (Witchel 2004; Palmer & Fontan 2007; Murrell 2015; Bossone 2017; Klein
2017; International Journalism Festival 2018; Plaut & Klein 2019a, 2019b; Palmer 2019).
DOI: 10.4324/9781003221678-17 217

Jerry Palmer
All of the literature about fixers is based on either personal experience or on interviews
with journalists and/or fixers; there are no texts based on ethnographic observation.4
Most recent analyses attribute the rise in both the prominence of the fixer’s role and
public interest in it to the reporting of the post-2003 conflict in Iraq (e.g. Plaut & Klein
2019a: 1698). Although there is no agreed analysis of why this situation has evoked so much
interest, the following features of it constitute a plausible explanation. It quickly became
apparent that the results of the invasion were not those anticipated; the US administrators
tried to paint a positive picture, but without much success (see e.g. Chandrasekaran 2007),
and many Western journalists rapidly insisted on seeing things for themselves rather than
accepting the administration’s assertions (Palmer & Fontan 2007: 9–10 and the sources
cited there). The deteriorating security situation meant that this reporting assignment
was exceptionally dangerous –resistance to the invasion led to the murder of those
they considered its agents and their domestic collaborators; this included both foreign
journalists and their local helpers. The exceptional reliance upon fixers deriving from the
danger led to debates in the USA about the reliability of reporting from Iraq (see Palmer
& Fontan 2007 and the sources cited there; see also Murrell 2015: 116–131).
Recent developments in foreign newsgathering

In order to understand the translation practices associated with the presence of fixers in
the communication chain, it is essential to understand their position in the newsgathering
process, as the practices derive from the mix of tasks involved, together with the structure
of foreign newsgathering. This involves translation because the newsgathering phase of
journalism –as opposed to the editing and dissemination phases –is the point at which
the journalist interacts with potential local sources of information.
Fixers are primarily used by foreign correspondents who are neither nationals of nor
resident in the location in question; however, some foreign news bureaux also employ
fixers (Palmer 2019: 16–17) and Klein quotes the case of a permanent correspondent in
Jerusalem who has a long-term fixer, due to the cultural complexity of Israeli society
(2017: 152). The position of foreign correspondent, as well as the nature of newsgathering
across national boundaries, has developed rapidly over recent decades and the role of
fixer has been part of this set of changes; in particular, long-term posting of journalists to
foreign bureaux is far less common than previously and foreign reporting is increasingly
done by visiting journalists (Kalb 1990: xiv; Hess 1996: 99–100; Witchel 2004; Hamilton
& Jenner 2004; Hammer 2014; Murrell 2015 132–133; Sambrook 2010: 17–18; Paterson,
Andersen, & Hoxha 2012: 111–113. See below for more detail).5
For reasons that derive primarily from the economics of news media, transnational
newsgathering relies less and less on bilingual competence among journalists recruited
from the home nation of the news organization. Traditionally, where it existed it was
associated with overseas bureaux, where individual newspapers and broadcasters
maintained personnel in target locations, which encouraged source language competence
and local knowledge. However, this has been largely –but by no means entirely –replaced
with a mixture of other arrangements, among which the following are commonplace.
Firstly, reliance on international news agencies, which maintain permanent local staff
in most nations and disseminate news in a range of major vehicular languages (Boyd-
Barrett & Rantanen 1998);6 however, newspapers and broadcasters prefer not to rely
on news agency reports alone –as these usually present only the most directly relevant
218
and most recent newsworthy facts, with little in the way of contextualization or explan-
ation –and commonly incorporate this material in longer reports compiled by their own
staff. Secondly, regional ‘hubs’, where long-term staff are expected to cover large areas
across national and/or linguistic boundaries (Hess 1996: 99–100; Hamilton & Jenner
2004). Thirdly, importing journalists from the home organization on a short-term basis,
a practice commonly known as ‘parachute’ journalism (Fondren, Hamilton & McCune
2019). Moreover, the use of hubs has been reduced during recent decades, at least by
some news organizations, and replaced by other arrangements and especially ‘parachute’
journalists; alternative arrangements involve local journalists (‘stringers’) working on a
part-time basis (Pedelty 1995: 36; Erickson & Hamilton 2006; Sambrook 2010: 17–18;
Murrell 2015: 9–10). Other inputs are media monitoring organizations (Palmer 2009),
which commonly disseminate news in major vehicular languages, and citizen journalism,
whose expansion has been expedited by the internet.
It is no doubt the use of hubs and parachute journalists that has been the principal
driver of the use of fixers in newsgathering, for it is journalists who are obliged to work in a
multiplicity of locations and linguistic settings who are the most dependent on their skills.
The inevitable corollary of these arrangements is that many journalists have assignments
where they need both an interpreter and advice on local matters. An unusually clear
example of need is the journalist who arrived in Cairo ‘asking to interview “Banna,” or
Hassan Al-Banna, the founder of the Muslim Brotherhood –who died in 1949’ (Bossone
2017: n.p.; see also Palmer 2019: 52). Other examples of the need for explanation and
advice reported in research literature are the politeness-oriented detours typical of Arab
conversation (Palmer & Fontan 2007: 13, 18–19) and the deference towards authority
in Indonesia, which inhibits the persistent questioning typical of Western journalism
(Murrell 2015: 138–139). Given the extent of the dependency involved, the UK journalist
John Sweeney’s description of fixers as ‘our eyes and our ears’ is not an exaggeration
(quoted Tumber & Webster 2006: 106).
These developments in foreign newsgathering mean that an increasing percentage of
foreign newsgathering is done by journalists who need local assistance with a range of
functions: translation, logistics, security, advice on local culture and contacts with poten-
tial sources. Journalists give an explicit centrality to linguistic competence in the fixer’s
role: in a recent survey, 19 out of 20 correspondents stated that they employed fixers for
help with language, and that it was both the single most important reason for hiring and
the common thread that links the various skills required to perform the range of tasks that
constitute the fixer’s role (Murrell 2015: 72–73). Similarly, fixers say that bilingual compe-
tence is an essential component of their role (Palmer 2019: 114–115).
Another element of the recent changes has seen fixers frequently performing tasks
traditionally undertaken by journalists themselves, or even becoming locally employed
journalists.7 This was especially frequent in Iraq after 2003, as transnational news
organizations became terrorist targets: members of the local population, recruited as fixers,
were able to perform journalists’ tasks with significantly lower risk attached, although
they too subsequently became targets (Palmer & Fontan 2007: 6; Murrell 2015: 116–120;
Witchel 2004; Bossone 2017). Where this has happened, their previous role as assistants
and translators has morphed into bilingual journalism.
Because fixers are most needed in the context of ‘parachute’ journalism, their role is
prominent in major events that produce an influx of foreign journalists. To an increasing
extent, especially since 2003, fixers have become integral to this form of newsgathering
219
Jerry Palmer
(Murrell 2015; Bossone 2017; Plaut & Klein 2019a, 2019b). Recent history in combination
with news focus on dramatic events has led to the fixer’s role being especially prominent
in conflict and disaster zones, and much recent attention seems to have been due to the
ethical dilemmas created by this position, as fixers are normally employed on an informal
basis, with little to no contractual security in places where risk is high (Witchel 2004;
Murrell 2015; International Journalism Festival 2018). The dominance of these situations
in professional discussions gives rise to an element of uncertainty in any assessment of the
scope of the analyses: conflict and disaster situations inevitably have features which are
not commonly replicated in other news-gathering circumstances, and it is unclear to what
extent these particularities may inflect the analysis.
The multiple roles of the fixer

Participant accounts and analytic studies alike stress the multiplicity of the tasks associated
with the fixer’s role. The best fixers are
… the smart boys, the wide boys, … who need to talk, need to fix… who know how
to get the black market petrol and how to get your electricity on. They may be a bit
crooked, but they know how to exist in a lot of different areas …
(Maggie O’Kane, quoted Tumber & Webster 2006: 106;
see a similar judgment in Murrell 2015: ix–x)
According to such accounts, no one task is the primary one, even if language competence
is universally agreed to be central because it is impossible to perform the other functions
without it. Other tasks commonly undertaken are transport and logistics, establishing
contacts for journalists, analysing local media coverage (which of course involves trans-
lation, usually in summary form), and security, especially in conflict zones (Tumber &
Webster 2006: 115; Palmer & Fontan 2007; Murrell 2015: 72–76; Mojica 2015; Palmer
2019: 15). Indeed, even bilingual journalists may need the services of a fixer for other
reasons. A Palestinian fixer notes that a foreign journalist, even one who speaks good
Arabic, ‘will not really be accepted by society’ (quoted in Klein 2017: 151); a bilingual
French journalist of Arab origin said he often needed a translator in Baghdad because
the local version of Arabic was very different from his version (Palmer & Fontan 2007: 8).
A woman journalist working in the Yemen needed two fixers, one male and one female,
because of the local prevalence of gender segregation (International Journalism Festival
2018: n.p.). A Russian journalist working in the Ukraine needed a fixer, despite the simi-
larities between Russian and Ukrainian (Palmer 2019: 121).
In addition to the range of competences demanded, trust is a paramount consideration.
Journalists regularly indicate that it is essential, for two main reasons: firstly, because in
conflict zones people’s lives are at risk (Palmer & Fontan 2007: 12; Hachey 2018; Tumber
& Webster 2006: 106–113; Bossone 2017; Murrell 2015: 77); secondly, because the fixer’s
professional judgments affect the outcomes of the newsgathering process (Plaut & Klein
2019a: 1709; Palmer 2019, passim; see below for further discussion); trust in translation is
less frequently mentioned (see below). Trust does not derive from any formal qualifications,
but from a combination of personal experience and a recruitment system largely based
on word-of-mouth recommendations or continued contact with the news organization in
question (Murrell 2015: 88–93; Plaut & Klein 2019a: 1706; Palmer 2019: 25); in particular,
220
journalists show little interest in any formal language qualification, let alone professional
qualification as a translator/interpreter (Murrell 2015: 72–73).
Journalists often stress security as a prime function of the fixer’s role (e.g. Tumber &
Webster 2006: 106–108), and language competence and security are interwoven in con-
flict zones, as the following story shows. In Cairo during the ‘Arab Spring’ revolution,
an American journalist and his local fixer were caught in the streets after curfew by a
policeman; the fixer persuaded the policeman that they were on their way home; the
policeman asked which way that was, and said if they went in another direction he would
shoot them both. The journalist continues: ‘We ran. Mohammad told me to go straight.
I followed him. Although I had studied Arabic, the fact that I didn’t fully understand the
officer’s orders reinforced for me just how essential fluent Arabic is’ (Bossone 2017: n.p.).8
However, other elements of local knowledge are seen as equally central. The list of
tasks cannot be placed in a rank order of importance, partly because respondents do not
often assign relative importance and partly because variation in circumstances produces
variations in the relative importance of different tasks. Journalists’ accounts of events in
conflict zones unsurprisingly place emphasis on the issue of security, but even in these
circumstances do not always give it overriding importance (Plaut & Klein 2019a: 1704);
French journalists interviewed in Palmer and Fontan even complained about fixers being
too timid and unwilling to take risks the journalists thought acceptable in Iraq (2007: 15).
The influence of the fixer on the newsgathering process

Central to the fixer’s usefulness to the journalist is the range of local contacts and con-
textual knowledge he or she provides (Murrell 2015: 76, 125, 150; Bossone 2017; Klein
2017: 152–154; Plaut & Klein 2019a: 1708–1709). Fixers interviewed by Palmer and Fontan
claimed that visiting Western journalists knew so little about Arab society that even bilin-
gual competence would be inadequate to compensate for it (2007: 15). Similar claims
are made repeatedly by the fixers interviewed by Palmer (2019: 36–40). The background
knowledge in question is essential to enable an understanding of events; for example, the
significance of statements made by local politicians is inseparable from their position.
In both the analytic literature and professional participant accounts of the fixer’s role
there are discussions of the implications of this function, which derive from their position
as a dual relay in the communication chain: they are centrally involved in the choice of
sources used by journalists, since it is they who have the contacts and the local knowledge;
and they are also responsible for the transfer between languages at the point of contact.
On the one hand, this role is invaluable for the opportunities it creates; on the other hand,
it also creates dependency, a dependency that is manifest in both domains –firstly, in the
choice of details of an event to be reported and interlocutors, and secondly in translation.
Influence over the choice of details to be reported and of interlocutors creates influ-
ence over the most fundamental elements of newsgathering, since their selection has a
profound impact upon how events are defined in news reports.9 In surveys, journalists and
fixers both stress that this element of the fixer’s role may have an impact upon decisions
that are properly the domain of the journalist; there is some divergence of opinion
between the two about the significance of this potential impact (Murrell 2015: 31, 85, 154;
Plaut & Klein 2019a: 1703, 1708; International Journalism Festival 2018). For example,
journalists prefer fixers who are themselves journalists, as they have an understanding of
news imperatives and can be proactive in looking for story material (Murrell 2015: 79,
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Jerry Palmer
83, 101). Fixers may emphasize that this does not amount to setting the news agenda
(Plaut & Klein 2019a: 1703), but correspondents think that fixers are unaware that their
connections and local knowledge ‘carry a risk of undue or unseemly influence’, even
if they themselves are confident in their ability to take adequate precautions against it
(Murrell 2015: 112). The fixers interviewed in Palmer (2019) are very aware of the influ-
ence they can exercise. In Palmer’s words, fixers may decide that ‘the correspondent does
not always understand the vital details [nor] always comprehend the obstacles’ involved
in their decisions about how to approach a story. The fixer may then choose to ‘educate’
visiting journalists about ‘the nuances’ of the place in question –in other words, tell them
how to interpret what is going on around them –or may suggest topics for stories, espe-
cially if the correspondent has come without any preconceived idea of the focus of their
reporting (2019: 36, 40). The fixer may even refuse to co-operate with a correspondent if
(s)he thinks the correspondent’s approach will lead to an inadequate version of the event
(2019: 50).
The fixer’s potential influence derives from the journalist’s dependence on his or
her language monopoly and superior local knowledge. The risks associated with such
dependency are increased by the possibility that the fixer is dishonest: (s)he may produce
a false witness for interview for purely commercial reasons, or may approach his or her
job with an ideological agenda, or be placed under pressure from other political agents
(e.g. local politicians, police and military); journalists are aware of these possibilities,
and take various measures to counteract the potential bias that may occur (International
Journalism Festival 2018, n.p.; Murrell 2015: 108–115; Witchel 2004: n.p.; Klein 2017;
Plaut & Klein 2019a: 1707; Palmer 2019: 49); this does not necessarily mean that such
measures are always taken or always successful (Murrell 2015: 110; Dragovic-Drouet
2007: 35–37).
This is also a point at which trust is significant: since the fixer is making professional
judgments about the relative importance of different elements of the situation, judgments
that will have an impact upon the outcomes of the newsgathering process, the journalist
will bear responsibility for something that is not entirely within their control.
Two issues are involved in this discussion. The first is the distribution of agenda-
setting between the journalist and the fixer, which is important for professional practice;
the second is the impact that the agenda-setting may have upon information flows in a
globalized information economy. From the point of view of the function of media in a
democratic society, it may be considered important that the agenda is set in accordance
with public interest in the news consuming society, i.e. by the journalist, or by the fixer
acting strictly as a proxy. On the other hand, viewed through theories of globalization that
seek to account for power imbalances between different segments of global society, this
may be tantamount to ensuring the continued reproduction of dominant nation agendas.
However, there is a countervailing analysis, according to which events and the frames
selected for them are inherently subject to negotiation; where correspondents interact with
fixers in this process, the negotiation constitutes a cultural interaction between two agents
with viewpoints that are always potentially divergent due to cultural traditions and pol-
itical commitments (Palmer 2019: 4–8, 58). Where fixers are able to set news agendas, or
otherwise inflect news coverage by exploiting journalists’ dependence on their skills, they
are going some way to redressing the power imbalance that is the historical legacy of colo-
nialism and uneven development (Murrell 2015: 5; see also Bielsa 2016: 153–157).
222
Fixers and translation

Participant accounts and analytic studies rarely go into any detail about the role of trans-
lation and interpretation in the newsgathering process. Indeed, discussion of translation
in journalism in general was rare until recently (Palmer 2009; Bielsa & Bassnett 2009;
Bielsa 2016: 143–147). The reliability of bilingual competence among fixers is rarely a
source of concern among journalists. Firstly, professional translators and interpreters,
with formal training and qualifications, are a rarity in newsgathering, editing and dis-
semination (Orengo 2005: 169–170; Tsai 2005; Schäffner 2005: 158; Dragovic-Drouet
2007). Secondly, when questioned directly about it, journalists mostly express confidence
in common-sense checks on the adequacy of translation (Palmer & Fontan 2007: 14;
International Journalism Festival 2018: n.p.).
Recruiting locally is an important element in fixer/journalist translation strategies,
since it privileges one element of the translator’s skills (knowledge of the source lan-
guage culture) over the translation protocol according to which best practice is to use a
translator whose natural first language is the target language. Phrased in terms of trans-
lator recruitment practice, it amounts to a preference for heteronomous recruitment over
autonomous.10 That this can have significant effects on the process of linguistic transfer is
shown in this comment by a Russian fixer: ‘I prefer to translate from Russian into English
because I know all these kind of clichés [in English] … whereas in Russian I tend to
overthink things…’ (quoted in Palmer 2019: 129).
Despite the paucity of analysis of translation, participants’ descriptions of events
and interviews can be interpreted to reveal the strategies that are used in the interactions
between fixers and journalists. Six commonplace strategies can be identified:11
• Firstly, in extenso translation, in other words the translation of everything in the segment
of source language in question;
• Secondly, trans-editing, consisting of producing a text in the target language which is
the product of both translation and editing; here editing takes the form of selection
from a source text, summary of the text, and the incorporation of material –either
quoted, translated or summarized –from other texts. From the point of view of trans-
lation theory, this is tantamount to replacing the source text with a new text, since little
of the original text may appear in the new version.
• Thirdly, dialogue (or community) translation, where translation emerges in discussion
across a linguistic boundary; here both source and target texts are likely to be modified
in the process of discussion.
• Fourthly, interpretive translation, where the translator does not set out to produce a
target text which is the linguistic equivalent of the source, but to produce a text adapted
to the comprehension needs of the person who has commissioned the translation; the
degree of modification introduced into the process is contingent upon the circumstances,
and first and foremost upon the cultural distance separating the parties to the linguistic
transfer.
• Fifthly, relay translation, in which more than one linguistic transfer takes place due to
the presence of a third language between the source language and the ultimate target
language; the intervening language is frequently but not necessarily a widely used
vehicular language.
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Jerry Palmer
• Sixthly, committed or activist translation, where the translator uses his or her monopoly
knowledge to produce a target text in accordance with some agenda. This may vary
from minor modifications to a source text to avoid giving offence (Palmer 2019: 130) to
deliberate mistranslation for propaganda purposes (see below).
In newsgathering translation these strategies are commonly found in ad hoc combinations.

In extenso translation is rarely used in the interactions between fixers and journalists.
Fixers and journalists concur that journalists do not usually want word-for-word transla-
tion, on the grounds that it is both time-consuming and usually unnecessary, and prefer
an informal mixture of summary and translation, in other words trans-editing (Palmer &
Fontan 2007: 10–11; Murrell 2015: 82); it is informal in the sense that there are no formal
guidelines for how to operate the mixture.
The time element is important for two reasons: firstly, because of deadlines; secondly,
because of security (in conflict zones). While deadlines are always significant in jour-
nalism, they are especially important under circumstances where any of the following
conditions apply: where ‘live’ reporting is needed; where there is competition to ‘break’
news, i.e. to be responsible for the first report; where access to satellite communications
is limited. In broadcast journalism, ‘live’ reports are often preferred in events with a high
public profile, such as conflict or disaster, and frequently involve dialogue between the
reporter and a studio presenter; under these circumstances, a ‘parachute’ journalist may
be very dependent upon the local knowledge of the fixer, because of the relationship
between logistics (including travel and filming permits) and deadlines (Murrell 2015: 145;
International Journalism Festival 2018). Moreover, all of these conditions are more likely
in conflict or emergency situations than in others. The time element is particularly rele-
vant in conflict zones where journalists and their helpers may themselves be targets and
security depends on frequent movement (e.g. Tumber & Webster 2006: 106–108; Murrell
2015: 125–126; Plaut & Klein 2019a: 1704).
The major exception to the preference for trans-editing is in the case of speeches and
interviews with major public figures where their status demands extended attention, and
the nuances of what they say are considered of public importance; however, the use of
vehicular languages either by the original speaker or by their official interpreter often
removes the need for in extenso translation by the fixer.
In extenso translation is usually considered unnecessary because newsgathering subjects
all information transmission to triage based on relevance, where summary is frequently
sufficient, especially since it can be expanded where necessary. This amounts to the selec-
tion of trans-editing as the preferred translation strategy, supplemented as appropriate by
dialogue.
The informal criteria that guide the triage of information in trans-editing derive from
the central journalistic criterion of ‘news value’, in other words the judgment about the
relative importance of different events and of the various elements of an individual event
(Sumpter 2009: 1002–1005; Palmer 1998). ‘News sense’, that is an understanding of news
values, is an attribute that journalists look for in a fixer wherever possible, as it enables
the interactions to function without undesirable repetition and clarification. Where the
fixer shares the journalist’s priorities in this respect, it is possible to achieve consensual
judgments about how much in extenso translation is required and, by the same token, what
can be summarized or even omitted (Palmer & Fontan 2007: 14; Murrell 2015: 79, 82–84,
101, 150). The practice of ‘parachuting’ journalists, rather than maintaining long-term
224
personnel, together with the tight deadlines imposed by competition to be completely up-
to-date, implies increased focus on news values and a decreased focus upon background
information; hence journalists’ preference for fixers whose background knowledge allows
reliable selection of relevant information (see e.g. Klein 2017: 151–153; Murrell 2015: 17).
As Palmer puts it: ‘the need for marketability sits in tension with the need for nuance and
caution’ (2019: 37).
While there is no systematic analysis of the relationship between in extenso translation
and trans-editing, there are occasional examples where questions about practice have
focussed attention on the role of strategic choice in translation. The first is taken from
an account by an English journalist working in Baghdad in the aftermath of the 2003
invasion. During interviews in the street, canvassing local opinion, he was dependent
upon his fixer’s summaries and translations; however, he knew enough Arabic to under-
stand fragments of what was said, and at one point noticed that one of the group being
interviewed spoke about ‘resistance’ to the invaders, and was chided by another for using
that word; the fixer did not include any mention of this in his translation or summary.
Subsequent questioning revealed that the journalist was indeed correct; he felt that
the omission was significant, which indicates that his sense of relevance and the fixer’s
did not coincide at this point (Steele, personal communication 2007). The BBC jour-
nalist Caroline Hawley, who speaks Arabic, narrates a similar incident (quoted Murrell
2015: 73). It is significant that the rare examples are taken from instances where some
discrepancy has been noted, as what journalists and fixers regard as normal practice
does not give rise to discussions of translation strategy, nor indeed of the adequacy of
translations.
Such difficulties are potentially multiplied in the case of relay translation. While the
principles –and problems –associated with it are well known (St André 2009), there
are few examples discussed in professional accounts of newsgathering. In one instance,
a French television journalist reported using a relay while working in Darfur (in what
was then the southern part of Sudan). The French embassy in Khartoum had arranged
a fixer for him who was bilingual in French and Arabic; however, the language in Darfur
is not Arabic but Fur, and a second fixer was needed (Ostian, personal communication
2004). This journalist was of the opinion that the information he sought was sufficiently
simple and factual that translation was unlikely to be problematic, and could anyway be
supplemented by follow-up questions.12 Clearly, the economics of newsgathering are likely
to reduce relay translation to the minimum inevitable; however, the frequency of its inci-
dence is unreported, as are any discussions of its adequacy.
In these instances, trans-editing has been supplemented through dialogue translation.
Journalists working in Iraq after 2003 said that they were well aware of the risks deriving
from a mixture of poor translation and summary, and used various techniques to minimize
the risks: asking essentially the same question in different ways to confirm information,
or checking the information against an alternative source (Palmer & Fontan 2007: 14).
Similarly, an interlocutor in the International Journalism Festival cites recourse to mul-
tiple translations in order to check reliability (2018: n.p.). These examples may be seen as
versions of dialogue or community translation; however, it should be noted that neither of
these techniques acts as a check on the accuracy of the translation, only on the journalistic
adequacy of the information transmitted. Other examples of dialogue translation are to
be found in cases where journalists and fixers discuss the latter’s corrections of journalists’
understanding of events. In these instances, fixers demonstrate flexible use of trans-editing
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Jerry Palmer
in combination with dialogue and interpretive translation (Murrell 2015: 81–84). For
example: ‘Sometimes an interviewee says something and it doesn’t really make sense. You
have got to explain why they are saying it’ (quoted Murrell 2015: 82). In instances quoted
by Palmer, fixers modify questions asked by correspondents in order to avoid offending
the interviewee, and either modify, explain or qualify the answers (2019: 130). In these
instances, the fixer has engaged in both dialogue and interpretive translation. There are
two corresponding a contrario demonstrations of the same principle to be found in the
interviews cited by Murrell: in the first, a fixer gives the example of a journalist who failed
to get full value from an interview because he never reached an adequate understanding
of the context of what was said (Murrell 2015: 84); in the second a fixer gives the example
of other fixers translating what they knew were lies by interviewees without correcting the
journalists’ knowledge (Murrell 2015: 114). In both cases, failure to engage fully in dia-
logue translation has resulted in a hiatus in the communication chain.
If all language transfer was in extenso, these risks would be relatively low, but the
informal mixture of summary and translation inherent in in situ trans-editing means that
loss or distortion of information is a permanent risk. Its avoidance is organized through
the journalist’s participation in other translation strategies, in particular by recourse to
dialogue translation.
The risks can be seen with particular clarity in the case of committed translation.
Committed or activist translation in newsgathering occurs at the point where the fixer
furthers their own ideological agenda by inflecting source statements through translation
choices. Journalists are well aware of this possibility; opinions vary as to the level of
threat to the integrity of information it produces, as do techniques for avoiding unre-
liability (Murrell 2015: 108–109; International Journalism Festival 2018: n.p.; Palmer
2019: 49, 118). An egregious example is found in a TV interview during the wars in former
Yugoslavia between a Luxembourg journalist and an elderly woman refugee speaking
Serbo-Croat:
the elderly woman (in a sad tone): ‘We’ve had a hard time finding food, and
the water has been cut off. In this icy winter, things are getting worse by the day.’
the translator (venomously): ‘The Serbs left us to die like dogs.’
the elderly woman: ‘We couldn’t do anything else, we didn’t have any choice.’
the translator: ‘The Serbs chased us out, destroying everything.’
(quoted Dragovic-Drouet 2007: 35)
In a second example, a Hungarian/Romanian interpreter working with a Romanian

reporter in the Hungarian speaking part of Romania gave ‘tainted’ information. In this
instance (unlike the first), the journalist was able to counteract the potential bias deriving
from the tainted information as she herself spoke enough Hungarian to understand what
was going on and have recourse to alternative sources of information (Plaut & Klein
2019a: 1707).
The role of ‘committed’ translation has been extensively debated in translation theory
and certainly it is possible to defend the type of translation choices made by committed
translators (see e.g. Cronin 2004; Brownlie 2009). Indeed, there may be cases where neu-
trality is impossible, as for example in the choice between alternative place names, where
changes have been made in the process of conquest and/or ethnic exchanges.13 In the
present context, its significance lies in the nature of the relationship between journalist
226
and fixer. As we have seen, the usefulness of the fixer derives from local knowledge and
contacts as much as from bilingual competence. However, the local knowledge is inevit-
ably accompanied by the possibility of partisan adherence. The extent to which journalists
are in practice aware of this possibility in any individual instance, and able to take effective
precautions against potential abuses, is varied (see above). Clearly, the possibility of a
successful activist translation derives from the journalist’s linguistic dependence in com-
bination with the trust (s)he places in the fixer. Trust is integral to the fixer/journalist rela-
tionship, as we have seen, and it is also central to translation strategy in so far as distrust
would lead to an attempt at confirmation, through some form of dialogue or community
translation.
From the journalist’s point of view, a deliberate mistranslation is a betrayal of the
agreement –implicit or explicit –between the two parties; from the point of view of
activist translators it is no doubt an opportunity to achieve a variety of purposes (see also
Dragovic-Drouet 2007: 37). To the extent that the public function of journalism is based
in the dissemination of reliable information, deliberate mistranslation is dysfunctional.
However, any judgment about the status of mistranslations depends upon the norms of
media performance used in making the judgment. While reliability is frequently cited as
a primary norm, there are circumstances where it may be balanced against other con-
siderations. For example, under conditions of warfare it may be considered secondary
to the service of political and military purposes: ‘There is nothing called media in times
of war’ (Abu Ayash, Chairman of the Palestinian Broadcasting Corporation, quoted in
Maiola 2005); more objectively stated, war is a test of the ‘political assumption of full
disclosure of information’ (Halliday 1999: 127). Indeed, it is well established that the pol-
itics of conflict situations are difficult to reconcile with any norm of media performance
(Palmer 2005).
Conclusion
In summary, it is clear that translation strategies and other elements of practice are
dictated by the exigencies of newsgathering across national and linguistic boundaries. It
has been possible to demonstrate in some detail the relationship between different elem-
ents of the process and choices about strategies and practices. Participant discussions
focus overwhelmingly on the journalistic practices involved and say relatively little about
translation and interpretation processes. Indeed, concern about the nature of practices
only arises if they are seen to threaten the integrity of the newsgathering process, either
by transferring responsibility for editorial decision-making away from the journalist and
towards the fixer; or by threatening the reliability of information transmission; here, reli-
ability is defined by the news gathering organization. The discussion of the risks inherent
in the translation practices analysed above suggest that their results are frequently unreli-
able. However, journalists insist that in the majority of cases reliability can be assured by
two features of the relationship: firstly, trust established by repeated confirmation of its
justification and maintained by word-of-mouth networking among journalists (Palmer &
Fontan 2007: 14; Bossone 2013 as well as the maintenance of data-bases of reliable fixers
(Murrell 2015: ix–x, 88); secondly, by accessing alternative sources of information when-
ever doubt occurs.
The lack of extended discussion of translation practices makes it difficult to make
any judgment about the typicality of any instances that are discussed. Additionally,
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Jerry Palmer
discussion of fixers in newsgathering gives more attention to conflict situations than any
other category of event, and the majority of the analyses of the fixer/journalist relation-
ship are based upon fixers working for English language media; these two factors add to
doubt about the typicality of the instances analysed, although the rare analyses in other
languages, or about non-English language transfers, do not present significantly different
evidence or conclusions.
Further reading
The research-based literature on fixers is small. The bulk of it is Anglo-American, and
most of the journalism analysed is English language.
• Murrell, C. (2015) Foreign Correspondents and International Newsgathering. The Role of

Fixers. London and New York: Routledge.
Is an extensive analysis based on a substantial number of interviews with practitioners,

both journalists and fixers. Although translation is seen to be central, there is no developed
analysis of translation practices.
• Plaut, S. & Klein, P. (2019) ‘Fixing the journalist–fixer relationship: a critical look
towards developing best practices in global reporting’, Journalism Studies, 201(12),
pp. 1696–1713.
Has the same strengths as Murrell, supplemented by a survey of a large number of

correspondents.
• Palmer, L. (2019) The Fixers: Local News Workers’ Perspectives on International

Reporting. Oxford: Oxford Scholarship.
Is exclusively focussed on fixers. It addresses the issues involved in linguistic transfer and
is full of useful anecdotal information. This text also includes a substantial number of
examples drawn from non-English-language media.
• Palmer, J. & Fontan, F. (2007) ‘Our eyes and our ears’. Journalists and fixers in Iraq’,
Journalism, 8(1), pp. 5–24.
Is limited in scope but includes extended analysis of translation strategies.
Notes
1 This chapter makes no distinction between translator and interpreter; in the circumstances in
question, as we shall see, the distinction has little relevance.
2 https://worldfixer.com
3 The term ‘parajournalist’, derived by extension from ‘paralegal’ and/or ‘paramedical’, may also
be used, but in American English ‘parajournalism’ is most commonly used in a derogatory sense,
to refer to journalism characterized by an inadequate distinction between truth and opinion. At
an earlier point, the French used the word ‘manipulateur’ to translate ‘fixer’ (quoted in Dragovic-
Drouet 2007: 35).
228
4 Clearly this is due to practical concerns, as fieldwork would be prohibitively expensive and sub-
ject to permissions which might not be forthcoming. Some of the interviews in Palmer and
Fontan (2007) were interrupted by refusal to continue.
5 Exceptions to most generalizations about foreign news occur at points where national bound-
aries do not coincide with ethnicity and linguistic competence. Under these circumstances many
and varied newsgathering and dissemination practices are to be found, especially bilingual jour-
nalism. An example which has been well studied is the bilingual communities on both sides of
the German–Danish border in Schleswig-Holstein (Teebken & Christiansen 2001; Palmer 2011).
6 This is a point at which much translation is done, usually by bilingual journalists rather than pro-
fessional translators (Bielsa & Bassnett 2009); see also entries by Davier, van Doorslaer; Kang;
Hernández Guerrero in this volume.
7 See Hammer (2014) for a brief overview of the arrangements used by American media; the
BBC has increasingly employed local journalists following an internal review of its foreign
newsgathering starting in 2011(quoted in Murrell 2015: 2); this trend was already noted in
Sambrook (2010: 48–51).
8 Similar events are recounted in Hachey (2018); Plaut & Klein (2019a: 1704); Tumber & Webster
(2006: 108).
9 In media theory, this process of event definition is known as ‘agenda-setting’ and ‘framing’. There
is a substantial literature on its role in news reporting, conveniently summarized in Dearing &
Rogers (1996).
10 ‘An autonomous system is one where colonizers train their own subjects in the language or
languages of the colonized. A heteronymous system involves the recruitment of local interpreters
and teaching them the imperial language’ (Cronin: 2002: 393). The principle clearly applies to
circumstances beyond the colonial system to which Cronin refers.
11 According to Kearns (2009: 282–285) there is little consensus about the naming and definition
of translation strategies. The terms used here are taken from entries in the Encyclopedia of
Translation Studies (Baker & Saldanha 2009).
12 Further examples of relay translation are reported in Palmer (2019: 123, 129), but without any
discussion of its implications for translation practices.
13 For example, the names that reflect the changing political status of a place over the last 100 years
alone: Kaliningrad, Königsberg, Królowiec, Karaliaučius. The entire 450 pages of Garde (2004)
are devoted to a discussion of the significance of name choice in different languages and dialects
in Balkan nations. See also Dragovic-Drouet (2007: 38).
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15
News translation strategies
Introduction
Translation is present at all stages of news production, from the moment the information
is generated until the transmission of the final product to the destined audience. News
media are key in this process due to their dual function: selecting and broadcasting –
selecting and filtering the news they transmit, giving it a specific style and language in
accordance with the target audience, as well as culturally and ideologically marking the
news items. The translation activity generated by mass media should be considered one
more piece in the complex process of news reporting given that these companies use trans-
lation not to present translated texts in the traditional sense of the word, but rather to
produce new information that responds to the expectations of the local audience and to
the interests (economic, political, ideological, etc.) of the communications group.
News stories that are translated for new audiences undergo transformation and
manipulation processes in which translation
is one element in a complex set of processes whereby information is transposed from

one language into another and then edited, rewritten, shaped and repackaged in a
new context, to such a degree that any clear distinction between source and target
ceases to be meaningful.
(Bielsa & Bassnett 2009: 11)
Hence, translation in mass media generates texts which are far from what has traditionally
been considered an accurate translation that is true to the original. This fact has drawn
the attention of the academic world and numerous studies have focused on the analysis
and description of the transformations that translated news stories undergo, showing the
different practices and strategies used to adapt the original texts to the functional and
ideological needs of the receiving media outlet and to the new audiences. The sociological
implications are clear: a significant portion of the news circulating on a global scale has
been translated and these translated texts help form the opinions of the readers, actively
232 DOI: 10.4324/9781003221678-18

influencing the way in which they perceive the world that surrounds them. Therefore it is
important to know the mechanisms used by the media to translate news, the reasons they
use them and what results they produce.
News translation is heavily influenced by the news production processes operating
in media organizations. These determine both the way in which the translation process
is carried out and how journalistic messages are redrafted for a specific audience. To
account for the transformation processes in news translation, different concepts, such
as gatekeeping, transediting, recontextualization, localization and rewriting, have been
suggested. These concepts will be reviewed below.
Gatekeeping, embedded in journalistic routines, is defined by communication studies
as ‘the process of selecting, writing, editing, positioning, scheduling, repeating and other-
wise massaging information to become news’ (Shoemaker, Vos & Reese 2009: 73). Those
who translate news also function as gatekeepers, in other words, they act as filters selecting
which information elements to disseminate and how. According to Fujii (1988: 36), these
journalistic translators carry out four gatekeeping functions:
1. Controlling the quantity of message, i.e. cutting the original;

2. Message transforming, i.e. altering the expressions of the original;
3. Message supplementing, i.e. adding expressions/information to the original;
4. Message reorganization, i.e. changing the structure of the original.
Fujii (1988: 37) argues that ‘such large-scale message manipulation certainly goes beyond
the work of mere translation’. Contrary to Fujii, Vuorinen (1995: 170) proposes that these
‘gatekeeping operations, such as deletion, addition, substitution, or reorganisation, be
considered part and parcel of the normal textual operations performed in any translation,
and particularly in news translation, in order to produce functionally adequate target
texts for a given use’. This role of journalistic translators as selectors and manipulators
of information (or gatekeepers) is a recurring theme for numerous researchers in that field
(for a critical evaluation, see Valdeón 2016).
Another concept used to refer to news translation is transediting. This term, coined
by Stetting (1989: 371), is described as ‘a pragmatic translation strategy which involves
radical editing’. For this scholar, editing has always been a part of translating. The process
of transediting entails translating and editing at the same time and covers the following
three areas:
1. Adaption to a standard of efficiency in expression: ‘cleaning-up transediting’;

2. Adaption to the intended function of the translated text in its new social contexts: ‘situ-
ational transediting’;
3. Adaption to the needs and conventions of the target culture: ‘cultural transediting’
(Stetting 1989: 377–378).
For researchers like Chen (2009: 204), the gatekeeping process encompasses transediting.
However, Valdeón (2016) defends that translation in the journalistic field involves an
important gatekeeping component that takes place at two different levels: an institutional
level and an individual level. He believes that in news production, the process of selection
known as gatekeeping is on a higher level than translation:
233
At the first level, the media select the material that can or should be translated. This
happens at an institutional level, so it would occur before the translation. The jour-
nalist-translator appears at the second level, and his or her role involves selecting
the information to be disseminated by the medium. At this level the agent is an
individual who makes more personal decisions with respect to omissions, additions,
adaptations, etc.
(2016: 39–40)
The translated news must function in its new sociocultural context and for that reason
media professionals not only filter, translate and edit; they also recontextualize for a
local media outlet and its audience. Verschueren (2007: 79–80) states that the process of
recontextualization of texts ‘affects their meaning, function and reception: a translated text
not only involves linguistic displacement but also contextual/cultural dislocation’. Obvious
processes of recontextualization occur in the translation of news and other journalistic
texts. In these processes, messages are transformed and information is presented from a
different perspective. As Schäffner & Bassnett (2010: 8) point out, ‘recontextualisation
always involves transformation, determined by goals, values and interests’ of the new con-
tent into which the information is being recontextualized.
The process of translated news transformation has also been associated with the
concept of localization. Pym (2004: 4) considers news to be a localized product: ‘The
foreign news we read in the local press can legitimately be seen as a localisation of foreign-
language texts, at some point transformed by the international agencies, and transformed
in ways that go beyond endemic notions of translation.’
Lastly, the process of rewriting has also been used to explain the transformations of
translated news. Rewriting, with or without translation, constitutes a frequent practice in
journalism. Hernando (1990: 57) describes it as a collaborative text production process
in which one or more editors rewrite information based on data from other journalists.
Bielsa and Bassnett note that ‘journalistic rewritings are the form in which news is
made available to readers worldwide’ (2009: 57). Translated news is rewritten for a par-
ticular audience, updated, adapted to their interests, following the textual conventions
of the receiving culture and with the marked ideological slant of the media outlet that
reproduces it. The process of rewriting is present in all journalistic products in which
translation is used: news from the international agencies ‘undergoes a process of rewriting
in the national language before it is once again distributed to newspapers, radio and tele-
vision’ (Lomheim 2002: 184); news produced by foreign correspondents is a result of
their intercultural mediation (Hautanen 2008); news from the international press which
has been translated by a national newspaper is rewritten for its new readers (Hernández
Guerrero 2009), to mention only a few.
These processes involved in the translation of news require the use of a series of
operations or strategies on the part of the journalists-translators. Numerous studies have
described and analysed the strategies utilized in news translation and their effects on news
production. We will examine these in the following section.
Principal strategies in news translation

In the processes of transformation and manipulation in news translation, journalists-
translators use strategies to adapt the information to their target audiences. The concept
234
of strategy in translation studies has been affected by the confusing use of terminology
and by the different denominations established in translation theory (for an overview,
see Chesterman 1997; Molina & Hurtado Albir 2002; Gil Bardaji 2009; Gambier 2010).
Terms such as procedures, techniques, norms, tactics, methods… occasionally function as
synonyms for strategy while at other times they refer to different concepts. As a result, the
term strategy is being used to reference both the macro-level decisions adopted in transla-
tion as well as the micro-level decisions. However, as Gil Bardaji (2009: 165) notes, the use
of ‘translation strategies’ has become widespread among those researching the translation
process, and has become practically the most widely used term. It is also the term most
widely used in the area of news translation, above all by scholars using English.
In this chapter, we have adopted the terminological and conceptual proposal of
Schjoldager (2008: 67), who prefers to talk about ‘strategies’, and distinguishes between
macrostrategies and microstrategies. Her use of these two terms is rather similar to
Chesterman’s (1997: 87–91) use of global and local strategies. Macrostrategies (or macro-
textual strategies) relate to the overall plan of the translator, whereas microstrategies focus
on how to solve specific translation problems in relation to words, phrases and sentences, in
other words, individual decisions made at the micro-textual level. The distinction between
these two poles can already be observed in some studies in the area of news translation
(see Scammell 2018; Chaal 2019).
Macrostrategies in news translation

In the field of journalism, information can be transmitted with different styles or different
intentions, but the underlying objective is always that the audience understands the
message efficiently and with maximum clarity. Consequently, the macro-textual strategies
used seek to compose journalistic messages that are easily and quickly understood by a
wide audience. In news production, journalists follow social and professional practices,
which are not independent of the target audience’s expectations and cultural preferences.
For this reason, news translation is heavily influenced by the processes and demands of
journalism and by the linguistic framework specific to each cultural community. These
factors influence how translations are carried out (Hernández Guerrero 2005: 159).
The different audiences prefer to receive the information in their own language and in
the way that they are accustomed. Thus, in news translation the dominant macrostrategy
is domestication, as illustrated in different studies (see Bassnett 2005; Bielsa & Bassnett
2009; Hernández Guerrero 2009; or Holland 2013, among others).
Communication scholars were the first to introduce the notion of ‘domestication’ into
news production studies. Gurevitch et al. (1991) in their European study of international
news provide a picture of how international news is ‘domesticated’. They state that, ‘in
order to be judged newsworthy, an event must be anchored in a narrative framework that
is already familiar to and recognizable by newsmen as well as by audiences’ (quoted in
Clausen 2004: 28). In an investigation of the production and output of international
broadcast news in Japan, Clausen (2004) mentions ‘domestication’ to refer to processes of
making information comprehensible to audiences in a given culture. Her study emphasizes
the domestication aspects of international news production through an analysis of strat-
egies of communication at four levels, namely the global, national, organizational and pro-
fessional levels of influence. In Clausen’s words (2004: 41), two main factors support the
notion of ‘domestication’ across levels: ‘first, an international effort to make information
235
understandable to national audiences, which was incorporated into professional mental

scripts and models for news production; second, contextual differences at the national,
organisational and professional levels caused news content to differ’.
In translation studies the concept of domestication is inexorably linked to Venuti’s well-
known dichotomy (1995): domestication and foreignization. Venuti describes domesti-
cation as the prevailing strategy in English literary translation; this entails translating
using a transparent, fluid and invisible style as a model so as to reduce foreign traces in
the text as much as possible. Conversely, foreignization consists in giving special import-
ance to linguistic and cultural differences in the original text and reflecting them in the
translated text. This dichotomy has spread from literary translation to other areas, such as
news translation, where the concept of domestication is used to indicate decisions made,
both at an institutional and an individual level, to produce fluent, transparent texts that
conform to the expectations and reading habits of the foreign audience. In the words
of Bassnett (2005: 127), in the field of news translation the tendency to acculturation
(domestication) prevails in news reporting. Bassnett argues that acculturation is essential
because foreignization is detrimental to understanding. Her analysis of translations of
the speeches made by Saddam Hussein and a statement by an al-Qaida group published
in British media show how deliberately highlighting foreign elements serves not to make
us more aware of what they are saying, but rather to emphasize their strangeness and
reinforce the distance that separates the Western world from such figures. Translating
so closely as to preserve the foreignness reinforces negative perceptions. In a subsequent
investigation, Bielsa & Bassnett (2009: 10) establish that ‘the dominant strategy is absolute
domestication, as material is shaped in order to be consumed by the target audience, so
has to be tailored to suit their needs and expectations’.
Microstrategies in news translation

The communicative purposes of news texts also determine the use of domesticating
translation strategies at the textual micro-level. As shown earlier, journalistic material is
restructured, rewritten and remodelled by the media, with an established editorial policy,
so it functions in a new linguistic and cultural context. An important part of the research
on news translation focuses on exploring translation strategies and their effects. The
strategies employed by the journalists-translators are the same strategies we encounter
in other forms of translation, but the scholars in this area have underscored a series of
common strategies, that are regularly used in news translation. Unfortunately, as regards
the denomination of these strategies, there is not a clear and consensual terminology and
we often find several terms to refer to the same concept (i.e. omission/deletion; summary/
synthesis/compression; substitution/change, etc.).
As observed by Van Dijk (1988: 114–119), reporters in news production utilize a series
of strategies for source text processing: selection, reproduction, summarizing, local trans-
formation (addition, deletion, permutation, and substitution), stylistic and rhetorical (re-)
formulation. Van Dijk understands ‘permutation’ to be the reorganization of informa-
tion by relevance criteria: ‘important information may be moved forward (up), or unim-
portant information may be moved backward (down)’. Inspired by this list, especially
in the operations involved in local transformation, some journalists-translators have
identified and described the principal strategies used in international news translation.
Thus, as already mentioned above, Vuorinen (1995: 170) proposes four ‘gatekeeping
236
operations’–deletion, addition, substitution, and reorganization –in order to produce

functionally adequate target texts. This typology is the same offered by Hursti (2001) who
draws on his experience working in news agencies.
These four strategies have been supported by product-based studies. On the basis of
their textual observations, and using different approaches, some scholars have described
the domesticating strategies that allow the journalists-translators to reshape the source
texts to cater to the needs and interests of the foreign readers and to comply with the
target news companies’ ideological stances. With the following non-exhaustive list of
works we observe that these analyses, focussed on different media and with different lan-
guage pairs, often present similar findings, with slight variations.
Thus, Valdeón (2005), in his analysis of a corpus of news stories from BBC World
translated into Spanish by BBC Mundo, identifies omissions and additions as the strat-
egies most used while at the same time adding ‘permutation’ to refer to the transform-
ation of the linguistic input that the writers and/or translators encounter in order to
adapt it to the needs, policies or ideology of the company they work for. In subse-
quent research, Valdeón (2007a) examines two articles translated into Spanish, one
in BBC Mundo and the other in CNN en Español. Both texts underwent thorough
transformations, such as the reorganization of the news events (including the order
of the paragraphs) as well as additions, omissions and substitutions. These strategies
allowed the journalists to imbue the final texts with the ideological position of the
journalists themselves or of the corporation they work for. In a different study, Bani
(2006) analyses the translations of Internazionale, an Italian weekly magazine that
publishes translations from newspapers from all over the world, and points out some
of the most common strategies: cutting or summarizing; inclusion of explanations;
generalization and substitution. Hernández Guerrero (2006) centres on translations
into Spanish of news items from the French newspaper Libération and considers amp-
lification (addition), compression and omission to be the strategies most often used in
news translation. In a comparative analysis of news stories published in Newsweek and
Newsweek Hankuk Pan (Korean edition), Kang (2007) underlines the following strat-
egies: omission, addition, generalization, particularization and re-perspectivization.
Loupaki’s (2010) study, based on Greek translations of English news articles,
highlights these main strategies adopted by the translators: literal translation, neu-
tralization, addition, explicitation, and omission. Chen (2011) focuses on English-
Chinese news transediting in the Taiwanese press. Findings showed the use of several
strategies, including selection, deletion, addition, combination, synthesis, abridgement
and recomposition. Putri (2019), with data collected from an online media, VICE
Indonesia, compares Indonesian source texts and their English target texts and here
the transformation of the message is carried out using strategies such as recompos-
ition/change of paragraph order, deletion, summarizing, and addition.
In their ethnographic approach to translation practices in some of the major agencies –
Reuters, AFP and IPS –Bielsa & Bassnett (2009) observed and described their internal
operation, interviewed the journalists and analysed translations. These scholars veri-
fied that translation can involve all kinds of textual manipulation, including synthesis,
omission, explication and a host of other textual strategies. Particularly, they note that
omission is a key strategy in the translation of news items (2009: 8). According to their
data, these are the most frequent modifications to which the source text can typically be
subjected in the process of translation:
237
• Change of title and lead (informative subtitles)

• Elimination of unnecessary information
• Addition of important background information
• Change in the order of paragraphs
• Summarizing information (2009: 64)
We can clearly see then that the use of strategies to domesticate foreign news for a target
audience is a very common tendency. However, there are scholars who have described
strategies of foreignization in some concrete elements of the news, such as proper names
and cultural references. Kwieciñski (1998), for example, in his analysis of a corpus of
English-Polish translations in two genres –voice-over (media programmes) and news art-
icles (Forum magazine) –demonstrates a marked dominance of highly foreignizing strat-
egies in the translation of culture-specific items, such as transference of culturally and/or
linguistically opaque items with no explanatory glosses. For this scholar, this fact indicates
that originally opaque Anglo-American items are rapidly absorbed by the Polish audi-
ence and consequently ‘deforeignized’. Scammell (2018) has examined strategies currently
used by journalists at Reuters to translate extralinguistic culture-bound references. Her
data showed a tendency towards domesticating translation strategies, but also a small
percentage of foreignizing strategies, such as retention (loanwords), specification (keeping
extralinguistic culture-bound references in their untranslated form thereby making them
more specific), and direct translation (calque) (2008: 61–64). Chaal’s (2019) study, based
on a comparative analysis of Arabic translations of English news articles, describes the
most common domesticating strategies (omission, addition, explication, substitution, nat-
uralization). However, she identifies a foreignizing strategy, ‘preservation’, which consists
of retaining proper names such as names of local institutions, journals, and applications
or projects developed by institutions or centres during the translation process: ‘It is used
to keep the local colour. Indeed, when reporting news, the journalist/translator needs to
preserve some foreign elements since the news represents an event that happens abroad’
(2019: 25).
Finally, Matsushita (2016, 2019) introduced a new element in the study of translation
strategies by applying risk management theory (Pym 2015) in her thesis on the decision-
making process of English-Japanese news translation. Seen from this perspective, trans-
lation strategies are ways of managing risk and not ways of achieving equivalence as
traditionally claimed. In her opinion, the strategies of risk management –risk taking, risk
avoidance, and risk transfer –offer a far more subtle and dynamic view of how translators
make decisions, i.e. how they choose a strategy. In a later work, Pym & Matsushita (2018)
identified a fourth strategy in news translation: risk mitigation, which tends to be deployed
to handle isolated points of difficulty. They use the term risk mitigation ‘to describe situ-
ations where the translator accepts one kind of risk but attempts in some way to protect
against the possible negative consequences of that risk by incurring a second risk, without
actually removing the initial risk’ (2018: 2). We see this, for instance, when the journalists-
translators choose to omit the words used in quotes when the words were difficult or the
phrasing complicated in order to avoid or mitigate the risk of making the translation
difficult to understand. These scholars consider that the use of strategies like mitigation
‘should challenge the huge binarisms [foreignizing/domesticating] that would classify
whole translations as being of one kind or the other’ (2018: 15).
238
Specific elements of news: headlines and quotations

The substantial changes that occur in the process of translation sometimes make a com-
parison impossible. Add to that the fact that many scholars are faced with the total or par-
tial absence of a traceable source text (see Davier & van Doorslaer 2018). These problems
have led some scholars to focus on the analysis of the translation strategies used in spe-
cific elements of the news, which, besides being easy to detect, permit the comparison of
parts of the target text with corresponding parts of the source text. This is the case with
headlines, key segments at the top of the news item, and quotations, which in journalism
are presented as faithful reproductions of the original speech.
Translation of news headlines

An article in the Spanish newspaper El País on 23 January 2019 about Brazilian president
Jair Bolsonaro’s first participation in the World Economic Forum in Davos, which was
translated in the Brazilian edition,1 sparked controversy among Spanish and Brazilian
readers who sent numerous complaints to the press ombudsman, while hundreds or
thousands of others online branded the newspaper as ‘manipulative’ (Yárnoz 2019). The
motive was the radical change in the title of the translation:
Spanish edition headline:

Bolsonaro anima a los ejecutivos de Davos a invertir en el nuevo Brasil
[Back translation: Bolsonaro urges Davos executives to invest in the new Brazil]
Brazilian edition headline:
O breve discurso de Bolsonaro decepciona em Davos
[Back translation: Bolsonaro’s brief speech disappoints in Davos]
The editors changed the headline of the Portuguese language edition based on last-minute
additions to the final translated article that included information about the negative
reactions to the president’s speech, such as the fall of the Brazilian stock exchange or the
comments made by the Nobel Prize winner in Economics, Robert Shiller. The new angle
of the news story, after updating the information, justified the creation of a different head-
line for the Brazilian edition of El País.
These types of changes are very frequent and common occurrences in news transla-
tion. But what is not so common is that the readers are actually aware of the transform-
ations produced during the translation of the information and that, as in the previous
example, they accuse the media of manipulation. Media in the digital age must familiarize
themselves with this new scenario resulting from multilingualism and the global access to
information.
Headlines are key segments of the news story. They serve three functions: they cap-
ture the readers’ attention, they provide a succinct view of the content and they serve to
identify the article. The perusal of many news stories starts with the headlines and, at
times, it goes no further since the reader, for whatever reason (lack of interest, time…),
does not continue reading. However, although headlines can function independently, they
are labels that are semantically linked to the information and its context. The way the
headline and lead are translated is influenced by the rest of the article in terms of content
translated, paragraph configuration, additions, omissions, etc.
239
The numerous articles on the translation of news headlines, between different languages
and in different media, have shown that many factors (informative, linguistic, cultural,
ideological, commercial…) have an influence on their translation and the transformations
they undergo, as well as the tendency to create new headlines instead of translating them.
In Sidiropoulou’s words (1995: 260), ‘headlines of news in the press are only rarely trans-
ferred intact into the target language’.
Petronienė & Žvirblytė (2012: 72), analysing the degree of equivalence between 100
English headlines and their Lithuanian translations, conclude that ‘absolute equivalence
is quite hard to be achieved [sic] in the translation of headlines of online news articles’.
Other researchers prefer to talk about rewriting or recontextualization. Kaniklidou &
House (2013), in their work on translated headlines of news articles from English into
Greek published in the newspaper I Kathimerini, note that ‘translated news headlines are
the product of re-capturing, reframing and re-narrating a news story originally belonging
to a different narrative and textual space’. Drawing on translated headlines between
English and Chinese, Zhang (2013) observes that ‘global news headlines involve working
with discourse that is heavily mediated and recontextualised, in which the transeditors put
their own knowledge and values into the transedited texts’.
Every language has its own conventions for headlining news stories and the target
audiences are accustomed to reading headlines that follow the textual conventions preva-
lent in their media context. This, coupled with recontextualization during the translation
process, leads to a preference for substituting the original headline for a new one instead
of translating it. This has been shown in studies of different language pairs such as those
of, for example, Sidiropoulou (1995), who compares the translations of news headlines
in the Greek press with their English originals; Samaniego (2003), in a corpus of English
newspaper headlines and their published translation into Spanish; Hernández Guerrero
(2004), who focuses on headlines translated from French by the Spanish press, or Bani
(2013), in a corpus of journalistic texts translated from Spanish into Italian.
When journalists-translators do not create new headlines, the overwhelming tendency
is to use domestication strategies like the naturalization of translated headlines in an effort
to avoid a feeling of disturbing strangeness among new readers. This is mentioned both by
Reque de Coulon (2002) in her analysis of news headlines from Le Monde diplomatique
translated to Spanish, and by Vella Ramírez & Martínez López (2012) in their work on the
translation of headlines from Spanish to English in the editions of El País.
Some scholars have also commented on the ideological component of translated news
headlines from different perspectives. Kontos & Sidiropoulou, (2012) use narrative theory
to explain how ideological assumptions influence how news headlines are translated. In
their analysis of 200 news headlines of English news stories translated into Greek, they
found that the headlines they examined were used to communicate different messages
than the original texts. Ali (2010) carried out a comparative descriptive analysis of sev-
enty English language headlines and their Arabic translations gathered from the Arab
press and the international press and news agencies during the second Iraq war. As her
data showed, lexical selection, style, and rhetoric in news headline writing and translation
is not accidental or arbitrary but deliberate, which makes these aspects of news headline
discourse a portal through which hidden opinions or ideologies may surface. Đorđević
(2020) has focused on the study of discursive strategies, specifically the discursive strategy
of argumentation, in a corpus of headlines and leads from 357 news articles published
by Reuters and their respective translations in online newspapers in Serbian. Her analysis
240
has shown that many Serbian news outlets tend to adapt news in order to confirm their
political affiliation to the government so as to ensure their survival in the media market.
Other researchers have adopted a critical discourse analysis (CDA) framework.
Valdeón (2007b) has compared the headlines used in the BBC, CNN and Reuters internet
services in both English and Spanish and has revealed the ideological implications for the
reader from the changes introduced in translation. In another study on BBC Mundo’s
news web texts and their source English BBC World reports, Valdeón (2008) discusses the
use of headlines in the source and target texts and studies the strategies used in the main
bodies of the reports, notably omissions, additions and permutations. Al-Shehari (2007)
investigates the strategies used by an international Arab news producer (aljazeera. net)
to translate into English news stories published originally in Arabic on its website and
shows how certain ideologies can be signalled through the translation of news headlines.
Khanjan et al. (2013) analyse the different ideological apparatuses involved in the process
of translation in English news headlines with their parallel Persian translations published
in the Iranian media or news agencies. By using strategies such as maintaining, manipu-
lating or excluding original headlines in the target news stories, translators show their (dis)
approval of the ideological content of the source headlines. Guangjun & Huanyao (2015)
explore the ideological factors underlying the disparity between English news headlines
and their Chinese translations and analyse the translation strategies adopted (substitution,
omission…). They argue that in the Chinese translations of the English news headlines,
the translators’ priority is on producing translations suitable to target readers and censors’
ideology, rather than linguistic equivalents.
Translation of quotes
Another element which has drawn the attention of scholars working in the area of news
translation is quotes. Quotes are statements, words spoken or written by those featured in
news stories. Attributing statements to their sources constitutes one resource to increase
truthfulness and credibility in news rhetoric. The transcription of statements from the
context of enunciation to the journalistic context is achieved via direct or indirect quotes.
Using these tools we can accredit the source with what he or she said or wrote, either
exactly (using a direct quote) or with paraphrase (indirect).
Quotes in other languages are presented to readers as if they had been pronounced or
written in their own language. But in reality they must be translated (Schäffner 2008: 3–
4). Blackledge (2005) argues that in addition to subtle linguistic transformations such as
adapting a quote to make it fit the syntactic structure of a sentence, recontextualization
also often involves the ‘filtering of some meaning potentials of a discourse’ (quoted in
Schäffner 2008: 4), which is reflected in omissions, additionsand reformulations of the
initial text in the new context. This also holds true for recontextualization processes which
include translation.
In the context of news translation, direct quotes have drawn the attention of scholars
since they offer ‘an interesting case for the comparison of international news texts and
their translations’ (Vuorinen 1999: 76). Some of the studies analysing the manner in
which foreign-language quotations are translated have looked at news agencies (see Bielsa
& Bassnett 2009; Davier 2012, 2017; and Scammell 2018). The nature of agency work
places a fundamental importance on direct sources. Moreover, news agencies also insist
on quoting these sources whenever possible, rather than paraphrasing them, note Bielsa &
241
Bassnett (2009: 71). These researchers underscore the fact that journalists are instructed
to translate quotes in an idiomatic way in general, which implies the use of domesticating
news translation strategies.
Davier (2012) notes that journalists from agencies usually display a very flexible con-
cept of translation, except in two cases –signed dispatches and quotes –due to the import-
ance of the author in these types of texts. On these occasions, journalists apply a more
literal method of translation. This reproduction of the source text almost verbatim is due
to a fear of mistranslation: journalists feel that it would be just as wrong to misrepresent
the thoughts of a politician who will be read in printed or online press. Davier (2012: 89)
mentions that, when it is not possible to translate a quote literally or when the literal trans-
lation seems awkward, journalists usually opt for one of these two solutions: they either
omit the quote or they include it using paraphrase. So it is very probable that, in translated
or edited dispatches, we will find more indirect discourse than in the source texts.
Scammell (2018) examines strategies currently used to translate quotation in Reuters
and confirms that the strategy used most often in her corpus is domestication. This ten-
dency is influenced by translation guidelines in the Reuters Handbook of Journalism, which
instruct journalists to translate quotes idiomatically and avoid foreign language. Journalists
are instructed to translate in a natural and comprehensible way, except when ‘a statement
is tendentious’ in which case literal translation is preferred: ‘When translating quotes from
another language into English, do so in an idiomatic way rather than with pedantic literalness.
However, give a literal translation if a statement is tendentious and likely to be the subject of
close analysis’ (Reuters Handbook of Journalism, quoted in Scammell 2018: 68). Scammell
proposes updating the guidance in the Handbook and defends the ethical potential of a
foreignized approach given the key role news translation plays as a tool for intercultural com-
munication and in the implications of the translation process for the accuracy of quotation.
Other authors have analysed how newspapers translate quotes. Chen (2009) focuses on
news texts from the New York Times and the Washington Post and their Chinese versions
from three newspapers in Taiwan to explore ideological manipulation. The main variance
between the target newspapers lies in their overall quotation contents: each paper used strat-
egies like selection, addition and deletion of quotations in the target texts to reflect their
dissimilar ideological perspectives. In this study, Chen (2009: 208) reveals how the target
newspapers’ ideologies systematically manipulate the seemingly ‘objective’ quotations:
Quotation is typically conceived of as ‘impartial’ reproduction of the cited sources’
messages or ‘objective’ transmission of facts in the words of referenced sources.
However, quotation is usually adopted and reproduced by journalists to implicitly
convey certain preferred interpretations or to render support to particular viewpoints
[…]. The final version of a quotation appearing in a news text may have already
undergone reinterpretations by a series of people. Its original communicative inten-
tion and purpose are no longer kept intact.
Applying risk management as a theoretical framework for analysing news translation
practices, Matsushita (2014) examines translations of US President Obama’s speeches by
five major newspapers in Japan. The target texts were taken from direct quotes which
were bracketed with quotation marks indicating that the quoted content was a faithful
reproduction of what the President actually said. The translation strategy most frequently
used was omission, ahead of other strategies such as addition, substitution, paraphrasing,
reorganization and explicitation. This scholar concluded that omission seems to be a
242
common strategy when managing translator’s risks and some of the unethical or non-
standard practices of using omission were better explained by applying the concept of
risk management.
Perrin & Ehrensberger-Dow (2018) have developed their own strand of research for
the study of the translation of quotes, using a multi-method approach which they call
‘progression analysis’, which combines ethnographic observation and interviews, com-
puter recordings and cue-based retrospective verbal protocols. Focusing on quotes in
languages journalists may not be familiar with or can hardly understand at a local Swiss
television station, Tele Züri, these scholars observed that in television news production
the journalists resort to strategies such as (1) altering quotes in voice-over translation to
achieve dramaturgical objectives inherent in the original quote; (2) solving a translation
problem by talking about it with a non-linguist colleague (e.g. a cutter, who was working
on the pictures for the same item); or (3) focusing on translating only the key sentences of
the speech to allow their audience to hear the original language. Among the translation
practices observed they mention the reformulation of the source text language to another
language variety in order to meet audience design standards, as well as the purposeful
omission of utterances from sources that journalists do not understand or do not have
the resources to translate in favour of other sources, such as choosing English instead
of Arab quotes. Perrin & Ehrensberger-Dow (2018: 179) confirm that during the trans-
lation of quotes the journalists ‘decide which voices are to be heard in their important
function as gatekeepers who control which messages the public receives’. They also note
that journalists’ linguistic awareness conditions the translation practices and strategies
adopted.
In a subsequent investigation, Haapenen & Perrin (2019) propose the term ‘translingual
quoting’ to refer to the process of news-writing in which the original discourse is translated
during quoting. From the progression analysis approach, they focus on the practices of
the journalists who work in news production in Swiss television newsrooms. Their findings
show two types of translingual quoting: (1) translating ready-made quotes and (2) trans-
lating interview utterances.
The news media have changed in the digital age with the irruption of new techno-
logical means, methods and tools. In this new journalistic context, new discursive
practices have emerged, such as the new textual convention of embedding social media
content as quotations into news items. Hernández Guerrero (2020) has analysed how
foreign tweets are presented to audiences and how they are translated when inserted
in news texts. Examining the articles from the Universo Trump [Trump Universe] blog
published by the Spanish digital newspaper El País, she has found that when journalists
use English tweets as quotes the following translation strategies are used: paraphrase,
literal translation or no translation, with a clear preference for paraphrase or indirect dis-
course. Furthermore, the translation of tweets as quotes in news reports, especially when
accompanied by a screenshot of the original tweet –a production habit that is more and
more widespread –makes the use of translation more obvious and more visible in the
transmission of information.
Conclusion
As we have seen in the previous sections, translating news involves the transformation
and manipulation of the originals to create a new text, specifically suited to the needs
243
of the publication in which it appears and the readers to which it is targeted. Faced
with the necessity of making information comprehensible to audiences, the macro-level
decisions adopted by the institution and individuals lead to the use of domesticating
strategies to produce information that can be read easily and quickly, and so increase
the number of recipients. At the micro-textual level, journalists-translators apply strat-
egies to adapt texts to the target context. Descriptions and analyses of these translation
strategies are abundant in news translation research and, though with a few variations,
the authors repeatedly refer to the use of these four: omission, addition, substitution,
and reorganization. These authors have also brought to light the impact of news trans-
lation strategies and their effects on the journalistic construction of reality, as well as
on public opinion.
Nevertheless, there are important challenges to be met. On the one hand, with regard
to methodological approaches. Some voices within news translation studies have pointed
out the limitations of product-oriented approaches and advocate for triangulation with
participant-centred methods. Davier, Schäffner & van Doorslaer (2018) suggest that
textual analysis on its own seems insufficient to provide a deep understanding of the
processes involved in news translation. Scholars can formulate hypotheses about trans-
lation strategies on the basis of their textual observations, but they do not know about
institutional constraints or individual competences and choices. These researchers call for
a modification of the methodological approaches to tackle news translation and propose
the triangulation of textual analysis and qualitative data collected during fieldwork. This
way, hypotheses developed during the textual analysis can only be confirmed or amended
through first-hand information gathered during fieldwork (semi-structured interviews,
non-participant observation and collection of internal documents).
On the other hand, scholars must face the changes in our digital age. Journalism is
immersed in an important transformative process. Spurred by the rise of communica-
tion technologies, new forms of journalism have arisen –citizen journalism, blogs, webs,
social networks, multimedia platforms…–and news companies, via media convergence
(newspapers + web; web + radio; or web + radio/television), are changing how content
is produced. These phenomena have led to a redefinition of the news panorama and are
transforming both the process of news production and the practices of journalists. The
implications of all of these transformations affect the ways in which the translation of
news stories is carried out. Studies have delved into this new context to analyse how the
latest news production methods are influencing translation processes and the strategies
that are used (see Davier & Conway 2019; Hernández Guerrero 2017, 2019; Hernández
Guerrero & Díaz López 2020). This new panorama in the production and broadcast of
information complicates the researchers’ work. In this regard, Caimotto (2019), analysing
the online translations of Trump’s inaugural speech published in real time on Italian
newspaper websites, highlights the difficulty that scholars face while investigating news
translation in a context in which target texts are updated repeatedly, as well as ‘the impli-
cation and effects of the different genres into which the source text is fragmented: oral,
written, subtitles, voice-over, short live posts, tweets, etc.’ (2019: 59).
The few studies done to date point to significant changes in the strategies used to trans-
late information. Thus, Davier (2019), in her analysis of the print, digital, and mobile
editions of the newspaper Le Droit –published in French in Canada –confirms that trans-
lation is avoided in audiovisual production, such as video clips, and French voices are sys-
tematically preferred over voices in English. She predicts that ‘it may reinforce the trend to
244
exclude sources in the second language’ (2019: 202). Hernández Guerrero & Díaz López
(2020) focus on the case of RT, a multimedia communication group that utilizes television
and a multilingual news platform, with editions in six languages, each with its own editing
staff. The journalists at RT constantly make use of infographics, hyperlinks, audiovisual
material, content from social media … so producing news which evolves into a true multi-
media story. The news stories on this web are brief, unsigned and their impact is based
on the information in the headlines. When these stories are switched to other languages,
the translation process is simplified: a new headline is created and the opening paragraph
(lead) is rewritten, while the rest of the elements, instead of being translated, are either
omitted or substituted for other digital content produced by the journalists at RT in the
target language. The strategy of substitution allows the company to optimize resources
and facilitates the process of production of information making it faster, an aspect which
is fundamental in digital platforms.
These studies point to a decrease of the use of translation in the transfer of informa-
tion, however it is still too early to confirm this tendency. More research is needed to dig
deeper into the new journalistic practices and the influence that media convergence is
having on news translation strategies.
Further reading
• Bassnett, S. (2005) ‘Bringing the news back home: strategies of acculturation and
foreignisation’, Language and Intercultural Communication, 5(2), pp. 120–130.
This very interesting paper debates the use of domestication and foreignization strategies
in news translation and reflects on their effects on readers.
• Bielsa, E. & Bassnett, S. (2009) Translation in Global News. London, New York:
Routledge.
An essential monograph on news translation in some of the major agencies. The authors
use ethnographic fieldwork to study all the factors involved in the transmission of infor-
mation at a global level, and look closely at the most frequent modifications in the process
of translation and its principal strategies.
• Matsushita, K. (2019) When News Travels East: Translation Practices by Japanese

Newspapers. Leuven: Leuven University Press.
This book analyses the translation practices of the Japanese press by focusing on direct
quotations appearing in news articles. The concept of risk management as a theoretical
framework for analysing the decision-making processes in news translation is applied.
• Hernández Guerrero, M. J. (2020) ‘The translation of tweets in Spanish digital

newspapers’, Perspectives, 28 (3), pp. 376–392.
This article addresses the use of new discursive practices in digital media, shows how for-
eign tweets are translated when inserted in news texts, and analyses the translation strat-
egies used by the journalists-translators.
245
Note
1 https://brasil.elpais.com
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16
Journalism and translation ethics
Georgios Floros
Introduction
There is mounting interest in the discipline of translation studies in examining journalistic
processes as a space cohabitated by translation and journalism, that is, as a hybrid space
of textual production via translation. The terms transediting (i.e. translation and editing,
Stetting 1989), news translation (see, e.g., Vuorinen 1995; Holland 2006; Bielsa & Bassnett
2009), journalistic translation and journalistic translation research (JTR, Valdeón 2015),
and journalator (i.e. journalist-translator, van Doorslaer 2012) are indicative of the way
in which news translation has been perceived, i.e. as a subfield of research within trans-
lation studies. Such perception is to be seen in the wider framework of how translation
studies has opened up to interdisciplinary and cross-disciplinary research some decades
after its formal establishment in the second half of the 20th century (see, e.g., Gambier &
van Doorslaer 2016) and of the efforts to broaden its scope of inquiry to contemporary
media studies by highlighting the specificities of news translation and applying suitable
methodologies (cf. Davier & van Doorslaer 2018; Davier, Schäffner & van Doorslaer 2018;
Schäffner 2018).
And yet, while the relationship between translation and journalism indeed dates back
to the 17th century onwards (see Espejo 2011; Valdeón 2012), it still seems to be an
asymmetrical one. All of the above terms stem from research in translation studies, not
journalism studies. In media and journalism research, the extent of the involvement of
translation in journalistic processes seems to be underestimated. Bielsa & Bassnett (2009),
van Doorslaer (2010a), van Doorslaer (2010c), Davier (2014), and Valdeón (2018) aptly
discuss this paradoxical situation; an exception is perhaps the special issue of Journalism
(Baumann, Gillespie & Sreberny 2011) on transcultural journalism and the politics
of translation. Translation is perceived by journalists simply as one of many editing
processes. For them, translation is confined to the obsolete understanding of the term as
correspondence-finding and word-for-wordism, which has long been abandoned by trans-
lation studies.
Many reasons have been suggested for this still restricted understanding of transla-
tion and its secondary position within journalism. Bielsa (2007: 135) notes that news
250 DOI: 10.4324/9781003221678-19

translation is usually ‘in the hands of journalists rather than translators’. Apparently,
there is a sort of power game at play when it comes to journalists reflecting on translation.
According to Vuorinen (cf. 1995: 163), translation is viewed by journalists as something
different from editing and from what journalists generally do. If, in addition, we consider
the fact that the translation profession does not enjoy an enhanced and recognized pos-
ition at all times, it is logical to assume that journalism, a practice which has even been
called ‘the fourth estate’, will not easily recognize synergies with this activity. Moreover,
the lack of widespread consensus within translation studies regarding the contemporary
conceptualization of translation does not favour the stability of the term so as to also
enhance its dissemination within other disciplines.
The question that arises from this rather disappointing picture is whether there are
any possibilities of establishing and reinforcing a substantial dialogue between translation
studies and journalism studies in a way that would benefit both ends. In other words, the
most important issue is not merely to enhance the image and position of translation within
journalism, but to create a space of cross-fertilization between academic disciplines. There
is by now an extensive bibliography on the interplay between translation and the news
industry from the point of view of history, outlets, strategies and agents (see the other
chapters of this part of the Handbook). This chapter will focus on translation ethics and
its possible interfaces with journalism studies, in an attempt to contribute to the debate
and open up a fruitful dialogue building on previous work, where it was asserted that
the particularity of news translation is constituted primarily through the norms

governing it. As with any contemplation of norms, we therefore need to engage in a
discussion […] of the ethical. In other words, the generic difference of news transla-
tion concerns the particularities of its ethics.
(Floros 2012: 929)
An overview of the interplay between journalism and

translation ethics
Translation ethics is an issue that has –less explicitly than implicitly –been discussed in
most work on news translation so far. Most studies which examine local or international
contexts of news translation (see, for example, the comprehensive overviews given in
Valdeón 2015 and Matsushita 2019) highlight drastic transformations of texts, expressed
as domestication processes, textual modifications, interlingual transformations, choices,
strategies, shifts, complex processes of change etc., which are undertaken by journalists or
journalators without being explicitly framed by theoretical accounts of translation ethics,
albeit such transformations are ethical issues par excellence. Few approaches make spe-
cific reference to theories of translation ethics to question these transformations from an
ethical perspective. Some of the most recent publications on news translation from the
standpoint of translation studies which explicitly refer to translation ethics include Floros
(2012), Talebinejad & Shahi (2017), Scammell (2018), Javandalasta, Aprina & Kirana
(2018), and Matsushita (2019). Interestingly, there is also a recent contribution from
media studies (Jaber 2016), which also examines journalistic representation processes by
specifically referring to ethical approaches that are considered standard in translation
studies. Likewise, various recently completed doctoral theses (see, e.g., van Rooyen 2019;
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Georgios Floros
Alghamdi 2019) add to the picture of translation studies contributing substantially to the
study of news reporting and production from an ethical perspective.
Floros (2012) uses the concept of ethical relativity, that is, the fluctuation of ethical
thresholds in translation as a result of subjective values and norms, to examine cases
of news translation where modifications are undertaken due to ideologically conflicting
discourses. He concludes that ‘news translation presents a case where ethical thresholds
are pushed to relatively low limits because of the subjectivity of the norms governing the
dominant part of the profession (journalistic norms)’ (2012: 937). Talebinejad & Shahi
(2017) also stress ideology as the framework in which textual distortions of various kinds
happen in the news translation corpus they study. At the same time, they assume teleo-
logical (or so-called consequentialist) models of ethics behind the action of the translators
they survey, since the choices in the corpus they examine seem to be motivated more by
the (political and historical) narratives they have embraced than by any conception of
what is the right thing to do. In this way, these publications are in line with other works
in translation studies that are implicitly touching upon theoretical approaches to ethics
when treating media and journalistic discourse. In fact, most publications studying trans-
formations in news translation use or point to narrative theory, political and sociological
theory, reception theory, various types of ideology and conflict emerging from it, as well as
to social and institutional norms and agendas to explain these transformations (see, e.g.,
Baker 2006; Conway 2006; van Leeuwen 2006; Chen 2009; the contributions in Schäffner
& Bassnett 2010 –particularly Brownlie 2010; Loupaki 2010; van Doorslaer 2010b; Chen
2011; Harding 2012; Kontos & Sidiropoulou 2012; Luo 2015). The latest addition from
the standpoint of social theory makes reference to what has been termed new cosmopolit-
anism, as an ethical approach to openness to the world and to others (see Bielsa 2016a,b).
The contribution by Javandalasta, Aprina & Kirana (2018) also moves along these lines in
reporting on a case of mistranslated news on the Copenhagen shooting in 2015.
Jaber (2016), writing with a background in both translation and communication/media
studies, examines ethical questions of translation and textual manipulation through
studying representations of the Syrian humanitarian disaster in The Guardian and The
New York Times, by drawing both on narrative theory as well as representation theory. He
calls for a more systematic inclusion of translation ethics in journalistic and media codes
of practice. To support this call, Jaber also quotes Darwish’s (2009) survey of more than
370 codes of ethics and codes of practice adopted by different global media, where it was
found that
none of these surveyed codes mentions translation as a fundamental factor in

ensuring accuracy and objectivity. Darwish also confirms that none of these codes
of ethics of journalism and media associations in developed countries pay attention
to translation in the news production process.
(Jaber 2016: 74)
The representations of the Syrian humanitarian disaster in The Guardian and The New York
Times reported by Jaber form a felicitous case where translation ethics has indeed been
observed by news outlets, contrary to many other reports in the relevant bibliography
about translation ethics having been neglected; hence the optimistic attitude towards a
synergy between translation and media ethics. The usefulness of such synergy notwith-
standing, it seems necessary to note that this observed case might have been the result of
252
the stance adopted in advance by the reporting journalist(s) or the media outlet (see also
newspaper positioning and personal positioning of the journalist in Brownlie 2010: 34).
In other words, it would be interesting to investigate to what extent the journalists were
(specifically) aware of any specific form of translation ethics beyond the ethical codes of
practice in their profession, and to what extent their translation ethics is the result of such
awareness or simply of the possibility that the data happened to serve the stance they had
adopted in advance.
A rather different approach is adopted by Matsushita (2019), who examines pure
instances of translation within journalistic work by focusing on direct quotations, as
these –contrary to hybrid instances which question the notion of a source text in news
translation –uphold the pre-existence of a source text and allow for translational analysis
in the traditional sense. In her comprehensive account of translation in news production
in Japan, Matsushita touches upon issues of translation ethics from a different perspec-
tive, being particularly interested in textual distortions. These distortions mainly refer to
instances of news editing which do not seem to be due to political or ideological reasons,
as the cases discussed above. For such instances, Matsushita largely adopts the theoretical
framework of risk management and Pym’s extensive work (see Pym 2004, 2008, 2015) on
how risk management can be applied within translation studies and provides a consequen-
tialist explanation for ethical issues in news translation, in the sense that many distortions
are the result of weighing various professional and economic risk factors such as securing
a job position or the high circulation of a news outlet. This can often lead journalators to
incur one kind of risk (e.g. distortion) in order to reduce another (e.g. viability), as risk
mitigation (see also Pym & Matsushita 2018). The consequentialist type of ethics applied
by Matsushita is an important addition to the discussion of ethics in news translation, as
it contributes to understanding the particularities of translation ethics when translation is
embedded in other professions.
While the approaches above –again, implicitly or explicitly –adopt a domesticating
reality for news translation, an innovative contribution comes from Scammell (2018), who
challenges the domestication norm in news translation and proposes a foreignizing stance.
She views foreignization, or at least a degree of foreignization, as an ethical alternative to
the domesticating norm, an alternative which, on the one hand, can ‘increase the reader’s
contact with the foreign source language and culture’ and, on the other hand, may ‘help
journalists to be alert to and counter accuracy issues when translating reported speech’
(2018: 75). To corroborate her approach, Scammell draws on the Reuters Handbook of
Journalism, and challenges their domesticating approach to the translation of culture-
specific concepts and quotations by suggesting a foreignizing update. Scammell’s approach
is important in that it complements an array of ethical stances and approaches from trans-
lation studies in news reporting.
Very often, the implicit or explicit discussion of the ethical dimension of translation as
used in news production happens not by reference to translation ethics, but by reference
to journalistic ethics, reporting ethics, or –more generally –media ethics. Representative
examples of this broader view of ethical issues of translation within news production
are van Doorslaer (2010b), Baumann, Gillespie & Sreberny (2011), and Chen (2011).
Therefore, when contemplating the role of translation ethics in news translation, an
important question concerns the way ethical issues are understood by professionals and
academics within both journalism studies and translation studies. Are the processes of
translation as well as the nature and extent of textual manipulations considered to be
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Georgios Floros
matters pertaining to translation ethics or to journalism ethics? By consequence, are these

two realms overlapping or totally different? It seems that even a rudimentary comparison
of the two would benefit the discussion of translation ethics in journalism and would also
contribute to the discussion of the position of translation within journalism.
Journalism ethics vs translation ethics

Drawing only on translation ethics to discuss what kinds of ethics have been observed or
not will not offer a sufficient explanation for textual transformations, or even distortions.
Neither will a unilateral discussion of translation ethics explain why translation has a sec-
ondary position in journalism. To these ends, a comparison between the understanding of
ethics prevalent in each discipline is needed. A hovering over recent bibliography on jour-
nalism ethics reveals a number of striking facets. The first is the complete absence of any
reference to translation (as a form of journalistic practice) or to translation studies. This
is not very surprising, given that journalism ethics, (a) covers all possible instances of news
production and coverage, that is, not only international news coverage from multilingual
sources, but also local, monolingual coverage and news, and (b) the asymmetrical rela-
tionship between journalism studies and translation studies has already been pinpointed
by extensive bibliography.
The second aspect refers to the remarkable similarities that can be traced between
journalism ethics and translation ethics, both in terms of theoretical conceptualization
and practical concerns, of course without this suggesting that there are no differences
too. Important reference works on journalism and media ethics such as The Handbook of
Journalism Studies (Wahl-Jorgensen & Hanitzsch 2009), The Handbook of Mass Media
Ethics (Wilkins & Christians 2009), or the Keywords in News and Journalism Studies
(Zelizer & Allan 2010), provide an impressive array of discussions on ethical aspects of
contemporary journalism, as these discussions touch upon almost every aspect of the
theory and practice of journalism. The general spirit of the discussions is that ethical
issues in journalism studies still need to be debated in terms of theoretical consolida-
tion. Indicative examples are given by Zelizer & Allan (2010: 38), when they say that
‘[n]‌onetheless, ethics remains a disparate set of expectations and principles’, at least as
regards codes of ethics in journalism studies, and Ward (2009: 80), when he refers to
researchers in journalism studies by saying that they ‘need to develop a more adequate
epistemology of journalism in the midst of a media revolution’. These tendencies are
similar to the ones regarding ethical issues in translation studies (see, e.g., The Routledge
Handbook of Translation and Ethics by Koskinen & Pokorn 2021). The call for continuing
research on ethical issues toward more coherent and adequate frameworks for describing
ethics is plausible, since the dependence on norms and the constant emergence of new
realities make ethics a highly variable concept across time and contexts, especially in codes
of ethics (see Hafez 2002). This also seems to be the reason for the rising number of
approaches to the issue of potential universals in journalism ethics, as opposed to ethical
relativism (see, in particular, Christians 2005; Ward 2009; Christians & Cooper 2009; Ferré
2009; Elliott 2009; Krüger 2018; Quinn 2018).
The dominant ethical principles discussed in journalism ethics can roughly be
summarized as a focus on truth and objectivity (cf. Ward 2010), accuracy, impartiality,
neutrality, diversity, fairness, public accountability (cf. Zelizer & Allan 2010: 37), encour-
agement of critical consciousness (cf. Marsch 2006), and, ultimately, support of democracy
254
(cf. Elliott 2009). Some of these ethical values, such as truth and objectivity, are more trad-
itionally established ethical imperatives that are now being questioned and re-examined
in the light of new developments in journalism, mainly brought about by technological
changes in the global media landscape, media convergence, and the emergence of what
has been termed citizen journalism (see Atton 2009). For instance, Ward (2009) gives an
overview of the different ways truth and objectivity have been understood since the 19th
century in order to introduce his concept of pragmatic objectivity as a re-establishment
of objectivity in the methods of news production and presentation, not in the sense of
absence of personal opinion (i.e. impartiality and/or neutrality), the ultimate aim being to
maintain truth as ‘fidelity with the real world’ and accuracy of facts (see Zelizer & Stuart
2010: 162).
Some other ethical values mentioned above, such as public accountability and support
of democracy are now being discussed in the broader framework of social responsibility
(see, e.g., the contributions in Wilkins & Christians 2009), a theoretical concept which is
gaining wide acceptance within journalism studies today; to put it in Zelizer and Allan’s
words, ‘[t]‌oday, most journalists in democratic countries subscribe to some notion of
social responsibility’ (2010: 37). In the same vein, the conceptualization of journalism
as contributing to a superior, common good and to voicing otherness has also led to
examining various concepts of peace and otherness and their application to journalistic
practice (see, for instance, Lee 2009 and Atay 2016 on peace journalism; Szpunar 2012 on
Levinasian ethics in journalism, and Bielsa 2016b on new cosmopolitanism).
There are many striking similarities to translation ethics not only as regards the
concepts and the theorization behind them, but also as regards their trajectory within
the discipline of translation studies. The notions of accuracy, faithfulness, fidelity, loy-
alty and, above all, neutrality, which have long formed ethical imperatives of translation
practice (see Koskinen & Pokorn 2021), are comparable to the notions of truth, object-
ivity, impartiality, neutrality and fairness as found in journalism ethics. Fairness (toward
all agents involved in news production) also presents a parallel to the quest for justice, a
notion which has preoccupied translation studies especially since the sociological turn
around the beginning of the 21st century, expressed through considerations of the wider
role translators and interpreters may play within social groups and society in general.
Especially as concerns truth and objectivity (in journalism studies) and fidelity or faithful-
ness (in translation studies), these two sets of notions are similar in that they both imply
an attempt to achieve a sort of invariance to the source material. Journalists are supposed
to reproduce facts truthfully and translators are supposed to reproduce the truth of the
original they translate. Moreover, most of the ethical imperatives in translation studies
have also been challenged and re-examined since specific contexts of practice, especially
contexts of conflict and conflict mediation (see, e.g., Baker 2006; Inghilleri 2012), started
informing theoretical accounts on the nature of the mediation provided by translators and
interpreters.
From an adherence to ideal –and rather rigid –concepts which cannot always be
upheld in real life translational activity, translation studies has turned to the ideas of
self-reflexivity, accountability and responsibility, which seem to be more operational, not
least for translator and interpreter training (see Baker & Maier 2011). Such a development
has obviously taken place in journalism and media ethics as well, particularly in the con-
text of the contemporary massive turn to digital media and the emergence of alternative
and citizen journalism, which have sparked some lively debate about how to re-instate
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Georgios Floros
the seemingly lost values of responsible and accountable journalism (see Singer 2014).
Similar concerns are posed by the examination of activist and volunteer translators and
interpreters (see, for example, Boéri 2008; De Manuel Jerez 2010). It therefore comes as
no surprise that the long-debated concept of social responsibility in journalism studies
(already since the 1980s, see Culbertson 1989), also started being discussed in translation
studies, albeit only recently (cf. Drugan & Tipton 2017).
Contemporary concerns in journalism ethics have already been compared to ethics
from other realms and disciplines, showing extensive overlaps. In a truly cross-disciplinary
article, Borden & Bowers (2009) describe some important ethical tensions that journalism
shares with other professions. For instance, as regards the tension between authority and
fallibility, they write that journalists
risk looking naïve or self-serving if they do not acknowledge that they make mistakes
or even that non-professionals may sometimes have the answers. This situation creates
a tension between invoking authority and acknowledging fallibility. In this regard,
journalists have much in common with academics.
(2009: 359)
One inevitably recognizes a parallel to translators, especially in view of the recent

turn to the examination of non-professional forms of translation. As regards the tension
between autonomy and accountability, that is situations ‘in which the public’s interest and
the corporation’s interest may be at odds’ (2009: 360), Borden and Bowers see a parallel to
engineers, but one can definitely relate this to the consequentialist dilemmas also inherent
in translation and interpreting. Finally, as regards the tension between procedure and sub-
stance, in other words the fact that ‘journalists often make decisions based on what a
procedure says they can do rather than determining what is good to do’ (2009: 361), a
tension also existing in law, translators and interpreters are often faced with exactly the
same tension when contemplating the degree of adherence to official or unstated transla-
tion policies in doing their job.
It becomes obvious that another striking similarity between journalism studies and
translation studies is that the ethics that govern them are somewhat mixed in their epis-
temological nature. This is to say, in both realms we can see consequentialist ethical
approaches, aiming to help weigh decisions based on the potential benefits or damages to
the professionals themselves or to their organizations, intermingle with approaches based
on virtue ethics, aiming to help decide on the basis of what is right or wrong. In studying
the effects of different social norms on the ethical behaviour of journalists, Lee, Coleman
and Molyneux refer to Kohlberg’s (1969) theory of moral development, which may pro-
vide a useful framework to examine the positioning of ethical approaches across different
stages of moral reasoning. They summarize Kohlberg’s theory as follows:
Kohlberg proposes that individuals go through three basic stages: (1) preconventional
–individuals at this stage are predominantly driven by personal interests; often times,
their moral behaviors are guided by extrinsic motivations (i.e. because those with
authority told them to do so, or because they want to avoid punishments); (2) conven-
tional –individuals at this stage are motivated by the desire to ‘be good’ (rather than to
avoid punishment), and they aim to maintain social norms; and (3) postconventional
–individuals at this stage are of the highest moral conscience; they are critical and
256
independent thinkers who are committed to ethical values such as Kantian univer-
sality and justice.
(Lee, Coleman & Molyneux 2016: 74)
It seems that, diachronically as well as synchronically, the ethical approaches governing

both journalism studies and translation studies spread across all three of the basic stages
described above, since consequentialist ethics (which would be positioned at the first stage)
may coexist with ethics of social responsibility (which would be positioned over both the
second and the third stages) and universal virtue ethics (which would be positioned at
the third stage). What is furthermore important in the empirical analysis provided by
Lee, Coleman and Molyneux is their plausible answer to what it is that makes journalists
adhere to or violate ethical standards. They study the impact of social norms on the
behavior of journalists first by distinguishing two kinds of social norms:
Injunctive norms (our perception of what other people, particularly those who are
important to us, think we should, or ought to do with respect to the behavior in
question) and descriptive norms (our perception of whether other people, particu-
larly those who are important to us, are actually performing the behavior in question).
(Lee, Coleman & Molyneux 2016: 75)
Their study then hypothesized that ‘H1: Injunctive norms significantly and positively pre-
dict unethical journalistic behaviors. H2: Descriptive norms significantly and positively
predict ethical journalistic behaviors’ (2016: 76, emphasis in the original) and found that
if […] journalists believed that others would approve of an unethical behavior

(injunctive norms), they were more likely to act unethically […] Conversely, if these
journalists believed that everyone else is acting ethically (descriptive norms), they
were more likely to act ethically […].
(2016: 81)
This conclusion bears important repercussions not only with regard to how newsrooms
(should) work at the collective level, but also with regard to how translation ethics may
be fostered collectively among translators and interpreters. In a nutshell, since translators
usually work in isolation and rarely in small groups, it is mostly up to professional
organizations and translation agencies to promote the right kind of norms that will foster
ethical behaviour.
Perhaps the most striking similarity between journalism ethics and translation ethics
arises from the study of quotations, especially the direct ones. After a very detailed ana-
lysis of different types of quotes, such as direct, sanitized, edited, secondhand, etc., notably
within monolingual news production, Killenberg & Anderson (1993) adopt a rhetorical
approach to the ethics of quoting, an approach that recognizes the full range of prac-
tical issues in quoting. The rhetorical approach prompts journalists to decide whether
they are mere conduits of messages or sensitive rhetors who make ‘rhetorical choices that
inevitably affect meanings and context’ (1993: 49). Killenberg & Anderson (1993: 50)
maintain that ‘[e]‌ach quote, no matter how literally accurate in a self-contained sense,
is necessarily inaccurate in a contextual sense’. They capitalize on philosopher Sissela
Bok’s (1979) work, especially on what is termed the test of publicity, to pose a seemingly
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Georgios Floros
consequentialist inquiry to journalists: ‘Is my behavior such that I would be comfortable

having all my audiences-interview subject, editor, public, and self-simultaneously monitor
my choice(s), knowing that I might later be called on to justify my actions?’ (1993: 52).
They conclude (ibid.) that such a test of publicity is different from principle-based ethics
as well as from consequentialist contemplations and that it presumes the truly mediational
role, as opposed to a conduit role, journalists find themselves in because journalism is a
communication profession where versions of truth are professed and audience-directed.
This is something translation studies knows perhaps better than any other discipline.
Filtering, alterations, adaptations and audience-orientation are integral parts of trans-
lational work. After all, it is not by chance that translators do not put their translations
within quotation marks, which are supposed to denote absolute accuracy and fidelity. But
mediated communication inevitably brings about adjustment –this holds true both for
monolingual situations in journalism and bi-or multilingual situations such as translation
in general and international news production in particular. But it is precisely in this aspect
of adjustment that lies the most important and striking difference between journalism
ethics and translation ethics, despite the picture of convergence that similarities in ethical
concepts and concerns might have created.
In translation studies, whatever editing is actually an inevitable necessity in order to
keep balances in mediation; but in journalism studies, editing is an almost ontological
necessity that defines the very profession as opposed to other ones. As Schäffner (2012)
explains, journalists pursue their own communicative aims when they produce texts,
while translators do not; translators produce texts that aim to function in a different con-
text through preserving the original communicative aim. Journalists regard editing as
an expression of their role; tensions arise in journalism ethics because of the attempt to
reconciliate universal ethical imperatives, such as truth and neutrality, with the expres-
sion of judgement and expression of opinion, of which translators are rather deprived.
Zelizer & Allan (2010: 63) clarify that the occupational roles of editors ‘fundamentally
involve judgement, reporting, language, narration and analysis’ (my emphasis), while
Ward (2009: 71) says that ‘[f]‌or most of the 400 years of modern journalism, journalists
were expected to be partisan, not impartial’, even if only as principled partisans, to use
Barnhurst & Nerone’s (2009: 22) words from a different context. In a nutshell, journalism
entails commentary, translation does not.
On the synergy between translation and journalism

So far, journalism and translation have been seen as activities that have a lot in common.
The practice in international news production (news translation) is hybrid, since editing
and translation are intertwined to such an extent that boundaries are hard to discern.
In addition, translation ethics display remarkable similarities to journalism ethics, even
regarding monolingual news production. Therefore, and as was pointed out in the intro-
duction, it seems surprising that journalists do not recognize translation as an ordinary
part of news production.
The striking similarities among ethical approaches applied to translation studies
and journalism studies point to the possibility that journalists feel their own ethical
contemplations are already broad enough to describe their own field. In other words,
journalists may believe that translation ethics is already subsumed in journalism ethics.
The scope of the ethical concepts used in journalism and the crucial differences between
258
translation and journalism regarding the standing and function of opinion may have been
the reasons for which journalists, (a) feel less attached to a source text than translators do,
and (b) regard translation as simply one among many techniques used in news production
instead of occupying a more prominent position. Therefore, it is precisely in the differing
ethical aspects that space may be found for a synergy between translation studies and jour-
nalism studies as disciplines, and not merely as practical activities. In other words, it is at
the theoretical level that the two disciplines might converge, instead of at the level of their
practical similarities, since these two activities are not the same. Synergy is here deliber-
ately preferred over hybridity, since synergy implies a convergence of differing activities
and not a combination of similar undertakings in order to cohabitate a specific realm.
An interesting question arises as to how exactly translation studies and journalism
studies may cooperate at the conceptual level. For a fruitful synergy, both sides need to
make concessions. Negative though it might sound as an expression, concessions are
meant here as acceptance of realities rather than reductions. On the part of translation
studies, some concessions revolve around the way we see translation in the social sphere.
Following Pym (2018) we need to see translation studies opening to training professionals
from other fields how to translate better and offering a framework on the way(s) other
disciplines might be informed by translation studies (see Floros 2021), in order to place
‘translation (also) at the exporting end’, as Dam, Nisbeth Brøgger & Zethsen (2018: 9) put
it. Pedagogical translation, for instance, is now being examined in the framework of TOLC
(Translation in Other Learning Contexts, see González Davies 2014). In Floros (2021), it
was suggested that, since the range of disciplines which might be informed by translation
studies is expanding, the coining of the term TOPC (Translation in Other Professional
Contexts) might be justified. We need to acknowledge that the activity of translation can
be carried out by non-professional translators, who, though, work in other professions,
and try to reach out to them by considering their specific purposes and tailoring trad-
itional concepts of translation studies to specific needs of other professions.
In the case of journalism studies, this would mean stressing that translation studies
has an extensive theoretical apparatus to inform mediating professionals on how to keep
balances between opposing forces while reproducing messages in a framework of social
responsibility. The existing works on translation ethics in news production that were
examined above are good examples of what translation ethics can afford as a tool in jour-
nalism. Other examples of concepts from translation studies which could contribute to
journalism as a profession could be functional approaches to translation, notably not only
Skopos-theory, but also the translational action model and the theory of polysystems,
which may provide a useful tool for the study of the role of different social strata in medi-
ating activities. Another sort of concession that translation studies needs to make is to
widen the scope of translation ethics to explicitly include issues of national and institu-
tional translation policies. The study of how translation policies emerge and operate from
an ethical perspective may significantly contribute to examining processes and important
topics such as gatekeeping and newsworthiness in journalism.
On the part of journalism studies, the concession is to acknowledge translation as a
delicate and rich activity beyond translation proper, governed by sophisticated ethical
standards. With an advanced apparatus of functional and other theories, translation is no
longer a correspondence retrieving activity. Thus, journalism needs to see translation as an
activity that resembles rather than differs from journalism in a professional-sociological
framework. Valdeón (2018) shows that communication scholars are clearly interested
259
Georgios Floros
in translation as an indispensable part of the news production process and that there is
obvious common ground worth exploring, for example, in the form of interdisciplinary
projects. Finally, the work of Lee, Coleman & Molyneux (2016), which proves empirically
which norms are more useful in promoting ethical behaviour in journalistic work, is indi-
cative of the kind of research that is needed in translation studies as well. The suitability
of norms is an issue with important repercussions on how newsrooms can function more
effectively and efficiently. But as was said above, this issue may also prove important for how
translators can work more effectively. Contrary to journalists, who work in newsrooms and
may benefit from peer observation and interaction, translators do not often enjoy such col-
lectivity. Therefore, translation studies is confronted not only with investigating the kinds
of norms that promote ethical behaviour in translation at the theoretical level, but also
with figuring out ways of promoting such beneficial norms among real-life translators, who
usually work in isolation. Such a way of promoting beneficial norms is through actively
discussing and informing professional codes of practice and ethics.
Conclusion
While journalism studies and translation studies may be seen as related disciplines in
the sense that both are concerned with mediation, their ethics, though overlapping to a
substantial extent, display significant, almost ontological differences. These differences,
however, are not sufficient to keep them apart, given that in practice –at least in news
translation –they work together in explicit and subtle ways which seem to encourage a
synergy also at the conceptual level. Such a synergy can only prove fruitful if the two dis-
ciplines not only realize their similarities and possibilities of convergence, but also actively
provide the space for it.
Further research is needed in translation studies to specify new ways to accommo-
date translation that is conducted by professionals in other realms. As a general starting
framework, translation studies should cultivate TOPC (Translation in Other Professional
Contexts) in order to understand translation not only as a specific profession, but as a
ubiquitous activity that is carried out as a social practice across professions, each of which
has different purposes to serve. In this way, translation studies will not only respond to
the needs of news translation, but also to the specific needs of other synergetic forms of
translation, such as transcreation or (trans)adaptation. Further research is also needed in
journalism studies, in order to –first and foremost –abandon the understanding of trans-
lation as mere lingual transfer and recognize it as a powerful tool that has the potential
to respond and contribute to resolving many dilemmas in journalistic work, not least
ethical ones.
Further reading
• Bielsa, E. & Bassnett, S. (2009) Translation in Global News. London: Routledge.
A seminal work in the relatively new field of news translation, which combines theoretical
description and empirical research in order to present a detailed account of issues that are
at stake when translation and news production meet.
• Koskinen, K. & Pokorn, N. (eds) (2021) The Routledge Handbook of Translation and
Ethics. London: Routledge.
260
A comprehensive and concise collection presenting the state-of-the-art of translation

ethics in all its aspects, from historical and ontological accounts to training issues and
new technologies.
• Lee, A. M., Coleman, R. & Molyneux L. (2016) ‘From thinking to doing: effects of
different social norms on ethical behavior in journalism’, Journal of Media Ethics, 31(2),
pp. 72–85. doi: 10.1080/23736992.2016.1152898.
A very well-argued and empirically substantiated investigation of the central role various
kinds of norms play in shaping ethical behaviour, which opens up the way for similar
much-needed research in translation studies.
• Valdeón, R. A. (2018) ‘On the use of the term “translation” in journalism studies’,
Journalism, 19(2), pp. 252–269. doi: 10.1177/1464884917715945.
A detailed account of the way translation is understood within journalism. This contri-
bution investigates the lack of interaction between translation and journalism, but at the
same time opens up prospects of collaboration worth exploring.
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17
Reading translated news
Claire Scammell
Introduction
Translation studies scholars have been examining the involvement of translation in the
news since the turn of the century, and, in this short space of time, have cast much needed
light on the inter-lingual aspects of the news production process in a variety of media
contexts. From the beginning, the literature has mainly approached translation in the
news by analyzing texts alone. These textual analyses have contributed important findings,
including on the norm for domesticating (Venuti 2008) translation strategies, which priori-
tize fluency in line with the journalistic goal of clear and concise news reporting (Bassnett
2005; Bielsa & Bassnett 2009; Schäffner 2005), and on the specific characteristics of trans-
lation in the news that make it a complex object of research –for example, the lack of a
clear ‘source’ or ‘target’ text (van Doorslaer 2010).
In the introduction to a special journal issue dedicated to methodologies in news trans-
lation research, Davier, Schäffner & van Doorslaer (2018) specify an ongoing need for
methodological diversification and outline possibilities for triangulating textual analysis
with other participant-based methods. The ‘participant’ in focus is journalists, but the
authors also highlight both a lack of and the potential value of reception studies. More
recently, Valdeón’s (2020) survey of the research published in the past five years reflects
a continued reliance on text-based methods and models, meanwhile Bielsa (2020) notes
that research on news translation is yet to move beyond textual analysis and engage real
readers as participants.
The scarcity of audience-based news translation research means that we know very
little about how translated news texts are read, or readers’ views and expectations with
regard to the strategies used by journalists to communicate foreign news information
across linguistic and cultural borders. The reliance on text-based methods in news trans-
lation research is a characteristic of translation studies more widely; issues such as reader
engagement and readability have traditionally been investigated without examining the
response of readers themselves (Lu & Chen 2011; Puurtinen 1998). An exception is audio-
visual translation (Brems & Ramos Pinto 2013), where reception research is gaining in
popularity (di Giovanni & Gambier 2018). In the news translation literature, contributions
DOI: 10.4324/9781003221678-20 265

Claire Scammell
interested in the effects of translation on audiences tend to ask questions about the ideo-
logical impact of translation in the news, and often answer these questions using critical
discourse analysis (CDA) (Federici 2010; Kang 2007; Schäffner 2010; Valdeón 2005). To
take a recent example, Filmer (2018) takes a CDA approach to investigate representations
of Italian culture in the British press and finds that the choice of translation can serve to
reinforce cultural stereotypes. Discussing the background to her study, Filmer (2018: 2)
describes how ‘news is construed through a reciprocal communicative act between news-
paper audience and news producer’. Translation studies scholars have begun to investigate
the role of the ‘news producer’ in participant-based research involving journalists, but
what of the other actor in this exchange –the reader?
As an approach to the analysis of news texts, CDA has been criticized for failing to
investigate the response of readers to those texts (Philo 2007; Stubbs 1997). In an entry
on news translation in the Routledge Handbook of Translation Studies, Holland (2013)
describes the reliance on discourse-based approaches in research on news production gen-
erally, as well as the limitations of examining news at the discourse level only:
A sense of audience is clearly of central importance to many of those involved in the

production and dissemination of news –from large media organizations to individual
journalists and/or translators –and academic critiques of news media output are
commonly predicated on the assumption that news as discourse has certain effects
upon the public at large. However, evidence for such claims is notoriously difficult to
demonstrate.
(Holland 2013: 343)
Earlier, Mason (2009: 63) warns of the ‘dangers of asserting the effects of particular
translations without extra-linguistic evidence of their actual reception by their users’ and
underlines the need ‘to find ways of investigating reader response, an under-researched
area of descriptive translation studies’.
In the second of two parts, this chapter presents a focus-group study investigating
the impact of different strategies on the readability of news texts and on the potential
for news translation to promote cross-cultural engagement and understanding. The first
part immediately below reviews some of the methods available to examine the recep-
tion of translations, and their various benefits and limitations. This discussion begins
by considering two challenges that are likely to be encountered in any reader-response
investigation examining how translated news is read, and therefore impact the choice of
method: defining and representing the ‘reader’ in question, and defining and measuring
the ‘readability’ of texts.
Researching readers
Answering questions about the way translated news is read involves first asking, who is
doing the reading? The answer may be more or less complex depending on the context being
examined. In some cases, the ‘reader’ may be a member of a relatively small group, for
instance, subscribers to a news magazine; in others it may be a large and diverse group of
news media consumers spread across the globe. The population of news media consumers
that read the news reporting produced by a particular publication extends far beyond its
primary readership. The multi-source nature of news reporting generally (Waugh 1995)
266
and a tendency for journalists to rely on secondary sources (Bell 1991) –particularly in
the case of foreign news reporting (Paterson 2007) –means that the translated content of
a particular news report may reach a far greater number of readers than just the audience
it was originally intended for. Of course, a research project may be specifically interested
in a particular part of the readership, for example, readers who access the reporting via
a specific platform (e.g., Twitter), or readers from a particular demographic group (in a
specific age range, perhaps).
In such cases, where the ‘reader’ in question belongs to a narrower and more definable
group, the goal of recruiting a sample that is representative of this population of readers
as a whole may be more achievable, particularly through quantitative methods. In quali-
tative studies meanwhile, a representative sample is likely to be unattainable due to the
limited number of study participants. In both quantitative and qualitative approaches,
popular convenience sampling techniques, such as ‘snowballing’ –where participants
recruit other participants from within their personal networks –are likely to produce
a fairly homogenous study population. However, the resources available to humanities
and social science researchers conducting participant-based research typically preclude
the use of more rigorous sampling methods (Saldanha & O’Brien 2013). When it comes
to defining and representing the ‘typical’ reader, an additional challenge faces researchers
who set out to investigate the impact of the translation process on audiences’ abilities to
understand news texts: doing so involves delving into the ill-defined and hard-to-measure
concept of ‘readability’.
Given that news translation must not interfere with the newswriting goal of clear and
concise reporting (Bielsa & Bassnett 2009), research into the impact of the translation
process on audiences’ abilities to understand news texts offers a rich and under-explored
field of study with potential value and interest for academic audiences outside of trans-
lation, as well as news practitioners themselves. Investigating the impact of translation in
this regard involves navigating the complex notion of the ‘readability’ of a text. The lack
of an agreed-upon definition (see O’Brien 2010 for a helpful discussion) goes hand in hand
with a lack of a reliable means to measure the readability of texts. The method or combin-
ation of methods most suited to answering questions pertaining to readability will vary
by project, depending on the context and audiences being investigated, and the questions
being asked. What is common to any participant-based approach, however, is that the
participants’ individual reading abilities cannot be discounted as a factor impacting the
data collected, nor can they be reliably assessed, with obvious implications for the repre-
sentativeness of the sample and the validity of the project’s findings. Some of the methods
available to researchers –eye-tracking; questionnaires; comprehension (or recall) tests;
interviews; focus groups –are reviewed below in terms of their potential usefulness in
answering questions about the effects of translated news on readers.
Eye-tracking is increasingly being used by researchers across a variety of disciplines
to collect quantitative data on a wide range of phenomena, both linguistic and non-
linguistic. The unique value an eye-tracker offers researchers investigating the way people
read texts is that it can show which parts of a text a participant looks at and for how long
(for a detailed overview see Saldanha & O’Brien 2013). In the context of news translation,
the technology can, for instance, offer insight into the processing of translations within
a news text by recording how long a participant fixates on a particular ‘area of interest’
(AOI). The fixation duration is interpreted as an indication of cognitive load (O’Brien
2011; Rayner 1998) ‒ the longer the participant fixates on an AOI, the more difficulty they
267
Claire Scammell
are considered to have experienced processing the information. Yet, eye-tracking has most
often been used to investigate the translation process; examples of research that uses the
technology to investigate the effects of translations on readers are rare, and almost exclu-
sively situated in the sub-field of audiovisual translation studies (Walker 2019).
Two examples from translation studies that deal with translated texts are Kruger’s (2013)
investigation of the impact of ‘foreignized elements’ in translated children’s literature on
cognitive effort and Walker’s (2019) quasi-experimental study comparing the processing
of excerpts of a French novel (by native French speakers) and an English translation of
those same excerpts (by native English speakers). A similarity between these two studies
is that they are both interested in the effects of translation strategies on readers. Kruger
(2013) uses eye-tracking (in combination with interviews –discussed below) to respond to
a lack of studies that empirically test the impact of either a foreignizing or domesticating
(Venuti 2008) translation strategy on readers, and investigates the possibility that children
might be more competent at handling foreign elements than is assumed. Walker’s (2019)
recent study is the first contribution to translation research to take an empirical approach
to Nida’s (1964) notion of ‘equivalent effect’.
An example of an eye-tracking method used to examine reception in audiovisual
translation research is Künzli & Ehrensberger-Dow’s (2011) investigation of the impact
of ‘innovative subtitling’. In the experimental design, the authors challenge assumptions
regarding the amount of subtitling information viewers can process –assumptions that dic-
tate norms in the industry. Participants were shown movie excerpts with a mix of surtitles
and subtitles, with the eye tracker measuring which parts of the screen receive attention.
In the triangulated methodology, participants were then asked to complete an on-screen
questionnaire comprising five multiple-choice questions designed to assess ‘reception cap-
acity’ (i.e. the accuracy of the information retained by the participants). A further three
questions collected data on perceptions of the ‘innovative subtitling’ technique (involving
surtitles in place of subtitles and the addition of extra-linguistic information), by asking
the participants to rate certain aspects.
Given the absence of research studies that use eye-tracking technology to investi-
gate how people read news texts, translated or not (Leckner 2012), triangulation of eye-
tracking with a questionnaire method, or another form of post-task data collection, can
offer a practical and efficient means to improve the ‘validity’ (see Saldanha & O’Brien
2013 for a discussion) of the project’s findings. Mastropierro & Conklin (2019: 313) use
an online questionnaire to compare how readers ‘react to potential dehumanising, dis-
criminating and racist implications’ in Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness. Likert-type
scale questions are used to compare the response of 67 participants to either the ori-
ginal English or one of two Italian translations. A questionnaire method is also used by
Chesnokova et al. (2017) to compare responses to Edgar Allan Poe’s The Lake in the ori-
ginal English and in translations into Portuguese, Russian and Ukrainian among readers
in Ukraine and Brazil. A total of 500 participants were asked to select the adjective from
a five-point semantic differentiation scale that best fits their impression of the poem, pro-
ducing statistically-significant results.
The five questions assessing reception capacity in the study by Künzli & Ehrensberger-
Dow (2011) discussed above fit the description of a ‘recall’ or ‘comprehension’ test used
in applied linguistics, communication studies and related disciplines interested in the pro-
cessing of news discourse. The combination of a recall test with CDA is suggested by
Widdowson (2004) as a means to overcoming the limitations of the latter in terms of
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assessing actual reader response. Widdowson makes two suggestions with regard to the
design of recall tests. The first involves giving readers a text to read and then asking them
to recall the content, for instance by providing a summary. The second involves modi-
fying textual features considered to be of significance and measuring reader response
before and after the modification. Mason (2009) follows both of the above suggestions
in a pilot experiment where one group reads an original text (a speech by an Irish MEP)
and one group reads a modified version. The participants were first asked to summarize
the texts and then to answer two multiple-choice questions to determine who they felt
was attributed agency in the text. Mason (2009: 66) underlines that the experiment had
only been a ‘tentative enquiry’ without the methodological rigour required to reach firm
conclusions.
Another example of a study which aims to address the lack of reader-based methods
within CDA is Murata’s (2007) investigation of the impact of cultural assumptions. Two
groups, one comprised of Japanese respondents and one of non-Japanese respondents,
were given the same text to read and then asked to answer a questionnaire. The focus is
on how readers’ interpretations are influenced by what they themselves bring to the text.
Of the ten questions in Murata’s study (2007: 41), eight constitute a ‘standard reading
comprehension exercise’. Six of these eight were included to disguise the objective of the
questionnaire; the two questions of interest asked for information that was not in fact
included in the news report. The answers to these two questions were used to assess how
the participants’ background knowledge affected the way they processed the information
in the text.
The validity of data collected from comprehension tests of this kind is questioned by
Schaap (2004) in relation to the processing of television news. Schaap (2004) observes
that assessments of comprehension are dependent on what the researcher considers to
be an accurate interpretation of the excerpt used in the test and argues that by seeking
to measure what viewers can accurately recall, researchers risk overlooking other poten-
tial areas of interest in the data. Schaap also underlines that because viewers process
news information according to their own terms, when asked a question in the researcher’s
terms, ‘a viewer may experience difficulty in retrieving information, thus accounting for
the low levels of recall and high level of miscomprehension found in general television
news research’ (2004: 118).
In a paper presenting the design and findings of an empirical study of news compre-
hension, Mathieu (2009) discusses the limitations of recall and comprehension tests and
advocates the use of qualitative methods:
unless we are content with the conclusion that recipients do almost nothing with
the news, alternative methods need to be explored. In that respect, qualitative
methods seem more appropriate to investigate what recipients actually do with the
news.
(2009: 81–82)
The qualitative alternative Mathieu (2009) uses in his comparative cross-cultural news
comprehension study is in- depth interviews. In individual interviews, Danish and
Quebecois participants were given one news report from Denmark and one from Quebec
(the one not from the participant’s home nation being a translation) and asked to give
verbal reports relating to their comprehension after each paragraph. A problem Mathieu
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highlights is that the method relies on the participant’s ability to report on their compre-
hension, an unfamiliar task.
Interviews have been used relatively widely in news translation research to access the
views of news practitioners and gain insight into the ‘invisible’ (Bielsa 2007) role of trans-
lation in the news production process (Bielsa & Bassnett 2009; Davier 2014; Tsai 2012),
but have not yet been used to investigate the views of readers or how translated news is
read. Examples of the method used to examine reception are rare in translation studies
more widely (Böser 2015). Kruger (2013) investigates the impact of ‘foreignized elements’
in translated children’s literature on cognitive effort using a combination of eye-tracking
and short interviews comprising three comprehension questions. Another example
from audiovisual translation research is a PhD project investigating audience response
to Chinese subtitles (Yuan 2010). A characteristic of data collected in interviews –both
individual and group –is that its validity is undermined by the fact that participants do
not necessarily say what they actually think (Litosseliti 2003; Saldanha & O’Brien 2013).
There is also the risk of researcher bias, since it is the researcher who formulates and
asks the questions, and who therefore cannot avoid setting the agenda to a certain extent
(Saldanha & O’Brien 2013).
The risk of researcher bias would seem to be a particularly important consideration for
studies that seek to gain access to the views of laypersons on translation or their experi-
ence of reading a translated text, since the respondents may not have thought on these
topics before and therefore be more likely to be guided by the researcher’s perspective. In
addition to a lack of attention to reception in news translation research generally, this may
explain why a body of interview research investigating practitioners’ perspectives has not
led to applications of the method to examine those of readers. As an alternative, a focus
group method involves the researcher acting as a moderator of a group discussion rather
than an interviewer and, as such, can reduce their presence in, and impact on, the data
collection (Saldanha & O’Brien 2013). A focus group methodology can entail a more or
less unstructured and respondent-led format, with the effect of generating natural discus-
sion not directed by research aims and questions.
With the exception of the study presented in the second part of this chapter (Scammell
2016), focus groups have not yet been used to investigate the reception of translations
by end users (Böser 2015). In translation studies’ sister field, interpreting studies, mean-
while, the use of focus groups is well established, and examples include studies to inves-
tigate the reception of interpreting by end users (Napier 2011, for example). According
to Bryman (2008), focus groups are common in media studies research. Certainly, in the
audience research that has been conducted, text-based interviews and focus groups have
been the predominant method of data collection, regardless of the news genre (written,
television or images) being researched (Madianou 2009). However, news audiences are
under-researched generally and what little research there is tends to be focused on TV
news audiences (Madianou 2009; Philo & Berry 2004; van Dijk 1988).
One exception (although not looking at the act of reading itself) is Coleman, Morrison
& Anthony’s (2011) use of focus groups to examine public trust in British journalism.
Another, recent example of a focus-group study is Huiberts & Joye’s (2018) project exam-
ining the ways in which audiences themselves domesticate foreign news to help make
it more relevant to them. Here too, and in the examples the authors give of empirical
research in the area of distant suffering, the focus is on television news. Given that news is
a commodity (Bielsa 2007; Boyd-Barrett & Rantanen 1998), it seems logical to expect the
270
use of focus groups to investigate the needs and expectations of news consumers across
all media to be as common in journalism research as it is in other fields, such as marketing
(Morgan 1996). Yet, news translation researchers, who might look to journalism studies
for guidance on researching the way audiences read the news, will find a limited amount
of studies that empirically test audience response to written news generally.
A focus-group study exploring the effects of ‘sending the reader abroad’

A norm for news to be translated using a domesticating strategy has been identified and
argued to be necessary in the case of journalistic texts on the basis that a foreignizing
strategy would be ‘detrimental to understanding’ (Bassnett 2005: 127). Yet, the effects
of foreignizing translation strategies in the news have so far only been described by
analyzing the translations themselves (Bassnett 2005; Bielsa & Bassnett 2009). Indeed,
despite extensive evaluation of Venuti’s (2008) ‘foreignization’ and ‘domestication’ in
the context of literary translation (to which they were addressed), studies which empir-
ically test the impact of either approach on readers are scarce (Kruger 2013). In the
study described here, the domestication norm is considered problematic in the case of
news translation for two reasons: (1) domestication obscures the translation process, and
therefore the necessary intervention of the journalist-translator in translated quotations;
(2) domestication obscures, and therefore prevents the reader from engaging with, the
foreign source culture.
The aim of the research was to develop a foreignized approach to translation that could
represent a viable alternative to current practice for the global news agencies (Reuters,
Associated Press and Agence France-Presse). The research focuses on the global agencies
because of the key role they play as providers of global news content, and of (translated)
quotations in particular. Reuters news reporting and news from France relating to Nicolas
Sarkozy’s social politics (as interior minister, presidential candidate and president of
France in the period 2005–2012) is taken as a case study. The research project is the first
in news translation research to engage real readers as participants in order to examine the
reception of translated news (Bielsa 2020).
In an entry entitled ‘Reception and translation’ in the Benjamin’s Handbook of
Translation Studies, Brems & Ramos Pinto (2013: 145) describe two types of reception
study within translation studies. The first type ‘looks at the reception of translations at a
social level and focuses on “theoretical readers” ’. The current study neatly fits the descrip-
tion of the second type, termed ‘reader response and assessment’:
this second perspective focuses on the ‘real reader’ and how specific translation strat-
egies affect readers’ response and assessment. Researchers try to answer questions
related to (a) the cognitive processes invoked at the moment of reception of translated
material; (b) the effect of specific contextual, sociological, technical or linguistic
aspects on reception; and (c) the readers’ assessment of particular translation
strategies.
(Brems & Ramos Pinto 2013: 145)
The investigation was carried out in three stages. In the first stage, Reuters’ news reporting
and newswriting guidelines were examined through textual analyses to identify the indi-
vidual strategies and global approach currently being used. In the second stage, a set of
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strategy changes, constituting a foreignized approach (based on and updating the guidance
on translation in the Reuters Handbook of Journalism (Reuters 2014)), was developed and
implemented on a corpus of five Reuters news reports (for a detailed account of the first
two stages only, see Scammell 2018).
In the third stage of the research, which is of interest here, a comparative, task-
based focus-group method was used to examine the impact of the foreignized approach
on readers. To facilitate the comparative analysis, three sets of two focus groups (each
comprising four participants) were conducted, with one group reading the foreignized
news reports and the other the original news reports. A convenience sampling method
(Saldanha & O’Brien 2013) was used, aimed at recruiting non-expert readers (no experi-
ence/expertise on journalism or translation) with comparable reading abilities across the
participants in each set (approximated based on occupation) in relation to the focus group
task. A semi-structured format was used, aimed at generating natural discussion, whereby
the participants were asked to read each of the four (foreignized/original) news reports
and discuss these as a group. The approach taken to the data analysis can loosely be
described as a qualitative content analysis (Wilkinson 2004). Following Ryan & Bernard
(2003), a distinction was made between ‘a priori’ (theory-generated) themes and ‘inductive’
(data-generated) themes in order to recognize the part played by a priori thought in theme
development.
Three broad a priori themes relating to the project’s research questions were
explored: Translation Awareness, Reading Ease, and Cosmopolitan Openness. The first
of these is interested in whether the foreignized approach increases readers’ awareness
that the news information originated in a foreign language that they do not have access
to. The second is directly connected to the viability of the foreignized approach and looks
at its impact on ‘reading ease’, a conceptualization that goes beyond ‘comprehension’ or
‘understanding’ to encapsulate the sense of reading ‘enjoyment’ or ‘comfort’, since, for
journalists and editors, in addition to being easy to read, news reporting should be enjoy-
able to read (Bani 2006). The theme of Cosmopolitan Openness explores the idea that
news translation as a tool of intercultural communication has the potential to facilitate
cross-cultural understanding and engagement by allowing readers of the news to come
into contact with foreign cultural concepts and language, exposing rather than obscuring
cultural and linguistic difference. Findings related to the three themes are summarized in
turn below.
No direct reference to the translation process was made in any of the groups, indicating
that the foreignized approach does not increase readers’ awareness of the translation pro-
cess. However, un-prompted discussions in two of the ORIGINAL groups regarding the
accuracy –‘well they’ve got speech marks so they must be actual quotes’ –and object-
ivity –‘it’s got the quotes […] the things that actually come out of his mouth, rather than
it being the journalist’s opinion’ –of the reported speech suggest that the participants are
unconscious of the involvement of (or at least the potential impact of) the translation pro-
cess. In contrast, in one of the FOREIGNIZED groups, the journalist’s mediatory role is
questioned by a participant: ‘the way that they’ve written some of the information down,
I’m not saying it’s not factual, it’s just that the writer has written their own style of writing
and the way they’ve expressed what he’s said’. While not evidence of translation awareness
as such, the participant’s comments do at least indicate awareness that the words reported
are not the words Sarkozy originally spoke and of the impact of the journalist’s linguistic
choices on the accuracy and objectivity of the reporting.
272
The research design deliberately avoided prompting translation awareness in order to

gauge the impact of the foreignized approach in this regard. The fact that the participants
do not discuss the presence of bracketed translations or foreign language may suggest that
the method was ineffective in exploring this theme. It may also suggest that non-expert
readers conceive of translation as straightforward linguistic transfer, and therefore not a
factor worth discussing (an important consideration that was overlooked in the research
design). Further research could ask participants directly about their awareness of transla-
tion in news reporting, perhaps through an interview or questionnaire method, or use an
eye-tracker to find out if/for how long readers look at the bracketed translations/foreign
language.
Many of the comments related to the theme of Reading Ease were made spontan-
eously, but others were prompted by questions aimed at generating data related to this a
priori theme. In one of the FOREIGNIZED groups, the participants report reading ease
on ten occasions (five of which were spontaneous). When asked directly about reading
ease –‘Did you find them all easy to read, was there anything you didn’t like about the
way they read?’ –all four participants were in agreement that the reports were easy to
understand ‒ even for ‘someone who doesn’t know anything about French politics’ or is
‘not the best reader’. The practice of culture-specific terms being retained in French along
with a translation/explanation (a feature of the foreignized approach) is spontaneously
mentioned ‒ ‘there was that technical term and I thought I don’t know what that is but
then it explained it, the name for the suburban ghettos’‒ and then collectively discussed as
being non-problematic ‒ ‘yeah, any French words they put the translation in’. However,
the retention of the French culture-specific term banlieue (in place of ‘suburb’) in a head-
line ‒ ‘Sarkozy pledges to beef up French banlieue security’ ‒ is shown to be problem-
atic: ‘I don’t know what a banlieue is so I’d probably have not looked at it.’
In another FOREIGNIZED group, one of the participants felt that some parts would
need ‘chewing over’ because there is ‘some new vocabulary in there, some French’. The
example given when prompted is an English term (‘deghettoization’) rather than a French
one. Indeed, there are reports of reading difficulty relating to the journalists’ use of
(English) language from participants in each of the ORIGINAL groups also. Contrary
to expectation and despite questions directly probing in this area, the participants in the
FOREIGNIZED groups do not complain about the presence of foreign language or
report to find it unusual.
In addition to what the participants report directly, analyses within the theme of
Reading Ease looked for other (non-reported) indications of the foreignized approach
having a negative impact on reading ease. There were instances where the participants in
the FOREIGNIZED groups struggled to or avoided pronouncing French words retained
in the news reports, but there were equally instances where the participants used or read
verbatim a foreign word without hesitation or difficulty. Furthermore, instances where
participants avoided pronouncing or struggled to pronounce foreign words were not exclu-
sive to the groups reading the foreignized reports; the presence of foreign names or non-
standard English vocabulary in the original reports also caused difficulty. In complement
to reports of reading ease/difficulty, this analysis of indications of participants struggling
[or not] with foreignized parts finds no clear indication that the FOREIGNIZED groups
experienced reduced reading ease when compared to the ORIGINAL groups. This could
be explored further using a comprehension/recall test, either to triangulate the findings of
a focus-group study or as a single method.
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The project’s theoretical exploration and analytical articulation of Cosmopolitan

Openness is underpinned by Bielsa’s (2010, 2014, 2020) application of the sociological
concept of cosmopolitanism to the case of news translation. For Szerszynski and Urry,
cosmopolitanism is ‘a cultural disposition involving an intellectual and aesthetic stance of
“openness” towards peoples, places and experiences from different cultures’ (2002: 468).
Hannerz (1996: 203) meanwhile, underlines that cosmopolitanism is ‘first of all an orienta-
tion, a willingness to engage with the Other’ but also ‘a matter of competence’. Drawing on
Venuti (1998, 2008), Bielsa argues (2014: 6) that a domesticating translation, ‘by rendering
the foreign falsely familiar and translation transparent, in fact denies any true openness to
the other as other and thus any genuine cosmopolitan commitment’. While foreignizing
translations are presented as the more ethical choice, Bielsa also highlights the inherent
struggle in translation between making a text emanating from one culture intelligible to
another and respecting the foreignness that naturally resides in the original text.
Analyses within the theme of Cosmopolitan Openness found indications of how a
foreignized approach to translation might increase the potential for news reporting to offer
opportunities to engage with the cultural ‘other’, and thus to equip readers with the cul-
tural ‘competence’ Hannerz (1996) describes. The following differences observed between
the ORIGINAL and FOREIGNIZED groups are interpreted as indications of a higher
level of engagement among participants reading the foreignized reports. In the ORIGINAL
groups, discussion dried up more quickly and required more prompting compared to the
FOREIGNIZED groups, and participants read verbatim from the reports more often. In
contrast, participants in the FOREIGNIZED groups tended to paraphrase the content
or discuss the report in their own words. Additionally, comments made by participants in
the FOREIGNIZED groups were on average longer than those made in the ORIGINAL
groups. More focus groups would be needed to explore this possible trend further, espe-
cially since the individuals’ characteristics will inevitably contribute to the richness of the
discussions within each group.
For Venuti (2008: 15), a translation can either have the effect of ‘bringing the author
back home’ or of ‘sending the reader abroad’. One of the aims of this project was to
challenge the predominant conclusion in the news translation literature that a domesti-
cating strategy is necessary in news translation (Bassnett 2005; Bielsa & Bassnett 2009;
Holland 2013) –that readers actually need the news to be brought ‘back home’ –and
explore whether there is scope for ‘sending the reader abroad’. A tendency seen across
the groups to ‘bring the news back home’ when discussing the reports –by, for example,
discussing the London riots in relation to the Paris riots, inflammatory comments made by
UK or US politicians in relation to comments made by Sarkozy, or immigration problems
in the UK in relation to the report about Sarkozy’s immigration policy –is interpreted
as an indication of a non-cosmopolitan status quo. Participants across the groups also
reported (often apologetically) not being interested in foreign news events because ‘it’s not
something that directly affects me’.
The translation of the French culture-specific concept banlieue to ‘suburbs’–with
its distinct connotations attached (see Scammell 2018 for a detailed discussion) –is a
common example of a domesticating translation strategy in the Reuters corpus. In the
ORIGINAL groups, the participants tended to reproduce the exact phrasing used to
translate this and other culture-specific concepts, indicating that the effect of the domes-
ticating translation can be to leave the reader unengaged and disconnected from the
reality being reported:
274
It feels like it’s people from the ‘poor suburbs’ because in [paragraph] 8 it says the gov-
ernment has failed to address their problems, and then quotes these two people, so to
me it feels like they’re part of these poor suburbs [air quotes] that aren’t getting any
backing from the government.
In the above excerpt, the participant is able to contextualize the news event in the ‘suburbs’
and therefore to process the information without needing to move beyond a familiar
reality; the translation brings the news ‘back home’.
By contrast, participants in the FOREIGNIZED groups –who have read news reports
where the French culture-specific term is retained with an explanation –make comments
indicating that a foreignized translation can have the effect of ‘sending the reader abroad’.
In the following excerpt from one of the FOREIGNIZED groups, the participant shows
how the news reports have equipped her with the cultural knowledge necessary to engage
with the reality of France’s banlieues: ‘The outskirts of the city, that’s where true France
is, it’s not in these posh cities where the tourists go to, it’s where the people are, on the out-
skirts, if you think about it.’ This comment is not made in isolation. A lengthy discussion
on the complexities of France’s banlieues and the social realities being reported develops
between this and another participant, in which both participants show a strong awareness
that they do not have a full understanding of the foreign context being reported on, as well
as a desire to ‘know more’: ‘I came away wanting to know more about what life is like, like
you say, for the people in those suburbs and what the difficulties are.’ In this context, the
cosmopolitan potential of a foreignized strategy becomes clear. By exposing the reader to
the foreignness of the source culture (a foreignness which a domesticating approach seeks
to obscure), the foreignized approach appears to enable rather than prevent the reader’s
engagement with the foreign culture, thus allowing cosmopolitan connections to develop
through the experience of reading news from abroad.
Needless to say, the study’s tentative findings cannot be generalized since it has
investigated a particular case, Reuters reporting on news from France, and with a limited
number of participants. Additional focus groups investigating the same news context
could reveal if the responses to the foreignized news reporting observed in this study’s data
may be typical of the response of Reuters’ English-language audience. Of course, further
focus group research examining different language pairs, different target audiences and/or
different news media (which may find very different audience responses) would be needed
before beginning to extrapolate any findings to other settings.
Conclusion
Questions about the effects of translation in the news on readers have predominantly
been explored through critical discourse analysis and have concentrated on the ideological
impact of the translation process. This chapter has underlined a need for contributions
that engage audience members as participants in order to address unanswered questions
regarding how readers themselves respond to and process translated news.
More than in defining who the reader is, the researcher’s first challenge lies in designing
a reader-response investigation that can represent this (likely broad) population of readers
as well as possible. The second challenge comes in undertaking research where the impact
of translation on the newswriting goal of clear and concise reporting is of relevance, and
therefore requires the researcher to find a way to first define and then measure ‘readability’
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in some way. The collection of methods discussed in the first part of the chapter can be seen
to offer three different pathways to measuring the impact of translation on readers’ ability to
understand news reporting: first, examining the processing of news information at a cogni-
tive level using eye-tracking technology; second, asking participants to recall the content of
a news report; third, asking participants about their experience of reading the news report.
The second part of the chapter has presented a focus group study investigating the
effects of a foreignized approach to news translation. Its findings exemplify how empir-
ical research can be used to gain insight into the needs and expectations of readers, which
have been the subject of theoretical debate since the emergence of news translation as a
sub-discipline. The data collected provides evidence on the invisibility of translation in
newswriting in terms of its reception by real readers, as well as pointing to the possibility
that domesticating translation strategies are not only not essential to ensuring the read-
ability of a text, but may reduce the reader’s engagement with the news story and the for-
eign context being reported on.
The above discussions have underlined the great scope for contributions to news trans-
lation research that can drive methodological advancements in translation studies more
widely by examining how real readers respond to translated news. In addition, engaging
readers as participants has the potential to increase the relevance of the research among
practitioners, particularly if the project takes a particular publication and its audience
as a case study. By collecting data from audiences of news media, contributions to news
translation research also have the potential to attract attention from academics in other
disciplines interested in those same audiences; this can promote awareness of the role
of translation in the news and foster the inter-disciplinary debate that has so far been
missing.
Further reading
• Chan, L. T. H. (2015) ‘Reader response and reception theory’, in Angelelli, C. V.
& Baer, B. J (eds.), Researching Translation and Interpreting. London: Routledge,
pp. 164–172.
A theoretical and historical survey of contributions on reception in translation studies.
• di Giovanni, E. & Gambier, Y. (eds.) (2018) Reception Studies and Audiovisual Translation.
A collection of essays dedicated to audience-based research in audiovisual translation

studies.
• Saldanha, G. & O’Brien, S. (2013) Research Methodologies in Translation Studies.

Manchester, UK: St Jerome Publishing.
A methodology textbook offering translation studies scholars guidance on methods that

are unfamiliar within the discipline.
• Scammell, C. (2018) Translation Strategies in Global News: What Sarkozy Said in the
Suburbs. Cham: Palgrave Pivot.
276
A short monograph investigating the translation strategies employed by journalists when

reporting foreign news events to home audiences.
• Walker, C. & Federici, F. M. (eds.) (2018) Eye Tracking and Multidisciplinary Studies on
Translation. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
An edited volume presenting recent developments in eye-tracking research from a prac-

tical and multi-disciplinary perspective.
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Part III
Multimedia translation
18
A connected history of
audiovisual translation
Sources and resources1
Introduction
At a very early stage, the film industry was confronted with the international market, with
its enormous diversity of languages and rapid change in technical tools –first from mech-
anical to analogue (1920s–1990s), and then from analogue to digital (1990s–today). A few
dates can serve to underscore this rapid evolution:
• Between 1833 and 1895, several techniques and instruments were developed, e.g.
chronophotography, alongside the phenakistoscope, kinetoscope, phonoscope,
kinetograph, and cinemascope, until February 1895, when the brothers Lumière
patented their cinématographe (both a recording camera and a film projector) and then
later, in December, showed the first public projection. Their first films were shot in
March 1895 (Barnier 2010).
• From 1895 onwards, on both sides of the Atlantic, the struggle to file new patents and
create new devices continued in unstoppable competition. Then, in 1993, the ‘cultural
exception’ was introduced in the GATT (General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade)
negotiations.
• The change from analogue to digital began to have an impact on all aspects of movie-
making: script- writing, shooting, sound production, editing, stunts, recreation of
style/housing/clothing, make-up, distribution, projection –and audiovisual transla-
tion (AVT).
Today, digitization is accelerating the convergence between production and distribution,

with Netflix the latest new economic model in the industry. These changes have created
alterations in certain usages and habits, such as schedules arranged by TV channels, timing
organized by film distributors, binge watching, and binge racing.
The aim of this chapter is twofold: firstly, to answer the question of why a ‘connected’
history of AVT is desirable, perhaps in parallel with the film industry’s challenging his-
tory in relation to technology, and, secondly, to point out the methodological problems
DOI: 10.4324/9781003221678-22 283

that such a connected history would present. After an initial short presentation of the
rapid changes in cinema, we offer some elements to consider for the writing of this his-
tory. We then deal with some of the questions related to the conditions and means for a
connected and comparative history of AVT. By way of illustration, we refer to diverse
local situations in France, the UK, the US and China. Our purpose is to underscore the
international/global dimension of this history –by reviving an earlier tradition of when
cinema,2both as an art and a business, was a universal practice.
The rapid emergence of cinema as an art and an industry

Before the talkies, silent movies were practically considered to be universal in
nature: pictures were seen as easily interpreted, irrespective of the cultural background of
viewers. In effect, film directors such as Sergei Eisenstein, John Ford, Karl Vidor, Friedrich
Murnau, Jean Renoir, Charlie Chaplin and René Clair were opposed to the incorporation
of languages in film due to their belief in the so-called global comprehension of images.
For David W. Griffith, Abel Gance, Carl Dryer, Fritz Lang, Alfred Hitchcock, Orson
Welles and Roberto Rossellini, cinema was considered to be a universal art.
Disputes and theories about what constitutes ‘art’ and how one should classify
different arts are rather common in different cultural spheres, for example with the nine
muses of Ancient Greece and the six arts in China from the time of the Zhou Dynasty
(11th–3rd centuries BC). It would be irrelevant here to discuss these controversies in any
detail. Suffice to say that as early as 1911 the Italian writer Ricciotto Canudo was the first
to promote cinema as the sixth art (Dotoli 1999). A decade later, in 1923, he published
the Manifesto of the Seventh Art, which was supported by Guillaume Apollinaire, Abel
Gance, Vladimir Mayakovski, and Vsevolod Meyerhold, followed by the French film dir-
ector, screen writer and film critic Louis Delluc (1890–1924) and the surrealists.
In a period of just a few years, cinema came to be acknowledged as a popular art
form with public showings. It also very rapidly became international. This internation-
alization was due partly to inventors from the US (e.g. John Carbutt; Thomas Edison;
Woodville Latham), Great Britain (e.g. William Kennedy-Laurie Dickson), France (e.g.
Charles-Emile Reynaud; Louis and Auguste Lumière) and Germany (Max and Eugen
Skladanowsky) all competing at around the same time to launch cinema as a motion pic-
ture industry –the first film studio being built in 1897. It was also partly because after only
a few years (1895–1897) films could be shot and shown to audiences around the world
(Rittaud-Hutinet 1985). These film showings extended from Melbourne to Helsinki,3
Kyoto to Liverpool, and Baku to Moscow.4 One year after its invention by the Lumière
brothers, film was also introduced into China. In 1926, the number of foreign films in
China was estimated at around 450 (Patterson 1927: 48) as against 367 in 1936, of which
328 were from Hollywood (Guo 1937: 55).
Movies –black and white, several minutes long and without recorded sound –had
become the most popular visual art in only a decade, in stark contrast to other arts which
had long been in place, and often only for the elite occupying positions of power (the
Church, royalty, aristocrats, etc.).
During the First World War, a complex transition took place in the film industry. The
exhibition of films changed from short one-reel programmes to feature films, cinema
theatres became larger, and techniques in shooting and lighting improved. In different
countries, such as the US, UK, Italy and Denmark, the need for wartime propaganda also
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History of audiovisual translation
boosted the industry. In the US, Griffith’s The Birth of a Nation (1915) and Intolerance
(1916) were a success.
The arrival of the sound era (Barnier 2002) was rather swift, at least in the US, where
in less than two years (1927–1929) Hollywood became almost all talkie, with several com-
peting sound systems soon standardized. The changeover was slower in other parts of the
world, for reasons that were economic (the Great Depression of the 1930s overwhelmed
small studios) and/or cultural. In China and Japan, silent films co-existed successfully
with sound well into the 1930s.
Therefore, before the beginning of the ‘Golden Age of Hollywood’ (1930s–1940s), all
countries had to make a decision regarding translation, as cinema was no longer a ‘uni-
versal’ language.
Towards a policy of audiovisual translation

How and why is any particular dominant mode selected and adopted by any given society?
For instance, how did Soviet cinema adopt a language policy from the silent era to the
talkies that ranged from subtitling to voiceover and interpreting? The question is inher-
ently complex and grounded in local histories. More systematic studies are still needed
to investigate the diverse motivations and factors that underlie national AVT policies (on
China see Jin 2018).
Very early on (1934), both subtitling and dubbing were proposed –with different and
opposing claims (Cornu 2014: 201–207). The selection process between the two modes
of AVT was not necessarily either rapid or permanent (Trumpbour 2002). For instance,
the long and hard competition between France and Hollywood explains the hesitation
in deciding between the two modes that took place in France for more than two decades
(Danan 1991, 1994, 1996; Barnier & Moine 2002). One relevant feature of the AVT land-
scape is that most ‘subtitling countries’ (at least in Europe) use a so-called ‘lesser-used
language’, whereas most of the ‘dubbing countries’ have both an ‘international’ language
(French, German, Spanish, etc.) and a bigger audience. However, today’s digital tech-
nology blurs this opposition. The reasons for choosing dubbing within dictatorial and
repressive regimes (between 1920s and 1970s) have been well documented; they hinge
mainly on cultural, ideological, economicand pragmatic factors (Gutiérrez Lanza 1999;
Rabadán 2000; Doherty 2013; Mereu Keating 2016). Be that as it may, one reason is still
often neglected: the high percentage of illiteracy of the population. How can one offer
subtitling to viewers who are unable, or barely able, to read? Whether these concerns have
dealt with the credited origin (production) or the final effect (reception), all the arguments
merge into the dominant ideology of the time.
In sum, the history of AVT runs in parallel with the following areas:
• Political history (including the role of preventive or institutional censorship) (Garreau

2009; Montagne 2007; Vezyroglou 2014; Hervé 2015; Merkle 2018)
• Language policy (including questions concerning the relationship between language
status and choice of AVT mode, the past and current roles of AVT in promoting or
reviving a language minority, and the impact of English on the international exchange
of films, TV programmes and series) (O’Sullivan 2016)
• Legal history (including issues of copyright law, accessibility and European Union
regulations for the media)
285
• Technology/media history (including consideration of the materiality of translation, a

rather new topic in translation studies) (Littau 2011)
What kind of history do we need?

In addition to the common issues associated with historiography, such as assumptions,
periodization, space division, type of narration, metalanguage, many other questions
remain open (D’hulst 2010):
• Who were the translators?

• What audiovisual products have been translated, or have not? Why or why not?
• Where and how did the translations circulate, and how were they distributed?
• Which authorities were supportive of the translated films and TV programmes, and the
translators and other agents (adapters, dubbing actors, audio-describers, etc.)?
• How were the translations made, standardized, accepted and made accessible?
• Were there time-periods and particular conditions when certain types of AVT were
more easily produced and made available?
• What were the effects and repercussions of AVT? (Zanotti 2018: 134–135)
• How quickly did dubbing and subtitling develop in different countries? How can the
technical changes (for example, for recording of voices) and the development of dubbing
be correlated?
• How did producers, distributors and audiences respond to the evolution of AVT? For
instance, what was the significance of dubbed versions throughout the 1930s, the 1960s
and the 2000s, in any given society? What was the impact of subtitling on viewers in
terms of their understanding and remembering of a film?
Individually, all these questions could potentially become the subject of different research
projects. An important preliminary step would need to address the issue of which his-
torical framework is best suited for eliciting and explaining their respective answers.
History can be approached in different ways. A macro perspective, for example, could be
developed through the prisms of nationalism, modernity, Marxism, or (post)colonialism.
Such a macro perspective, however, is a gamble: structures, processes and agents risk being
reduced to general statements and being considered through causal determinism.
A micro-history approach is also possible (Munday 2014; Wakabayashi 2018a), by
observing the implications and effects of a specific subject of investigation, in this case
the different modes of AVT. A study of the agency involved could furthermore highlight
the links between the socio-cultural constraints of the work and the beliefs, values and
representations of the groups or individuals involved.
A history of AVT could also be comparative (Valdeón 2018), with scholars comparing,
for instance, the use of subtitling in different societies during the same time period and
exploring the effects and consequences of this use. They could also compare the role of
(self-) censorship in the production and reception of translated films under different pol-
itical regimes.
Another approach, and one we would like to promote with this chapter, is that of a
‘connected history’ (Wakabayashi 2018b). Since cinema and AVT have both developed
rapidly worldwide, with the internationalization of media (including AVT com-
panies) speeding up and boosting contacts and exchanges in the audiovisual industry, a
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transnational history (through data, concepts and methods) could well be adopted. This
type of history historicizes certain analytical categories (e.g. nation, global, local, East,
West, tradition, modernity, etc.) and transcends national borders, even though scholars
tend to describe their respective domestic usages and habits: Italians have focused on
Italian dubbing, Catalans on Catalan subtitling, etc. A connected history that is created
by multiplying the sources and following the ‘subalterns’ (a frequent status of audiovisual
translators) could provide new insights and new perspectives on the dissemination of
cultures and different types of knowledge.
Correlating technical innovations and audiovisual translation for a

connected history
One of the first elements to be taken into account for the writing of a connected history is
the impact of technologies. Technology has not only sped up the development of cinema
everywhere, it has also offered solutions for dealing with a wide variety of languages.
1895 to around 1930: cinema is neither mute nor silent

Silent movies (1895–1927/1930) were not entirely silent (Slide 1978; Bowser 1994; Musser
1994). There were sounds (piano music, sound effects), translated intertitles and oral input
from a narrator behind a curtain who read the intertitles (for the illiterate), telling the story
and making comments, not unlike a prompter in a theatre. This narrator was known by
several names: bonimenteur in French (Lacasse 2000), benshi [orator] and then setsumeishi
[explainers] in Japanese (Dym 2003), byensa in Korean, spieler in American English, and
dilmaj in Persian. He (or she) was part of the mediation between the film and the audience
in a live collective performance (Hansen 1991; Doherty 1999). In China, the earliest record
of screening foreign films with a Chinese narrator appears in the Game Newspaper in 1897
(Anonymous 1897). In 1915, a narration service was included in the opening advertise-
ment of a cinema in Shanghai (Anonymous 1935). In cinemas in Guangzhou, narrators
would not only explain the plot clearly but also add interesting comments (Liang 1927).
Commentator-performers continued to be employed beyond the time of the silent era, for
instance for Soviet films in the 1920s–1930s (Youngblood 1980; Pozner 2004), in Japan
and other parts of Asia until the mid-1930s (Nornes 2007: 110, 118, 132–137), and in Iran
up to the 1940s (Zhirafar 2014). A similar practice is also the case today in some African
countries, for example, in Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania where Nollywood films (from
Nigeria) are live interpreted with a kind of vocal addition. These ‘vee-jays’ (video-jockeys
or VJs) are popular figures.
In addition to narration, the use of intertitles has also been a part of AVT history.
From the earliest stages of the Chinese film industry, Chinese filmmakers have ambi-
tiously screened Chinese films not only for domestic audiences but also for international
audiences. The earliest extant Chinese film, Laborer’s Love (Lagong zhi aiqing, also known
as Romance of a Fruit Peddler, Zheng Zhengqiu 1922), has bilingual intertitles. For most
films made in the 1920s and early 1930s, bilingual intertitles were added by Chinese film
companies. A small number of extant Chinese films which were screened abroad have
foreign language intertitles that were added by overseas exhibitors. They include, for
example, the French intertitles in The Rose of Pushui (Xi xiang ji, a.k.a Romance of the
Western Chamber, Hou Yao 1927). However, in 1931 and 1933 the nationalist government
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repeatedly issued decrees forbidding the inclusion of English intertitles in prints of

Chinese films intended for domestic consumption.
Other technical changes had an impact on cinema and AVT in many different places
and at more or less the same time. A few examples are noteworthy. Shots increased from
one minute (or less) to four and even up to 20 minutes, with a corresponding effect on
narration and editing. Cameras, first made of wood and later of metal, were heavy and
noisy, and placed in a sound-proofed booth. The evolution in equipment increasingly
differentiated the concepts of time/space between cinema and theatre, the latter having
served as a model in movie-making for a long time. The viewfinder of a camera and
camera lens also made it possible to shoot close-ups of people and items, and to frame
them differently. Finally, the camera dolly (a camera on a trolley on rails) allowed for long
takes and sequence shots. These developments inspired new genres, such as musicals. At
the same time, they would have tangible repercussions on subtitling practices.
Prior to the appearance of sound-film, there were discussions on editing and other
matters. Exposure, fast/slow motion and types of cuts were among the themes dealt with
by Sergei Eisenstein (1898–1946), Dziga Vertov (1896–1954) and Lev Kuleshov (1899–
1970), among many others. From the 1940s, the focus shifted to editing and the producer
rather than editing and the film director. Again, as for the types of shot, editing would
have consequences for AVT.
A new era (1920s–1930s): the talkies

With regard to experiments with sound, the situation was rather unfortunate for a long
time (Eyman 1997). How does one effectively trace the complexity and turbulence that
characterized the transition to sound when it was more meandering than linear? The first
public exhibition of projected sound films appeared in Paris in 1900, but these were never
made commercially practical. In the 1920s, several sound systems were developed on a
disc or the film itself, such as Photokinema (1921), Phonofilm (1923), Fox Movietone
(1927), etc., but the system which prevailed in the competition and the markets was
set up in 1926 by the Warner brothers. In 1925 they were the pioneers of synchronized
sound, and by 1926 they had established the Vitaphone. This analogical sound-on-
disc system became profitable and was widely used as a soundtrack separate from the
pictures. In August 1926, Don Juan, directed by Alan Crosland, became the first film to
use Vitaphone sound effects with a synchronized musical arrangement (no spoken dia-
logue). Although it did not get a warm reception in New York among the aesthetes, it did
please the audience.
The transition from silent films to the talkies is commonly marked by The Jazz Singer,
shown in New York on 6 October 1927 (Geduld 1975). At that time, cinema was a commer-
cial success almost everywhere in the world.5 When this musical film, based on the theatre
play The Jazz Singer, directed by Alan Crosland and produced by Warner Brothers, was
released with lip-synchronous singing and a few short dialogues, it was a public success.
Prior to talking, cinema was singing, as if songs were a necessary step in the transform-
ation of the seventh art. The end of the silent motion picture era was not immediately
apparent. Movie theatres had yet to be converted to sound.
The first 100% talking film was the crime drama Lights of New York in 1928. Of course,
progress on the soundtrack did not come to a stop in 1926–1927 with the Vitaphone. In
1930–1931, the Moviola system allowed for the synchronization of separate tracks: voice,
288
music, and effects. Finally, a hallmark of the late 1980s is the adoption of a timecode by
the film industry, with a real impact on the spotting of the subtitles.
In short, talkies were largely accepted between 1926 and 1930 (Walker 1986).6 The
development of soundtracks and the presence of foreign languages in films had deep
implications for the film industry, with changes taking place in the shooting of scripts,
in narration, in the techniques of directing, and in framing (O’Brien 2005; O’Sullivan
2011). The issue of languages was raised very quickly. How and where would one export
if audiences did not understand the original language of the film? (Vasey 1997). The
question of languages amplified the territorialization of cinema (Rossholm 2006). They
also seriously endangered the US cinema’s world market, which by 1929 had generated
35–40% of major studio profits (Thompson 1985: 164). Everywhere, and in less than a
decade, the film industry had to cope with languages.
Between the 1930s and the 1960s: coping with language diversity
Concerning languages, there were several more or less co-existing options for satisfying
the emerging demands (Crafton 1998; Nornes 2007: 123–154; O’Sullivan & Cornu 2019a,
2019b).
Film directors made second versions of actors performing in their own language,
sometimes including different shots in order to better target a certain audience. At the
beginning, in particular after 1929, multi-language versions (MLV or LVs) or foreign-
language versions (FLVs) were shot, mainly from US films (Dubrovičová 1992; Barnier
2004: 215–262), in the same setting, in the US or Great Britain, with local actors from
France (e.g. Maurice Chevalier, Charles Boyer), Germany (e.g. Marlene Dietrich), Sweden
(e.g. Greta Garbo) and Italy. Famous films such as Blue Angel (Von Sternberg 1930),
Dracula (Browning 1931) and the Threepenny Opera (Pabst 1931) were shot in two or three
languages (mainly English, French, German and Spanish). But, due to the costs of pro-
ducing so many different similar versions, the shooting was outsourced, with Hollywood
building studios in Germany (Studio Babelsberg in Berlin, Wahl 2009, 2016), France
(Joinville), Italy (Rome), England, etc. These multilingual versions (especially between
1929 and 1932) were expensive and often a commercial failure. Nonetheless, during 1930–
1931, 84 films were produced as multilinguals by major US studios, of which 22 were in
French. It was clear that a new strategy was needed –and possible. It took the form of
post-synchronization, despite the recurring problem of voices.
The 1930s saw the emergence of dubbing (Cornu 2014: 91–133, 177–220). From 1931
on, linguistic challenges were no longer taken up by production companies but by distri-
bution firms and importing countries (Higson & Maltby 1999). Opting for dubbing was
motivated by protectionist, financial and technical incentives. The original equipment for
dubbing featured only a soundtrack with conglomerated voices, music and effects. In 1930–
1931 the multitrack Moviola system enabled separate tracks to be synchronized. However,
this technical tool did not mitigate the controversy underway. In the 1930s, studios and
distributors quickly discovered that dubbing could accommodate chauvinistic audiences,
and for far less money than the MLVs. Riots took place in Paris, Prague, Budapest and
Milan against the use of foreign tongues on the screen, particularly English and German.
For the Chinese market, experimentation with dubbing was carried out by American film
companies, Soviet film companies, and Chinese individuals. MGM (Metro-Goldwyn-
Mayer, founded in 1924) released Tarzan’s New York Adventure (Richard Thorpe 1942) with
289
a Chinese dub (Guan 1946); Sovexportfilm dubbed Zoya (Lev Arnshtam 1944) (Khoo &
Metzger 2009: 81); and Wang Wentao and Chinese students in Italy experimented with
dubbing A Song to Remember (Charles Vidor 1945) into Chinese, which was screened in
4 October 1947 in Shanghai (Anonymous 1947). Deep concerns regarding the Chinese
film industry appeared in film reviews because Hollywood films could be watched by the
Chinese audience without a language barrier, which would threaten the development of
the Chinese film industry (Guan 1946).
Subtitling was also experimented with both in and after the 1930s. As with many
different aspects of the history of cinema and AVT, it is not possible to attribute only one
name to the invention and development of subtitling. The evidential sources for early tit-
ling practices are various, making the need for a connected and comparative history more
compelling. Naturally, historians have tended to prioritize their own domestic inventors.
The first film to be subtitled in Great Britain was Kameradschaft, in January 1932, with
around 80 subtitles.7 The first subtitlers (not necessarily translators or adapters) into
French, Dutch, German and Japanese were brought to the major US studios at the begin-
ning of the 1930s. They had to cope with various problems, such as the length and pos-
ition of the subtitles, the size of the fonts, and their synchronization with pictures. In
China, cinemas first printed Chinese subtitles on the film but later used projectors to
show Chinese subtitles for foreign films on a neighbouring screen. The latter was less
complicated and made it easier to correct mistakes but often distracted the audience’s
attention. In 1926, the inclusion of subtitles in film became a selling point for the screening
of The Veil of Happiness (Le voile du bonheur, Albert Capellani 1910). These two methods
coexisted in China until the end of the 1940s.
The technical evolution of subtitling in cinema has been slow (Cornu 2014: 223–283).
Between the 1930s and 1945, two techniques were dominant: thermal and chemical
subtitles. In 1933, a patent for chemical subtitles was registered both in Sweden and in
Switzerland for a method to permanently engrave subtitles on silver film. Two French
companies controlled this market: Titrafilms, which launched in Paris in 1933 but rapidly
gained a foothold in the Belgian, Dutch, American and Brazilian markets, and Cinétitres
(1958). In the 1980s, two new systems appeared: laser subtitling, which gradually replaced
chemical and optical subtitling in Europe and Asia during the 1990s, and electronic sub-
titling with time codes, very handy for TV, DVD and film festivals.
Simultaneous interpreting was also used for some time as a way to cope with language
diversity. In 1939, the top cinemas in Shanghai began to experiment with simultaneous
interpreting services while screening foreign films. The first attempt was conducted on
the translation of Return of the Cisco Kid (Herbert I. Leeds 1939) by the Grand Theatre
in 4 November 1939. The three interpreters not only interpreted all the dialogue but also
gave a brief narration of the plot and introduction of the characters. However, the audi-
ence complained that, ‘just as the Chinese subtitles are disturbing our vision, simultan-
eous interpreting disturbs our hearing’ (Anonymous 1939). The practice of simultaneous
interpreting in cinemas was popular in Shanghai until 1949 and was also used elsewhere,
in particular in the 1950s and after in film festivals, such as the one in Moscow mentioned
earlier in this chapter.
Another solution to cope with foreign languages in cinema was also developed in the
1930s. Known as the remake, it resembled a kind of appropriation that changed the lan-
guage and, to a certain extent, the plot (with all its values and assumptions), characters,
and cultural context. Whilst during the years 1930–1950, most of the remakes were US
290
films noirs re-contextualized in and for Europe, the process has been reversed since the
1980s, with successful European films being remade in the United States (Mazdon 2000;
Verevis 2005; Moine 2007).
To sum up, a number of strategies were used, simultaneously or successively, for the
transition from the silent film era to the talkies, at least in the few countries where changes
have been documented (US and UK, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Brazil, Russia, Japan,
China, and others). These changes include intertitles in a foreign or local language, live syn-
chronization with bonimenteurs, partial adaptation of the same film with several versions
in different languages, multilinguals shot in different places, dubbing and subtitling, and
remakes. What is needed now is to survey other parts of the world where research has
either not yet started or has been carried out but is not necessarily easily available.
Methodological challenges
Various resources and methods can be used to map out the history of AVT in different
countries.
Direct and indirect sources of information

Direct sources comprise intertitled, subtitled and dubbed versions, stocked in film archives
and off-air TV recordings. Gaining access to these involves practical, logistical and finan-
cial difficulties, however. As examples of direct source, we can mention print bilingual
pamphlets of foreign films with the plots and names of all the people involved in the film’s
production, used by Chinese cinemas in the 1920s, and extant Chinese films with bilin-
gual intertitles, such as Song of China (Tianlun in Chinese; Fei Mu 1935). When Douglas
Maclean, an actor and producer with Paramount, travelled to Shanghai, he decided to
bring the film back to the US (Law, Bren & Ho 2004). Tianlun (‘family relationships’ in
Chinese) is an important concept in Confucian values. After its purchase, the film was
renamed Song of China, indicating that it was a film about China, rather than reflecting
the meaning of the Chinese title. The intertitles reveal how much Paramount adapted the
original, changing the ending and reducing the film to half its time. For instance ‘Father’
and ‘my dear father’ in Chinese were translated into ‘my noble father’ or ‘honourable
father’ to represent that filial piety was emphasized in Chinese society.
Indirect sources are reports by different agents through their memoirs and life stories,
of their retrospective and subjective perceptions of what they did. They also include all
kinds of epitexts (Genette 1987, 1997) mediating the audio-visual work to the viewers,
which are disseminated through newspapers, magazines, journals, marketing material and
the internet. They include, for instance, film reviews, film criticisms, interviews with film
directors, actors and translators, correspondence, webpages, blogs, video-clips, trailers,
posters, flyers, leaflets in DVDs, censorship reports, etc. All these epitexts tease out and
complement the information as it is shaped by editors, distributors and viewers. In a way,
they ‘package’, accompany and introduce an audiovisual product before it is watched,
influencing viewer expectations, their decision on whether to go to the cinema or select a
TV programme, and their reception of the work.
For research on the translation of early cinema in China, film reviews posted in
newspapers and journals also provide valuable information. As noted earlier, when for-
eign films were screened in China at the start of the 20th century, they were often shown
291
with interpreting or with subtitles projected on a neighbouring screen. These translations

of film contents are often lost. However, the advertisements for the films in Chinese
newspapers such as Shanghai News and Ta Kung Pao can still be found. UFA, a German
film company producing and distributing films from 1917 to 1945, had quite a strong
presence in China. The translations of the titles of the German films they screened were
extremely domesticated.
Archives and databases

The International Federation of Film Archives (FIAF, Fédération Internationale des
Archives du Film) has been dedicated to preserving and providing access to the world’s
film heritage since 1938.8 With 89 active members and 77 active associates in 75 countries,
it is the single most important global network of cinematheques and film archives. It has
several databases: the International Index to Film Periodicals (1972 to today) with approxi-
mately 12,000 new references added every year, the International Index to TV Periodicals
(1979 to 2000), and Treasures from the Film Archives, with information on over 53,000
silent films, fiction and non-fiction.
Besides the FIAF, there are also several centres with press packs and files, and some-
times a picture library. They include the Fonds Rondel, the Bibliothèque de l’Arsenal
(Paris), the BIFI/Centre Pompidou (Paris), the Institut Lumière (Lyon), the Film Museum
(Amsterdam), the Library of Congress (Washington), and the Museum of Modern Art
(New York), among others.
Journals and newspapers also contain old and new relevant information on AVT. Some
examples in English are Film Daily, The Moving Picture World and Varietyand in French,
the Cinématographie française, Le Film, Cinéa-ciné pour tous, Cinémagazine, Cinémonde,
Ciné-Miroir, Ciné-Revue, l’Illustration, La revue du Cinéma and L’écran traduit (launched
online in 2013). But how reliable are the film reviews and surveys of the 1930s as materials
for a history of AVT? How do we read these sources without being anachronistic?
Finally, not to be omitted are some research databases and projects such as the rich
database Women Film Pioneers Project at Columbia University, where silent-era female
producers, directors, script writers, camera operators, costume designers and title writers
are studied (with women sometimes using gender neutral or masculine pseudonyms,
see endnote 4) (https://wfpp.cdrs.columbia.edu), and the Vitaphone Project (www.
vitaphoneproejct.com). The latter has been running since 1992 and focuses on the sound-
track discs that accompanied some early 1927–1930 talkie shorts and features. These two
examples send the clear signal that a history of AVT cannot ignore analyses carried out
in film history.
Yearbooks of cinemas likewise provide useful information about film translation. The
earliest yearbook of Chinese cinema was written by Cheng Shuren and was published in
1927. Included within are the names of the translators of foreign films, Chinese films and
recordings of their translations, as well as the distributors for foreign films in China.
Editing pieces of archives on AVT, translation procedures and decision-making, as
well as translators and their networks, is not an easy task. Potentially of use are film
archives, restored and remastered films, the personal papers of translators, correspond-
ence with distributors, contracts, diaries, records of TV broadcasters, official files of AVT
companies and censorship reports. While the low profile of adapters in most countries
is a challenging reality, some material is to be found: for example, the memoirs of Nina
292
Kagansky (1995),9 who was the manager of Titra Film (1965–1990), founded by her father
in 1933.
The choice of archives and subsequent detective work depend, of course, on specific
research interests. In many cases, archives are not organized according to translators or
types of AVT. And, if they are accessible, they are not kept in a form which is helpful
for researchers. Moreover, some archives have disappeared. The celluloid used until the
1950s was highly flammable and degraded easily after 70 years. The acetate films that were
introduced in the film industry as early as 1934 created acids when they were exposed to
heat and moisture, so they deteriorated rapidly. It is said that virtually all the foreign films
distributed in Japan before World War II were consumed by the National Film Centre
fire in the 1970s. The film stock of the Reichsfilmarchiv in Berlin (1935–1945) was either
destroyed or seized by the Soviet Army. Martin Scorsese has claimed that 80% of US
silent films have vanished. But films can also be rediscovered. A copy of The Cave of
the Silken Web (Pan si dong, Dan Duyu 1927) was found in the archives of the National
Library in Norway in 2013 (Liu 2014: 109). The newly rediscovered film has both Chinese
and Norwegian intertitles as it was screened in a theatre called the Colosseum in Oslo for
six nights in January 1929. The newly found Norwegian version has a Norwegian trans-
lation superimposed on the original Chinese ones. When compared, the translator was
found not only to have interpreted freely but also added humorous comments in paren-
theses (Anckarman 2014: 28–36).
Where does one find the necessary archives? In addition to places already mentioned,
other places include the Archives françaises du film (within the CNC/Centre National du
Cinéma, Paris),10 the Fonds Audiovisuel of the National Audio-visual Institute/Institut
national de l’Audiovisuel (Paris), the Fondation Jérôme Seydoux-Pathé (Paris), the British
Film Institute/BFI and the London Screen Archives (London), the Danish Film Institute
(Copenhagen), the Museo Nazionale del Cinema (Torino), the George Eastman House
Museum (Rochester, New York), the National Film Preservation Board and Foundation,
and the Motion Picture, Broadcasting and Recorded Sound Division (MBRS) (both
under the auspices of the Library of the Congress in Washington), as well as the IASA
(International Association of Sound and Audio-visual Archives).
If digital and cloud technologies now provide access to unprecedented quantities of
audiovisual products and their translations, the data from the pre-digital era of AVT
remain limited. Access to old films and TV programmes is one of the main challenges for
research. The archives may be available in libraries, cinemas and museums but not neces-
sarily with the required equipment or in the right formats.
Electronic corpora
Corpus-based studies have increased in popularity in translation studies over the past
20 years (Laviosa 2013). AVT presents a situation that is rather different. Many of the
principles and problems are those common to all corpora (general or specialized, mono-
or bi/multi-lingual, written or spoken or multimodal): representativeness (to what extent
is the corpus representative of a certain kind of data –text-type/film genre, author/film
director, period of time, etc.?), exhaustiveness (is the corpus made of printed, published/
distributed, indexed, signed documents, with all the necessary bibliographical data/
credits?), characterization (what elements are included or excluded in the corpus with
regard to languages, length (full texts/films, samples, excerpts), timeframe (synchronic/
293
diachronic), and level of expertise (popular or art films, documentaries, etc.). In terms of
AVT specificity, corpora are also rather scarce because of certain additional difficulties:
• Films and TV series require considerable electronic storage capacity to be saved and
retrieved. To date, there is no corpus of translated TV programmes,11 apart from news
and series. To our knowledge, Salway (2007) is the only exception: he set up a small
corpus of audio-description scripts used on television and established a frequency list of
certain words and phrases occurring in relation to characters’ appearances, emotional
states, locations and interpersonal interactions.
• Due to copyright issues, producers are reluctant to give explicit permission to use full
movies for research. So it is difficult, for instance, to create a parallel corpus (films in an
A language and translated films in a B language and/or originals in B and translations
in A) or a comparable corpus (films of the same genre in the same language, translated
or not).
• Multimodality demands a complex tool in order to transcribe and analyse a film. To
select only the soundtrack (the verbal component) is to drastically cut a product made
of several sign systems (sound effects, prosody, facial expressions, body movements,
interpersonal distance, etc.).
• To analyse a film out of its context of production, distribution and reception limits
studies to certain descriptive and comparative approaches.
Romero-Fresco (2006, 2009) has created a parallel corpus to compare the American TV
series Friends and their dubbed versions in Spanish, and a subsequent comparable corpus
of those versions with the Spanish sitcom Siete vidas, which features similar settings, plots
and protagonists. Pavesi (2005, 2009) and Freddi (2009) have also carried out corpus-
driven research in AVT, analysing different linguistic categories. The Pavia Corpus of Film
Dialogue (PCFD) is composed of three sub-corpora of transcriptions which include the
transcriptions of 24 films shot in British and American English, transcriptions of the
dubbed Italian versions of English originals, and transcriptions of six original Italian films
comparable, in terms of genres and public success, to their British and US counterparts.
Most of the works derived from the PCFD (2009–2019) are pragmatic and based on lin-
guistic markers. The contrastive approach, combining both source-and target-oriented
perspectives, uncovers structural features of the dubbed language and spoken Italian.
Although the results offer better knowledge of the formal and textual conventions of film
dialogues, they ignore the multi-semiotic dimension of films.
Indeed, there are very few tools able to support both the collection and analysis of
multimodal corpora. One project of note is the Forlì corpus of Screen Translation or
Forlixt 1, which operated from 2003 to 2013. The design, creation and transcription
of the corpus, and the data retrieved with dedicated query tools, as well as the display
of concordances between verbal and audiovisual markers, were reported in two papers
published in 2008 by Valentini and by Heiss and Soffritti. Forlixt 1 was composed of less
than 50 films (Italian, German and French full-length films with complete transcriptions
of the dialogues). Since 2013, the project has been developed and enhanced with Forlixt
3.0 (Multimedia Database on Screen Translation).
Another corpus of note is the TRACE project or TRAducciones CEnsuradas in
Franco’s Spain (1939–1976 and after), initiated in 1995. Included in this compiled parallel
294
corpus of theatre plays and novels in English and Spanish is some film material (Merino
& Rabadán 2002; Gutiérrez Lanza 2011).
Despite their limitations and their small sizes, these corpora in AVT are an important
step in scholarly efforts to better understand audio-visual texts in their multimodal
complexity.12 Automatic indexing of images in audio-visual databases, and artificial
intelligence with speech and visual recognition, are advancing rapidly, with the possi-
bility of yielding more refined quantitative and qualitative results and insights for AVT
research.
Oral history
Oral histories are useful for sparking memories and eliciting the perceptions of lay people
about their working conditions, environment and daily routines for the purpose of pre-
serving a narrative of historical significance. Oral history recordings need to be stored
at a library, in an archive or online, in order to be consulted and interpreted sooner or
later by historians, sociologists, anthropologists, town planners, etc. One of the primary
reasons for oral history is to conduct and preserve interviews for future use, as done by
Pym (2016), who has archived interviews with more than 80 scholars in translation studies
on YouTube. The principles and practices of oral history are still debated (Yow 2015),
addressing relevant questions such as the validity of oral testimonies, the editing of audio
and video recordings, issues of reliability, privacy, subjectivity and the narrators’ ways
of speaking, etc., all also inherent in life stories as used in sociology, or in autobiog-
raphies as produced by some literary translators in Japan or by former film translators
(Razlogova 2014).
Oral histories could enrich the study of a micro-history of AVT and present a fuller
historical picture. In 2004, and of interest to AVT, the FIAF initiated an oral history
project to begin recording archivists who had worked with different stakeholders of the
film industry. It may soon become urgent to record the memories of film archivists or
old cinema attendants, for instance in countries where pioneers are still alive (Treveri
Gennari & Sedgwick 2015). In China, the oral and written accounts of dubbing artists
such as Su Xiu and Liu Guangning from Shanghai Dubbing Studio have been published
in recent years (Su 2014; Liu 2017). In 2005, China Central Television interviewed dozens
of translators, dubbing directors and dubbing artists to make a five-episode documentary
about the translation of foreign films in the People’s Republic of China. These initiatives
provide valuable resources for constructing a history of AVT. M. C. Kuo (2018) has
also given a detailed and informative account on how Chinese films were translated and
disseminated in France.
To sum up, the sources and research methods for AVT history are diverse (Zanotti
2018: 146–151). New insights can be gained by combining different data and approaches,
by triangulating different kinds of measures and methods (e.g. archival work cross-checked
through questionnaires), and by exploring possible convergences between cinema’s indus-
trial, technical, and institutional history and a socio-cultural history of its audiences
(Maltby & Stokes 2004; Biltereyst & Meers 2018; Hill 2018). This ambitious endeavour
demands an interdisciplinary research agenda whereby history, cultural history, soci-
ology, ethnology, social psychology, media and film studies, and translation studies can
co-operate in a constant scholarly exchange.
295
Concluding remarks
By pleading for a comparative and connected history (this chapter provides a few elements
from the US, some European countries and China), we are attempting to recognize the
choices, traditions, conventions, rules and factors of change constrained and conditioned
both by cultural backgrounds and the universal impact of technology. Such a history would
shed light on how economic and technical competition has had political underpinnings
and consequences that are not exclusive to any one country at any given time. Since 1895,
cinema has been international in scope through its different transformations. Historians
can of course speculate and write a virtual or counterfactual history: what would have
happened if…? For example, what would cinema be like today if the brothers Lumière
had not sent cameramen abroad in 1895–1896, or if war had not come in 1914–1918 and
in 1939–1945, or if silent movies had not come before the talkies, or if Hollywood had not
considered film as a business, or if cinema was not used for entertainment, propaganda
and popularization…?
It rapidly becomes evident that to write a comparative and connected history of AVT
would demand teams of researchers from different disciplines. But in order to map the
history of AVT worldwide, how can we make sure that the research methods used by film
historians, film archive curators, translation studies scholars and audio-visual translators
are comparable? Moreover, to set up an international network of scholars today is tech-
nically possible, but the agendas of universities, foundations and other financial partners
as well as the AVT industry itself differ between countries. Research priorities in the social
sciences are quite different. This tension between the need for a network on the one hand
and priorities on the other is a challenge and is part of the reason for the slow emergence
of a history of AVT.
Further reading
• Atom, E. & Balfour I. (eds) (2004) Subtitles: On the Foreignness of Films. Cambridge,
M. A. and London: The MIT Press.
How to translate the cultural experience of film? Thirty-two filmmakers, writers, artists
consider mechanics and aesthetics of subtitles. The format of the book suggests a movie
screen.
• Kress, G. & van Leeuwen, T. (1996) Reading Images. The Grammar of Visual Design.
The authors offer a comprehensive account of the grammar of visual design. They
study the meaning-making process in the visual semiotic modes, with a broad range of
examples.
• Pérez-González, L. (ed.) (2018) The Routledge Handbook of Audiovisual Translation.

The book gives an overview of the key modalities of AVT, the main theoretical frameworks
and research methods in a rapidly developing field.
296
Notes
1 This chapter is based on a longer article published in Translation Spaces, 8(2), 2019, pp. 193–230.
I acknowledge the publisher, John Benjamins, who kindly granted me permission to use the art-
icle and reproduce parts of it. www. benjamins.com/catalog/ts
2 The focus is mainly on AVT in cinema. Because of the lack of space and also because their his-
tory is rather different, we have dealt with other forms of audiovisual products (TV, videogames,
corporate video etc.) only allusively.
3 We have documented that the first cinema showing in Finland took place in Helsinki on 28
June 1896.
4 DVD 2015, edited by the Institut Lumière, Lyon (France): Lumière! Le Cinématographe 1895–
1905, with a selection of 114 ‘views’ of around 50 seconds each, shot in France and in different
countries.
5 We must also remember that cinema was not a male business only. A set of four recently published
DVDs (Lobster Films 2018), Les pionnières du cinéma, highlights the work of women. They focus
on the period between 1895 and 1930, with references to Alice Guy (France) who shot more than
200 short films and founded the Studios Solax in the US where she worked from 1907 to 1922;
Lois Weber (US) who was the first woman to be admitted into the Motion Picture Directors
Association in 1917; Mable Normand (US) who directed Chaplin during his early years; Marie
Epstein (France); Karin Swanström (Sweden); Germaine Dulac (France); Mary Pickford (US);
and Jeanne Roques, or Musidora (France), etc.
6 In this section, our presentation focuses mainly on the Western history of cinema and AVT. See,
for instance, Chomenstowski (2014) on how Soviet cinema adopted a certain language policy
from the silent era to the talkies, from subtitling to voice-over, and Razlogova (2014) on how
interpreting was also used, especially during film festivals.
7 Before World War II, subtitlers were said to use between half and a third of the subtitles provided
today for similar films. However, studies on the correlation, over time and across film genres,
between the number of subtitles and the type of verbal manipulation are yet to be carried out.
8 For more information on FIAF and its databases, see www.fiafnet.org/.
9 The memoirs report on technical innovations and translation practices. Published at the author’s
expense, the book has had a limited distribution.
10 In the Archives, 1,636 feature-length films have been saved out of the 2,467 films produced in
France between 1936 and 1953.
11 It is worth mentioning here the Journal of European Television History and Culture (online) and
some of its issues: 2(3), 2013: European TV memories; 3(5), 2014: TV histories in (post)socialist
Europe; 4(7), 2015: Archaeologies of tele-visions and -realities; and 5(9), 2016: TV formats and
format research: Theory, methodology, history and new developments.
12 See Perspectives’ special issue on‘Corpus linguistics and AVT: in search of an integrated
approach’, 21(4), 2013.
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19
Film translation
Introduction
The relation between film and translation is determined by two of cinema’s constitutive
features, namely its use of language and its mobility. Cinema’s use of language in both its
oral and written forms was made possible thanks to technologies that enabled, first, the
insertion of snippets of text (e.g. intertitles) on the screen and then, from the late 1920s,
the synchronization of sound and image and the advent of sound film. From the start,
the use of language in films has meant that, unlike most other visual forms of represen-
tation, but much like literature, films needed to be translated in order to reach linguis-
tically diverse audiences. In this sense, film translation can be generally defined as the
interlinguistic transfer of the dialogue, the narrative, the song lyrics, the narrative captions
(spoken and written), and any other on-screen text, into another language, usually the
presumed native language of the audience. Historically, three different modalities of film
translation have developed. These are (i) subtitling, i.e. the superimposition of written
translations onto the image; (ii) dubbing, i.e. the replacement of the soundtrack with its
translated version; and (iii) voice-over, i.e. the addition of a translated soundtrack over
the existing one. Theorizing on film translation from this point of view bears mainly on
issues of representational accuracy and adequacy, including but not limited to questions
of semantic and pragmatic equivalence, the translation of cultural references, semiotic
coherence, orality, idiomaticity, and characterization.
Cinema’s mobility as a medium is equally fundamental to the notion of film translation
insofar as the quasi-synchronous release of films in theatres around the world prompted
the development of fast and effective methods of linguistic access for the local audiences.
Since the turn of the 20th century and until the current digital era, technologies of com-
munication, reproduction and travel have progressively extended the spatial reach of films
and have shortened the delay between their production, dissemination and exhibition.
As a result, film translation is generally characterized by the double requirement of mul-
tiple target languages and short turnaround times. This situation has led to the creation
and standardization of an array of stylistic, grammatical, graphological and technical
conventions for subtitling, dubbing and voiceover which operate as quality standards in
302 DOI: 10.4324/9781003221678-23

Film translation
professional and educational contexts and are used to expedite the translation of indi-
vidual films. These conventions have been devised and diffused by the big film studios and
other private bodies which own the technologies of film production and traffic. However,
national governments and bodies have also played an important role in shaping film
translation. Through a combination of legislature and other indirect incentives, national
governments have traditionally controlled whether and how each translation modality
was to be used in their markets, and, more generally, have included film translation as an
important consideration in their cultural and linguistic policies.1
The choice between subtitling and dubbing as a preferred ‘national method’ of film
translation is telling in this respect. Traditionally, this choice has been predicated not
only on economic factors but also on political and ideological ones. Dubbing can be
used to mitigate foreign political and cultural influences since it entails the removal
of the existing dialogue, thus leaving plenty of room for domesticating translation
solutions. Conversely, subtitling ensures higher exposure to dominant foreign cultures
(e.g. Anglophone ones where a great proportion of mainstream films hail from) and may
be enlisted as a tool for the modernization, cosmopolitanization, or cultural coloniza-
tion of the global periphery (O’Sullivan 2016: 265–267; Dwyer 2017: 19–51). From these
points of view, film translation can be thought of as a form of accessibility to cinema
that registers the effect of local tensions and global asymmetries in the production and
circulation of (popular) culture. Accordingly, the study of film translation affords spe-
cific insights into the history and the nature of film as a cultural institution, while it
also testifies to the ways culture has been operationalized during the 20th and 21st cen-
turies in order to promote national and international projects of self-representation and
self-transformation.
As this chapter will suggest, much of the scholarship on the translation of films is at
its early stages. Although there is substantial research into film translation as a practice of
interlingual transfer, there is relatively little debate around other significant aspects, such
as the role of translation in shaping cinema as a globally popular art form. In approaching
film translation from a theoretical perspective, it is therefore useful to differentiate between
two distinct, if closely interrelated, conceptualizations of translation, to wit, as transfer
and as transformation of the ‘original’. Though, in practice, every translation combines
both elements, their theoretical implications are different. The study of film translation as
a form of interlingual transfer is the appreciation of how (or how well) the verbal elements
of the film, taken as a complex semiotic whole, are conveyed in the subtitles, the dubbing
or the voice-over. This approach generally assumes the translated film to be a derivative
product and is often concerned with descriptive, normative and pedagogic aspects of the
translation task. Conversely, the study of film translation as transformation of the ‘ori-
ginal’ considers translation to be a necessarily creative interference with the film that is
marked by the new geographical and linguistic settings in which it is transposed and by
the aesthetic, ideological, economic and other agendas that condition the translation’s
production and reception. From this point of view, a translated film is not merely the
‘original’ with some auxiliary scriptural additions or verbal substitutions but an alterna-
tive version of the film which delivers a different spectatorial experience. Seen this way,
translation’s conventional purpose of representational accuracy appears to be problematic.
The same is true of the classic trope of ‘translation’s invisibility’ –in subtitling, ironically,
a professional principle as much as a physical impossibility. It follows that film translation
provides a powerful lens for amplifying the interpretive scope of films as they travel across
cultures and languages, for examining the (geo)political and institutional forces at work in
303
various film distribution and exhibition contexts, and, ultimately, for probing into the role
of translation in contemporary media culture.
This chapter will touch upon both conceptualizations of film translation but with an
emphasis on its film-transformative aspects. Although these aspects have received relatively
less attention, there is currently increasing interest in the (often very creative) ways trans-
lation intervenes in the conception and production of films and complicates the ‘original
versions’ on which it is performed. Starting from film translation’s historical beginnings,
this chapter will then briefly discuss some descriptive and prescriptive approaches which,
under the rubric of ‘audiovisual translation’, currently account for the bulk of scholarly
activity in the field. We will then expand on critical considerations of the translation-film
interrelation through two disciplinary angles, namely, translation studies and film studies.
Historical aspects of film translation

Despite early filmmakers’ and film studios’ convictions that cinema was accessible to all,
the presence of language and its inescapable bind to geographical regions has always
constituted a barrier to cinema’s global and universalist aspirations. As an instrument for
negotiating this barrier, interlingual translation has been a constitutive feature of cinema
since its earliest years. As several scholars have pointed out, early cinema was rarely
silent (Abel & Altman 2001: xii; Nornes 2007: 93). Tessa Dwyer, meanwhile, observes
that the era’s ‘supposed universalism was in fact underwritten by a vast array of trans-
lation practices’ (2005: 301). Film screenings were accompanied by in-situ performances
by lecturer-narrators and interlingual interpreters, and title cards were systematically
translated by film studios and distributors. Film translation during this period also
involved adding or omitting titles, translating paratextual materials, and even re-editing
storylines (O’Sullivan & Cornu 2019: 16). Negatives to be exported internationally were
often re-cut using alternate takes, and storylines were modified in order to meet the cul-
tural expectations of importing nations. Paradoxically, then, translation was integral both
to cinema’s global enterprise and to its universalist myth during the ‘silent’ period.
The introduction of synchronized sound in the late 1920s presented an additional
linguistic barrier, raising novel aesthetic and semiotic issues in the process. As Nataša
Ďurovičová observes, the unique attraction of sound cinema was that it offered to
reattach the disembodied voice to an ‘audible’ body (2010: 93). Despite a move by
Hollywood studios towards the synchronicity of sound and image, not everyone was
convinced by its introduction. Filmmakers such as Paul Rotha and Charlie Chaplin
continued to make silent films, with Rotha lamenting that the introduction of audible
dialogue would strike ‘a fatal blow at the heart of the cinema’ and threaten its ‘universal
appeal’ (1931: 22). Meanwhile Russian montage filmmaker-theorists such as Sergei
Eisenstein were critical of the ideological and commercial motives behind the move
towards synchronization. Eisenstein, together with Vsevolod Pudovkin and Grigory
Aleksandrov, argued for sound’s ‘distinct nonsynchronization with the visual images’,
stressing that only contrapuntal sound would allow montage films to achieve their full
artistic potential (1985: 84).
Alongside these aesthetic and semiotic concerns, sound also presented a significant obs-
tacle to (Hollywood) cinema’s commercial viability and its global economic aspirations.
In particular, it complicated international distribution, leading to a period of signifi-
cant instability and creativity. The international market, which the United States had
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Film translation
dominated for over a decade, began to dissolve. New markets organized along linguistic
lines were developed, and new representational practices were devised, which, following
Ďurovičová (2021), can be divided into two broad trends: practices that concealed a film’s
linguistic otherness, and those that made it more apparent.
As part of this first approach, film distributors devised so-called ‘synchronized’
films –‘silent’ versions of talking pictures that included music and title cards in the
local language (de Luna Freire 2015: 194–203). European and American film studios
also notoriously experimented with multiple-language versions and polylingual films.
The former involved the simultaneous or sequential production of films shot in more
than one language, while the latter were films that featured two or more languages in
an attempt to appeal to multiple national and linguistic audiences (Rossholm 2006).
As Anna Sofia Rossholm explains (2006: 66), bilingual films, which often integrated
the issue of translation into the film narratives, were able to cater to audiences without
the need for extra-diegetic translation. These practices were relatively short-lived in
Europe and the United States due to their commercial failure, although multiple-
language versions are still produced in India and the interlingual remake has been a
common feature of Hollywood cinema.
Strategies that preserved the trace of linguistic difference included non-translation
(either targeting immigrant populations or requiring audiences to sit through films in
languages they did not understand) and, as stated earlier, dubbing, subtitling and voice-
over. Given Hollywood’s early adoption of synchronous sound and its drive to maintain
its dominance over foreign markets, subtitles were predominantly produced in European
countries and in European languages. With lower production costs and relatively short
turnarounds, subtitles were the translation strategy adopted by smaller nations with high
levels of literacy such as the Netherlands and Scandinavian countries. Given, however, the
limited audiences of subtitled films, which ‘became charged with the burden of “educa-
tion” ’ (Ďurovičová 2010: 103), alternative representational strategies such as dubbing were
simultaneously developed, motivated by commercial, ideological and political interests
(O’Sullivan & Cornu 2019: 21–22).
Once dubbing, subtitling and voice-over established themselves as dominant modes of
film translation, their uses, rules and conventions remained relatively unaltered for much
of the remainder of the 20th century. It was only with the emergence of new recording
technologies and storage devices that this stability was disrupted. Following the develop-
ment of VHS in the late 1970s and of DVDs in the 1990s, cinema became increasingly
distributed, globalized and localized, especially as these formats offered viewers greater
choice in terms of the translation modes (and target languages) available. Technological
developments have paved the way for the proliferation of translated products that lie
outside the control of film studios and distribution companies (such as pirate and fan-
translated materials) and for innovative translation practices such as creative subtitles,
also known as integrated titles (see Fox 2018). Reflecting on the role of translation in
cinema’s continued expansion across screens of all shapes and sizes (computers, tablets,
mobile phones etc.), Ďurovičová suggests that translation, with its unavoidable entangling
of images, texts and sounds, may well have ‘prepared the way to cinema’s dis/integration
into the flow of screen material consumed today’ (2021: 288). What histories of film trans-
lation highlight, then, is that not only have translation practices been shaped by the trans-
formative shifts throughout cinema’s history, but that translation has also transformed
cinema.
305
Audiovisual translation and film

Since its emergence as a field, ‘audiovisual translation’ or AVT has come to define an
approach that predominantly focuses on the linguistic, pedagogical and industrial aspects
of film translation. It has tended to focus on interlingual practices that take place at
the distribution stage of filmmaking, and has overwhelmingly addressed two dominant
modes, namely dubbing and subtitling. In particular, research has tended to concentrate
on the representational functions of these translation modes and on their associated
histories, norms and techniques. The discipline’s close alignment with associated media
industries has also meant a consistent preoccupation with professional practice, as Mona
Baker points out, when she writes that ‘the priority has been to address practical needs,
with training manuals and descriptive accounts of professional practice dominating the
field’ (2014: xiv).
Offering a broad overview of the field’s trajectory, Frederic Chaume (2018) maps out
four so-called ‘turns’ that have occurred during the discipline’s history: descriptive, cul-
tural, sociological, cognitive. During the discipline’s nascent period in the 1980s, scholars
sought to distinguish audiovisual translation from literary forms of translation through
analysis of the idiosyncratic features of audiovisual texts, the audiovisual translator’s
task, and the industrial translation process. To be sure, concerns relating to the field of
audiovisual translation’s identity, vibrancy and place in the academy have been a con-
stant feature throughout the discipline’s history, as scholars attempt to stress the field’s
independence and maturity, particularly in the context of a marketized and competitive
academic landscape.
Around the turn of the century, scholars increasingly directed their attention towards
the translated texts themselves, producing systematic taxonomies of translation strategies
adopted by translators. These descriptive approaches tended to focus on linguistic and/
or technical aspects of existing translations and aimed to produce translation norms. By
concentrating on micro translation problems relating to language (e.g. cultural references,
swear words, humour) and to technical constraints associated with the representational
apparatus (e.g. lip-synching, segmentation, line breaks), studies of this kind catalogued
individual strategies, established patterns and constructed typologies. The work of Jorge
Díaz Cintas and Aline Remael (2007) and Chaume (2012), and in particular their respective
classifications of subtitling and dubbing strategies, are exemplary of this approach.
Research approaches endemic to translation studies have tended ‘to exhibit “micro”-
preoccupations, sometimes examining issues of execution to the exclusion of context’
(Dwyer 2017: 27). In response to an emphasis on the micro, researchers have turned
towards the wider cultural and sociological aspects of audiovisual translation. As a result,
attention has shifted from micro (the text itself) to the macro (that which surrounds the
text), taking into account the ways in which films and their translations are socially and
culturally embedded artefacts. Marcella De Marco’s (2012) work on how gender as a social
construct shapes the translation of films, including the visual elements of DVD covers,
exemplifies such an approach. Acknowledging that audiovisual products are shaped as
much by ideological and political forces as by linguistic and technical constraints, other
lines of inquiry have explored issues relating to policy and censorship. O’Sullivan (2016),
for example, emphasizes the role that protectionism has played, alongside nationalism, in
the determination of governmental policies regarding the translation of films.
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Film translation
In recent years, translation scholars have been increasingly drawn to the field of psych-
ology, in particular in relation to psycholinguistics and cognitive perception. Much of
this process-oriented research has investigated various operational aspects of audio-
visual translation, including cognitive processes of translators and spectators, profes-
sional workflows, and human-machine interactions. Researchers have assessed viewers’
perceptions of subtitle reading speeds and line segmentations (Szarkowska 2016), their
enjoyment of dubbing versus subtitling (Wissmath et al. 2009), and their experiences
of creative subtitling (Fox 2018). Research in these areas is driven, to an extent, by the
demands of the audiovisual market (Nikolić 2018: 182) and is often preoccupied with
pedagogical, practical and industry-related issues and questions.
Looking ahead, as ongoing technological shifts undermine the homogeneity of
national markets and audiences, fostering novel modes of interaction between producers
and users, Pérez-González stresses the need for audiovisual translation research ‘to move
beyond’ these traditional areas of inquiry and to develop interdisciplinary and critical
research (2019: 2). The following sections consider such approaches.
Beyond interlingual transfer: film-transformative aspects of translation

Pérez-González (2012, 2014) introduced a distinction between audiovisual translation as
a site of representational practice and as a site of interventionist practice. Examining
translation as a site of representational practice primarily concerns the traditional, eco-
nomically motivated applications of translation which also form the material basis for
the theories of equivalence that prevail in educational, publishing and media contexts.
At the same time, however, drawing attention to translation as a form of representation
raises complex theoretical issues insofar as the films on which translation is performed are
already first-degree representations of the realities they depict. The question that arises
for the viewer, then, is whether they are watching a doubly mediated reality. The use of
subtitles and dubbing/voiceover creates conditions of viewing that defy the verisimilitude
of fictional cinematic narratives and modify their effect. Because they obscure the image
or fail to synchronize perfectly with it, subtitles and dubbing disrupt the image-sound
ensemble and bely the reality that it strives to convey. Therefore, in principle, at least, it is
possible to argue that every translated film is a site of intervention and can be examined
(and watched) as such. This is not to question the stricter meaning that Pérez-González
gives to ‘intervention’ as ‘politically, ideologically or aesthetically engaged’ translation
practice that is citizen rather than industry driven (2014: 58). The intention is rather to
broaden the idea of intervention, put the accent on the transformative agency of every
film translation and ask how translation as practice and concept transforms individual
films and the cinema more broadly.
In the remainder of this chapter we will focus on transformative aspects of translation
in its interaction with film. Following historical and contemporary theoretical trends, we
will examine the various guises under which translation affects common and scholarly
perceptions about the cinema beyond questions that are strictly related to the interlin-
gual transfer of the film’s dialogue. Far from being homogeneous, these trends originate
sporadically from within film studies and translation studies. We will examine approaches
from both disciplines, starting with the former.
307
Film studies approaches

In his book Cinematic Journeys: Film and Movement, Dimitris Eleftheriotis (2010: 187)
laments many film theorists’ ‘stubborn refusal to consider that subtitles might be theor-
etically significant or at least acknowledge their existence’. Eleftheriotis takes issue spe-
cifically with the French apparatus theorists who, ironically, drew attention to questions
of spectatorship and the material means of representation in cinema, both of which are
closely related to the function of subtitles, dubbing and voice-over. However, his point
is relevant to film theory in general; the simple fact is that, until recently, film scholars
showed very little interest in any aspect of film translation.
Yet, in a more general sense, translation has been part of theoretical discussions about
film from early on, as we have seen already. It has not been sufficiently acknowledged
that the concept of translation has informed debates about the ‘language of cinema’
in the context of film semiotics, in the 1960s and 1970s. In his influential essay ‘The
Cinema: Language or Language System?’, originally published in French in 1964, Metz
examined cinema as a signifying practice while also looking for what is specifically cine-
matic in the way cinema produces meaning. In his essay, Metz asked whether film is a
‘universal language system’ or something more akin to ‘verbal languages’ (1991: 55).
Drawing on Roman Jakobson’s linguistics of translation among other things, he used the
concept of translatability to argue that cinema is not a self-contained language with its
own vocabulary and rules (a langue) but a plurality of codes (a langage) that is constantly
deconstructed and reconstructed in the course of film practice. According to Metz, the
language of film ‘is the height of the translatable’, hence its universal scope, while verbal
languages are ‘more or less translatable’ (1991: 64) and therefore non-universal. The idea
of the universal translatability of film language may be questionable (as it would suggest,
implausibly, that film ‘translates’ in a similar way across geographies and temporalities),
but it shows the importance of translation in pinning down the difference between cinema
as audio-visual code, and the languages spoken in it.
In his collection of essays Heretical Empiricism (1972), Pier Paolo Pasolini challenged
Metz’s conclusion and asserted that cinema was a genuine language (a langue) into which
‘the language of reality’ is translated. Without going into the details of Pasolini’s argu-
ment, it is worth quoting the conclusion of his short essay ‘The Nonverbal as Another
Verbality’ from that collection (2005: 283, emphasis in original). He confirms that:
Written-spoken languages are translations by evocation; audiovisual languages

(cinema) are translations by reproduction.
The translated Language, therefore, is always the nonverbal language of Reality.
According to Pasolini, the language of cinema is of the same order as verbal languages
because, just like them, it is a translation of the ‘language of reality’. Thus, as Robert Stam
explains, for Pasolini, ‘the relationship between film and the world is one of translation.
Reality is a “discourse of things” which film translates into a “discourse of images […]” ’
(2000: 113). Like Metz, Pasolini uses translation to describe a relationship of difference
that is fundamental to cinema; only, while, for Metz, translation concerns the difference
between cinematic language and verbal languages, for Pasolini translation pertains to the
difference between all languages, including that of cinema, and the language of reality.
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Film translation
Despite the importance of translation in their thinking, neither Metz nor Pasolini
reflected systematically on subtitling and dubbing. Their shared conviction that film was a
universal language (whether as a langue or a langage)2 seems to have blinded them to the
fact that, as far as cinema is concerned, difference is most evident at the level of verbal
languages used in film and their translation for heteroglot audiences. From a contem-
porary standpoint, Eleftheriotis thinks of this blindness as ideological, in the sense that
it ignores ‘the extensive transnational life of filmic texts’ and prioritizes ‘a mythical ori-
ginal as the location of ultimate “meaning” for analytical/critical/theoretical purposes’
(Eleftheriotis 2010: 183).
Notwithstanding the paucity of critical thinking about translation among film scholars,
Ella Shohat and Robert Stam must be credited with the first attempt at delineating a
theoretical space for the translation-cinema interrelation. In their article ‘The Cinema
After Babel: Language, Difference, Power’ (1985), Shohat and Stam set the scene for fur-
ther inquiry into ‘the impact on the cinema of the prodigality of tongues in which it is
produced, spoken and received’ (1985: 35). Echoing the Metz-Pasolini debate but also
pointing at its limits, Shohat and Stam connected the idea of film as translation with that
of the translation of film: ‘If all film experience involves a kind of translation –from the
images and sounds of the text into the internalized discourse of the spectator –inter-
lingual cinematic experiences entail specific and more complicated mechanisms’ (1985: 41).
The authors raised a number of key issues that are still being debated by film translation
scholars including the historical notion of cinema’s universality, the hegemony of English
as cinematic lingua franca, the ideology underpinning the use of subtitling and dubbing,
and the discovery of film translation as a new site of difference in the cinema.
In Framer Framed, Trinh T. Minh-Ha (1992) stressed the ideological nature of subtitles,
in particular their duration, arguing that the convention of synchronization between sub-
title, image and sound functions as a form of suture and a means of establishing unified
spectator-subjects. The system of suture is rooted in the shot/reverse-shot model, a main-
stay of classical narrative cinema used to edit for continuity. Drawing on the suture theory
of Jean-Pierre Oudart and Daniel Dayan, Minh-Ha considered how subtitling adheres to
continuity editing protocols in concealing the means of representation and maintaining
an impression that films provide ‘unmediated access to reality’ (2005: 129). For Minh-
Ha, subtitles perform this function by collapsing ‘the activities of reading, hearing and
seeing into one single activity, as if they were all the same’ (1992: 207). In this way, con-
ventional subtitles function ‘to naturalise a dominant, hierarchically unified worldview’
(ibid.). Dionysios Kapsaskis (2017) built on Minh-Ha’s work to suggest that the meticu-
lous stitching of subtitles to shot changes (a timing technique used in professional sub-
titling) constitutes an even clearer example of suture at work in cinema. Although the
subtitle is unable to conceal itself as effectively as the camera, Kapsaskis points out that
‘the care taken in professional contexts in order to make it inconspicuous is a measure of
the truth of Minha-Ha’s argument’ (2017: 252).
An important collection published at a time when film translation was only being
discussed as the interlingual transfer of dialogue in audiovisual translation circles was
Atom Egoyan and Ian Balfour’s Subtitles: On the Foreignness of Film (2004). Thematically
diffuse and unsystematic in its approach, this volume nevertheless captured the growing
interest among filmmakers and scholars in the intersection of cinema and translation.
While many of the contributors used translation as a pretext and a metaphor to discuss
the mechanisms of suppressing foreignness in mainstream cinema, a few chapters sought
309
to reflect on translation as a process that is central to film. Notably, Eric Cazdyn drew
attention to the ‘political nature of subtitling’, arguing that
[a]‌ll subtitles invariably transform the original text. This concept of transformative
subtitling seeks to de-link and de-territorialize the subtitled version from the original.
[…] Transformative subtitling implies that the original is not only what it is, but that
it also exceeds itself.
(Cazdyn 2004: 414–415)
The political dimension alluded to here is that the ‘original’ film is entrenched in the hom-
ogenizing narrative of the nation whose official language it speaks, and that subtitles
dispute this narrative and testify to the transnational life of all cinema. Consequently,
a subtitled film presents audiences with the aesthetic experience of the ‘national/trans-
national paradox’ (Cazdyn 2004: 417) –a paradox of which audiences are not sufficiently
aware on the level of everyday social life, according to the author.
In her essay ‘Vector, Flow, Zone: towards a History of Cinematic translatio’, Ďurovičová
identified the same paradox at the heart of the cinema. As she put it, ‘the baseline condi-
tion of cinema [is] reflective of, and enmeshed in, a transnational scale of space –a scale
characterized by a simultaneous dependence on and transcendence of the nation-state’
(2010: 94). For Ďurovičová, the inquiry into this paradox entails a new historiography
of cinema for which she uses the term ‘translatio’. This is ‘a revisionist account of film
history’ (2010: 101) which weaves together formal and institutional aspects of cinema
such as the medium’s global mobility, its use of speech as a fundamental feature, the
impact of nationalism on film translation policy in different parts of the world, and the
internationalizing impulse of the film industry. Such a complex methodological frame-
work is necessary because film translation theory that focuses solely on questions of lin-
guistic transfer lacks the analytical force that the prism of translatio affords. Ďurovičová
explains:
Extending beyond semantics so as to include the social and political ground-rules of

text transfer from one to another set of cultural circumstances, [translatio] is expli-
citly attentive to the non-identity, asymmetry, or unevenness of power relationships
in which all translation is inevitably implicated.
(2010: 95)
In an essay published in 2021, Ďurovičová used the idea behind translatio, though not the
term itself, to propose a chronology of cinema based on its relation to language and trans-
lation. She perceives a historical pattern
from (1) the initial expansion-driving rhetorical trope of motion pictures as a ‘uni-
versal language’, through (2) a cultural contraction and movies’ worldwide ‘nation-
alization’ brought about by the general adaption of synchronized speech from ca.
1930 on, to then, (3) some four decades later, starting in late 1970s, cinema’s de-col-
lectivization combined with a re-globalization brought about by the new proto/digital
technologies of video, DVD and VOD (video on demand).
(2021: 281)
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Film translation
From cinema as a universal language to cinema as an expression of ethnolinguistic unity

(and the attendant maxim of imperceptible translation) to the new media ecology of ‘ever
more globalized’ and ‘ever more localized’ distribution (2021: 286), Ďurovičová’s tripartite
periodization is an example of how the translational view generates ideas that feed into the
study and understanding of cinema.
Mark Betz’s Beyond the Subtitle: Remapping European Art Cinema (2009) can be read
as a specific contribution to this cinematic historiography. Betz’s study zoomed in on the
period between what Ďurovičová saw as phases (2) and (3) of film history, namely, the
nationalization and the re-globalization of cinema. Focusing on European co-productions
of art films in the late 1950s and the 60s, Betz investigates a range of translational
exchanges beyond subtitling and dubbing, including those among polyglot film casts and
crews. For Betz, the subtitling/dubbing debate was predicated on (mis)perceptions of lin-
guistic authenticity in the cinema, with subtitling often being considered more authentic
than dubbing on the grounds that it let the ‘true’ voice of the actors be heard. Based on
a close examination of contemporary journalism and criticism, and noting the political
and aesthetic undertones of this discussion, the author argues that this debate was symp-
tomatic of the crisis of the nation-state in Europe in the face of the impending European
integration and the neo-capitalist transformation of the European economy.
Broadening the debate both theoretically and geographically, Tijana Mamula and Lisa
Patti’s edited volume The Multilingual Screen: New Reflections on Cinema and Linguistic
Difference (2016) addressed simultaneously the topics of multilingualism and transla-
tion in film. The linguistic and geographical variety of the case studies examined in this
book indicates the growing visibility and relevance of film translation to the film com-
munity. In their introduction, the editors discern two lines of inquiry. The first is audio-
visual translation which is exemplified by studies such as Abé Mark Nornes’s Cinema
Babel: Translating Global Cinema (2007) and Carol O’Sullivan’s Translating Popular
Film (2011). The second line of inquiry probes into ‘the development of the transla-
tional as an interdisciplinary discourse and the growing need to account for the work of
migrant, diasporic or otherwise “intercultural” filmmakers’ (Mamula & Patti 2016: 2–3).
Translation is here used metaphorically for the most part to draw attention to the inter-
stitial exchanges and collaborations between filmmakers with different lingua-cultural
backgrounds, with Naficy’s An Accented Cinema: Exilic and Diasporic Filmmaking (2001)
mentioned as a prime example. In effect, however, the two lines of inquiry can hardly be
separated. While there are historical and methodological reasons for approaching film
translation from these two different angles, a new interdisciplinarity is necessary and in
fact has already been informing studies such as Nornes (2007) and O‘Sullivan (2011),
which will be reviewed further down.
Stam, a film scholar who has always been attentive to linguistic difference and the
centre–periphery dynamic, exemplifies this interdisciplinary approach with publications
such as Race in Translation:Culture Wars around the Postcolonial Atlantic (2015, with
Shohat) and World Literature, Transnational Cinema, and Global Media. Towards a
Transartistic Commons (2019). The latter book is a comparative study of cinematic and
literary cultures in which the author reflects on the translation of novels in relation to
that of films and discusses the cinematic adaptation of literary works as forms of trans-
lation. In tracing the common ground between world literature and world cinema, Stam
transposes to the domain of films David Damrosh’s idea that for a literary work to qualify
as world literature it must ‘gain in translation’ (2019: 62). Stam thus explores ‘the gains
311
of (film) translation’ in a chapter (2019: 75–83) that looks at translation as a productive

process which enriches the source texts whether they are novels adapted to films or
films translated into other languages. Stam identifies several patterns of transformation
through the translation and adaptation of source texts such as ‘Hollywoodeanization’
(2019: 87), ‘textual diasporization and amplification’ (2019: 93) or ‘actualization, indigen-
ization, racialization, Africanization, relocalization, dialogization and so forth’ (2019: 88).
In every case, translation in the literal or metaphorical sense is understood as a process of
revitalization (2019: 84) of texts through which ‘a transartistic commons’, as Stam calls
it, is progressively defined.
Writing from an equally interdisciplinary perspective, Dwyer has also insisted on
translation’s productive impact on filmic texts. In Speaking in Subtitles: Revaluing Screen
Translation (2017), Dwyer made a strong case for subtitling and dubbing as critical
components of transnational screen culture insofar as they introduce to it the elements
of risk, errancy and excess, and thus destabilize the myth of film’s ‘universal language’
(Dwyer 2017: 3, 69). For Dwyer, errancy and excess, in the form of translation failures,
mistranslations and misrepresentations, are central to screen culture, and her focus on
errant practices provides a re-evaluation of the concept of ‘quality’, emphasizing its
instability and openness. Sidestepping industry-driven concerns about ‘good’ and ‘bad’
translation, Dwyer explores ‘improper’ translations in productive ways, drawing attention
to the underlying assumptions and agendas rooted in translation studies, its associated
industries and the socio-political forces that shape them.
The book’s fourth chapter explores these assumptions in relation to what Dwyer refers
to as ‘guerrilla translation’ –that is, unregulated translation practices performed by fans
(e.g. fan-subbing/-dubbing) and non-fans (e.g. bootlegging) (2017: 110). Dwyer highlights
the commonalities shared by guerrilla subtitles associated with bootlegging operations
and professional practices, pointing out that non-fan translation tends ‘to imitate the
norms and conventions of mainstream, commercial practices, exhibiting a conservative
formal and textual approach’ (2017: 124). In other words, these subtitles display a pre-
occupation with invisibility in the same way as professional subtitling. For Dwyer, consid-
eration of the excess and errancy that stems from practices like guerrilla translation brings
the ideological assumptions of mainstream translation practices into sharper focus, dem-
onstrating the fragility and constructedness of concepts such as ‘quality’ and ultimately
destabilizing the authority of ‘originals’.
Nornes’s influential concept of corrupt/abusive subtitles originally dates from 1999,
but it can be usefully understood as an errant form of screen translation in Dwyer’s
ascription of the term (see Dwyer 2017, chapter 3). A key idea in Nornes’s book Cinema
Babel: Translating Global Cinema (2007), abusive subtitling is framed as an ethical and
political response to the realization that ‘all subtitles are corrupt’ due to the ‘violent reduc-
tion’ imposed upon them by the temporal and spatial constraints of the subtitling appar-
atus (1999: 17, 18). Subtitlers, for instance, are often forced to condense their translations
to physically fit the space of the frame and to temporally synchronize subtitles with the
utterance. This inevitable reduction leads corrupt subtitle(r)s to appropriate the source
text and to ‘conform the original to the rules, regulations, idioms, and frame of refer-
ence of the target language and its culture’, while purporting to provide direct access
to it (Nornes 2007: 155). Denouncing these subtitles as corrupt and as a form of vio-
lent domestication, Nornes proposes an alternative approach: abusive subtitles. While
corrupt subtitlers conceal the violence that subtitling necessarily entails, abusive subtitlers
312
Film translation
embraces it. The latter foreground their corruption and alert spectators to their complicity
in such practices through the use of textual and graphic experimentation. For Nornes, to
translate abusively is to underline, or playfully suggest at, the impossibility of the direct
access that corrupt subtitles purport to provide and to remind viewers of the unknow-
ability of the source text.
For Nornes, subtitlers are able to translate in more daring, thrilling and, ultimately,
abusive ways when ‘capital does not enforce the rules and regulations of corruption’
(2007: 182). As a result, he locates many of these abusive practices in fansubbing, in
particular the interventionist subtitles associated with Japanese anime. These abusive
strategies include the use of different-coloured subtitles for overlapping dialogue, explana-
tory footnotes, non-standard fonts, sizes and colours that complement the source text’s
material qualities, and the free placement of subtitles (2007: 182–183). Nornes stresses
that ‘abusiveness is not only or exclusively graphic’, that it may take other forms and
that it is not restricted to anime (2007: 183). Non-or even anti-translation, for example,
is one such strategy used in live action cinema. Robert Gardener, for example, decided
to forego translation altogether in Forest of Bliss (1986, United States), an ethnographic
film that features no subtitles or narration for audiences who do not understand the film’s
language(s). Non-translation is also a feature of the so-called ‘Navajo English’ subtitles
produced for Jean-Luc Godard’s Film Socialisme (2010, France). Godard’s subtitles,
which do not contain punctuation, articles or conjugation, are deliberately obscure and
almost a form of anti-translation that brings attention to the untranslatability of cinema.
Translation studies approaches

Several scholars have transcended the descriptive-prescriptive paradigm that has to date
dominated the field of audiovisual translation, raising a range of issues in addition to the
interlingual transfer of the semantics, stylistics and pragmatics of film dialogue. These
approaches are discussed in this section, in particular with regard to the potential of
translation to modify, transform and act upon cinema.
In his book Translation Goes to the Movies (2009), Michael Cronin points out that
while translation studies research has focused on translators as active agents, both socio-
logically and historically, the representation of translators in films has received scant
consideration. Despite the relative neglect of translation as a cinematic theme,Cronin
reveals how the question of translation has been an ongoing concern of filmmakers
throughout the medium’s history and across different genres (2009: x). Issues of trans-
lation, he asserts, ‘are not the recondite concerns of niche film makers but lie at the
heart of some of the most widely seen films on the planet’, such as The Great Dictator
(Chaplin 1940, United States) and Star Wars (Lucas 1997, United States) (2009: xiii).
Indeed, while the labour of audiovisual translators has traditionally been invisible, much
as it is indispensable in popular cinema (Hollywood would not exist without them),
Cronin demonstrates the consistency with which translation has been present in the con-
struction of mainstream cinematic narratives and its relevance to our understanding of
cinema. As a result, Cronin’s book highlights just one of the ways in which translation
(in addition to its role as representative of film dialogue and text) has acted on, modified
even, films.
In Translating Popular Film (2011), O’Sullivan contributes to the discussion regarding the
centrality of language and translation to mainstream cinema through an exploration of the
313
ways in which film studios and filmmakers frequently both exclude and exploit translation
for the purposes of their global ambitions. Focusing on what she refers to as ‘translational
transactions’ (the ways in which filmmakers represent and manage linguistic otherness),
O’Sullivan highlights the translational work that filmmakers undertake, in particular during
a film’s development and production, in order to maintain ‘the dream of instantaneity
and redundancy of translation’ in cinema (2011: 40). These transactions include the use of
accented English, the non-translation of foreign dialogue, the so-called translating dissolve
(which translates diegetic textual elements for a film’s primary target audience, notably as
part of the image rather than as superimposition), and the sudden shift between narrative
and narrating languages. Importantly, what these transactions or strategies have in common
is that they all facilitate the avoidance of more explicit forms of translation, such as subtitling
and dubbing. What both Cronin and O’Sullivan demonstrate, then, is the importance of the
thematic role that translation plays in mainstream cinema and the ways in which the notion
of film translation extends beyond the process of linguistic representation applied to a source
film during the distribution stage of filmmaking. Their work challenges the assumption that
film translation concerns the production of a secondary target text based on a pre-existing
source text, gesturing towards the symbiotic and entangled relationship between film and
translation, whereby they act upon and transform each other in productive ways.
Drawing on some of these conceptualizations of translation in relation to cinema,
Kapsaskis (2017) notes that translational supplements such as subtitles testify above
all to the simple fact of film’s translatability and thus enable us to challenge ‘cinema’s
intrinsic claims to the universality of its language and to the realism of its representations’
(2017: 249). Kapsaskis mobilizes methods and concepts from the field of translation theory
(from close textual analysis of subtitles and dubbing to the geopolitics of translation) so
as to develop a specifically translational critical inquiry into film. The purpose of such
an inquiry is to interrogate ‘monolingual critical angles’ (2017: 247) in film theory and to
develop new tools for the analysis of particular films. With regard to the way the transla-
tional inquiry deconstructs cinema’s pretension to realism, Kapsaskis (2017: 251) combines
Metz’s (1991: 12–13) and Cronin’s (2009: 15) arguments on the paradoxical nature of cine-
matic realism which relies on the careful exclusion of selected aspects of reality from the
cinematic representation. One of these aspects, Kapsaskis argues, is linguistic difference;
analysing cinema through a translational lens draws attention to the ways in which lin-
guistic difference is constrained and monolingualism is constructed and represented as a
universal reality. In a later publication, Kapsaskis (2020) broadened his inquiry, taking as a
case study a range of films by the American director Jim Jarmusch. Here the attention is on
previously unnoticed thematizations and narrativizations of translation in Jarmusch’s films,
on the use (or deliberate non-use) of subtitles in the ‘original’ versions of the films, and on
aesthetic representations of translation such as in the visual duplication of objects and
actors. Kapsaskis’s aim is not to deconstruct the representation of reality in the films under
examination but to demonstrate how the interpretive angle of translation affords pene-
trating insights into these films, and into the director’s artistic vision and film-philosophy.
Conclusion
In this chapter, we have explored a growing body of texts that apply an array of lenses to the
field of film translation, offering novel and productive ways of thinking about the relation
between cinema and translation. In particular, the emphasis has been on research that explores
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Film translation
aspects of film translation that have received relatively limited attention compared with the
traditional descriptive-prescriptive, industry-oriented conceptualizations of translation as
interlingual transfer. By invoking a broader notion of intervention (to include the material,
as well as linguistic, elements of translational supplements), and by considering how these
translational operations are enmeshed in discourses of power and in economic, ideological
and political agendas, we have sought to highlight the transformational agency of translation
as it interacts with cinema and individual films. In doing so, this chapter has emphasized
approaches to film translation that look beyond, or in addition to, questions of a strictly
linguistic character, examining instead the ways in which translation, as an instrument of
commerce, ideology and politics, has shaped cinema as an institution, challenged its enduring
myths, and preserved its global reach. We have thus foregrounded conceptualizations of
film translation that emphasize transformation over transfer. By the same token, as we have
seen, film translation has also been shaped by cinema. Historically, subtitling and dubbing
practices, in the hands of dominant film studios and distributors, have been developed in line
with the aesthetics of mainstream cinema to prioritize synchronicity. The demands of cinema
as capital and the need for simultaneous multi-regional film releases have played a part in the
standardization of translation practices. Meanwhile, a preoccupation with invisibility (which
allows for the smooth flow of said capital) has blinded audiences as much as theorists to the
overwhelmingly visible and material aspects and effects of translation.
The body of work explored points towards a growing interest in the non-representational
and transformative qualities of film translation and in questions of aesthetics, ideology
and power. This is not to invoke the trope of the disciplinary ‘turn’ and to suggest that
we are witnessing some kind of ‘cinematic turn’ in translation studies (for, as we have
mentioned, the assemblage of work gathered here is heterogeneous and sporadic); rather,
it is to acknowledge that scholarship in translation studies is responding to contemporary
calls to ‘move beyond’ traditional fields of inquiry and to explore cross-disciplinary
interstices and connections. As such, this collection of work explores the ways in which
translation, inextricably bound to the mobility of films as commodities and to language
as one of its constitutive elements, mediates, transforms, and is transformed by, cinema.
Further reading
• Dwyer, T. (2017) Speaking in Subtitles: Revaluing Screen Translation. Edinburgh: Edinburgh
University Press.
Dwyer’s monograph questions some of the theoretical assumptions underpinning conven-

tional ‘screen translation’ practice, such as the authenticity of the ‘original version’ and the
universality of film language. By foregrounding the concepts of excess and errancy in the
translation of films, Dwyer underlines the value that translation brings to screen culture.
• Mamula, T. & Patti, L. (2016) The Multilingual Screen: New Reflections on Cinema and
Linguistic Difference. New York: Bloomsbury.
A broad array of theoretically and geographically diverse case studies around the theme
of linguistic difference in the cinema. The editors’ introduction and Masha Salazkina’s
opening chapter provide an overview of scholarly research into the intersection of film,
multilingualism and translation up to the time of the book’s publication.
315
• Pérez-González, L. (2014) Audiovisual Translation: Theories, Methods and Issues.

London: Routledge.
This book examines professional and educational approaches to audiovisual translation,

lends visibility to activist and interventionist practices and delineates the main research
methodologies in this field.
• O’Sullivan, C. (2011) Translating Popular Film. London: Palgrave Macmillan.
A ground-breaking book which demonstrates the historical role of translation in the

production of films and the shaping of film narratives, and explores the devices and
conventions used to represent (and often to suppress) linguistic foreignness in popular
cinema.
• Eleftheriotis, D. (2010) Cinematic Journeys: Film and Movement. Edinburgh: Edinburgh

University Press.
Eleftheriotis describes subtitles as markers of foreignness and key aspects of the trans-
national experience of cinema. His discussion provides a standpoint for critiquing earlier
theorizations of the cinematic apparatus and introducing the concept of the ‘foreign spec-
tator’ as a speculative theoretical category.
Notes
1 By way of example, see Cornu (2014: 33–71) for a historical account of how dubbing came to be
the predominant film translation modality in France.
2 See Pasolini’s essay ‘The written language of reality’ in Heretical Empiricism, where he claims
that ‘film is an international or universal language, the same for anyone who uses it’ (2005: 202).
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20
Mapping the contemporary
landscape of TV translation
Chiara Bucaria
Introduction
Usually a mostly invisible part of the distribution of audiovisual products across linguistic
and cultural borders, translation has risen to prominence in 2020 due to a series of con-
tingent events, which have hopefully contributed to making audiences more aware of its
crucial role as a facilitator for international television and filmic content. One occurrence
is the international success of the Korean-language film Parasite (Bong Joon-ho 2019).
The film, originally distributed with subtitles for the Anglo-American market, went on
to make Academy Award history in 2020 as the first non-English film to earn a best pic-
ture Oscar, as well as winning, among others, the Palme d’Or at Cannes Film Festival in
2019, and both the BAFTA and Golden Globe for best foreign-language film in 2020. The
‘otherness’ of Parasite as a product that needed linguistic and cultural mediation in order
to be enjoyed by non-speakers of Korean took centre-stage at the Golden Globe Awards
ceremony, when during his acceptance speech for best foreign-language film director Bong
Joon-ho stated through his interpreter that ‘Once you overcome the one-inch-tall barrier
of subtitles, you will be introduced to so many more amazing films.’ This explicit mention
of the work needed to overcome language barriers in the circulation of international
productions in languages other than English drew attention to the profession of subtitlers,
as well as perhaps also being a not-so-veiled criticism of the instinctive aversion of cer-
tain audience segments to subtitles. Furthermore, the message concerning the importance
of media translation in general was reinforced by the fact that Bong Joon-ho’s speech
was televised and delivered through his Korean-American interpreter, Sharon Choi, who
also accompanied him all throughout the film’s promotional campaign in 2019 and in
the period leading up to the 2020 award season, with her presence being an integral part
of press-conference and talk show interviews, including one on US TV network NBC’s
The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon. Choi’s flawless and poised professional per-
formance, which was praised by many and earned her her own fan base on social media,
contributed to increase the visibility of professionals working in the field of media trans-
lation and to shine ‘a light on interpreting, an overlooked aspect of film’s promotional
circuit, especially on the arthouse side’ (Hoad 2020).
DOI: 10.4324/9781003221678-24 319

Chiara Bucaria
A second occurrence that increased the visibility of audiovisual translation processes in

the first few months of 2020 was a temporary change in the offer of dubbed and subtitled
TV series1 on some subscription video on-demand (SVOD) platforms due to the SARS-
Covid19 pandemic. Similarly to many other in-person services and businesses, dubbing
studios had to suspend their activities during lockdown in order to limit the spread of
the disease. As a consequence, episodes from a substantial number of newer, ongoing TV
series normally available in Italian on Netflix, Amazon Prime Video and others (e.g. The
Walking Dead, Homeland, Westworld, Better Call Saul, This Is Us, Bosch) could not be
dubbed and had to be temporarily made available to viewers only in the original version
with subtitles in the target language. For the same reason, the Italian free-to-air network
Canale 5, chose to postpone the second part of the second season of the popular med-
ical drama New Amsterdam, which was aired in its dubbed version at the beginning of
June. By way of example, Netflix Italia announced this delay by attaching the following
messages to the affected shows:
Doppiaggio in arrivo. La salute dei doppiatori ha la priorità. /Potrebbe mancare

l’audio in alcune lingue. La salute dei doppiatori ha la priorità.
[The dubbed version is on its way. The dubbing actors’ health takes precedence. /
Audio tracks might be missing in some languages. The dubbing actors’ health takes
precedence.]
Particularly at a time when a significant percentage of the population found themselves

increasingly relying on streaming/on-demand platforms for entertainment, the absence
of the Italian audio track for some of the most popular TV series drew attention to the
crucial role that the dubbing industry plays in the mediation and distribution of audio-
visual products, including the quick turn-around that professionals in all the different
phases of the dubbing process have to comply with. Therefore, although perhaps not the
momentous watershed in changing attitudes and preferences towards different modes
of audiovisual translation that some had initially hypothesized, perhaps the sudden and
unexpected standstill of the dubbing industry contributed to increase some audience
segments’ awareness of the impact that audiovisual translation can have on their own
personal viewing habits.
As the two previous examples show, a discussion of TV translation would be incom-
plete without acknowledging the fluidity and permeability that characterize the field of
audiovisual translation and distribution today. Both the Parasite and the missing dubbing
examples highlight, on the one hand, the porousness in the distribution of different kinds
of media content, and, on the other, the ever-changing, ever-present nature of linguistic
and cultural mediation in the contemporary media landscape. We immediately encounter
a clear example of this permeability when tasked with a description of the state of the art
of research and practice in TV translation. In Johnson’s words ‘it is no wonder that it has
become harder and harder to pin down what television as a medium might be’ (2019: 16)
or, in essence, what are we talking about when we talk about TV translation today?
More generally, how do we define television and how do we limit the scope of our
observations, both in terms of medium and content? Whereas content made available on
traditional, linear networks seems like an obvious choice, how do we qualify subscription-
based streaming and on demand platforms and services? Can we still call their content
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Mapping landscape of TV translation
‘television’ even if it is made available through a different kind of technology and often
enjoyed by viewers through other screens than the television screen? And, more import-
antly for the subject at hand, do the ways in which audiovisual content is translated differ
depending on whether it appears on linear or non-linear television outlets? Moreover, a
parameter based on content alone, i.e. restricting the field only to genres that have trad-
itionally populated linear TV’s schedules –including, for example, series and documen-
taries –is not necessarily satisfactory, because there is so much more content available on
digital platforms, not only in terms of original productions but also library content that
is temporarily hosted on these services but was previously translated for other outlets. For
example, the previously mentioned film Parasite has become available in Italy through the
SKY on-demand library, NOW TV, and other platforms, which is a completely normal
trajectory for films that had an initial theatrical release. Also, one may wonder how
fansubbing should factor in in this scenario, considering that this form of amateur sub-
titling can be applied to TV content but, as a phenomenon, it occurs in different locations,
i.e. on dedicated online platforms and subsequently on the viewers’ computers or mobile
screens. A similar point could be argued for YouTube clips from talk shows that are ori-
ginally aired on network TV but are later uploaded online –and possibly translated –for
a different audience.
Finally, perhaps a further point concerning the complexity of defining the field of TV
translation should be made about the possibility to include not only television content but
also the apparatuses used to deliver this content in the purview of television translation,
particularly when it comes to TV apps and user interfaces (UIs) (Johnson 2020). In the
contemporary mediascape, in which internet-distributed television (Lotz 2017) provides
a large portion of the available content, the lines appear to have become more blurred
between audiovisual translation and localization per se, since said content is embedded in
apps and websites that also need full localization, which is in turn completely entangled
with the adaptation of audiovisual products and needs to provide continuity with their
translated versions. An increasing amount of paratextual information (see Batchelor
in this volume) and metadata have therefore been added to the amount of information
that needs to be made accessible to users across the world through a process of linguistic
and cultural mediation, including episode summaries and highlights, the labels of the
algorithm-based recommended categories appearing in individual UIs and the tags or key
words describing –often in just one word or short phrase –the tone of a given audiovisual
product.
For the purposes of our discussion here, a criterium based on distribution modes seems
to be the most accurate in limiting the scope, because it incorporates factors that are unique
to the televisual form, for example the quick turn-around with which translations have to
be delivered to a commissioner for the simultaneous release of a TV series or documen-
tary or the urgency behind news translation and synchronous modes of audiovisual trans-
lation, such as simultaneous, consecutive and sign interpreting, and respeaking for live
events. This chapter will therefore be mainly concerned with modes of audiovisual trans-
lation and issues concerning them in the context of television content (thus excluding,
for example, films originally adapted for a theatrical release) delivered through both
linear and non-linear programming, albeit with constant attention to the often-permeable
boundaries created by the interaction among genres and by similar delivery mechanisms.
The remainder of this chapter first looks at existing research, debates, and approaches
to different modes of TV translation, and subsequently offers a few observations on how
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more recent distribution dynamics, technological developments and consumption modes

have potentially affected the processes and products of TV content adaptation. Based on
the rich and multifaceted landscape of audiovisual translation described in the previous
sections, the final portion of this chapter considers possible further avenues for research in
the context of the global distribution dynamics of mediated TV content.
Existing research and debates on TV translation

When thinking in practical terms about the ways in which TV content is most often
linguistically and culturally mediated, the three main modes that come to mind are
dubbing, subtitling, and voice over. By virtue of their inherent characteristics, they have
been employed traditionally for different TV genres, although their use also intersects
with aspects relating to national preferences and target audiences. In very broad strokes,
because of its ability to completely cover the original dialogue (‘covert translation’ in
Gottlieb’s (1994) terminology borrowed from Juliane House), dubbing has been privileged
in productions and contexts in which the narrative illusion has to be prioritized, such as
fictional genres, whereas subtitling is often associated with a higher level of authenti-
city and transparency by virtue of the fact that viewers are granted simultaneous access
to the original soundtrack and its written, summarized translation (‘overt translation’).
A similar narrative can be seen for voice over, in which the adapted (but not lip synched)
dialogue is overdubbed but the original soundtrack is faintly audible in the background
and more distinctly perceptible at the beginning and end of turns (soundbites). Because
of its increased authenticity and cheaper costs by comparison with dubbing, voice over
has been traditionally used for non-fictional genres such as documentaries and news
interviews. Simil sync is a more recent evolution of voice over that is often used for
reality shows, docu-series, and lifestyle shows (Rossato 2020) and that typically involves
a higher level of theatricality in the voice actors’ performances. For historical, cultural,
and economic reasons (O’Sullivan 2011; Dwyer 2017), countries have in the past tended
to cluster around one of these modes, although the scenario has really always been more
complex, with exceptions such as programmes for children being dubbed even in trad-
itionally subtitling countries.
The early 1990s are usually considered the starting point for the more consistent body
of research that led to audiovisual translation becoming the established academic dis-
cipline that we see today. A preliminary problem in trying to disentangle TV translation
from other practice contexts is that, especially in earlier research, scholarship tended to
either discuss audiovisual translation in general and through taxonomies relevant across
the board to subtitling and/or dubbing regardless of their context of application, or to
focus more prominently on cinema rather than television. This tendency might have been
partly due to the close relationship between early translation studies and literature –which
perhaps invited more immediate comparisons with filmic adaptations of literary works
or with auteur films –and partly because television has traditionally enjoyed a lower
status and perhaps been considered as less ‘research worthy’ or more commercial and low-
brow than films. Subsequent technological advances have in the meantime contributed to
making television content more readily available to scholars –first in the form of DVD
boxsets and then streaming and on-demand platforms –thus perhaps partially making
up for the more ephemeral nature of the television medium and allowing scholars more
conveniently to collect samples for their analyses. Even in terms of the perceived quality
322
gap between filmic and televisual content, the last couple of decades have brought about
sea changes, with TV productions often rivalling films for production value and crit-
ical acclaim. However, in their introduction to a recent collection of essays on dubbing,
Ranzato and Zanotti still note the disproportion in scholarly research devoted to audio-
visual translation in the context of cinema as opposed to television, particularly as far as
dubbing is concerned (2019: 10).
In line with earlier scholarship on audiovisual translation in general, initial publications
on dubbing and subtitling were more prescriptive in nature and were put forward both
by scholars and practitioners, who could perhaps more easily bridge the gap between
research and practice. Some took the form of manuals on dubbing and subtitling (e.g.
Luyken et al. 1991; Ivarsson 1992; Dries 1995), highlighting best practices and trying to
move towards the development of protocols in the fragmented landscape of audiovisual
translation across different national contexts. Perhaps one of the best-known attempts
in this direction is Ivarsson and Carroll’s ‘Code of Good Subtitling Practice’ (1998), in
which the authors (both experienced subtitlers) offered a list of general guidelines for
the creation of subtitles, ranging from the need for a close correlation between film dia-
logue and subtitle content to the appropriateness of the register used in subtitles and the
need for the spotting to ‘reflect the rhythm of the film’. The code presents itself as a set
of prescriptions to achieve the best possible results in subtitling, while at the same time
offering a loose enough template to accommodate national standards and practices. It is
also worth noting that the only audiovisual products mentioned are films (‘film dialogue’,
‘rhythm of the film’, ‘end of the film’), which, albeit possibly used as an umbrella term for
audiovisual texts, suggests that cinema was the default frame of reference used to discuss
audiovisual translation at the time.
Over subsequent years, a more descriptive approach was adopted in most publications,
thus firmly inscribing audiovisual translation in the tradition of descriptive translation
studies (DTS). Searching for norms governing the adaptation of audiovisual content,
most initial studies focussed mainly on dubbing and subtitling, with voice over being
largely under-researched until more recently (e.g. Orero 2009; Franco et al. 2010). These
approaches privileged qualitative, textual analyses in various language combinations,
using marked product-oriented methodologies and often implicitly highlighting the idea
of loss of meaning and nuances occurring during the translation process, for example,
impacting on characterization, and diatopic and diastratic varieties. Perhaps because of
its frequent representation of everyday life, from a thematic standpoint TV content has
proven particularly prone to analyses of the adaptation of cultural references (Pedersen
2011; Chaume 2016; Ranzato 2016), features of oral speech or ‘prefabricated orality’
(Chaume 2012: 82), and humour (Zabalbeascoa 1996; Pelsmaeker & Van Besien 2002;
Bucaria 2007; Delabastita 2010; Valdeón 2010).
In reflecting on the contribution of purely descriptive studies to audiovisual transla-
tion, however, some scholars have periodically noted the limitations of these approaches,
with Yves Gambier famously issuing one of the first such warnings by stating that ‘it is
time to train researchers beyond the traditional “textual” paradigm’ (Gambier 2009: 24)
and again more recently regretting that the ‘small-scale and descriptive nature [of case
studies] might seem repetitive and incapable of offering an in-depth analysis’ (Gambier
& Ramos Pinto 2018: 5), albeit acknowledging the initial value of case study research
in mapping the field of audiovisual translation. Similar concerns have been expressed
by Dwyer, who notes that research in audiovisual translation mirrors the tendency of
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translation studies to ‘exhibit “micro”-preoccupations, sometimes examining issues of

execution to the exclusion of context’ (Dwyer 2017: 27).
Later research hinging on corpora-based studies has helped in collecting more exten-
sive sets of data across different audiovisual products. These attempts have been valuable
in their effort to incorporate quantitative analysis tools that aim to go beyond observa-
tion by the researcher that might be limited to a relatively small number of occurrences.
Whereas earlier publications tended, with few exceptions (e.g. Romero Fresco 2006),
to focus on filmic dialogue, more recent research has started to incorporate examples
from television products. The possible contribution of corpus linguistics to audiovisual
translation is seen in an easier identification of patterns occurring in large amounts
of translated audiovisual text with the help of software rather than manual analysis,
with the possibility of gaining insight into the translation of a wide array of (socio)
linguistic phenomena, ranging from phrasal verbs to terms of address and endearment,
intensifiers, and diastratic and diatopic varieties, to name but a few. A recent overview of
this approach can be found in Bruti (2020), while specific examples applied to television
content in different language combinations and across different modes of audiovisual
translation are available, among others, in Balirano (2013), Baños (2013) and Arias-
Badia (2020).
From a methodological standpoint, a significant contribution to the investiga-
tion of audiovisual translation on a larger contextual framework was offered both by
multimodality and reception studies. Multimodal approaches to audiovisual translation
(e.g. Taylor 2003) apply the theories originally formulated in visual semiotics by Kress &
van Leeuwen (2001) and are critical of previous or alternative approaches to audiovisual
translation that appear to be confined only to the verbal/linguistic aspects of the audio-
visual text (for instance the written subtitles or the dubbed dialogue). The latter are seen
as not paying enough attention to the complex interaction of the other semiotic elem-
ents –e.g. visual cues, gestures, sound/music, editing –as additional and equally crucial
meaning-making modes. Often incorporating the multimodal transcription tool (Thibault
2000) and sometimes creating multimodal corpora (e.g. Valentini 2006), scholars adopting
a systematic multimodal approach engage in frame-by-frame analyses of audiovisual
products including detailed descriptions of how different semiotic modes interact with
each other in a given on-screen situation and how only careful consideration of all of
these interactions can lead to efficient translation.
As far as reception studies in audiovisual translation are concerned, the reader will
find a more detailed overview elsewhere in this volume. However, it is worth mentioning
that, before the more recent developments in this subfield brought about by eye-tracking
technology, Gambier’s admonitions about the lack of empirical studies based on audience
reception were indeed taken on board and put into practice in a handful of sometimes
overlooked, earlier studies carried out in the early 2000s that investigated the reception
of dubbed and subtitled fictional TV products (Antonini et al. 2003; Antonini & Chiaro
2005, 2009; Bucaria 2005; Bucaria & Chiaro 2007). In particular, in their study on the
audience reception of television programmes dubbed into Italian from multiple source
languages, Antonini & Chiaro (2005, 2009) acknowledged the importance of including
the perspective of viewers –i.e. the end-users of these translations –into an assessment of
the quality of translated audiovisual texts. By collecting almost 200 responses through a
web-based questionnaire and processing these responses through statistical methods, the
authors contributed to set the stage for the kind of larger-scale, empirical research that
324
is advocated today. Also notable from an earlier period are Franco & Santiago Araújo’s
(2003) pilot study on the reception of subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing in Brazil
in both fictional and factual TV programmes. Case studies and edited collections on
reception studies in translation and audiovisual translation have since then noticeably
grown (e.g. Federici & Walker 2018; Di Giovanni & Gambier 2018) to include other TV
genres and methodologies –mostly based on eye-tracking technology –but are beyond
the scope of this chapter.
As relatively recent developments in audiovisual translation research, both multi-
modal and reception studies have the merit of having opened up the scope of research
to include context-based information in the analysis of audiovisual products –such as
the interaction of various semiotic modes within the audiovisual text and the point of
view of the end-users of these texts –to the point that today audiovisual translation
research that does not take into consideration issues of production, distribution, and
reception may come across as ultimately irrelevant. Furthermore, these approaches
have fostered increasing interdisciplinarity in the field by borrowing tools and meth-
odologies from other disciplines, such as psychology, psycholinguistics, semiotics,
market research and audience studies. However, research hinging on such methodolo-
gies still appears to have a tendency to focus mainly on restricted phenomena and
micro-preoccupations, rather than the larger picture and the contexts of production,
distribution, and reception of translated audiovisual texts, which have, on the other
hand, received occasional attention from disciplines such as (global) media studies and
sociology (e.g. Barra 2012; Kuipers 2015). No doubt due at least in part to the expen-
sive and time-consuming nature of both multimodal and reception research on a larger
scale, these approaches could benefit from more across-the-board projects, perhaps
allowing scholars to zoom in on the more practical applications, for example in terms
of translator training and work-flow improvement, that some of these studies have
already theoretically envisioned.
Newer dynamics in audiovisual distribution and adaptation

The large number of edited collections and special issues on aspects of audiovisual
translation published just in the last few years (e.g. Baños-Piñero & Díaz Cintas 2015;
Gambier & Ramos Pinto 2018; Di Giovanni & Gambier 2018; Pérez-González 2019;
Ranzato & Zanotti 2019; Bogucki & Deckert 2020) could be seen both as an indication
of the renewed interest in the adaptation of more recent and topical audiovisual content
by academics and as the discipline’s constant need to keep current with the new techno-
logical developments that inform the production, distribution, and consumption of this
audiovisual content in its linguistically and culturally mediated forms. Over the last 15–
20 years, the multiplication of platforms and services for the delivery of audiovisual
content has gone hand in hand with an exponential increase in the amount of content to
be mediated and localized for target audiences and with the use of multiple audiovisual
translation modes for the same products. Following a shift that had initially started with
DVDs and later with the digital switchover, audiences have now gained easier access to
audiovisual content both in source-language and mediated versions, to the point that
several scholars have noted that the traditional distinction between subtitling, dubbing,
and voice over countries has now become more simplistic and inaccurate than ever (e.g.
Dwyer 2017, Chiaro 2019).
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From the viewers’ standpoint, more and easier access to multiple versions of the same
content has meant not only that consumption options have increased, but also that it has
become easier to compare source-and target-language versions, so that not only sub-
titling can now be said to be a ‘vulnerable’ mode of audiovisual translation (Díaz Cintas
2010: 346) exposed to criticism from viewers in terms of perceived mistakes or inaccur-
acies in the translation (Dollerup 1974). Because viewers can easily switch from source-to
target-language versions, new dynamics have also started to emerge involving a sense of
increased agency on the part of viewers with respect to the work of audiovisual translation
professionals. While until a relatively short time ago, especially in traditionally dubbing
countries, audiences had no simultaneous access to the original and translated versions
of a TV series or film and therefore played a more passive role as receivers of mediated
content, fans and casual viewers alike have now become more vocal in expressing their dis-
satisfaction with subtitled or dubbed content that is not up to their standards. This kind
of appropriation of agency has been possible in part thanks to the amplification provided
by social media, a tool that fans use to critique choices made in the translation and adap-
tation process of certain audiovisual productions (Bucaria 2019). Similarly to fansubbing,
in the recent past this kind of grassroot agency has been effective in establishing viewers
as a crucial part of the audiovisual mediation process, with Netflix choosing to provide
new Italian versions of some its content (e.g. in 2020 The Half of It2 and Neon Genesis
Evangelion3) as a consequence of fans’ complaints. It remains to be seen if this newfound
viewer agency will go hand in hand with an increased sense of accountability from audio-
visual translation professionals, especially the ones working in the more covert modes
such as dubbing.
The increased volume and availability of audiovisual content4 –especially, but not
confined to, TV platforms –paired with the faster pace required for the production of the
translated versions, has significantly altered working conditions for the audiovisual trans-
lation professionals involved, for example, in the processes of dubbing and subtitling.
Even before the worldwide launch of streaming platforms, for example, Sky had started
the practice of airing the subtitled and dubbed versions of high-impact TV series at a
reduced interval with respect to the date of airing in the country of origin (the next day
for the subtitled version and one week later for the dubbed version), with the TV series
Lost being one of the first instances in Italy in 2010. The more and more stringent time
constraints became even more self-evident with the simultaneous global release of content
on streaming platforms, with dubbing perhaps being the mode that has been most severely
impacted because of its costliness and the length of its production process, from dialogue
translation to voice-actor performance and sound mixing. The increasingly larger volume
of content that necessitates mediation within very strict deadlines has had an impact on
subtitling practices as well, with many subtitlers being provided with pre-timecoded and
annotated templates in English (where only the target-language translation needs to be
added) or being required to work with proprietary software that uses these features to
speed up the process of creating, proofreading and synching subtitles.5 Furthermore, the
piecemeal work model that had gained popularity in subtitling has in some cases become a
reality for dubbing as well, with cloud dubbing technology allowing practitioners to work
remotely from different locations. In this respect, whether the effects of the 2020 lock-
down on remote work in audiovisual translation have been temporary or have contributed
only to accelerate already ongoing processes will have to be determined in the near future.
What is certain is that more systematic applications of automatic subtitling, deep fake
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technology, and AI in general seem just around the corner, begging the question of what
the future role of media translators might be and what these possible new developments6
might mean for audiovisual translation training programmes around the world.
The factors mentioned in the previous paragraph have raised concerns about the
quality of the output of audiovisual translation, with Italian dubbing professionals, for
example, expressing concerns about the ways in which the lower budgets, tighter deadlines
and longer working hours imposed by juggernauts such as Netflix and Amazon have also
been affecting the quality of the final products.7 Factors affecting the quality of audio-
visual translation –especially as far as subtitling is concerned –have in the past been
addressed through a product-oriented approach, with readability being one of the main
concerns, for example, in the form of correct text chunking and line segmentation, text
condensation, and display rates (e.g. Díaz Cintas & Remael 2014, 2020). Because of the
increasing number of platforms providing mediated audiovisual content, research on
quality in different modes of audiovisual translation seems all the more relevant today,
particularly in consideration of the fact that a number of global providers tend to cen-
tralize the process of content localization (Barra 2020), which is often carried out by local
affiliates according to (presumably) unified guidelines. Pedersen (2018), for instance, looks
at this aspect through a comparative analysis of guidelines provided by Netflix for inter-
lingual subtitling in different countries/languages, finding that initial prescriptive norms
from Netflix become more descriptive as they are adapted to local practices in different
locales. Szarkowska et al. (2020) also set out to provide fresh insights into what quality in
interlingual subtitling means to different groups of stakeholders –professional subtitlers
and viewers. Their conclusions suggest that quality parameters alternately overlap and
diverge depending on the different groups, noting for example that condensation tends to
be more easily accepted as a quality indicator by professionals rather than viewers.
Another area that has arguably had an impact on more recent developments in audio-
visual translation practice and distribution is non-professional subtitling, or fansubbing.
In the context of audiovisual translation research, fansubbing has been studied as a phe-
nomenon quite separate from ‘official’, professional subtitling, abiding by its own rules
and sometimes coming into conflict with or even openly flouting the quality requirements
and standards of commercial subtitling. Fansubbing has been described as subversive and
abusive (Nornes 2007), and as an interventionist form of audiovisual translation (Pérez-
González 2014) that fosters agency and displays a co-creational approach (Barra 2009)
from viewers and fans, who have now the faculty of becoming active prosumers of media
content. However, some of the most interesting repercussions of fansubbing have to do
with the viewers’ appropriation of the modes and times of audiovisual consumption years
before this became commonplace through SVOD platforms. This was achieved both
by offering an alternative to sometimes unsatisfactory (and/or manipulated), commer-
cially distributed versions and by allowing for customized viewing times, regardless of
the constraints of linear programming. The grassroot push from the fansubbing model
also arguably contributed to the decision of some SVOD services to make high-profile
TV series available in record time (Massidda 2015), which aimed at partially curbing the
potential for piracy and, by extension, for the use of fansubs by viewers to counteract the
delay in broadcasting. Finally, from the point of view of audiovisual translation practice,
fansubbing has also been seen as shining a light on alternatives to the traditional approach
to subtitling, including variations such as the positioning of written text on screen, the use
of explicatory glosses for cultural references and humour, and the amount of information
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appearing on screen. Pérez-González (2014: 275), for example, reflects on the positioning
of titles on screen as fostering subjective spectatorial experiences and affectivity, which
seems to have been recently implemented by Netflix –at least for some intralingual
subtitles –by positioning text closer to the side of the screen on which the speaker appears.
In terms of extra information appearing on screen in addition to subtitles, Ramos Pinto
(2020) carried out a reception study on extra-titles intended as glosses on visual elements
or other information that is likely to be opaque for viewers, the use of which was favour-
ably received by the film directors and viewers that were part of her sample. Despite her
study being focused on filmic rather TV products, the potential seems there for customiz-
able applications to TV platforms as well, with Amazon Prime Video already providing an
‘X-Ray’ optional feature, which drawing on the Internet Movie Database (IMDb) for each
scene allows viewers to access extra information, for example details and trivia on the cast.
Lastly, while an extensive overview of issues pertaining to accessibility in audiovisual
translation is beyond the scope of this chapter, it is worth noting how the multiplica-
tion of available mediated versions has also included an increasing amount of subtitling
for the deaf and hard of hearing (SDH) and audiodescription for the blind and par-
tially sighted. Although most streaming platforms still offer only intralingual SDH and
audiodescription (with AppleTV+ being a notable exception offering in some cases inter-
lingual audiodescription as well), this area of audiovisual translation is bound to expand
even more both in terms of availability from providers of audiovisual material and of
academic research (see for example the audio subtitling experiment described in Iturregui-
Gallardo & Matamala 2021). Pérez-González posited in 2014 that accessibility was
responsible for pushing forward new research in audiovisual translation by introducing
new methodologies and approaches, for example as regards the use of eye-tracking tech-
nologies for reception studies in specific audience segments. However, it could be said that
issues originally put forward in the context of accessibility have also helped in a broader
sense, by offering the opportunity to partially re-conceptualize what accessibility means.
Gambier and Ramos Pinto, for example, take an even more comprehensive approach to
accessibility, a term which, although more frequently used ‘to refer to research and prac-
tice focused on audiences with specific disabilities’, should really be expanded to include
‘all types of audiences and the discussion of how accessible AV products are to those
audiences’ (2018: 3), in other words stressing the importance of making audiovisual texts
equally accessible to all viewers outside the source language and culture in which they
were originally produced.
As a final consideration inspired by recent events, it should be noted that issues of
accessibility on television were also brought back to the international stage as a con-
sequence of the change in administrations in the USA in January 2021. While the US
National Association of the Deaf had previously complained about the lack of American
Sign Language (ASL) interpretation at Coronavirus briefings during the Trump admin-
istration (Campisi 2020), all the events surrounding the inauguration of Joe Biden as the
new president of the United States were made accessible with SDH, audiodescription,
and sign language interpreting through a companion website.8 The White House has
also announced that all press briefings will now include a sign language interpreter.
The anecdote serves as a useful reminder of the fact that accessibility –and undeni-
ably translation in general –constantly and inescapably intersects with issues of politics
and policy, and with aspects of representation, power, and ideology that can never be
overlooked.
328
Conclusion and future directions

While the intention was not to provide an exhaustive overview of all the research carried
out in the area of audiovisual translation, this chapter has focussed on a selection of issues
that seem particularly relevant for the content and modes offered through the television
medium. The first part of the chapter contains a description of the progressively more
multifaceted approaches used for the study of audiovisual translation, whereas the second
part addresses the impact that more recent technological developments and distribution
modes have had on the ways in which audiovisual translation is practised and accessed.
What jumps out is that attention has been focused in the literature mainly on scripted
genres and on the modes that are more commonly used to adapt fictional programmes, i.e.
dubbing and subtitling. Considerably less attention continues to be devoted, for example,
to voice over in reality shows or documentaries –despite the fact that the offer of these
genres has significantly increased on streaming and on-demand platforms –and to news
translation (Bielsa & Bassnett 2009; Conway 2010), for example in the form of translations
performed on air both by professional (media interpreters) and non-professional figures
(news hosts or interviewers). The use of live subtitling through speech recognition soft-
ware (respeaking) for live events is mostly limited to intralinguistic translation, although
research suggests that the potential is there for more extended applications to interlin-
gual settings as well (Romero-Fresco 2011; Szarkowska et al. 2016; Romero-Fresco &
Pöchhacker 2017).
Less academic attention has been paid so far to newer iterations, such as the combined
use of different forms of audiovisual translation in the same product. Whereas some
documentaries seem to have been precursors in the concomitant use of dubbing or voice
over for the off-screen narration and subtitles for on screen interviews, Poland has now
reportedly introduced TV productions featuring voice over and subtitles for the benefit
of deaf and hard of hearing viewers simultaneously (Łabendowicz 2018). Furthermore,
the increasing number of multilingual TV productions (see for example Valdeón 2005;
Corrius & Zabalbeascoa 2019) which for authenticity purposes make use of a substantial
amount of dialogue in languages other than English –Narcos, Giri/Haji, Ramy, Killing
Eve, to name but some of the most recent cases –should spark renewed interest in the
ways in which different forms of audiovisual translation interact on screen, in issues of
language policy, and perhaps in the possible role that similar productions, in which the
main foreign language is usually dubbed and the secondary one(s) are subtitled, might
have in normalizing subtitling even more for viewers who have so far been exposed to it
more infrequently.
On a broader level, the ever-increasing customization of the consumption of audio-
visual products is bound to keep sparking scholarly interest in the specificities of adapting
TV content as opposed to content for other media, for example in terms of audience
studies. More custom-made viewing experiences mean that several platforms (Amazon
Prime Video, Apple TV+, and Disney+ among others) already offer customizable options
for subtitles –including variations in font, size, background, and style –and a Google
Chrome plugin (Super Netflix) allows viewers to activate additional functionalities on
Netflix (among which the optimization of video quality and speed and the option to visu-
alize subtitles external to the platform), while a separate plugin (Language Learning with
Netflix) helps language learners by visualizing on screen two sets of subtitles in different
languages for the same product. Similarly to what Díaz Cintas & Remael (2014) had
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noted about subtitles for the DVD industry, SVOD services have now normalized even
more the viewers’ ability to easily stop and ‘rewind’ the video at any point if necessary for
their understanding of culture-specific references (which, if opaque, can be easily looked
up on the nearest mobile device) or simply to re-read subtitles that are too fast or too
long or both. While certainly not making for the smoothest viewing experience in many
circumstances, these affordances are among the many variables that should perhaps be
accounted for, in some form or other, in the experimental design of reception studies going
forward, as they seem to have become an increasingly more defining part of the audiences’
experience when enjoying and engaging with TV content. Finally, from the broader per-
spective of an investigation of viewers’ preferences for certain audiovisual translation
modes over others, a study of variables that might impact their choices cannot be limited
to personal preferences, device, knowledge of original language, or age, but might also
want to include habits such as binge-watching, second screening –which might distract
attention from the main screen as viewers engage simultaneously with other devices –and
the level of compromise that has to be achieved if watching, either in person or by means
of shared remote viewing features, with family members, spouses or friends who do not
share the same preferences.
From a workflow/process-oriented perspective, there seems to be room for more sys-
tematic ethnographic research aiming, for example, to map the working conditions of
audiovisual translation practitioners and to investigate if and how these change depending
on the urgency of airing/release deadlines. While streaming services are usually associated
with the simultaneous release of their content across international territories and the
strain that this model might cause to the audiovisual translation industry (see previous
section), several platforms (e.g. Apple TV+ and Disney+) have adopted or reintroduced
weekly releases for TV series’ episodes or a hybrid model involving the simultaneous
release of the first few episodes followed by weekly episodes on the same day of the week.
As newer distribution models emerge and begin to coexist with older ones, scholars should
take notice of such diversification and integrate these variables in their study of processes
and quality standards. Furthermore, in a field in which, similarly to other areas of trans-
lation, resources for automatization are improving and becoming more reliable, more
research would be welcome on how this might impact the work of audiovisual translation
professionals and, unavoidably, the focus of audiovisual translation training programmes.
While audiovisual translation professionals and stakeholders9 are pondering the extent to
which automatization and AI will impact the profession, trainers might also legitimately
consider the possibility to diversify curricula even to a greater extent than in the past, not
only by including training in the use of these new technologies but also by strengthening
revision, post-editing and project management skills. In an increasingly globalized scen-
ario in which audiovisual translation appears to be part of more centralized localization
strategies and practices, training for the audiovisual translation industry might indeed
have to be partially reconsidered to include managerial profiles that could potentially
work more upstream in the audiovisual production and mediation process.
Other aspects that have emerged with the presence of new players in the distribution
of audiovisual content have to do with issues of translation policy and directionality.
For example, increased investments by streaming platforms in original productions from
non-English-speaking countries around the world are contributing to the circulation of a
possibly unprecedented amount of TV content ready for global distribution in a plurality
of different source languages, some of which would probably be considered as minority
330
languages. Given the traditionally dominant position of English as the main source lan-
guage in audiovisual translation, this emerging trend is likely to open up opportunities
for scholars to expand research into language combinations that have been so far rarely
explored –at least on a larger scale and as far as TV content is concerned –particularly
with English now becoming the target language in dubbing for a number of international
productions. Connected to this, further explorations could also come from looking at
audiovisual translation through the lens of translation policy, involving, for instance,
which language options and translation modes are available for which content, on which
platform and in which territories. What diatopic varieties of English, Spanish or French
are chosen to dub or subtitle the Polish The Woods or the Islandic in The Valhalla Murders?
On what factors are these decisions based on a corporate level? Accessibility issues in the
broadest sense also fall into the purview of the politics of audiovisual translation and
may touch upon the reduced availability of interlingual audiodescription options for cer-
tain products or the lack of differentiation between English-language closed captions (CC
or SDH) and subtitles for hearing audiences, which can be observed on most platforms.
One might wonder if, ultimately, the availability (or lack thereof) of multiple audiovisual
translation options could become –if it isn’t already –a deciding factor in the streaming
wars, with consumers choosing to subscribe only to the services that best cater to their
needs and preferences. However, in sharing O’Sullivan’s view that ‘thinking about trans-
lation policy can open up research in audiovisual translation and encourage interdiscip-
linary research, for instance, with film and media studies’ (2018: 83), one has to necessarily
acknowledge the complexity of the task at hand, especially in consideration of the notori-
ously protective attitude of some streaming services with regards to their viewership data.
Lastly, when stopping to acknowledge the incredibly rich and multifaceted land-
scape of linguistic and cultural mediation in the context of television today, it seems
clear that the discipline could benefit from expanding the object of study to the increas-
ingly interconnected area of audiovisual localization, particularly to the adaptation of
the paratextual information surrounding TV content. Coming full circle with the intro-
duction to this chapter, considerations on what we mean by TV translation inevitably
lead us to include paratexts under this label –for example in the form of marketing
campaigns, trailers, teasers, episode summaries and programme descriptions –as funda-
mental meaning-making elements that have become essential to the viewers’ selection and
experience of audiovisual products. Although audiovisual paratexts are still unfrequently
studied, more systematic research on these elements could represent a further step beyond
the strictly textual level, thus potentially deepening our knowledge of the mechanisms
behind audiovisual adaptation at large.
Further reading
• Díaz Cintas, J. & Massidda, S. (2020) ‘Technological advances in audiovisual transla-
tion’ in O’Hagan, M. (ed.), The Routledge Handbook of Translation and Technology.
London and New York: Routledge, pp. 255–270.
This chapter provides a detailed and updated description of the most recent technological
developments in the practice of audiovisual translation and includes a wide range of
examples.
331
Chiara Bucaria
• Grainge, P. & Johnson, C. (2015) Promotional Screen Industries. London and

Although not about translation per se, this volume offers detailed information and case
studies on the promotional mechanisms behind the circulation of audiovisual products,
which provide crucial context for audiovisual scholars as well.
• Iturregui-Gallardo, G. & Matamala, A. (2021) ‘Audio subtitling: dubbing and voice-

over effects and their impact on user experience’, Perspectives, 29(1), pp. 64–83.
An empirical perspective on audio subtitling as a lesser known and studied mode for TV
localization in the field of interlingual accessibility.
• Li, J. (2020) ‘Political TV documentary subtitling in China: a critical discourse analysis

perspective’, Perspectives, 28(4), pp. 554–574.
A much-needed contribution to a deeper understanding of issues relating to power and

ideology involved in the production process and products of subtitled political TV docu-
mentaries in China.
• Rossato, L. (2020). ‘Reality television and unnatural dialogues: trends in the Italian
audio-visual translation of factual programming’, The Journal of Popular Television,
8(3), pp. 277–283.
The article provides an overview and selected examples of the simil-synch technique, a
relatively new and under-researched mode of AVT.
Notes
1 For the sake of convenience, the word ‘series’ will be used throughout this chapter even when
the specification ‘series and serials’ would be more appropriate to indicate a differentiation in
genres.
2 ‘Grosso guaio a Schifohamish. Il doppiaggio Netflix “fatto in casa” di L’altra metà (2020)’. Last
accessed 28/01/2021. https://doppiaggiitalioti.com/2020/05/19/grosso-guaio-a-schifohamish-il-
doppiaggio-netflix-fatto-in-casa-di-laltra-meta-2020
3 ‘#Evaflix –Dopo un anno ecco il nuovo adattamento italiano di Evangelion su Netflix’. Last
accessed 28/01/2021. http://distopia.altervista.org/2020/07/evaflix-nuovo-adattamento-italiano-
2020-evangelion-netflix
4 The European Audiovisual Observatory’s 2018–2019 yearbook states that in both the EU and
the US ‘SVOD is driving the growth of pay-service revenues: it accounted for 75% of 2016–2017
growth in the US, and 58% in Europe, and for an even greater proportion in terms of subscribers
growth in both regions’.
5 Netflix’s version of this is called the Originator tool.
6 For more on recent developments in audiovisual translation technology see Díaz Cintas &
Massidda (2020).
7 ‘I doppiatori italiani contro Amazon e Netflix: indetto stato di agitazione’. Last accessed 28/01/
2021. https://movieplayer.it/news/doppiatori-italiani-contro-amazon-netflix-stato-agitazione_
64114
332
8 https:// b ideninaugural.org/ a ccessibility/ ? fbclid=IwAR0YA6bdSJGHsAQHUJuZC4c

CGrVUEt6uZuk7zc6KS2v-C2sRd6COQyJdqZs
9 See, for example, the discussion panel at the 2020 Languages & the Media Virtual Event held on
15 December 2020.
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21
Media interpreting
Introduction
Media interpreting is a field of socially situated practice which is as complex as the con-
temporary media landscape itself. The myriad of interpreter-mediated broadcasts and
media productions, which take place in a wide range of media environments and pro-
duction conditions, lead to a conceptualization of this field of practice as intrinsically
heterogeneous. This statement contradicts most of the literature on media interpreting,
both academic and professional, in which media interpreting practices are still presented
as largely happening on TV and usually investigated within the conference interpreting
paradigm or at most in sheer contrast to it. However, there is a growing number of studies
that have challenged the hegemony of simultaneous live interpreting on TV. Such studies
pave the way for this chapter.
The chapter starts out from the need to go beyond the current mainstream paradigms
and aims to present a comprehensive picture of media interpreting, covering the com-
plexity of practices in terms of interpreting modalities, broadcasting genres and events,
working conditions and quality assurance/assessment, as well as methodologies and the-
ories required to comprehend this complexity. In this sense, I aim to introduce media
theories and methodologies which have been largely ignored in media interpreting studies.
The communicative ethos of broadcasting, theories of authenticity and critical discourse
analysis applied to public service broadcasting vs commercial broadcasting will be used to
explore the reasons behind the different conventions and trends in terms of interpreting
modalities and broadcasting events found across media outlets. Special attention will be
paid to how the contemporary, fragmented and diverse globalized media landscape affects
media interpreting, with the concept of ‘transmedia interpreting’ being introduced as one
of the most common and challenging practices in the field, not only for interpreters but
also for other stakeholders involved, such as producers, journalists, press officers, sound
and image engineers, social media managers and so on.
Another key issue in media production which still requires profound exploration when
it comes to media interpreting is quality. Although this chapter will not provide a compre-
hensive definition of quality in media interpreting, it will offer guidelines and items to take
336 DOI: 10.4324/9781003221678-25

Media interpreting
into account whenever broadcasting institutions, academics and interpreters themselves

set out to tackle quality.
Last but not least, the status and recognition of interpreters or individuals who provide
interpreting in media productions will be discussed. How this practice is credited in broad-
cast productions and recognized via copyright or image rights is an essential issue in terms
of ethics, quality assurance and, subsequently, the public status of media interpreting and
interpreters in the media and society at large.
Media interpreting: an intrinsically heterogeneous landscape

Media interpreting is generally understood as the practice of interpreting simultaneously,
consecutively or dialogically for any given media, between spoken languages and/or
signed languages. This definition, while truthful and representative of common practice,
portrays a superficial view of an extremely complex landscape (in terms of practices),
and fails to problematize ongoing issues in media interpreting at different levels, i.e.
training, practice and research. First of all, such generalizations have led to a view of
media interpreting as the type of interpreting that takes place mostly on TV. Secondly,
the assumption that the client or employer is the broadcaster, as encapsulated by the lan-
guage that is used when referring to practice –interpreting for the media –is reductionist
and unrepresentative. Studies of contemporary, complex multimedia landscapes and even
of the so-called mainstream media tell us that interpreting for, in and with the media
can all be part of a diversity of settings and arrangements. Thirdly, a tendency towards
generalizations has led to media interpreting being included in conference interpreting, or
at least being looked at through the lenses of conference interpreting (e.g. Gile 2011). Why
not see media interpreting as part of public service interpreting, dialogue interpreting, or
even journalism studies? Such problematization and new theorizations can have relevant
consequences for training and research.
It is, therefore, the main aim of this chapter to provide a critical overview of media
interpreting theories and methods that focus on the study of audiovisual media (TV, radio
and online media) but also on printed media and multimedia events, in as geographically
diverse contexts as possible. Subsequently, challenges for broadcasters and future research
avenues will be put forward, as well as training outcomes that can lead to more specific
programmes dealing with media interpreting. Focus will be put on spoken languages,
being my area of expertise, but references to further research on sign language media
interpreting will be provided.
If there is one characteristic that encompasses contemporary media interpreting, it
is heterogeneity, which applies to interpreting modalities (simultaneous, consecutive,
dialogue, mixed dialogue- simultaneous, etc.), working conditions (including hiring
procedures, shifts and working hours, situational arrangements, preparation time and
research, see Jacobs 2017), media outlets (including newspapers, magazines, radio, tele-
vision, the internet and mixed media), broadcast settings (varying from press conferences
to exclusive interviews) and broadcasting events (such as live interviews, pre-recorded
news features, documentaries, news reports, among others). Faced with this diverse land-
scape, a recurrent question poses itself: are there features, skills and challenges in media
interpreting that distinguish it from other forms of interpreting (i.e. conference interpreting,
public service interpreting)? Although there may be commonalities with these fields of
interpreting and there are instances where they overlap –take, for example, interpreting
337
in/for public service broadcasting as a form of public service interpreting –it is the com-
municative setting that makes media interpreting unique. What is being interpreted is
always aimed at a broader audience which is not physically present in the setting where
the interpreter-mediated event takes place, irrespective of the language communication
needs of active participants/primary interlocutors (Alexieva 1999, 2001; Straniero Sergio
2011) in the broadcast interaction or event. Thus, in functionalist terms (Pöchhacker
1995), the ultimate purpose of providing interpretation in the media is not necessarily to
provide interlinguistic understanding between the primary interlocutors themselves (e.g.
interviewer–interviewee) but between the media outlet and its audience, generally in a way
that reaches out and appeals to as broad and numerous an audience as possible. Alexieva
(1999) calls this the on-screen and off-screen levels of communication in TV interpreting,
which for the purposes of media interpreting in general we will call the on-stage and off-
stage levels of communication.
Interpreting modalities
According to Pöchhacker (2010: 224), live-broadcast simultaneous interpreting ‘is still
regarded as the prototypical manifestation of media interpreting, which nevertheless
includes other scenarios, modes and modalities as well’. Whether that ‘prototype’ is quan-
titatively representative and professionally desirable or not, the influence of conference
interpreting, where simultaneous interpreting is indeed the prototypical manifestation, is
clear (e.g. Pöchhacker 2010: 224–225).
Different studies have shown that there is no such thing as a ‘standard’ in media
interpreting modalities and even if trends can be found, as will be discussed below, there
are different practices and views across stakeholders on what interpreting modality is
used –or is to be used –in different broadcasts. Mason (2018: 86) moves away from proto-
typical manifestations and states that media interpreting includes ‘voice-over, consecutive
and simultaneous modes’. Castillo (2015a, 2015b) shows that the interpreting modality is
intrinsically linked to various media-related factors which can be categorized as situational,
ideological and pragmatic. Building on Gieve & Norton (2007) and Katan & Straniero
Sergio (2003), Castillo (2015a) puts forward a descriptive framework of interpreting prac-
tice which provides a model that could be expanded to other media outlets’ practices (see
Table 21.1 below, based on Castillo 2015a: 301; 2015b: 281). What is relevant in Castillo’s
framework for media interpreting as a whole is the link that is established between the
location, the subsequent situational arrangements, the broad pattern of interaction and
the mode of interpreting. The latter can be considered a by-product of the elements con-
figuring the communicative setting, to which ideological and pragmatic considerations –
usually those of the media stakeholders –also contribute.
Working conditions
Working conditions, understood in Grbić and Pöchhacker’s terms (2015: 441–443), may
arguably be a reflection of how media outlets integrate and care about interpreting services
and, ultimately, multilingualism (see Gieve & Norton 2007). Grbić & Pöchhacker (2015)
discuss interpreters’ working conditions based on the understanding that interpreting is a
situated activity in a social context, which is therefore open to a range of influences. They
categorize these influences into employment-related, assignment-related and task-related,
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Media interpreting
Table 21.1 Live interpreter-mediated interviews: descriptive framework of practice
Location • Studio
• Outdoors /On Location Studio
• Remote: Studio-to-studio
• Remote: Studio to private home
Broad pattern of interaction • Face-to-face
• Face-to-face, multi-party interview
• Studio-to-studio connection
• Phone connection
Mode of Interpreting • Dialogue
• Mixed: Simultaneous/dialogue
emphasizing that overlaps between these categories are possible and boundaries can be
fuzzy. Factors at all three levels affect the quality of the service provided by an interpreter,
the amount of stress they experience and how satisfied they are with their job
overall (Jacobs 2018). Working conditions will also have an effect on other key aspects of
interpreting practice, such as team work, professional status and workplace arrangements.
This is a complex and largely unexplored issue that deserves further research (cf. Jacobs
2017) and which goes far beyond what we see/hear in the final broadcast product, which
has largely been the focus of media interpreting research to date.
Although the scope of this chapter does not allow for a review of the sociology of
interpreters’ work in the media, an attempt to outline the different aspects of working
conditions and their potential influence on practice and quality is key. To start with, hiring
procedures foreground ensuing working conditions. The landscape of hiring procedures
is vast and diverse: in-house interpreters, hired via different processes, ranging from state
exam style processes (in the case of RTVE and other public regional broadcasters in the
Spanish State) to specific interpreting exams; self-employed interpreters and open-ended
contracts selected by the broadcaster’s language service, such as the case of French-
German public broadcasting company ARTE (Moreau 1998, Dörte & Fünfer 2011;
and public tender (the case of Canal Sur TV for sign languages interpreters, see Jacobs
2017). These different hiring procedures will likely have different impacts on the quality
of work and the establishment of policies and guidelines –or the lack thereof –that pos-
ition interpreting as an intrinsic part of media production. Having in-house interpreters/
interpreting services seems to be particularly common to public service broadcasters (e.g.
RTVE, Al Jazeera), specifically for their news channels where the need for interpreting
services is most recurrent.
However, the nature of a number of interpreter-mediated broadcasts, the wide range
of language combinations and the unpredictability of the demand, may be the explan-
ation for other types of hiring processes, such as hiring on-demand, on a freelance basis
(cf. Dörte & Fünfer 2011 101–104). The regularity of some interpreting jobs may lead to
the hiring of the same interpreter, whenever their language combination makes it possible,
and it tends to be the case with private broadcasters on a programme-by-programme basis
(cf. Castillo 2015b) and specialists/theme channels (e.g. Barça TV), where interpreting
services may be required as often as once every fortnight or every other month, for a spe-
cific event.
Half-way between these two procedures is the outsourcing of interpreting services.
It is widely acknowledged in sociology and economics that the increase of outsourced
339
services are part and parcel of contemporary neoliberal policies (Cingolani 2019), both
in public and private companies. Interpreting is no exception to this, as has been the case
in public service interpreting (Martin & Ortega-Herráez 2013). Jacobs (2017) presents an
illustrative case of how outsourcing under precarious public tender conditions may have
detrimental consequences on the day-to-day work of sign language interpreters. Further
research on these practices is needed to raise awareness of the physical and psychological
consequences for interpreters, as well as for the quality of interpreting services.
The hiring of so-called fixers (see Palmer’s chapter in this volume) could be considered
as a form of outsourcing, in this case a particular type of service, whereby the local bi-/
multilingual expert carries out a range of jobs, including interpreting. This type of hiring is
common in media productions taking place in a foreign country, usually by executive pro-
ducers on location, for news features and documentaries, often in conflict zones (Murrell
2010). Although fixers may be crucial for finding key informants and reaching out to
people who otherwise might not have a voice in the media, they can also act as gatekeepers
(Wadensjö 1998), controlling what information is presented through their renditions and
their choice of informants and interviewees (for further information, see Chapter 14).
The practice of hiring non-professional interpreters because they are experts in the
subject or professionally close to the interviewee is also documented in media interpreting.
An illustrative case of this ad hoc practice can be heard from time to time on RTVE’s
Radio 3 (Castillo 2015a), where film critics, music experts and roadies have been infor-
mally hired to ‘help with the translation’, as it is framed by the presenters on air. Although
non-professional interpreting is gaining scholarly attention (cf. Martínez-Gómez 2015),
its presence and potential implications in the media is yet to be addressed.
A common practice in news broadcasts and interviews is the use of externally hired
interpreters, meaning interpreters hired by the organizer of the event covered by the media,
or the management of the interviewee. This tends to be common practice in film and music
festivals, as well as award ceremonies (e.g. MTV Awards, Premios Princesa de Asturias, see
Jiménez Serrano 2011) and press conferences (Sandrelli 2012). In these events, communi-
cation between press officers and media producers/journalists is crucial in order to make
interpreting services work both for the event organizer and for the media outlet. However,
there is no guarantee of such collaboration running smoothly: interpreters’ intellectual
rights and copyright, credits and potential allegiances may be overlooked and become an
issue prior, during and after the interpreter-mediated broadcast event.
Furthermore, recurring to externally hired interpreters is an increasingly common
practice for programmes/productions which have seen their budgets cut over the years or
which due to their small scope and budget (private and public local media, independent
and alternative media) cannot allocate funds for interpreting services.
Journalists also commonly work as interpreters in the media, as documented by Chiaro
(2002), and this may entail a wide range of issues, from a careful choice of propositional
content being interpreted to unconventional interactions in terms of the standards of
dialogue interpreting (see the communicative ethos of broadcasting, below). The range
of practices is wide and further research with broadcast data needs to be carried out.
Quantitative results could provide a basis for the profile of the journalist acting as inter-
preter and ensuing patterns of interaction. However, some small-scale studies, including
field work with journalists (Castillo 2012), point at journalists venturing into interpreting
when it involves English as lingua franca, official languages in bilingual or multilingual
countries (such as Catalan and Spanish, French and Flemish) and foreign correspondents
340
Media interpreting
with a long career in a foreign country confident enough to not rely on interpreters or
fixers (J. Fairley 2011, personal communication).
This wide range of hiring processes and practices show that there is no homogenous
sociology of the media interpreter and, more importantly, that we are far from being
able to talk about standards for working conditions. It is tempting to argue that working
conditions of in-house interpreters should pave the way for the publication of best
practices and standard guidelines, which have a certain influence in terms of salaries,
preparation time, physical-spatial arrangements, stress management, working teams and
so on. However, critical descriptive research on these working conditions (along the lines
of Jacobs 2017) is crucial at a large scale in order to have a clear overview of the soci-
ology of work in media interpreting and to have an impact on policies and guidelines
for media interpreting working conditions. A small-scale, yet pioneering example can be
found in À Punt, the new public broadcaster in the region of Valencia (in the Spanish
State), an officially bilingual (Spanish-Catalan) broadcaster. Before this public service
broadcaster was launched (in June 2018), a linguistic committee was created to deal
with the different issues of language transfer and accessibility, including interpreting.
The committee consisted of media professionals, but also translation and interpreting
professionals, scholars and researchers, in order to create an evidence-based best prac-
tice style guide that would serve as the basis for the hiring of interpreters, as well as
the production and organization of interpreter-mediated events –among other issues
of language transfer (Coorporació Valenciana de Mitjans de Comunicació–Generalitat
Valenciana 2017: 278–279).
Media interpreting across media outlets, broadcast events and genres

As mentioned above, existing literature conceptualizes media interpreting as mostly
taking place on TV (e.g. Kurz 1997; Mizuno 1997; Straniero Sergio 1999, 2012; Katan
& Straniero Sergio 2001, 2003; Mack 2002; Molina Vallecillo 2002; Darwish 2009;
Wadensjö 2008; Shibahara 2009). As acknowledged by Pöchhacker (2010: 224), ‘much
of the research literature on media interpreting to date concerns live-broadcast spoken-
language interpreting on television and focuses in particular on setting specific constraints
and various aspects of performance quality’. While no study has yet presented quanti-
tative data that justifies this generalization, my aim is to problematize and diversify that
landscape of practices. Although this is not a comprehensive account of interpreter-
mediated events and settings, beyond news and talk shows there are live and pre-recorded
interviews, pre-recorded news features, documentaries, news reports, live event coverage
and press conferences. They occur in different media outlets, from TV and radio to print
media and internet multimedia platforms, including social media. It is, therefore, key to
distinguish between broadcasting outlets, media genres and events.
The mix of these three categories (genre, event and outlet), what Cicourel (1992: 294)
calls the ‘broad context’ of interaction, helps to frame media interpreting as a specific field
of interpreting. This broad context influences the interpreters’ performance and decisions.
In TV live interpreting Alexieva (1999) distinguishes between the ‘monologue type’, which
mainly occurs in news and reports and typically involves simultaneous interpreting and
‘the dialogue type’ (1999: 333), which mainly occurs in interviews and panel discussions
and typically involves dialogue interpreting. There are instances where both types of talk
may be intertwined, such as in press conferences, where the monologue type typically
341
precedes the dialogue type in the form of an introduction after which a dialogue following
the interactional dynamics of interviews or Q&A sessions ensues.
In her study of interpreter-mediated TV events Alexieva (1999) establishes specific con-
textual parameters which can be split into four groups: (1) the participants, which are
subdivided into ‘on-screen’ and ‘off-screen’ casts, with the interpreter acting as mediator
in two communicative channels; (2) the specificity of the TV product as a polysemiotic
text; (3) the communicative goals of the two casts of primary participants and the strat-
egies employed to attain these goals in a situation highly marked from a kinaesthetic and
proxemic point of view, which often leads to shifts in the interpreter’s output, and (4) the
factors determining the choice of the optimum mode of interpreting (Alexieva 1999: 329).
Although later research has shown how the choice of the mode of interpreting exceeds
what is presented by Alexieva (1999) as a short-term informed decision-making process
based on those ‘factors’ (cf. section 1 above, Castillo 2012, and Gieve & Norton 2007),
Alexieva’s work was pioneering in approaching media interpreting from the angle of
broadcast media studies.
A typology of broadcast events and an analysis of the language and discourse of
different interpreter-mediated events are key prerequisites to understanding the challenges
in media interpreting. We will first consider news and reports, which are monological
types of media talk and, given the existing conventions, tend to follow simultaneous
interpreting in live events and consecutive interpreting or scripted voice-over of previously
interpreted talk in pre-recorded events. Mack (2002: 205) singles out the salient features of
media discourse when interpreting is involved:
a. the typically asymmetrical and one-way character of television communication: there

is a growing number of recipient subgroups –the television audience [off-screen
participants] –who cannot actively participate in the communication process but have
the power of (remote) control, accompanied by a shrinking number of producers of
messages, the on-screen participants, and an even smaller number of senders distrib-
uting the ‘raw material’ (pictures and contents);
b. the industrial character of message production for mass communication, involving
enormous personal and technical resources and economic interests, which makes it
difficult to identify and clearly distinguish between animator, author and principal of
a message.
It is precisely that industrial character of message production that may explain why it
became a convention to avoid, as much as possible, live interpreting in news programmes,
news features and documentaries. Here, the original interpreter-mediated talk is hardly
ever broadcast and the final broadcast product uses a pre-recorded and usually voiced-
over piece based on the original interpreter’s rendition. Thus, the interpreter’s renditions
contribute to the difficulty in identifying and clearly distinguishing between animator,
author and principal of the message pointed out by Mack through the use of Goffman’s
terms (see Chapter 2).
In contrast to TV, radio has been the forgotten medium in media interpreting research.
Whether it is due to a lack of interest by researchers, a simple overlooking of radio
as the media of the spoken word and talk par excellence (Castillo 2015a: 110), or the
overshadowing power of TV, the reality is that vast amounts of interpreter-mediated data
remain understudied. The lack of media theories and scarce interdisciplinary research
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Media interpreting
where cross-pollination between media studies and interpreting studies exists may also
have contributed to this imbalance. The origin of radio broadcasting and the allegedly
first interpreted speeches in the media can serve as an illustrative example of why there is
much more to radio interpreting than has been researched so far:
…the practice itself [media interpreting] dates back to the 1930s, when renowned con-
ference interpreters such as André Kaminker and Hans Jacob interpreted speeches
by Hitler simultaneously for French radio. This mode –live-broadcast simultaneous
interpreting –is still regarded as the prototypical manifestation of media interpreting,
which nevertheless includes other scenarios, modes and modalities as well.
(Pöchhacker 2010: 224)
This implicit call for broadening research on media interpreting practices and challenges
also questions the pre-established norm of media interpreting mainly taking place on
TV (and specially on TV news and talk shows) using simultaneous interpreting. Castillo
(2015a, 2016) challenges these assumptions in his studies of contemporary radio, TV and
online interpreting.
Castillo (2015a) studies the organizational, interactional and discursive aspects of
dialogue interpreting in radio settings. By studying a public radio station that focuses
on culture (Spain’s Radio 3), Castillo evidences the existence of a large corpus of live
interpreter-mediated interviews which, intrinsically linked to the technical and communi-
cative features of radio, follow a mixed interpreting modality pattern of interaction ‘based
on the use of the dialogue interpreting modality for English into Spanish utterances, and
simultaneous/whispering mode (with sound mute on most occasions) for Spanish into
English utterances’ (Castillo 2015a:197). This broad pattern of interaction gives way to
specific organizational and interactional phenomena that paint a much more complex pic-
ture of interpreter-mediated interactions than previously thought (cf. Castillo 2015a: 299–
307). While the analysed data is narrowed down to a series of interviews of one of Radio
3’s programmes, evidence of this practice in other major radio broadcasters such as BBC
Radio and Radio France is presented (cf. Castillo 2015a:112), thus suggesting that radio
interpreting may well be as frequent as on TV, if not more so.
Beyond traditional mass media categorizations and following García-Beyaert 2015 and
Boéri 2015 studies, which depart from inward looking, interpreter-centred approaches, it is
fitting to put forward the concept of transmedia interpreting –based on the contemporary
concept of transmedia (Jenkins 2006, Merkin 2010) –as a form of media interpreting that
transcends traditional media and in which the purposes, spaces and ways of organizing
the interpretation are multifunctional and overlap. Transmedia interpreting can be defined
as the type of interpreting produced to serve the needs of different media (i.e. television,
radio, printed and online newspapers, news agencies), as well as different media-related
institutions (i.e. press offices, organizers’ social media, journalists’ blogs and the primary
participants’ own social media and related platforms). The actual interpreting may occur
prior to the editing, when the raw material is filmed/recorded, during the broadcasting
(live), or in the editing stages over a pre-recorded or pre-filmed piece. Film festivals,
global sports events and award ceremonies are events that typically feature transmedia
interpreting. Such events may have one or more internally and/or externally organized
interpreting services and hired interpreters may not always be informed by media outlets
about which of their renditions will be broadcast. This increasingly common phenomenon
343
entails certain challenges for interpreters and interpreting service providers. First, how can
interpreters adapt their discourse, register and tenor to a multiplicity of media outlets and
potential audiences when they cannot know all of the media involved in the event? Second,
who has the right to broadcast the interpreters’ renditions, an issue often overlooked in
contracts, copyright recognition and credits? This is key not just in terms of interpreters’
recognition and status, but also in terms of accountability and journalistic ethics.
Theories and methodologies for the study of media interpreting

It could be argued that media interpreting research has reached a mature stage where
descriptive studies mostly carried out by professionals working in the media (e.g. AIIC
2012) and studies which fall onto a certain degree of prescriptivism (e.g. Daly 1985) can
be overcome. Thanks to the application of critical theories and methods drawn from
sociolinguistics and media studies, a deeper understanding of the processes, products
and challenges related to media interpreting has been reached. In other words, a critical
understanding of why interpreter-mediated events and interpreting services in the media
are both organized and broadcast the way they are (cf. Falbo 2011) must be reached before
delving into questions of broadcast interpreting quality (in terms of propositional content
and delivery) and necessary skills for a media interpreter –questions which are certainly
relevant and urgent. We, therefore, need to explore and theorize on what shapes the organ-
ization of interpreting services. More specifically, comprehensive studies of the communi-
cative ethos, media outlet/institution guidelines, conventions, production conditions and
input from interpreting service provider(s) are starting points for grounded theories and
methods dealing with media interpreting.
Research taking into account these concerns has been undertaken from the 2010s
onwards and has paved the way for studies that have arguably had an impact on
broadcasters and interpreters alike. In this section, suggestions for theories and methods
in media studies and sociolinguistics will be put forward, focusing on innovative and inter-
disciplinary accounts that deal with the communicative ethos of broadcasting and theories
of media authenticity, the comfort factor and the ethics of entertainment. However, solid
theoretical work in the same fields will also be discussed, including the use of conversa-
tion analysis in the study of interpreter-mediated interaction (e.g. Wadensjö 2000; Castillo
2015a), critical discourse analysis (Mack 2002) and commodity fetishism and the comfort
factor (Katan & Straniero Sergio 2003).
The communicative ethos of broadcasting

The conceptualization of ethos, having its origin in Aristotle’s Rhetoric (Grinshpun
2019:102), has played an increasing theoretical role in sociolinguistics, particularly within
critical discourse analysis since the 1980s (Grinshpun 2019:102). Arguably running par-
allel to Goffman’s concept of theatricality in interaction (1982), the communicative ethos
looks at the production of institutional talk and discourse as the construction of the
image of the self (Amossy 2010). Hutchby (2006) takes this term from Scannell (1988,
1989: 152) to refer to the distinctive approach to communicative procedures and policies
of a broadcasting institution, station or broadcaster. This ‘distinctive’ communicative
ethos tends to instil a sense of familiarity and, hence, inclusiveness and sociability in the
broadcast audience (Hutchby 2006: 12). The communicative ethos of broadcasting does
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Media interpreting
not involve a ‘natural’ practice or way of talking but a performance (Hutchby 2006: 12).
Hence, a critical description of what a particular broadcaster is working to produce and
how they present their programme/presenter to the audience can be developed, based on
aspects of everyday casual conversation which are imported into the broadcaster’s dis-
course and modified according to the distinctive institutional contexts of broadcasting
(Hutchby 2006: 12).
As Scannell (1996) argues, broadcasters work to produce their distinctive ethos
and that distinctive ethos is key in the creation of the public arena of broadcasting
(Clayman 2004), also referred to above as the broad pattern of interaction. The public
arena of broadcasting reflects the overall participation framework created by the
participants in the broadcast (most notably the institution in charge of the produc-
tion and the host) where the interaction takes place. These arenas are understood as
modes of human interaction with their own conditions of access and rules of conduct
(Clayman 2004: 29). Thanks to this approach, we can thoroughly understand and
explain organizational processes and interactions in interpreter-mediated events (cf.
Castillo 2015a), such as the implicit and explicit organization of interpreter-mediated
interviews via the presenter’s on-air framing and introduction to the interview. This
approach to the study of broadcast talk (whether interpreter-mediated or not) is usu-
ally supported methodologically by conversation analysis models, which are accom-
panied by corroboration and triangulation of data in the way of semi-structured
interview surveys with media professionals and interpreters, and then also checked
against the actual broadcast interviews and footage or recordings of off-air time (cf.
Castillo 2015a: 351–357).
Analysis following this methodology can allow researchers to engage with professional
practices in a way that understands the broadcasters’ needs and preferences. In addition,
researchers can contribute with guidelines and best practice recommendations based on
each particular station or programme’s communicative ethos.
Mediated authenticity: a critical theory for studying the broadcast

of interpreter-mediated interaction
It has already been pointed out earlier in the chapter that a large part of interpreter-
mediated interactions are broadcast pre-recorded and edited, whether they are news
pieces, documentaries or feature interviews. The way they are edited and presented to the
audience was studied by Gieve & Norton (2007) using data from British TV, leading to the
conclusion that the trend to minimize linguistic difference is ideological. Representations
of linguistic difference are avoided or strategies adopted which minimize the implications
of linguistic difference, thus representing ‘Others as unreachable [and] irredeemably
different’ (2007: 208).
However, there are other angles in media theory that can be used to analyse why
certain production conventions in the broadcasting of interpreter-mediated interactions
have become institutionalized and critically review such conventions. I am referring to
the concept of authenticity in media production, a construct which has been studied
thoroughly by Enli (2015) and which is one of the overarching principles of media
institutions such as the BBC. The concept of authenticity was developed to a large extent
by critical theorists (cf. Hardt 1993). More recently, Enli (2015) sheds new light on it as
both a subject of study and a powerful methodological tool in media studies. According
345
to Enli (2015: 1), the concept of mediated authenticity refers to how authenticity ‘is a
currency in the communicative relation between producers and audiences’. Therefore,
as a social construction, ‘it traffics in representations of reality’ (Enli 2015: 1). Two key
points in Enli’s study which are of methodological value for media interpreting are that,
first, mediated authenticity ‘is achieved through production techniques and authenticity
illusions’ (2015: 1) which range from minor adjustments to post-production editing and,
second, they constitute ‘the authenticity contract’ (2015: 1) which, in turn, is based on ‘a
set of genre conventions, as well as established practices and expectations’ (2015: 1). This
contract involves a mutual tacit understanding between producers, audiences and regu-
latory authorities about the norms and conventions of mediated communication. Thus,
the audience expects authenticity, which consists of three primary subcategories, namely
trustworthiness, originality and spontaneity, and this authenticity is constructed during
the media production process.
The contract is not set in stone, Enli argues, and the author explores moments and
processes in media broadcasting history of changes in the authenticity contract, that
is moments/processes that ‘illuminate a change in the relation between producers and
audiences’ (2015: 19). If authenticity is a communicative process in the context of the
media, therefore, the construction and degree of authenticity ‘depends on symbolic nego-
tiations between the main participants in the negotiation’ (Enli 2015: 3).
The authenticity contract may explain the editing-out of any interpreter-mediated
interaction in pre-recorded interviews for news and documentaries, as well as the gender
matching of the original with the interpreting via post-editing voice over. This implies that
what is seen as authentic is eminently monolingual interactions and, at most, multilingual
interactions where issues of interlinguistic communication are presented as irrelevant or,
at most, easy to overcome. Examples of this authenticity contract in interpreter-mediated
interactions abound, and yet studies that elicit and critically study the processes of this
social construction are scarce.
Quality and quality assurance

Quality is arguably both a buzzword and probably the most elusive concept in interpreting
studies and within the profession, for service providers and users alike. Although there
are numerous practices still to be analysed across genres, broadcasters and countries, the
amount of data and scope of research to date suggests that we can confidently take a step
forward in media interpreting research: conceptualizing and measuring quality in a multi-
layered, comprehensive way.
The International Conference on Interpreting Quality (ICIQ), in the three editions held
to date (2001, 2011 and 2017) has repeatedly asked a fundamental question for defining
quality in interpreting: interpreting quality in terms of whom, what and why? When this
question is applied to media interpreting, it reveals its full complexity. Quality in terms
of the broadcast product? In terms of the media stakeholders and the production pro-
cess? In terms of audience satisfaction? Or in terms of interpreters themselves, as well as
practitioners’ bodies and scholars?
There have been attempts to measure quality in media interpreting in terms of the final
product, i.e. the interpreter’s output (e.g. Pignataro & Velardi 2013), based on the users’
expectations (e.g. Kurz & Pöchhacker 1995), or via mixed models of non-interpreters’ and
interpreters’ perceptions (Chevalier 2019), all of them providing revealing results, mostly
along the lines of an overall preference for form over content as prime marker of quality.
346
Media interpreting
Nevertheless they are not sufficient. Media interpreting is embedded in complex produc-
tion processes which researchers and media stakeholders cannot overlook if quality is to
be taken into account as a truly ‘multidimensional socio-psychological as well as textual
phenomenon’ (Pöchhacker 2002: 105).
Investigating the production of interpreter-mediated broadcasts, including thorough
studies of the programmes’ ethos and the notion of mediated authenticity is key not only
for conceptualizing media interpreting quality but, most importantly, for guaranteeing
quality assurance processes which take place prior to and during the interpreter-mediated
event. Adopting such a production-oriented approach involves shifting the focus away
from the final product and expanding the concept of quality to the actual multidimen-
sional character alluded to by Pöchhacker (2002). This, in turn permits a comparative
examination of actual practices, a large-scale mapping of the organization of media
interpreting services and potentially the creation of quality assurance protocols in media
interpreting, which are currently largely inexistent. As for methods, triangulation (Cohen
& Manion 1986) approaches suggest themselves if we are to be coherent with said multi-
dimensional character.
Conclusion
The overview of current issues and state of the art research in media interpreting in this
chapter has shown that although media interpreting has gained a prominent space in the
field of interpreting, the picture is still incomplete and further research is required on
different fronts: history and geographies of media interpreting, particularly when it comes
to radio interpreting and moving beyond Eurocentric, Western and mainstream media
practices. The inclusion, use and value of media interpreting in training programmes is
also under-researched, as are innovative teaching methods that capitalize on the potential
of interpreter-media events for training purposes (cf. Castillo 2019). The rapid develop-
ment of new technologies also increases the potential of media interpreting as an add-
itional accessibility service, as in the case with interlingual respeaking (Romero-Fresco &
Pöchhacker 2017).
In terms of future studies and methodologies, interdisciplinarity, involving cross-
fertilization with media studies and sociolinguistics, but also statistics, social psych-
ology and neuroscience, is key for moving the field of study forward. For instance, in this
chapter it was mentioned that the authenticity contract may be subject to change (Enli
2015). Current conventions (or authenticity contracts) in interpreter-mediated broad-
cast productions use the concept of authenticity as a face-saving device and provider of
comfort factor (Katan & Straniero Sergio 2003) as well as credibility, but these are only
theorizations which require further studies of an interdisciplinary nature. Furthermore, if
the paradox of authenticity (Enli 2015) can be challenged, the question is: to what extent
can interpreters or interpreting service providers be agents of change in the conceptualiza-
tion of authenticity in interpreter-mediated broadcast encounters? Should media events
also be studied through the lenses of the communicative ethos of broadcasting, theories
of infotainment and/or Bourdieu’s habitus when different languages are in contact but
there is no interpreting provision?
These issues present an exciting picture for media interpreting as a field of research
and practice where a great deal of progress can be made. It is up to academics and
practitioners –interpreters and broadcasters alike –to seize the opportunities that this
rapidly evolving environment presents and to be active participants in these processes.
347
Further reading
• Enli, G. (2015) Mediated Authenticity: How the Media Constructs Reality. New York:
Peter Lang.
A contemporary inroads into media broadcasting theories which touches on key aspects
of media production that are of direct relevance to the study of interpreter-mediated
broadcasts, i.e. the production of authentic interactions involving trustworthiness, origin-
ality and spontaneity.
• Falbo, C. (ed.) (2011) The Interpreter’ Newsletter. Special Issue on Television Interpreting,
16. Trieste: Edizioni Universitàdi Trieste.
Monographic journal issue devoted to contemporary issues in television interpreting

research. The issue works as a multilayered publication that led the way with regard to
how to look at media interpreting (in this case TV interpreting) in all its complexity and
potential with academic rigour and clarity.
• Gieve, S. & Norton, J. (2007) ‘Dealing with linguistic difference in encounters with
others on British television’, in Johnson, S. & Ensslin, A. (eds), Language in the Media.
London: Continuum, pp. 188–210.
A comprehensive study of how British television deals with linguistic difference in

encounters with ‘Others’. By looking at a small corpus of televised travel, documentary
and lifestyle programmes in British television, the authors unveil the strategies for dealing
with linguistic difference on broadcast television (including interpreter-mediated and
non-interpreter-mediated encounters) and the subsequent emerging attitudes towards lin-
guistic difference in multilingual talk-in-interaction on TV.
• Katan, D. & Straniero Sergio, F. (2003) ‘Submerged ideologies in media interpreting’,

in Calzada Pérez, M. (ed.), Apropos of Ideology. Manchester: St Jerome, pp. 131–144.
A theoretically robust analysis of Italian interpreter-mediated (in dialogue interpreting

mode) talk show material that reveals broadcasters’ control over the interpreting process
following the overriding norm of the ‘comfort factor’, which is an integral part of the
two main underlying ideologies of media infotainment: consumer capitalism and popular
culture.
• Wadensjö, C. (2000) ‘Co-constructing Yeltsin –explorations of an interpreter-mediated

political interview’, in Olohan, M. (ed.), Intercultural Faultlines. Manchester: St Jerome,
pp. 233–252.
A pioneering study, which applies an interactionist approach to the study of dialogue

interpreting in a highly institutionalized social event: broadcast talk, and more specific-
ally, live political interviews on radio. Contextual aspects that affect the interpreter’s per-
formance are thoroughly analysed following a mixed methodology.
348
Media interpreting
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22
Translation and the
World Wide Web
Miguel A. Jiménez-Crespo and Laura Ramírez-Polo
Introduction
During the last two decades, the internet and the World Wide Web (WWW) have reshaped
how modern societies communicate, network, consume media products, etc. (Castells
1996, 2003). The revolutionary impact of the internet has been compared to the inven-
tion of the press in the 15th century (Lockwood & Scott 2000), allowing the circulation
of information, services and products at quantum speed. Currently, 7.6 billion people in
the world have access to the internet (InternetWorldStats 2020) and in certain areas, such
as North America or Scandinavia, internet access reaches over 95% of the population. In
turn, translation plays a key role in the development of the ‘global village’, as it enables
this global exchange of goods, services and media products. English, Chinese, Spanish and
Arabic represent the languages with the most users in the internet (InternetWorldStats
2020), while the rest of languages represent 41.8%. In this context, consumption of online
textual, audiovisual and multimodal content and their associated localization and trans-
lation processes continue to increase, becoming the fastest growing sector in the lan-
guage industry (DePalma et al. 2015). This chapter delves into this symbiotic relationship
between the rise of the internet/WWW and the development of new processes, trends
and directions both in the practice of translation and its associated discipline, transla-
tion studies (TS). It also traces the interdisciplinary connections with related areas of
inquiry such as media studies, web studies (Berners-Lee 2006), internet studies (Consalvo
& Ess 2011; Dutton 2013), as well as globalization and internationalization (Jiménez-
Crespo 2021).
This chapter is structured as follows. It first explores (1) the development of the WWW.
It then moves on to the different areas in which it has had an impact on TS, such as
(2) ongoing changes to professional practices that include the use of the WWW for docu-
mentation, the move to cloud computing in the language industry, the emergence of
new digital genres and associated modalities, i.e. web localization, the use of the WWW
as a networking platform (O’Hagan & Ashworth 2003; McDonough Dolmaya 2015),
and (3) the emergence of what is known as ‘participatory cultures’ (Jenkins 2006), ‘fan
cultures’ (Hills 2002) and its associated ‘user-generated translations’ (Perrino 2009). The
352 DOI: 10.4324/9781003221678-26

Translation and the World Wide Web
chapter ends with a reflection on (4) areas of inquiry within translation studies that have
been marked by the WWW, such as its use by translators as a networking tool, online
teaching of translation or the emergence of web-based research methods for empirical
and ethnographic/sociological studies.
Translation and the emergence of the internet and the World Wide Web
Tim Berners-Lee created the World Wide Web in the 1980’s as a ‘universe of network-
accessible information, an embodiment of human knowledge’ (Berners- Lee et al.
1992: 52). He also attributed a social dimension to his invention, ‘the web is more a
social creation than a technical one’ (Berners-Lee 1999: 113), in what could be seen as a
prediction of the current social network era. The WWW was built upon the successful
implementation of the internet, and usually those two terms are often used inter-
changeably. Nevertheless, the WWW is merely one of the many communicative possi-
bilities enabled by the internet, such as chats, videoconferencing or messaging apps in
smartphones (O’Hagan & Ashworth 2003). The history of the internet dates two decades
earlier, and it began in the 1960s when researchers in the USA developed protocols to
connect computers remotely. It was not until 1982 when the current TCP/IP protocols
were standardized that the internet as we know it was born. The internet emerged as
a powerful communication tool, allowing for email, instant messaging, voice over
internet calling, video conferencing, discussion forums, blogs, etc. On its part, the WWW
was possible thanks to developments such as Hypertext Markup Language (HTML)
by Berners-Lee in 1991, as well as other technical innovations such as the Extensive
Hypertext Markup Language in 2005. The Web 2.0, or the ReadWriteWeb, was based
on the premise that users should be more involved in the creation of content, bringing
new communication, production and distribution channels. Users, thus, became produ-
cers, reviewers, moderators, translators and disseminators of massive amounts of new
content. The previous one-way street of the Web 1.0, where content was somewhat con-
trolled by the producers of information, gave way to a model in which anyone could
potentially create and distribute content, empowering users and communities worldwide.
This Web 2.0 gave rise to social networking sites or platforms for the production and dis-
tribution of all types of content, from videos to photos to personal information. These
platforms are ubiquitous in modern societies and they gave users control over the type of
content that was produced, distributed and in many cases, translated. Some of the most
visited websites worldwide such as Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Wikipedia, Reddit, and
LinkedIn1 represent instances of web initiatives of users consuming and producing what
is known as ‘user-generated content’, and all of them include ‘user-translated’ content
(Perrino 2009). The next step has been the move towards the Web 3.0 or the ‘semantic
web’, in which users can customize and personalize their digital life through the conver-
gence of media, platform and content (Metz 2007). It hinges around the complete inte-
gration of web, social media, apps, widgets, etc. and the accumulation of knowledge and
personalization of each user’s experience. In this context, the WWW is also adjusting to
the explosion in mobile technologies that are outpacing the usage of desktop computers
in the daily lives of billions. This expansion of the WWW to mobile has also fuelled
the next translation revolution (Jimenez-Crespo 2017b), with mobile human translation
becoming a reality through apps such as Unbabel, Stepes or the post-editing non-profit
app Kajingo (Moorkens, O’Brien & Vreeke 2017).
353
Jiménez-Crespo and Ramírez-Polo
Over the years, the symbiotic relationship between the WWW and translation has
resulted in each of them producing radical changes to each other. Translation has allowed
the WWW to become a truly global platform, while the latter has prompted continuous
new developments in translation practices and the translation microcosm. Examples of
these advances are, among others, the widespread adoption of Free Online Machine
Translation (FOMT), the subsequent adoption of web or cloud- based post- editing
machine translation (PEMT) (Aikawa, Yamamoto & Isahara 2012; Mitchell, O’Brien &
Roturier 2014; Nunes Viera 2019), including web based machine translation (MT) sub-
titling of online videos (Bywood et al. 2017; Georgakopoulou 2018), the emergence of
web localization (Esselink 2006; Jimenez-Crespo 2013), the move to cloud-based tech-
nology tools and marketplaces for professional translation (García 2015, 2017) or the glo-
balization of collaborative translation and crowdsourcing through web-based platforms
(Jimenez-Crespo 2017a). All these advances have radically reshaped how translations are
commissioned, produced, distributed, used or repurposed. The following section reviews
some of these changes to translation ecosystem.
The World Wide Web, translation processes and translation events:

a dynamic evolution
Professional translation is nowadays considered a technological process due to the fact
that ‘virtually all translating is aided by computers’ (Biau & Pym 2006: 17), and ‘tech-
nology is an integral part of translation practice in the world’ (Olohan 2017: 279). In
this regard, translation is now conceptualized as an instance of ‘human-computer inter-
action’ (O’Brien 2012) in which the WWW plays a key role. The WWW has had a ‘tremen-
dous impact on the actual practice of translation’ (Diaz Cintas & Massida 2019: 267). It
has revolutionized translation processes worldwide, primarily through three interrelated
phenomena: (1) its use for documentation and terminology research during translation
processes (Enriquez-Raido 2013; Albir 2017), (2) the move towards cloud technologies
for translation memory, machine translation and translation management, and (3) its
use as a communication and networking tool for translators and the language industry.
Nowadays, it is not uncommon for a translator to work on web-based content, such as
a website, using a cloud based translation tool, maybe post-editing matches from a web-
based MT system, while consulting online documentary resources and networking online
with the other members of the translation team. The WWW revolution for the profession
is thus already here.
The WWW in the documentation and terminology processes

The WWW has turned into a massive repository of resources for most professional
activities. Professional translation is also now highly dependent on the WWW and its
applications, websites and services. The WWW now represents one of the main docu-
mentation sources for professional translators in terms of terminology, references, back-
ground information, or the compilation of proprietary resources such as ad-hoc corpora
(Enriquez Raido 2013). This has been confirmed in empirical process studies, where
online resources are referred to as ‘external support’ (Alves 2003). Hvelplund & Dragstead
(2018) found, for example, that non-literary translators use on average 20% of their time
consulting online information, while literary translators average 11% of their time. It can
354
thus be confidently argued that WWW use is nowadays an integral part of the translation
process.
Online resources can be broadly grouped into those specifically created for translators
or any professional interested in languages, such as specialized online dictionaries, cor-
pora or terminology databases; those devised for other specialists, such as information
portals (like MedlinePlus for healthcare professionals); and those created for the general
public, such as general dictionaries or encyclopaedias such as Wikipedia. Lexicographic
resources such as online dictionaries emerged when the WWW led to digitalization and
many publishers created parallel versions of their lexical resources on the WWW. Though
first versions were just mimicking the paper copies, new electronic dictionaries contain a
number of features that expand those of the hard-copy versions. Most of them include pro-
nunciation guidelines, concordances from real texts, inflections for nouns and conjugations
for verbs, auto-suggest, images, and, most importantly, dynamic user-generated content,
mostly in the form of forums where users post their questions and suggestions to entries
and expressions that are not reflected yet in the dictionary, making of these resources an
ever-growing source of information and facilitating the contact between translators and
experts (Gambier 2016). There are all types of dictionaries, from monolingual to bilingual
and multilingual, from general to specialized.
Online terminology databases have also emerged as an invaluable tool for professionals.
Terminology databases store records and are usually created and maintained by inter-
national organizations (IATE, WHO, World Bank, United Nations), language policy
entities (Termium, TermCAT, Euskalterm) or private companies (i.e. Microsoft, Adobe).
Like dictionaries, these tools have evolved and reinvented themselves, adding new features
and making them more user-friendly. A recent example is IATE, the terminology data-
base of the European institutions, which was first launched in 2004, and then revamped
and relaunched in late 2018. Some recent developments in terminology databases include
dynamic concept maps, such as WIPO Pearl, and ontologies.
A study carried out within the SCATE project (Steurs et al. 2016) among profes-
sional translators showed that, for term research activities, the online resources were
most exploited (94%), followed by personal resources (85%) and client’s resources (64%).
Among these online resources, the most used were search engines, with Google and Bing in
the lead, online dictionaries such as Oxford, Proz.com, TermWiki Search and TermCoord
glossary links, term banks such as IATE, Termium Plus, EuroTerm Bank, FAOTERM
and WTOTERM, monolingual corpora such as Eur-lex, Global web-based English,
British National corpus and Corpus of contemporary AE, and parallel corpora, such as
Linguee, Europarl, Glosbeand TAUS search (Vandeghinste et al. 2019). Translators also
admit using Google Translate as a last resource to solve terminology problems. Many of
these online resources are also directly accessible from translation memory tools through
widgets, but generally translators seem to prefer to access them directly through their
browsers due to usability reasons (van der Lek-Cuidin et al. 2015).
Terminology processing is not a trivial task. As previously mentioned, translators
spend more than 20% of their time using online resources (Hvelplund & Dragstead 2018),
and most of this time is usually dedicated to terminology. Out of all the different steps in
terminological management –collecting, processing, classifying and consistently applying
vocabulary (Popiolek 2015: 341) –processing takes most of the time. For a translator, this
step consists of checking the concept represented by the term and finding the appropriate
term in the target language. Here lexicographical and terminological tools are often not
355
enough to meet translators’ needs, who often need to resort to other resources to under-
stand concepts or to find equivalents for the terms they intend to translate, such as online
comparable documents, web corpora or ontologies. The first one, comparable texts (also
known as parallel texts by some authors), consist of texts originally written in the target
language with the same or similar function and of the same genre as the one where the
source term is found. They can also help with collocational and usage information, but
here a combination with the next resource, online corpora, is necessary. A web corpus
is an online collection of electronic texts gathered following specific criteria (text type,
mode, time, topic, etc.). Translators normally make use of monolingual and parallel cor-
pora in their work. Monolingual corpora include only one language (Kenny 2001: 58),
such as the BCN, the Corpus of Contemporary American English or the Spanish CREA.
Parallel corpora include source texts and their translation into one or more languages
(Laviosa 2002: 37), and their online availability and easy-to-use online systems such as
Linguee, Mymemory or Glosbee have turned them into one of the preferred resources
for professionals. Corpora can be used for terminological work, but also to research
other textual features such as phraseology, style, and genre conventions (Laviosa 2002).
Translators tend to rely more on their corpora, that is, their translation memories, than
on termbases to retrieve translation solutions. In addition, the same way translators use
corpora for terminology research, new research applications also show the use of corpora
compilation from the WWW for automatic term extraction (Delpech et al. 2012; Rigouts
et al. 2018).
The WWW now allows translators a wide range of options to explore corpus data.
First of all, it is possible to distinguish between (1) the ‘Web for Corpus’ (WfC) and the
‘Web as Corpus’ (WaC) (Fletcher 2012). The first one uses the Web as a source of machine-
readable texts for corpus compilation. A number of tools can be used to compile web cor-
pora, such as the automatic tool Bootcat, and they can also be compiled manually in what
is known as an ad-hoc corpus (Varantola 2003) for specialized translation purposes. It
also includes ready-made corpora compiled by different organizations and made available
to translators, such as Sketch Engine. In addition to this, many parallel corpora compiled
by organizations and collectives, such as the European Union or the United Nations, or
others compiled by collectives such as Opensubs are made available both as a download
to be analysed with offline concordancers such as Wordsmith tools or Antconc, or dir-
ectly consulted online in corpus repositories such as the above mentioned Opus Corpus
(Tiedeman 2009, 2016), Linguee or Mymemory. The ‘Web as Corpus’ (WaC) refers to
cases in which the WWW is consulted directly during translation. This should be the case
when Google is used to check any term or phrase, with or without using advanced search
operators, as well as the use of engines that use the Web as a corpus for specific monolin-
gual searches (i.e. Webcorp, Webconc, Corpeus, Diatopix). In this regard, there are also a
number of Google-based tools that aim at facilitating the use of the Web as corpus. For
instance, 2lingual.com allows users to search a term in two different languages, and the
results are displayed as a parallel table, and with trends. google.com users can check which
out of different key terms or phrases has more hits in Google, with results also organized
by subregion. In addition to these examples, there are also a number of tools online for
analysis and download, stop-word lists, etc.
The access to almost unlimited informational resources also implies some threats. The
ability and freedom that any user has to publish content means that, on the one side, the
quality of that information might suffer and, on the other side, users might have a difficult
356
time discerning what are reliable and reputable sources of information (Vargas & Ramírez
2012). Therefore, it is of utmost importance that advanced search skills are complemented
with good evaluation skills to assess which sources will serve their purpose and which
sources might contain flawed information.
Cloud-based technologies and the translation revolution

The impact of the WWW in the professional and non-professional practice can also be
seen in the rise of cloud-based technologies that are reshaping the future of translation
(García 2015, 2017). Web-based cloud technologies have specially had an impact through
(1) moving online existing translation memory, subtitling, localization and productivity
tools, which no longer physically reside in the translators’ workstation and (2) the emer-
gence of new cloud marketplaces that foster efficiency, collaboration, integration of all key
participants in dedicated workflows. Nowadays, most major translation memory (TM)
tool solutions offer online versions, such as Trados, MemoQ, Memsource or Wordfast,
while others have been fully developed for cloud environments, such as MateCat or
TermSoup. In addition, a myriad of for profit web-based translation initiatives have
emerged, and they can be divided into two distinct groups (García 2017). On the one
hand, online marketplaces that connect clients and translators, such as Proz, Translators’
Cafe or Lilo, and on the other, companies based on microtask crowdsourcing approaches,
such as Smarling, Straker Getlocalization, Onehourtranslation or Unbabel. These latter
companies are disrupting the translation marketplace (Sakamoto et al. 2018), with distinct
collaborative translation production processes beyond the classic translate-edit-publish
(TEP) and the inclusion of different participants (non-professionals, semiprofessionals,
highly qualified professionals). In this regard, some indicate that this ‘cloud scenario is
looming as a major fork in the course of translation as a –hitherto –expert human activity’
(García 2017: 67). Nevertheless, the cloud has also opened the market to initiatives that
blend both for profit and non-profit scenarios. For example, subtitles platforms such as
Amara allow users to request both a free or paid project, while others are exclusively for
profit such as Oona. More recent innovations in online technologies for translation include
cloud-based models that blend MT and TM, known as MT assisted TM (García 2010), i.e.
Matecat, with new developments such as the Interactive Machine Translation (IMP) (Carl
& Braun 2018), i.e. the platforms Litl or Casmacat. Similarly, subtitling programs such as
Subtitle Edit offer the possibility of integrating web based MT systems in their workflow,
creating a dynamic space for combining web-based and computer-based solutions (Diaz
Cintas & Massidda 2019). The integration of web-based statistical or neural MT in trans-
lation processes (i.e. Bowker & Buitrago 2018), especially in combination with Human
Post Editing (i.e. Moorkens, O’Brien & Vreeke 2017), have thus become essential to fully
account for the dynamic and fast development of translation-mediated web-based com-
municative practices.
In addition to the ongoing integration of MT in media translation, the move to the
cloud has also lead to new practices, such as ‘cloudsubtitling’. This term refers to the pro-
duction of subtitles through browser based systems where participating parties can have
access to their assets with their own (multiple) devices to carry out subtitling and post-
production tasks. According to Diaz Cintas & Massida (2019: 265–266), ‘cloudsubtitling’
not only brings benefits in order to carry out subtitling and quality control tasks online
with the possibility of direct access by multiple participating parties, but also other issues
357
such as closer control by clients, easier delivery of the final product and the lowering of
costs. Examples of this can be Oona, ZooDigital, CaptionHub or Subtitlenext.
Communication and networking for translators

Networking for professional and non-professional translators is another area of impact
of the WWW in translation practices (blogs, Facebook groups, Twitter users, non-profit or
fan groups, etc.) (i.e. Risku & Dickinson 2009; McDonough-Dolmaya 2018). Nowadays
online platforms such as Proz and Translator’s Cafe represent vast repositories of infor-
mation that have built up over the years through the interactions of translators globally.
They represent open platforms that might act as marketplaces (Proz). In essence, they are
portals that offer a myriad of resources, and in which any translator, regardless of their
skills, can interact in a broad range of topics of interest to the profession. Similarly, a wide
range of translation initiatives offer online fora for participants to interact, such as the
ones in Facebook Translate, TED Open Translation Talk initiative (Olohan 2014) or the
one in Wikipedia (McDonough-Dolmaya 2015). These fora have been used by translation
researchers to study a variety of sociological issues, such as the anxiety over translation
automation by professionals (Nunes Viera 2018). Translators can use these platforms not
only for communication, but also for marketing activities. There are numerous translators
that through their Twitter profiles or blogs attract new customers, promote and monitor
their profession-related position, creating and developing an online presence, which in
turn grants them professional benefits (such as invitations as speakers in professional
conferences, or discounts for the acquisition of new technological products) and jobs
(Vargas & Ramírez 2012).
New translation modalities: web localization

The digital world has resulted in the emergence of new modalities and translation types,
such as web or smartphone app localization, as well as other modes such as chat transla-
tion (O’Hagan & Ashworth 2003). These novel modalities have also resulted in popular
digital genres to translate, such as websites of all kinds, advertisements, user interfaces,
smartphone apps or tweets (see Jimenez-Crespo 2013: 97–99; Jimenez-Crespo 2019).
Web localization emerged in the late 1990s and nowadays represents one of the modal-
ities with the largest market share in the world. At present, the majority of multinational
companies, institutions or organizations have a web presence with one or more localized
versions of their websites. This means that web localization is now a ‘lucrative, dynamic
and interprofessional field, often involving marketing, design, software engineering, as
well as linguistic processes’ (Pym & Windle 2011: 410). This process has been defined as ‘a
complex communicative, cognitive, textual and technological process by which interactive
digital texts are modified to be used in different linguistic and sociocultural contexts, guided
by the expectations of the target audience and the specifications and degree requested by
initiators’ (Jimenez-Crespo 2013: 20). This integrative approach incorporates basic tenets
in TS in terms of any translation activity viewed as a linguistic, textual, communicative,
cultural and social process, as well as a functionalist and user-based approach (Suojanen,
Koskinen & Tuominen 2015). It also incorporates all along language industry notions such
as ‘client specifications’. Research into this vibrant area of inquiry comprehends a wide
range of issues that include the study of cultural (Tercedor 2005; Dong & Mangiron 2018),
358
political (i.e. Wu 2017; McDonough-Dolmaya 2018) or social aspects (i.e. Aüstermuhl &
Mirwald 2010), as well as what is known as ‘development’ or ‘non market localization’
(Schäler 2010). The WWW fuelled the emergence of a wide range of new digital genres,
such as online newspapers or social websites, as well as instrumental genres such as search
engines (see Jiménez-Crespo 2013: 66–101). Research has focused on many of these genres
with high localization rates, such as corporate, social networking or institutional websites
(see for example Jimenez-Crespo 2019). These new conventionalized forms of digital texts
have brought up new challenges to TS, such as the localization of multimodality and
interactivity in digital texts. It has also led to question whether findings of corpus-based
studies on the ‘general features of translation’ are also found in texts in new digital genres,
such as localized websites (i.e. Jimenez-Crespo 2009, 2011, 2016). Another area of interest
is the intersection of localization and web accessibility. In this area, some studies have
taken a purely descriptive approach,while other empirical studies have employed a corpus-
based methodology (Tercedor & Jiménez-Crespo 2008). Rodríguez Vázquez (2015, 2016)
has also pioneered an experimental process-based approach to the study of accessibility
(i.e. Rodríguez Vázquez 2016). Corpus-based studies into web accessibility have shown
that the frequency of localization of alt image tags for visually impaired users is consist-
ently lower in localized texts than in non-translated ones (Tercedor & Jiménez-Crespo
2008), pointing at the necessity of integrating web accessibility in training programmes.
Translation collaboration and the World Wide Web: fans, participatory

cultures and crowdsourcing
Translation and media studies have found a space for interdisciplinary interaction in the
context of the emergence of the WWW and its intersection with the ‘fandom phenom-
enon’ that gave us fansubbing and fandubbing (Dwyer 2013, 2018). Audiovisual fan com-
munities started to translate media products prior to the emergence of the WWW within
the context of what media studies refers to as ‘participatory cultures’ (Jenkins 2006: 137).
To trace the evolution of these cultures, media scholars Delwiche & Henderson (2012)
propose the existence of four stages of their development that can be used to analyse the
evolution of fan translation. The first stage, ‘emergence’ (1985–1993), predated the WWW
and it started with fansubbing of Japanese manga and anime using analogue VHS video
technologies. Subtitles would be hardcoded in the actual film and the distribution channel
was regular mail. The desire to collaborate, produce subtitles and share or distribute them
was already there. The emergence of the internet and the WWW completely revolutionized
these practices and marked the next stage, ‘waking up to the Web’ (1994–1998). Fan
subbing communities that were already structured in non-digital contexts quickly adopted
this new digital platform to advance their activities and projects. This stage was dominated
by what was known in media studies as the ‘fandom phenomenon’ (Jenkins 2006), in
a gradual transition in translation mediation from an analogue to a digital world. The
WWW and related technologies not only afforded the exponential growth of fan transla-
tion communities, but also reconfigured how they are structured and how they function
(i.e. Orrego-Carmona 2012). Web users were empowered to become co-creators of digital
media in what has been referred to as ‘co-creative user’ (Banks 2009) or ‘prosumer’ (Toffler
1980). Fan communities initially took advantage of the digital revolution of the internet
using relay chats (RC) and online forums. In the ‘push button publishing stage’ (1999–
2004), fan translation mediated through technology exploded, from the fan translation
359
of comics, scanlation, to all types of audiovisual texts. The communicative affordances

provided by the participatory Web 2.0 meant that translation processes related to partici-
patory cultures grew exponentially. They have also changed ‘how audiences engage with
audiovisual content around the world […]’ and ‘played a key role in the expansion of the
audiovisual market’ (Orrego-Carmona 2018: 321). This was the time when early instances
of translation crowdsourcing by companies or institutions based on the rise of server-
based cloud technologies emerged, such as the subtitling platforms Amara or Viki. This
stage involved a new paradigm in which ‘passive consumers of AVT have become active
consumers or prosumers, since this new democratic use of technology has allowed them
to take on some of the power and responsibility that traditionally was solely in the hands
of the producers’ (Chaume 2018: 47).
In the last stage, ‘ubiquitous connections’ (2005 to now), participatory cultures have
continued to become a mainstream phenomenon, from the explosion of fansubbing
around the world to the translation of fiction such as Harry Potter through forums and
collaboration (Munday 2010). In this second part of the 2000s, the WWW enabled the
emergence of online collaborative translations platforms, such as those of Wikipedia,
Facebook, Kiva, TED Talks Open Translation Initiative or the more recent Hermes
from Netflix that closed in late 2018. They all used distinct web-based technological
solutions to facilitate the participation of users. Facebook, for example, developed a
micro-task crowdsourcing inspired workflow model with translation and voting by the
crowd (O’Hagan 2016; Jimenez-Crespo 2017a; Chen 2019), while the Wikipedia platform
adapted the open participation model to the translation tasks based on the ‘Linus Law’
or the ‘many eyes principle’ (Raymond 2001). In a related development, web mediated
translations for civic engagement and activism have become commonplace thanks to the
WWW. In this context, activists are, for example, subtitling videos in YouTube to reach
global audiences as seen in recent uprising in Middle Eastern countries (Baker 2016).
Online translation practices are being currently used as ‘instrument[s]‌of human political
intervention’ (Cronin 2010: 102), in a way that the combination of online technologies
and activism can be used to ‘to further human concerns or agendas’ (ibid.). Examples of
these are Global Voices, Ashoka, EngageMedia or Wiser Earth. In addition, the role of
the WWW as an information and interaction platform has also been explored for the sig-
nificance of translation during humanitarian crises (Schäler 2010; Federici 2016).
The combination of the WWW and volunteers and non-professional translators has
helped bridge the gap between the ever-growing volume of digital content that greatly
surpasses the capacities of the professional market and the translation needs of diverse
communities around the world, the so-called ‘funnel effect’ in translation (Gambier 2014).
This has led to the development of novel approaches such as translation crowdsourcing
and online volunteer community translation (Fernández Costales 2012; Jiménez-Crespo
2015, 2017a). From the perspective of translation studies, Jiménez-Crespo defines
translation crowdsourcing as ‘collaborative translation processes performed through
dedicated web platforms that are initiated by companies or organizations and in which
participants collaborate with motivations other than strictly monetary’ (Jiménez-Crespo
2017a: 25). This process is slightly different from what it is referred to as ‘online collab-
orative translations’, which are self-initiated by web-based communities and whose motiv-
ations are non-monetary in nature, such as the fan subtitling initiatives described above,
or the translation or rom hacking of videogames.
Despite the prior existence of fansubbing as a restricted and more limited activity,
translation crowdsourcing became a mainstream phenomenon when Facebook and
360
many other social networking websites started to crowdsource localization processes

to their loyal user-base. Facebook successfully crowdsourced in 2008 the first Spanish
version in a day using Stanford University students, but it was the crowdsourcing initia-
tive by LinkedIn that started to alert professionals of the potential dangers of volunteer
web-based initiatives. This web portal requested that only professional translators par-
ticipate in the localization of its website (Kelly 2009). The potential disruption of the
market caused by web-based free campaigns initiated by for-profit companies soon led
to statements by professional associations such as the American Translators’ Association
(2009) to issue warning statements. The Federation International de Traducteurs (FIT
2015), for example, claimed that crowdsourcing had already ‘disrupted the organization
of labour and professional status of industry practitioners’ (ibid., n.p.). Despite these
criticisms, web-based crowdsourcing and online collaborative translation are nowadays
a consolidated reality (Jimenez-Crespo 2017a), with multiple dynamic intersections in
which novel technologies, communities and areas of interest (i.e. humanitarian, fan, social
networks, activist, knowledge dissemination, etc.) and translational practices (subtitling,
web localization, videogame rom hacking, etc.) are interwoven, expanding the boundaries
of translation. Research has shown that professionals are not necessarily worried about
web-based free collaboration. For example, Flanagan (2016) found that the translators
barely discuss this phenomena in professional blogs, an indication of a lack of concern
about its potential impact in the profession. The paper claims that professionals believe
that their trade can coexist with free volunteer models, highlighting the stratification
of different market niches with different economic conditions and quality expectations
that exist in the marketplace. In addition, ‘professional translators involved in non-profit
translation crowdsourcing are actively blogging about their experiences and encouraging
other professionals to become involved’ (Flanagan 2016: 164). Similarly, another survey
study by Nunes Viera (2018) on what worries professionals in terms of technological
developments found that crowdsourcing does not appear among developments that cause
concern.
Conclusion: new research trends

Nowadays, technology is ‘central to the definition of translation activity’ (Cronin 2013: 2)
and the technologization of translation and its environment is exerting an impact on
research and theorizations (Munday 2008: 179). This impact of the WWW in translation
studies can be located within the growing body of research in what has been known as
the ‘technological turn’ (Cronin 2010; O’Hagan 2013). The emergence of this turn is due
to ‘significant shifts in the way in which translation is carried out in the contemporary
world’ (Cronin 2010), and also to the way translations are commissioned, distributed
and used. It has been defined as a gradual process by which translation theories ‘begin
to incorporate the increasingly evident impact of technology’ (O’Hagan 2013: 513),
subsequently helping develop theoretical tools and frameworks for TS and related dis-
ciplines. The WWW has been pivotal in the evolution and dynamization of translation
practices worldwide, leading to new trends and areas of inquiry within TS. Several of
these areas are:
• Translation studies, the WWW and the ‘technological’ (Cronin 2010; O’Hagan 2013)
and ‘globalization’ turns (Snell-Hornby 2010).
361
• The study of translation practices within the context of ‘network’ or ‘internet studies’
(Folaron 2010, 2019).
• The examination of the role of the WWW in ‘extended translation’ paradigms (Risku
& Dickinson 2009; Risku & Windhanger 2013), that is, the study from a socio-cognitive
perspective of translators’ networks mediated through the WWW (Risku, Rogle & Pein-
Webber 2016).
• Translation pedagogy and the WWW (Olvera et al. 2005, 2009; Jimenez-Crespo 2015),
including the use of audiovisual translation for the acquisition of translation compe-
tence (Dorado & Orero 2007; Orrego Carmona 2014; Gulati et al. 2015).
• The impact of digital online environments in the study of quality in translation (Jimenez-
Crespo 2018).
• The study of ongoing changes in the translation process based on web-based processes,
such as the case of ‘augmented translation’ (Lommel 2018; Krüger, 2019).
• The impact of the WWW in the way translated texts are distributed and used across
the world, from the impact on newsrooms and online newspapers across the world
(Matsusita & Schaffner 2018) to the translation of events of global impact such as presi-
dential speeches (i.e. Jimenez-Crespo 2012; Munday 2012).
• The WWW and the constant evolution and changes in the production, distribution,
reception and evaluation of audiovisual translation (i.e. Orrego-Carmona 2018; Diaz
Cintas & Massidda 2019).
• Finally, the impact of web-based research methods in sociological and cognitive research
agendas should be mentioned. For example, empirical studies on post-editing have used
web-based research methods (Mellinger 2015), while other studies have used the so-
called ‘netnography’ (Kozinets 2010) to investigate online translation communities (i.e.
Dombek 2014; Bundgaard 2017).
These are not the only areas of interest, but it is clear that the WWW has been a catalyst
for both the evolution and expansion of translation practices, as well as the emergence
of research trends and web-based research methods to propel the discipline forward.
With new advances in the digital society such as the ‘mobile revolution’ or the ‘Web of
things’ in which real world objects connect to the WWW and interact with end users
(e.g. self-driven cars or fridges automatically ordering food for its users), the intersec-
tion of translation studies and the WWW will be at the forefront of the discipline for
years to come.
Further reading
• Enriquez-Raido, V. (2013) Translation and Web Searching. New York–London: Routledge.
An examination of the crucial role of the WWW in the documentary process during
translation practices.
• García, I. (2017) ‘Translating in the cloud age: online marketplaces’, HERMES –

Journal of Language and Communication in Business, 56, pp. 59–70.
This paper reviews the changes to the profession of translation through the novel online
marketplaces and their impact on the commission and production of translations in cloud
environments.
362
• Jiménez-Crespo, M. A. (2013). Translation and Web Localization. London: Routledge.
This monograph is exclusively dedicated to web localization. It offers a comprehensive

approach to this phenomenon and a foundation for students and researchers interested in
researching web localization.
• Jiménez-Crespo, M. A. (2017). Crowdsourcing and Online Collaborative

Translations: Rxpanding the Limits of Translation Studies. Amsterdam-Philadelphia:
John Benjamins.
The first monograph dedicated to crowdsourcing and online collaborative translation.

Since the first object of crowdsourcing practices were websites, software and videogame
localization, this publication offers a comprehensive theoretical framework to study col-
laborative localization processes.
Note
1 www.alexa.com/topsites
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23
Video game localization
Translating interactive entertainment
Xiaochun Zhang
Introduction
Video games are ubiquitous in digital life today, not only as a mainstream form of global
entertainment but also a medium of significant influence over culture, politics, education,
healthcare, and many other aspects of contemporary society. Activists organize in-game
protests against various social issues and political agendas.1 Teachers use educational
games to achieve their pedagogical goals. People play video games for all intents and
purposes, to have fun, to socialize, to learn, to destress, and to exercise. Video games
are celebrated for providing immersive play experience in vast and profoundly interactive
virtual worlds which engage players both somatically and mentally. Video games offer
gaming experience across a wide variety of genres, such as action and adventure; driving
and racing; first-person shooter; platform and puzzle; role-playing games; strategy and
simulation, sports and beat-’em-ups (Berens & Howard 2002: 25–26), as well as new genres
introduced in recent years, such as serious games, social games and first-person walker.2
They are being played on an assortment of platforms and devices from traditional gadgets
like arcade, PC, and console, to handheld devices, such as personal digital assistant (PDA)
s and mobile phones, that enable gaming anytime, anywhere, as well as increasingly access-
ible virtual reality (VR) gears.
The recent establishment of a technology-driven game domain and the broad variety
of game genres, experiences and platforms led to some unstable usage of terms when refer-
ring to this new dynamic medium (Newman 2004/2013: 8). Several terms have been used
in current literature, including videogame, video game, computer game, electronic game,
digital game, to name but a few. In addition, terms such as entertainment software, inter-
active entertainment, or interactive software can be detected in the names of several asso-
ciations that represent the industry, such as Entertainment Software Association (ESA)
in the US; the Association for UK Interactive Entertainment (UKie); and the Interactive
Software Federation of Europe (ISFE). There is no consensus so far among consumers,
producers and scholars as to which term should be preferred. Nevertheless, the fact that
scholars continue to debate the definition and demarcation of the object of study in the
field of game studies is not a ‘failing of the discipline’ but ‘a practical reality’ of the
DOI: 10.4324/9781003221678-27 369

Xiaochun Zhang
investigation into this inherently fluid and fast-moving medium (Newman 2004/2013: 8).
Foregrounding the complex, yet dynamic situation and for pragmatic reasons, this chapter
adopts the term ‘video game’. It is a widely accepted term, used both in the game local-
ization industry and in academia, although the term multimedia interactive entertain-
ment software (MIES) proposed by Bernal-Merino (2014) is probably more accurate in
capturing the main features of the medium. From the perspective of translation studies,
Mangiron (2013: 42) defines video games as
entertainment software applications containing text, images and sound that can be
played in an electronic platform, such as a PC, a console or a mobile phone. They
are, therefore, interactive multimedia and multimodal products with a strong audio-
visual component, based on complex systems of rules, and designed with the primary
function of entertaining, albeit not exclusively limited to that function.
While this definition is sound and thoughtful, it is necessary to note that not all video
games contain text, images and sound at the same time. Some games, such as Ethereal
(Nonsense Arts 2019), do not contain text, and audio games, such as Paladin of the Sky
(VGStorm 2013), do not have images.
Over the past few decades, video games have rapidly evolved into a significant economic
phenomenon with multi-billion revenue incomes in US dollars and multi-billion players
worldwide. While the game localization sector comprises only about 1% of the game
industry,3 it has been playing an essential role in the economic and cultural globalization
of video games. Under the background of the GILT (Globalization, Internationalization,
Localization and Translation) industry, localization is ‘the processes by which digital con-
tent and products developed in one locale (defined in terms of geographical area, language
and culture) are adapted for sale and use in another locale’ (Dunne 2006: 4). A localization
project usually involves linguistic issues, content and cultural issues, and technical issues
(Mazur 2007: 347). Importantly, localization involves not only the translation of textual
content into the target language but also adaptation of non-textual content, to meet the
cultural, technical and legal requirements of the local market. There is an ongoing debate
regarding the term ‘game localization’ and ‘game translation’ in the scholarly discussions
in translation studies (e.g. Bernal-Merino 2006, 2014; O’Hagan & Mangiron 2013; Ranford
2017). For clarity, this chapter opts for the term ‘game translation’ for translation between
languages, i.e. translation in a narrow sense, while ‘game localization’ refers to the whole
industrial process, which includes both linguistic and non-linguistic tasks.
As an emerging field of research, video game localization has been drawing increasing
scholarly attention. This chapter provides a snapshot of the current landscape in game
localization research with a focus on the features of video games and its impact on
translation.
Understanding video games

Video games are unique as a new medium. Their distinctiveness derives predominantly
from their interactivity, ludonarrativity, and transmediality. Sound knowledge of the key
features of video games may help determine and increase understanding of the delicate
and informed handling required for game localization.
Interactivity in games refers to active participation, or what Aarseth (1997) calls non-
trivial interactivity, which provokes engagement both somatically and emotionally. Video
370
games function in a different way than other forms of entertainment, such as films, music
or television, because they require ‘both the active participation and immersion of their
audiences’ (Nichols 2011: 39). The subsequent sequences of play are determined by the
game players’ input, which affects which and how potential structures of the game are
depicted (Tavinor 2009). In other words, interactivity enables ‘the experience of receiving
immediate, direct feedback on one’s action and of influencing the game world’ (Klimmt,
Hartmann, & Frey 2007: 845). Similar to film and literature, there are text and dialogues
for the audience to read or listen to in video games. Book authors and film directors engage
their audience as spectators of stories. The audience can empathize with the protagonists
and witness their journeys in the stories, but they cannot influence the development of
the plot and the ending. Video games, however, enable the audience to become that char-
acter (Perterson et al. 2019: 6) and the way game players achieve a goal or accomplish a
mission is associated with their personalities and skills in handling various challenges in a
game. Players can choose a role and interact with other characters in video games, in role-
playing games in particular, and this enables them to create their own and unique stories.
In the interactive game world, each game player is, thus, both director and actor, spectator
and participant. To facilitate this feature, video games, in contrast to the predefined linear
storyline in films and books, tend to build non-linear and stochastic story universes with
several possible endings.
Ludonarrativity is another feature that is crucial to understand video games as a
medium and art form. Video games, in most cases, contain both story and gameplay.
Game designers and scholars have been seeking to understand the intersections between
narrative experiences and gameplay despite the disagreement between two different views
on what a game is. The narratologists consider video games as media text that tells stories,
whereas the ludologists believe video games are playable objects that cannot and should
not be analysed by narrative theory. From a translation studies’ perspective, each camp
highlights a specific feature of video games, whereas neither of them is sufficient to the-
orize video games comprehensively. The narratologists may neglect the performability
perspective of the game. There are diverse trajectories of gaming experience, and not all
playing experience can be built on a narrative experience, despite a broad range of story-
telling possibilities in games. Meanwhile, the ludologists may miss out the context of game
playing and the intertextuality between the game and other media versions (O’Hagan &
Mangiron 2013: 75). No consensus has been achieved yet on what a video game is in game
studies. However, it has been accepted by scholars and practitioners in the game field
that video games are ludonarrative and game writers and narrative designers have been
working innovatively to change the types of stories that games can tell and how stories
can be played in games. While not all game translators are involved in the process of game
development, it is necessary to acknowledge that video games can combine traditional
narrative devices, such as the sequence of events, with the dynamic meaning-making pos-
sibilities of an interactive medium.
The interactivity, narratives, and playability of video games are mostly communicated
to game players via languages, be it in the written or oral form. Video games usually con-
tain various types of texts that may need to be translated, which includes in-game text,
such as menus, help messages, tutorials and system messages, narrative and descriptive
passages, and dialogue; textual graphics, such as signs, maps and notices with texts in the
original design; audio and cinematic elements that contain audio and voiceover recordings,
for example, theme songs and the script; and printed materials, such as paper instruc-
tion manuals, packaging and marketing materials (Chandler & Deming 2012: 144–148).
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Narrative-oriented games tend to be text-heavier, which may contain more narrative and
descriptive passages, although there are text-less games that tell stories through images,
such as The Gardens Between (The Voxel Agents 2018). Play-focused games may have
less dialogue but a substantial amount of text explaining game rules, skills, and weapons.
Texts enabling storytelling may have a tendency to be literary and descriptive. Bringing the
story across languages and cultures may be the priority of localization, and the translators
may be given more freedom to recreate the story where necessary. Meanwhile, texts facili-
tating gameplay tend to be technical and explanatory, where accuracy in conveying game
rules to avoid any possibility of hindering the gameplay may be the most essential. In
most cases, all these elements are intrinsically interconnected. The knowledge of rules
and conventions of both narrative and gameplay can deepen the understanding of this
very media that game translators work with and help them shape the overall translation
and localization strategies. In addition, in video games, there are promotional texts to
encourage users to buy game products, as well as legal texts, such as EULA (end-user
license agreement) that advise players about their rights and restrictions that apply to the
use of game products. In the translation and localization of a game, game translators may
need to deal with text with various functions and apply appropriate translation strategies
accordingly.
Moreover, video games are transmedial. The last two decades have seen the rapid devel-
opment of transmedia storytelling, which represents ‘a process where integral elements of
a fiction get dispersed systematically across multiple delivery channels for the purpose of
creating a unified and coordinated entertainment experience’ (Jenkins 2007). Video games
are at the forefront of transmedia storytelling. Stories from books and films have been
adapted to games, making them interactive and more compelling. For example, there are
various Harry Potter-inspired games, from Lego Creator: Harry Potter (Lego Software
2011), a sandbox simulation game, to Harry Potter: Wizards Unite (Niantic 2019), an
augmented reality (AR) mobile game. This characteristic of video games makes them
transportable across various media and platforms, which leads to the formation of inter-
woven text (O’Hagan & Mangiron 2013: 71). This is likely to impact on the translation of
video games in the sense that the potentially greater leeway granted to games localization
is restricted, and the translators’ skills of working cross-media are challenged (O’Hagan
& Mangiron 2013: 73–74). The translators are expected to respect the authority of the
original. For example, names of characters must stay untranslated or correspond to
existing translations. The localization strategy needs to address the transmedia perspective
where storytelling is strategically planned on different media platforms, referencing one
another with different focuses. With careful planning, localization can be less restricted
and various translation approaches can be applied in different media forms in a comple-
mentary manner. For instance, films and video games are subject to technical restrictions,
such as time and space limitations. Certain linguistic and culture elements may have to be
compromised due to these constraints. However, the missing parts can be compensated for
in other platforms without technical challenges, such as books or websites.
Critical issues in current research

The literature on game localization was first written by game localization practitioners,
reflecting on their own practice (e.g. Dietz 1999; Trainor 2003). Translation scholars began
to devote attention to this emerging field of research around 2006 (e.g. Bernal-Merino 2006;
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Mangiron & O’Hagan 2006; Dietz 2006; Heimburg 2006); thus, 2006 is considered ‘year one’
in game localization research within translation studies (Mangiron 2017). Since then, the
past decade has witnessed the publication of two monographs in English4 (Bernal-Merino
2014; O’Hagan & Mangiron 2013), three edited volumes (Bernal-Merino 2011; Mangiron
et al. 2014; Zhang and Strong 2017), and a substantial amount of articles. Detailed and crit-
ical literature reviews are provided in both O’Hagan & Mangiron (2013) and Bernal-Merino
(2014). In addition, Mangiron (2017) provides a chronological and more descriptive review
of the current research landscape. This section discusses some of the critical issues in the
existing literature with a focus on translation strategies in game localization.
Early literature (e.g. Bernal-Merino 2007; Dietz 2006; Mangiron & O’Hagan 2006) in the
field focuses primarily on the features of game translation and localization, discussing the
linguistic, technical, and cultural challenges. Linguistically, translators face multi-textual
reality in various game genres, decontextualized fragmented texts, and grammatical issues
in translating strings containing variables. Technically, translators may need to handle
space limitations in the user interface (UI) and avoid concatenation or text-overflow. In
addition to technical challenges, game localization needs to deal with cultural complexity.
The increasing presence of audiovisual content and sophisticated multimedia storytelling
can raise complex cultural issues in the process of game development. Issues such as sexu-
ality, religion, ideology, and historical views, may differ significantly across cultures. As a
result, the localization of culturally complicated games may need to go through what Di
Marco calls cultural localization, which adapts visuals, sound and scripts across languages
and cultures in a way that the games can be ‘fully consistent with the assumptions,
values and other boundaries and outlooks of the second culture, and internally con-
sistent within the semiotic strategies of the original video game text, visuals and sound’
(2007: 2). Edwards (2011:20) introduced the concept of culturalization, which ‘takes a
deeper look into a game’s fundamental assumptions and content choices, and then gauges
the viability in both the broad, multicultural marketplace, as well as in specific geographic
locales’, something considered ‘a step further beyond localisation’ (ibid.). Additionally,
the publication and distribution of video games are subject to different age-rating systems
depending on the target markets. The categorization of age groups varies from country
to country, and regulations on what content is appropriate for each age group can be sig-
nificantly different. For example, the system from Entertainment Software Rating Board
(ESRB) applied in North America and the Pan European Game Information (PEGI)
used in Europe have different regulations. A game can receive different age-ratings under
different systems. Cultural adaptions may be needed to make sure the localized games fit
in the desired age-rating decided by the game publisher. Different translation strategies
may be needed to deal with sensitive cultural and socio-political issues in video games.
Cultural adaptation takes place on both macro and micro-level (O’Hagan & Mangiron
2013: 215): the macro-level modification may change the overall design of the game, such
as the game mechanics, graphics, character design, and the storyline; and adaptation at
micro-level involves textual changes made to the in-game text, the script and dialogues,
the text in graphics, and printed materials. Cultural adaptation can verge on censorship
by the publishers, for example, the strict self-regulatory process enforced by Nintendo
of America on NES games (O’Hagan & Mangiron 2013) and self-censorship by the
translators in game localization in China (Zhang 2012).
Game localization benefits considerably by research from the perspectives and expertise
of audiovisual translation, particularly in the field of subtitling, dubbing, and accessibility.
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Xiaochun Zhang
Video games, particularly role-playing and action and adventure games, increasingly include
audio and cinematic assets, containing scripts, songs, and audio tutorials and instructions.
The audiovisual elements in games are usually subtitled, dubbed or both. The subtitling
of video games has some traits in common with the subtitling of DVDs in the sense
that most dubbed games contain intralingual subtitles and users are able to control the
subtitles, for example, they can stop, restart, and in some cases skip the subtitles as they
wish, while playing the game. Nevertheless, the subtitling of video games is considerably
different from the conventions used for subtitling films and TV programmes. Mangiron &
O’Hagan (2006: 14) note that game subtitles often appear at a faster speed than in films
to keep pace with generally rapid game actions. In addition, the length of the subtitles in
games must rigorously stick to and are usually calculated by pixels rather than the number
of characters to maximize the available space. Mangiron (2013) conducted a descriptive
study and found out that subtitling guidelines and standards established for film and TV
are in general not applied in game subtitling. Games can include subtitles of more than
three lines and use small fonts. The segmentation of a subtitle in some games does not
pay appropriate attention to the semantic unit, and the established average reading speed is
often ignored. All of these can negatively affect players’ gaming experience. Based on these
findings, Mangiron (2016) examined six subtitling parameters including subtitle presenta-
tion, alignment, reading speed, the difference in reading speed of one-liners vs two liners,
character identification, and sound effects. The study involved 25 participants including 12
hearing users and 13 deaf users and provided exciting findings, such as hearing users’ pref-
erence for more creative subtitling formats, like the speech bubble and the decorated brown
text box. Deaf users, on the other hand, favoured the subtitles without a box. While by
default current game subtitles are left-aligned, all users preferred subtitles to be centred in
the screen. More empirical research is crucially needed to provide more data on the recep-
tion of game subtitles. Most importantly, there is an urgent need for subtitling guidelines
and standards in game subtitling in the industry.
Regarding dubbing, Japanese games are usually dubbed into English and have subtitles
in other European languages. Games which have English as the original language are
usually either dubbed or have subtitles in other languages, as observed by Mangiron &
O’Hagan (2006: 13). Subtitling seems to be the first choice for games developers due to
the time and high cost of dubbing and the fact that English has been used as the lingua
franca in the gaming community worldwide, despite the preference of game players from
countries that have a dubbing tradition. Little research has been dedicated to dubbing in
games except for Mejías-Climent (2017), who discusses how the taxonomy of dubbing
synchronizes based on the multimodal configuration of video games, providing a useful
approach for further studies.
Game accessibility refers to ‘the ability to play a game even when functioning under
limiting conditions. Limiting conditions can be functional limitations, or disabilities –
such as blindness, deafness, or mobility limitations’ (IGDA Game Accessibility SIG).
While video games have become worldwide entertainment, people with visual, auditory,
cognitive and physical disabilities have not always been able to enjoy the fun of playing
games. Mangiron (2012) addresses current issues in games accessibility and explores the
concept of design for all which strives to include rather than exclude gamers with disabil-
ities. Furthermore, Mangiron & Zhang (2016) focus on the situation for blind and visually
impaired players and explore the applicability of audio description to games as a method
to improve game accessibility.
374
Substantial scholarly attention has been dedicated to the discussion on translation

strategies in video game localization. Skopos theory is one of the central areas of debate.
Mangiron & O’Hagan (2006: 14–15) propose that the key priority of game localization
is to maintain the gameplay experience for the target game players, as if it was developed
in their languages in the first place, and to deliver amusement equivalent to that felt by
the game players of the original version. Christou, McKearney & Warden (2011) remark
that game localization should aim at ‘creating complete suspension of disbelief’, allowing
players to immerse themselves in the virtual world created by a game. The game, there-
fore, has to communicate with them on all levels. To achieve this, game publishers and
localizers need to make sure that no game elements are misinterpreted or lost in transla-
tion. If necessary, certain components in the game can be bowdlerized or adapted, such as
adding all major ethnicities for players’ avatars, or including local brands and celebrities
that fans can relate to, or even changing storylines and locations not to alienate consumers
in particular locales (Bernal-Merino 2011:17). Skopos theory has been widely applied to
other types of translations, although substantial departure from the original may still
be seen as unprofessional in some situations. In game localization, it is considered the
most suitable tool since it ‘emphasises the purpose of the target rendering’ (Šiaučiūnė &
Liubinienė 2011: 53).
Transcreation is a long- established tradition in many cultures, which has been
recognized by translation scholars and widely practised in different fields. In the context
of game localization, Mangiron & O’Hagan (2013) connect the concept to de Campos’s
conceptualization of transcreation (in Vieira 1999: 97), where the original is utilized to
‘nourish’ new work in the target language. They define transcreation as ‘deliberate trans-
formative approaches which are present in game localization, operating at multiple levels
and in multimodality to recreate the whole gameplay experience in a new target-user
setting’ (Mangrion & O’Hagan 2013: 199). Several scholars have examined the applica-
tion of transcreation in video game localization. For example, based on the case study of
Final Fantasy (Square Enix, 2001), Mangiron & O’Hagan (2006: 17–19) conclude that
the creativeness and the freedom of game translators are reflected mainly in four aspects,
namely re-naming of key terminology and character names, contextualization by add-
ition, re-creation of plays on words and deliberate use of regional expressions. Šiaučiūnė
& Liubinienė (2011) highlight evidence of transcreation in the English to Lithuanian local-
ization of the game Magical Encyclopedia (TSR 1992). Fernández-Costales (2012) points
out that transcreation can be identified more often in game genres that rely on narrative
techniques and well-developed plots, such as role-playing games, action and adventure
games. Based on case studies of games into and from Chinese, Zhang & O’Hagan (2019)
suggest that transcreation of elements is closely associated with the gameplay experience,
international marketing, as well as censorship in the context of China. In addition, the
creativity of game localization is discussed from the perspective of humour in games (e.g.
Lepre 2014; Iaia 2016).
Domestication and foreignization (Venuti 1995/2008) are the two classic and exten-
sively contested translation strategies in all types of translations. In the context of game
localization, Bernal-Merino (2006) believes that the translation of games ‘trends to tilt
towards the receiving culture’, due to ‘the need for the customisation of the product’.
Nevertheless, both strategies can be observed in the localization of games. Domesticating
strategies have been recognized by Mangiron & O’Hagan (2006) in their case study on Final
Fantasy X (Square Enix 2001) and Final Fantasy X-2 (Square Enix 2003). Domestication is
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Xiaochun Zhang
detected in the use of idiomatic and colloquial language; the adaptation of jokes, sayings
and cultural references; and the re-creation of new cultural references and plays on words
in the target text, which, they believe, provides a remarkable and original flavour to the
localized version. Buzz! (Sony Computer Entertainment Europe 2005), a quiz game, is
another example of domestication, where every single question is tailor-designed for the
target audience with significant adaptations to the original version (Crosignani & Ravetto
2011). Meanwhile, Fernández Costales (2012: 6) examines the game Assassins’ Creed
(Ubisoft 2007) and considers its localization a typical example of foreignization since ‘the
original atmosphere and taste of Italian culture has been effectively preserved in the des-
tination locales’. Italian words or expressions used by certain characters are preserved in
the English and Spanish versions. The same strategy is also evident in Grand Theft Auto IV
(Rockstar Games 2008), where the accents of Nico Ballic, a game character from Eastern
Europe, and his relatives are preserved to indicate his ethnic origin and nationality (ibid.).
Under the Skopos of achieving commercial gain, either foreignization or domestication
can be adopted to cater for the taste and desire of potential target game player groups, be
it exotic experience or home feel amusement.
Research trends and future directions

Game localization research will benefit from an expansion of research scope and methods.
Product-based textual analysis has contributed significantly to the current literature, with
several case studies covering issues such as cultural adaptation, censorship, creativity and
the translation of humour. While the domain would benefit from further studies based
on this method, future research may need to go beyond the game itself and in-game texts.
Video game texts involve a complex combination of interactions between the player, the
game rules, the story world and the technology (Paterson et al. 2019). Everything that may
constitute ‘that cloud of extra media objects swirling around the game’ shall be studied
as game texts (Jones 2008: 71), which may include pre-release marketing materials, pro-
duction and design notes, online chat between fans, trailers, reviews, spin-off books,
player-created game modifications, and websites (official and unofficial). All these infor-
mation and materials may serve as paratextual elements depending on when and where
the readers, viewers, audience, or players encounter them. Game localization goes beyond
the game itself to the external world, which includes the wider gaming community, such
as blogs, vlogs, online forums, and other cross-media content.
Video game live streaming, an activity where game players record the process of them
playing games to a live audience online, is an unexplored area that may open a new per-
spective for game localization research. Video game live streaming has developed from a
niche market into a mainstream activity within a few years. Today, major game streaming
services, such as Twitch, host millions of active users daily. Video games are inherently an
interactive medium. Yet, the past few years have witnessed a growing community who spec-
tate gamers playing video games, which is poised to alter the current understanding of this
medium and its audiences. While the phenomenon starts to draw attention from scholars
in game and media studies (e.g. Taylor 2018), little research has been done from the per-
spective of translation. There is a dearth of understanding of its potential impact on game
localization practice and research. Several questions await answers: do game streamers
have any influence on game localization, particularly on game terminology and gamers’
talk? How accessible is game live streaming? (i.e. are live streams subtitled, dubbed, audio
376
described, and how?) What are the interconnections between game streamers, developers,
publishers, and localization service providers? Video game live streaming may also provide
useful and plentiful materials for researchers to study gameplay, reception of games and
localized games, the interaction between the game streamer and the audience. Researchers
in the field of game localization have been having difficulty in obtaining materials, as
pointed out by Bernal-Merino (2008, 2014) and O’Hagan & Mangiron (2013), primarily
due to confidentiality issues and non-disclosure agreements. The source of materials of
the existing studies primarily comes from fan sites, blogs, wikisand walkthroughs. Game
live streaming can be another open source of research material with easy access and
provide a new ground to experiment with less employed research methodology, such as
netography, in future studies.
Risk management is an approach used in business and economics, which identifies,
evaluatesand prioritizes risks to minimize the impact of negative events and maximize
the realization of opportunities (Hubbard 2020). The approach has only recently been
used in translation studies. Ardelean (2013) claims that risk management can optimize
the translation process. Pym (2015) argues that translating can itself be studied as a form
of risk management. Pym identifies three levels of risks that can be applied to transla-
tion: (1) credibility risk, which concerns the trust between translators, clients and end-
users and their shared beliefs about translation; (2) uncertainty risk, which refers to the
translator’s uncertainty when making decisions on how to transfer meaning between
languages; and (3) communicative risk, which ensues from the way texts are interpreted
and used in different settings. For example, Matsushita (2016) draws on Pym’s framework
to show how news translators shift risk when translating sensitive content. Risk manage-
ment has not yet been applied in game localization, particularly not from the translator’s
perspective, though it is applied in game development. Several research questions are yet
to be asked, such as what are the risks in game localization? and how are they mitigated
by game translators, project managers and game publishers?
Another key area that deserves attention in future research is the impact of the appli-
cation of new technologies on game development and game localization processes.
Biofeedback and virtual copresence promise new directions in game development, and
their influence on game localization is an entirely unexplored area. Augmented reality
(AR) and virtual reality (VR) are expected to affect terminology and subtitling practices
(Mangiron 2017). Meanwhile, the translation industry is witnessing the integration of
human and machine translation. Machine translation with human post-editing is viewed
as an efficient tool to deliver translation of similar quality to that produced by human
translators with significantly lower time and cost (Green et al. 2013). The place of machine
translation in the gaming industry has emerged at the forefront of discussion amongst
experts and practitioners in the industry. For example, it was one of the topics of a panel
discussion in the Game Developers Conference in 2014. However, the performance of
machine translation in game localization has not yet been widely tested and evaluated.
Creativity is considered fundamental in game localization, particularly in handling
humour and marketing texts, where machine translation is commonly considered to be
lacking. Some attention has been paid to this topic (e.g. Arthur et al. 2010). However,
several questions remain unanswered: has machine translation been applied in the game
localization industry? If so, how and to what extent? How does machine translation per-
form in game localization? Does performance vary in different game genres? Is it more
efficient for the game translators to post-edit machine-translated text than translating
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Xiaochun Zhang
from scratch? What is the translators’ view on using machine translation in game local-
ization? What do the players prefer? Human translation, machine translation with human
post-editing, or machine translation without human intervention?
Game localization research will benefit from more empirically based reception
studies. Game players have been at the centre of the current scholarly debates; trans-
lation and localization strategies are evaluated or justified based on their enjoyment.
However, several claims are made from the speculations of the researcher or based on
the reflections of the translator. Game players have not been involved in the research as
much as they deserve to be. End-users of media products have been empowered by the
advancement of technology. Video game players and fans can influence the creation,
translation, and distribution of media products by expressing their options on social
media, modifying games and translating or re-translating games. The perception and
reception of localized games among game players have not been fully addressed, apart
from a small number of studies, covering the issues of player experience (O’Hagan
2009, 2016), localization quality (Mangiron 2014), players’ opinions on localized
games (Geurts 2015; Fenadez-Constales 2016; Ellefsen 2016), and subtitles in games
(Mangrion 2016). A full critical overview can be found in Mangiron (2018). Player
agency in game localization is an area that can bring new insights into the current
understanding of the industrial practice.
Last but not least, game localization training deserves more attention among educators
in translation studies. The role of the game translator is multifaceted, and game translators
are expected to have multiple skills and competences, including knowledge of general soft-
ware terminology and specific games platform terminology, specific features of screen
translation, natural and idiomatic language, games culture and global pop culture. They
are also expected to have cultural awareness and creativity (Mangiron 2007: 311–316).
Game localization training was first offered in the industry as professional development
courses for new and established translators. The training is currently available online in
the form of MOOC5 and Webinar.6 The tutors are often practising professionals who can
offer hands-on experiences. However, as Bernal-Merino (2014) points out, this type of
educational sector is not well-regulated. The certificates are issued based on ‘attendance’
rather than ‘proficiency’. In higher education institutions, game localization has not yet
been widely included in the curriculum of translation programmes. Game localization
components are currently offered either as part of a module, such as audiovisual trans-
lation and software localization,7 or as a module devoted entirely to game localization.8
The curriculum design, including expected learning outcomes, teaching contents, and
assessments are presented and discussed by Bernal-Merino (2008, 2014), Granell (2011),
and O’Hagan & Mangiron (2013). Regarding teaching methods, Esqueda & Stupiello
(2018) report their experience of using open-source games and CAT tools available over
the internet to provide students with authentic learning materials in Brazil, which solve
the difficulties of universities not being able to use authentic games for teaching purposes
due to secrecy and copyright issues. Outside of the field of translation studies, translation
issues have not been paid much attention in disciplines such as game studies or com-
puter science, except studies by Selja & Katalinic (2017) which analyse the process of inte-
grating localization in video games from the engineering perspective, focusing on issues
pertaining to tools and resources, processes, project management and quality assessment.
It can be seen that pedagogical issues have not received much scholarly attention and the
existing literature is primarily based on the situation and education conventions of a few
378
institutions in Europe. Game localization pedagogy will benefit from more comprehen-
sive discussions among educators. It is essential to continuously update the curriculum
design and reflect on teaching methods to keep pace with the rapidly evolving industry
and ensure adequate training for future professionals and researchers in the field.
Conclusions
For many, playing games is not only a pattern of everyday life but is also part of the
marking of technologized futures. In addition to play for fun, people engage in all types
of activities facilitated by video games, obtaining new professional skills from simula-
tion games, improving health by exergaming (playing fitness games), and performing
and appreciating art in arthouse games. With the advancement of technology, video
games open doors to endless possibilities in the future digital life. This chapter discusses
the unique features of video games as a new medium through the lens of its inter-
active, ludonarrative, and transmedial natures. In addition, it demonstrates the way
game localization has developed conceptions of translation, expanding the parameters
of translation and creativity. Game localization celebrates and challenges the role of
translators as cultural mediators and co-creators of stories and gaming experiences,
encouraging boldness and ambition. While there is growing interest in this field, there
are several unexplored areas requiring further scholarly attention. Undoubtedly, future
investigation on video game localization will deepen the understanding of this fast-
evolving medium and expand the landscape of translation studies and other related
disciplines.
Further reading
• O’Hagan, M. & Mangiron, C. (2013) Game Localization: Translation for the Global
Digital Entertainment Industry. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
A comprehensive and well-structured monograph on the subject covering both theoretical

discussions and industrial practice. A must-read for students, academics and professionals
interested in the topic.
• Mangiron, C., Orero, P. & O’Hagan, M. (eds) (2014) Fun for All. Translation and
Accessibility Practices in Video Games. Bern: Peter Lang.
A collective volume that includes scholarly discussions on game accessibility and different
issues affecting game localization, such as culturalization, fan translationand terminology
management.
• Zhang, X. & Strong, S. (eds) (2017) Special Issue on ‘Game localization’, The Journal of
Internationalization and Localization, Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
A special issue covering topics such as research trends, literature adaptation, minority
languages, censorship, fan community, and the market expectation in game localization.
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Xiaochun Zhang
Notes
1 For example, Sims Players Hold Virtual Black Lives Matter Rally in June 2020, for more informa-
tion, please see www.kotaku.com.au/2020/06/sims-players-hold-virtual-black-lives-matter-rally/
2 The First-Person Walker genre refers to games that have minimal player interactions, a deliberate
slow pacing of the game play, and ambiguous goals (Muscat et al. 2016).
3 According to the Slator 2019 Gaming Localization Report, available at https://hub.memoq.com/
games-localization-report-2019-slator-memoq
4 There are also three monographs in Spanish (Granell, Mangiron & Vidal 2016; Méndez & Calvo-
Ferrer 2018; Muñoz-Sánchez 2017).
5 For example, on Udemy, available at www.udemy.com/course-introduction-to-game-localization/
6 For example, on Proz.com, available at www.proz.com/translator-training/course/5207-video-
games-localization-101
7 For example, in the Software Localization module in the MA in Translation at Johannes
Gutenberg-Universität Mainz, Germany; and in the Multimedia Translation module in the MA
in Translation at University of New South Wales, Australia.
8 For example, in the MA in Chinese-English Audiovisual Translation at University of Bristol, UK,
the MA in Specialized Translation at University of Roehampton, UK; and MA in Audiovisual
Translation at Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, Spain.
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Ludography
Assassins’ Creed (Ubisoft 2007)
Buzz! (Sony Computer Entertainment Europe 2005)
Ethereal (Nonsense Arts 2019)
Final Fantasy (Square Enix 2001)
Final Fantasy X-2 (Square Enix 2003)
Grand Theft Auto IV (Rockstar Games 2008)
Harry Potter: Wizards Unite (Niantic 2019)
Lego Creator: Harry Potter (Lego Software 2011)
Magical Encyclopedia (TSR 1992)
Paladin of the Sky (VGStorm 2013)
The Gardens Between (The Voxel Agents 2018)
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24
Translation, accessibility
and minorities
Pilar Orero
Introduction
Most translation studies scholars will baulk at the idea of linguistic accessibility as a
synonym for translation, since the idea of people having linguistic disabilities may not
be welcomed with open arms. This in a way is the objective of the proposed change: to
spread the idea that nobody is perfect or normal. To date accessibility, and more specif-
ically media accessibility, is considered as a research area within the realm of audiovisual
translation. This chapter inverts the hierarchy, positioning translation studies and audio-
visual translation as areas of specialization within a wider field of media accessibility. It
looks at translation, audiovisual translation and media accessibility from a social diversity
approach, examining their normalizing function in the information society.
We start from the position of translation studies: revising the object of study and its
adequacy to the needs of communication in the information society. After describing the
change of roles between accessibility and translation, the focus moves to the forces pulling
towards equality. The context is the existing legal framework in human rights and lin-
guistic rights: the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights ICCPR (1996), the
Convention of Rights of Persons with Disability (CRPD), and the UNESCO Universal
Declaration of Linguistic Rights. From this background, accessibility, and linguistic
accessibility in particular, will be justified as one of the many approaches to breaking
communication barriers towards full social inclusion. The second part of the chapter will
discuss significant contributions in the field of audiovisual translation and media accessi-
bility. The third part will look at minorities and propose a new approach towards research
on media accessibility where people are no longer classified by their disabilities, but by
their capabilities, and finally, to conclude, some new avenues for research will be discussed.
The place of translation studies

Translation studies, as an autonomous field of research, is a new discipline with ‘an
evolving identity’ (Munday 2010: 426). Translation studies developed in the written
format, with canonic texts as the object of study such as the Bible or the many established
384 DOI: 10.4324/9781003221678-28

Translation, accessibility and minorities
literatures for each language. At the time of the publication of The Name and Nature of
Translation Studies by Holmes (1972), or even earlier in Jakobson (1959), other communi-
cation formats already existed, other languages such as music had been translated (Spaeth
1915). Films, even silent movies, needed translation (Danan 1991), operas were translated
(Matamala & Orero 2008), sign languages existed, and semiotics were already a field of
research, as pointed out by Stecconi (2004: 17): ‘Pierce’s theory of signs was right there
when contemporary Translation Studies was born’. The ‘semiotics of translation mystery’
identified by him (2004: 16) continues to this day, and not many scholars have risked the
‘exotic journey’ of establishing the link between ‘translation and interpretative semiotics’
(ibid.).
The focus on the written text and linguistics, and the disregard for other languages and
formats, are the reason why translation studies is proposed in this chapter as a modality
within a wider category: accessibility. Other scholars such as Munday (2001) or Cronin
(2003, 2009) have pointed out at the unbalanced or neglected attention from translation
studies to other fields. Some basic translation themes such as ‘equivalence, fidelity, infidelity,
domestication, foreignization, control, invisibility, identity, untranslatability, positionality’
(Cronin 2009: xi) have not been defined beyond paper formats. There has been not enough
encouragement to look for original approaches and broad re-definition of traditional cat-
egories, and not many translation theorists have examined other media, new technologies,
and the internet as the new canvas to develop the field further. This has been a constant
criticism in audiovisual translation, as mentioned by Remael (2010: 16): ‘some scholars
deplore the lack of encompassing theory of audiovisual translation, yet one cannot help
wondering if such a theory would even be useful’. In the 21st century other elements
beyond words on paper are those of the activity defined by Eco as ‘saying almost the same
thing’ (2003: 9) or, as Jakobson (1959) called it, translation proper.
The increasing number of variables directly affecting translation, its study and ana-
lysis, clash with research trends and ‘university policies, but also on politico-economic
developments that determine the translation market’ (Remael 2010: 15). New research
methodologies and increasing interdisciplinarity challenge the efforts of those
‘essentialists’ (Munday 2010: 426) who insist in closed taxonomies and definitions, what
Remael (2010: 15) already identified as against ‘expanding the concept of translation to
encompass diversification’. The increasing tension between ‘essentialists’, orthodox trans-
lation academics and other translation formats is a reality: in journal rejections, PhD
research approaches, or research methodology. To curb the inevitable fragmentation van
Doorslaer (2007: 220) proposed ‘an open and descriptive map’ towards a flexible and
dynamic research framework. Over ten years later, the reality is a growing number of areas
of independent research such as localization or accessibility, away from the umbrella of
translation studies. And yet, the need of belonging to a discipline is required for academic
formalities. A friendly academic field is needed to link research in new and hybrid modal-
ities (Matamala & Orero 2013) and new formats such as virtual environments (Agulló
et al. 2018). The commonality in the proposed ‘friendly translation studies’ is the theor-
etical starting point from Jakobson’s third form of translation as a process: intersemiotic
translation or transmutation (1959: 233). Turning to semiotics to save the day seems like
closing the circle, whilst also securing the survival of translation studies, since ‘it helps us
break free of precisely metaphorical bounds. Translating does not involve transferring
words, meaning or what have you like a parcel in the mail. When one translates nothing
is transferred, nothing moves. Like all signs, translations happen’ (Stecconi 2004: 21). In
Stecconi’s terms much ‘exotic travelling’ is needed if translation studies is to survive the
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pull from technology and the developing of formats where 21st century communication
develops.
Empowering accessibility
This chapter follows the concept of ‘minority’ proposed by (Cronin 1995: 86), for whom
‘ “Minority” is an expression of a relationship not an essence’ (ibid.). Minority is a quan-
tifiable concept in relation to a whole, the hegemonic majority. Minority in translation has
been analysed according to the object of study. Toury (1985), Branchadell & West (2005)
looked at minority languages, while Burnett (2003) at minority literatures in translation,
and Álvarez & Vidal (1996), Castro et al. (2017) focused on minority cultures and iden-
tities in translation. In the broader picture translation is only one of the many accessibility
services deployed towards breaking the language barrier, thus allowing communication.
This is the reason why this chapter proposes rebranding translation as linguistic accessi-
bility. In the past translation studies was proposed as the field encompassing audiovisual
translation, which in turn held media accessibility. Now the hegemony of translation
studies is questioned and is demoted to one of the many accessibility services: linguistic
accessibility. The term joins the list of many accessibility modalities: physical accessibility,
cognitive accessibility, media accessibility, etc. Accessibility, according to Tyler (2011: 12),
is ‘a core issue which relates directly to the quality of life: if a person cannot reach and
use a facility then they cannot take advantage of the benefits that the facility is seeking
to provide’. It is interesting how in the 21st century we move the focus of study from
the written text to the human who needs to interact with their environment. The first
instances of accessibility research come from the field of architecture and engineering
and are associated with universal design. The earliest representative of universal design
is the architect Ronald Mace, who stated that it is ‘an approach to creating environments
and products that are usable by all people to the greatest extent possible’ (Mace, Hardie
& Plaice 1991: 156). The field of accessibility and universal design was associated with
people with disabilities and spread subsequently to other academic areas including educa-
tion (Eagleton 2008), recreation (Russell, Hoffmann & Higgins 2009), and media (Greco
2016, 2018; Szarkowska 2013; Matamala 2019; Tor Corraggio & Orero 2019).
How translation enters the field of accessibility, as linguistic accessibility, is interesting
since it not only reverses the dependency of media accessibility on audiovisual translation
onto translation studies. Media accessibility lacks theoretical background, though it has
tried to loosely attach itself to translation studies via Jakobson (1959). Media accessibility
has focused on the process, understanding both the creation and reception of messages.
The human translator and the audience are for media accessibility the two forces that need
to be mutually aligned towards fulfilling for example the concept of ‘fidelity’. The move
from the written text to the infinite possibilities of the audiovisual text, from cross media
to immersive environments, leads to challenging two basic translation concepts: the source
and target texts, since many languages coexist in a single media text. In the 21st century,
not only the human becomes the centre of studies, the visual image is more popular than
the written text, and language communication is one of the many elements in the commu-
nication environment.
Leaving aside the explosion in terms of quantity of audiovisual media vs written
media, the power of the audiovisual and the digital formats and their many interactions is
what leads the information society. Concepts such as digital divide or digital literacy are
no longer neologisms, and access to the digital society is now considered a human right.
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How to establish alternative communication channels to both interacting with the digital
content and the content itself is the object of study in media accessibility. And again
‘meaning’, another classic theme in translation studies, is of relative value, as it is ‘quality’.
In audiovisual translation each channel –audio, visual and audiovisual –has its meaning,
and not all are translated. A good example is dubbing, when the voice of the actors cannot
itself be translated, only the dialogue is first translated and then modulated to match the
utterance duration, the accompanying visuals, the sound or the music, and the actors’ lips.
Already here we could suggest that translation studies, and its focus on the written word,
could be a field of audiovisual translation. In terms of semiotic channels audiovisual
translation considers writing, but not as its only and predominant theme.
In the past, audiovisual translation was questioned as a form of translation (Remael
2010). The technology that allowed for the audiovisual content to be generated and
consumed has since developed beyond recognition. Audiovisual translation is still deeply
anchored in descriptive research of lineal media consumption and produced media con-
tent such as movies or TV series. New technology developments related to consuming
media content, distribution media platforms and media content itself challenge again the
field of audiovisual translation. This time it is not the ‘essentialist’ translation scholars
who question its value as a product or study. The flaw seems to lie in the exuberance and
dynamism of the new audiovisual digital text, along the conditions and platforms of con-
sumption leading to a new field of research: media accessibility. The move is from the
‘dynamic umbrella’ of audiovisual media (Orero 2004) to the melting pot of digital media
and its study: media accessibility. Once this shift has been accepted, by volume of pro-
duction, studies, and methodologies, translation becomes the most popular accessibility
modality, claiming the pole position to subtitling. The jewel of audiovisual translation, in
media accessibility subtitling has to concede its hegemony to translation.
Accessibility
The quest for fairness and justice is perhaps the most enduring objective for the United
Nations (UN), proposed in 1942 during the Second World War and coming into existence
in 1945. UN policies are developed aiming at curbing existing inequalities in any area, from
health to education. A good example is the Convention on the Protection and Promotion
of the Diversity of Cultural Expressions (UNESCO 2005) focusing on minority culture,
or the Declaration on the Rights of Persons Belonging to National or Ethnic, Religious
and Linguistic Minorities (UN 1992) on minorities defined by sex, religion or language.
These and many other UN conventions demand political action by the 193 states who par-
ticipate in the UN –almost all states in the world. The UN approach is to work towards
diversity and protect against exclusion. Diversity and inclusion for all was fully developed
in the Act on the Protection and Promotion of Cultural Diversity (UNESCO 2005), and
further expanded in the Convention of Rights of Persons with Disabilities (UN 2006).
The European Council as signatory of these conventions has transposed the mandates
into European legislation which are:
(1) Directive on the Accessibility of Websites and Mobile Applications. This directive
requests from all EU member states to meet common accessibility standards in
public bodies’ websites and mobile apps. It is based on the Web Content Accessibility
Guidelines (WCAG) 2.0 four steps: ‘Perceivable, Operable, Understandable, and
Robust’, and references EN 301 549 as the standard which will enable websites and
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apps to comply with the law. This directive was transposed into the laws of each EU
member state by 23 September 2018.
(2) The Audiovisual Media Services Directive (AVMSD), which governs EU-wide coord-
ination of national legislation on all audiovisual media, providing rules to shape
technological developments, creating a level playing field for emerging audiovisual
media, preserving cultural diversity, protecting children and consumers, safeguarding
media pluralism, combating racial and religious hatred, and guaranteeing the inde-
pendence of national media regulators. The directive was approved in 2018 and
member states have 21 months to transpose it into national legislation.
(3) The European Accessibility Act, passed in 2019, is a law that aims at making many
products and services in the EU more accessible for persons with disabilities. Some
examples include: smartphones, tablets and computers, televisions and TV programmes,
E-books, online shopping websites and mobile applications. It takes the form of a dir-
ective, which is legally binding, meaning that the EU Member States have an obliga-
tion to apply what the act mentions. In order to comply with the new legislation, public
and private sector organizations will need to monitor the accessibility of their websites,
mobile apps and media content, make information from the monitoring available in
an accessibility statement and report to a central authority identified for each country.
These three pieces of EU legislation demand accessibility services in all cultural venues
and events, not only for their websites, ticketing services and spaces, but also for their
offered contents and information. The media policy reform across the world triggered
by the UN CRPD is acknowledging the vulnerability of people with disabilities (Flora
2003) and as a collateral effect the right to access to culture (Cemaforre 2011) and
minority languages (Downey 2007; Kruger et al. 2007; Olivier 2011).
The objects of study in media accessibility are the identification of the barriers and
solutions to ‘achieve a specified goal in a specified context of use’ (ISO 20282). Accessibility
is always studied within the Design for All approach, also defined by CEN1 as the ‘design
for human diversity, inclusion and equality. Its aim is to enable maximum use of products,
goods and services’. Accessibility in general aims at optimum human interaction, and
media accessibility in particular focuses on allowing communication. It may be safe to say
that media accessibility, as a research discipline, was born in the 21st century, though com-
munication and language accessibility (translation and interpretation) are documented
from the moment Eve was in the Garden of Eden and was offered an apple (Pujol &
Orero 2007). Media accessibility has also been established in its own right in standardiza-
tion agencies such as the United Nations agency for communication ITU (International
Telecommunication Union). In 2013,2 the Audiovisual Media Accessibility Focus Group
was established to ‘address the need to make audiovisual media accessible for persons
with disabilities’. The international standardization organization (ISO) also has a working
group on accessibility, and at European level CEN has also its media accessibility group
(Matamala & Orero 2018).
Media accessibility and services

Accessibility is well understood and popular in the physical world, when for example stairs
are seen universally as a barrier for access and a ramp is the solution. Physical or archi-
tectural accessibility has become a requirement in any public building construction, which
incidentally stands in stark contrast to the lack of training on accessibility for architects
388
in most university degrees. In the digital realm accessibility is not so evident. Some access
services such as sign language interpretation or subtitles are evident, either in live inter-
pretation or on the screen. Web pages have some icons such as the size of letters AA or a
magnifying glass INLINE to help augmenting the size of the text. Other services are never
displayed since they are sound based; audio description and audio subtitling, or clean
audio are three good examples. Media accessibility offers alternative communication to
media content, and the most common modality –as proposed in the previous section –is
linguistic accessibility, where translation, Easy to Read or Plain Language are some of the
most popular services. What is currently the case for accessibility services is their dynamic
definition and hybrid nature where two or more services are offered together, for examples
audio subtitles, or easy-to-read audio description (Bernabé & Orero 2019).
As early as 2013 Szarkowska et al. (2013: 151) identified media accessibility as
various tools providing access to audiovisual media content for people with sensorial
disabilities: in the form of subtitles for those who are deaf or hard of hearing and in
the form of audio description (AD) for those who are blind or partially sighted.
Greco (2016: 15) adds more services and hints at a wider audience: ‘Unfortunately
MA [Media Accessbility] theories and practices –for example subtitling, surtitling, audio
description –are assumed to be domain expertise and tools exclusively for persons with
disabilities’. Technology is these days at the core of both raising accessibility barriers
and finding solutions. This oxymoron has its origins in the lack of applying accessi-
bility principles at designing stages for both products and services, as encouraged by the
standard EN301 549 and W3C WCAG. New technology development allows for both
personalization or customization of services and towards the concept of a common user
profile (Kaklanis et al. 2016), against a one-size-fits-all approach. Today it is possible to
turn subtitles into audio subtitles, or into easy to read subtitles, which read aloud are easy
to read audio subtitles (Bernabé et al. 2020).
Defining the different media services is a daunting task. A good example is subtitles,
considered as the main or most popular accessibility service until translation became lin-
guistic accessibility. Subtitling was defined in 2010 by Díaz-Cintas (2010: 344) as ‘rendering
in writing the translation into TL [Target Language] of the original dialogue exchanges by
different speakers, as well as of any other verbal information that is transmitted visually
(letters, banners, inserts) or aurally (lyrics, voices off).’ Ten years later, this canonical sub-
title definition is dated. It clashes with almost 100%of subtitles automatically generated
by social media platforms as YouTube, where subtitles are in fact more or less faithful
transcriptions of spoken dialogue.
These days media access terminology is dynamic, and rapidly fast, following tech-
nology development. While it may be impossible to define each access service, it is possible
to suggest a very generic classification as follows:
Visual accessibility –Services to challenge visual barriers are: audio description, audio
subtitling, voice over, text-to speech based services, and the new voice-command
devices, which work on deep learning techniques and artificial intelligence.
Audio accessibility –Services to challenge audio barriers are: subtitling, subtitling for
the deaf and hard of hearing, transcriptions, Easy to Read, Clean audio, or Object
based Audio.
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Interactive accessibility –Services required to allow for human interaction with the
media content, for example web accessibility, the media player, or the different voice
commands on a smartphone.
Linguistic accessibility –Services to challenge linguistic barriers: translation and inter-
pretation, including sign language services, but subtitling or audio description could
also join this group, when the service is that of translating existing subtitles or audio
description in text format. As already mentioned, the possibility to mix accessibility
services is a reality nowadays.
Accessibility services presentation modes

In the previous section, a very rough classification of accessibility services was suggested.
Still more variables may impact a service, such as presentation modes. Media are
consumed from a platform and in a device, both have direct impact on the service, which
varies according to the browser or device from where they are consumed (Rodríguez-
Alsina et al. 2012). This is a surprising fact that is seldom noticed, for example in sub-
titling research. The presentation mode for subtitles is different for each of a smartphone,
a tablet, a PC or a TV screen. Even more surprising is that subtitles on TV are presented
according to the TV brand. Samsung subtitles are not the same as LG subtitles, nor within
the same brand according to the model. This example goes to show the technological
impact on the accessibility service, its reception and research. It also shows the possi-
bility to modify the service and activate personalization functions (Mas & Orero 2018).
The reproduction speed for media content may vary allowing for a faster/slower rate,
and the audio mix can be customized according to the end user needs. Colour contrast
and combination can also be altered to allow for people with different sight preferences
or conditions. This new personalized panorama challenges classical guidelines and
definitions. Still, students at university are taught to produce media services, including
translation, away from technology. The production of these services is also changing
fast, from fully automated, as already mentioned for YouTube or Facebook subtitles, to
manual subtitling, from personal production to crowdsourcing, from working in house
to remote working conditions. Technology and globalization are changing media acces-
sibility, as any other industrial sector. The commonality across all accessibility services is
to define where quality stands (Bosch-Baliarda et al. forthcoming; Burchardt & Lommel
2014; Fryer 2019; House 1981; O’Brian 2012; Pedersen 2019; Redón 2014; Romero-
Fresco 2012; Van der Graaf & Van der Ham 2003) and the proliferation of standards at
international and national agencies are not producing clear benchmarking (Matamala &
Orero 2018).
Minorities: disability and impairment

One of the fundamental elements of media accessibility is its intended audience: the end
users. Media accessibility studies have always been targeted at people identified as vul-
nerable groups, and specifically to persons with disabilities: a minority group. The link
between accessibility and disability has its origins in both the UN CRPD (Convention of
Rights of Persons with Disability) and to the definitions and classifications gathered in
WHODAS3 from the UN agency World Health Organization. This is what is considered
the medical model, based on physiology as the root of the impairment. This medical
model presents a challenge when defining accessibility services, since for example audio
390
description will never rehabilitate people with loss of their condition. A blind person
watching TV with audio description, or a deaf person going to a play with sign language
interpreting will never improve their sight or hearing. Other disability models such as
the social (Orero & Tor-Carroggio 2018) or the human rights (Greco 2016) have been
analysed recently related to media accessibility, interrogating this fact.
The medical model is still dominating the demographics of research (Orero et al.
2018). It approaches disability following its linguistic composition, with the prefix ‘dis’
changing the meaning of the word ‘ability’. The lack or limitation of the functioning of
a person was classified by its condition, and more interestingly the medical model sees
impairments as a personal condition with a possible rehabilitation. The social model
moves the focus from health to society which ‘sees disability, by contrast with impair-
ment, as something imposed on disabled people by oppressive and discriminating social
and institutional structures’ (Terzi 2005: 201). Disability is not the result of having
a physical impairment, but the failure of society to consider individual differences
(Bøttcher & Dammeyer 2016). Disability is not an attribute of the individual, but an
environmental social creation (Mitra 2006). The social model, as with any model of
such a complex issue, also falls short and, according to Shakespeare (2010: 271), ‘the
simplicity which is the hallmark of the social model is also its fatal flaw’, since it misses
disability as a core feature of many disabled people’s lives and works within the con-
cept of the barrier-free utopia. Terzi (2005) considers there is an aspect of the over-
socialization of sources and causes of disability and the model overlooks the complex
dimensions of impairments.
Other models exist such as the Nagi Model (Nagi 1991), with a dynamic approach
based on the difference between four different but interrelated concepts: active pathology,
impairment, functional limitation, and disability. The difference between impairment and
disability is defined here. Disability is an ‘inability or limitation in performing socially
defined roles and tasks expected of an individual within a sociocultural and physical envir-
onment’ (Nagi 1991: 315). These roles and tasks are organized in spheres of life activities,
such as work, education, family, etc. For instance, say a ten-year-old girl with a severe
hearing impairment does not attend school but stays at the farm where she lives with
her parents helping with farming chores. If she lives in a society where young girls are
not expected to go to school, then she cannot be seen as ‘disabled’ under this model. In
opposition to that, if she lives in a place where girls her age go to school, then she does not
perform her socially expected role and, therefore, she is disabled.
The biopsychosocial model is a yet another model created as a response to the
over-
medicalization of the International Classification of Impairments, Disabilities
and Handicaps (ICIDH). The UN World Health Organization in 2001 published the
International Classification of Functioning, Disability and Health (ICF). The ICF was
intended to complement its sister classification system, the International Classification
of Diseases (ICD) (Brown & Lent 2008). The ICF Model sees disability as the result
of a combination of individual, institutional and societal factors as the environmental
context of a person with an impairment (Dubois & Trani 2009). It is operationalized
through the World Health Organization Disability Assessment Schedule II (WHODAS
II) and it covers all types of disabilities, for various countries, languages and contexts,
which makes it suitable for cross-cultural use, still WHODAS is more a classification than
a model.
The UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD) was initially
drafted as a human rights convention that aimed to substitute the medical model of
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disability for the social model of disability. According to Degeners (2016), the drafters
went beyond the social model and wrote a treaty based on a new approach: the human
rights model of disability, which is a tool to implement the CRPD. It takes into consid-
eration many human rights: political, civil, economic, social, and cultural rights. It goes
beyond anti-discrimination rights for disabled persons (Degeners 2016). Regarding its
weaknesses, Berghs et al. (2016) underline that non-enforcement has been identified as a
problem, and there is evidence of a lack of defined penalties. This is true for some world
regions, but is not the case for the US, Australia or Europe, where laws have been passed
enforcing through heavy penalties, and the Netflix caption lawsuits are a good example.4
The choice of the disability model as the locus to frame research on media accessibility
is a stumbling block since it may lead to fatal flaws and invalid results. Understanding
the difference between disability and impairment (Ellis 2016) is a basic departure point in
any study related to media accessibility, since the target group to be tested may not coin-
cide with the objective of the study. A good example of this disparity is the many tests
to understand reading speed in subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing with deaf and
hard of hearing audiences. If the objective of the research was testing reading speed, the
intended population should have been those with reading issues, for example people with
dyslexia, people with low literacy, people who are not used to reading the subtitle writing
alphabet, people with sight issues, who may be deaf and hard of hearing, but there is a
much larger population that could have been tested for reading speed (Agulló et al. 2018).
The same can be said for audio description, which is traditionally tested with people with
low sight. Audio description is an audio based accessibility service, hence hearing issues
may arise when testing for reception. Still, the fact that while media accessibility allows
the whole society to access media content, it provides alternative communication channels
to the standard communication cannot be ignored. The direct association of media acces-
sibility to minorities and people with disabilities is still at the core of any research and
the reason is twofold. First because the services are for people, who define requirements
(Orero et al. 2018). Second because media accessibility context is the UN CRPD with
the motto ‘nothing about us without us’. This user centric approach is at the heart of the
human right towards the full democratic participation of minorities in society –which in
the 21st century depends on access to media (Dahlgren 1995).
The shift from disability to capability and impairments is not accidental. Minorities
should no longer be defined by clinical conditions, but by their situation in their envir-
onment, society or education. A growing number of studies in media accessibility focus
for example on migrants or displaced populations (Frachon & Vargaftig 1995; Orero
2020). People who are illiterate may have issues with subtitle reading speed, but also
those who struggle reading a foreign language or writing style. A Japanese tourist may
have issues reading subtitles written in any of the languages using the Latin alphabet.
Tourists are in a way a new minority group who also benefit from media accessibility. But
also a Japanese person in the Tokyo subway will need subtitles to access any audiovisual
content due to environmental noise: consuming media content in public spaces requires
media accessibility. This goes to show the difference between impairment and disability,
and how not only social elements, but also location impacts media accessibility potential
audiences.
New profiling is now a first step to define the minority group or groups addressed in
each accessibility service, and will lead to a new age in the research of media accessi-
bility away from clinical demographics. New profiles that understand the aim and purpose
towards accessibility should be addressed (Riggins 1992, Cormack 2007) and balanced
392
against their traditional clinical label. What may define people with hearing loss may not
coincide with profiling sign language deaf users. Demographics for the hearing loss group
may be based around communication, while sign language users will extend the aims to
coincide with Browne’s (1996: 59) classification:
(1) To rescue the language,

(2) To increase self-esteem,
(3) To combat negative images,
(4) To work for greater cohesiveness, and through this for political influence,
(5) To provide a visible and audible symbol of the indigenous society,
(6) To provide an outlet for creative production, and
(7) To provide a source of employment.
These added layers to the definition of the sign language group (Browne 1996) are taken
from the field of cultural politics of minority languages (Cormack 2005). Again, profiling
for media accessibility could also take into consideration speakers of minority languages.
While the UN CRPD focuses on people, the UN UNESCO Universal Declaration of
Linguistic Rights ‘promises a future of coexistence and peace thanks to the recognition
of the right that each linguistic community has to shape its own life in its own language in
all fields’ (1996: 9). UNESCO goes further in Article 3.1, and while not mentioning acces-
sibility it does secure:
The right to be recognized as a member of a language community; the right to the

use of one’s own language both in private and in public; the right to the use one’s own
name; the right to interrelate and associate with other members of one’s language
community of origin.
While not explicitly mentioning technologies, the UNESCO declaration foresees the
human interaction required towards establishing communication. This means that not
only the media content should have accessibility services, but also the menus in the TVs,
the players and the new voice interaction operated systems to access content, such as
Amazon’s Alexa, Google home, or Siri. Using minority languages in training large voice
interaction systems has a great impact in the development of language technologies from
speech to text and vice versa, and also in natural language processing. This user inter-
action in minority languages with technology (Somers 2003) thus has a direct impact
in the many workflows in communication, the digital economy, and ultimately in media
accessibility (Browne 1996, 2007; Cunliffe 2007).
Conclusion
In 2005 media accessibility was already considered as part of the larger field of audiovisual
translation (Orero 2005a, Greco 2018) and was included in the curriculum of some uni-
versities (Orero 2005b), with international conferences such as Media for All established
in 2007, special issues such as Translation Today (Díaz-Cintas 2005) and TRANS5 (Orero
2007) and the monographic series in Rodopi (Diaz-Cintas et al. 2007; Díaz-Cintas et al.
2010; Remael et al. 2012). Currently, media accessibility is growing into an independent
discipline as ‘a proactive principle for achieving human rights. It requires that the duty-
bearer of a human right proactively intervene in order to fulfil that right, and it sets access
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as a necessary requirement on behalf of the duty-bearer in order to satisfy the human

right’ (Greco 2016: 17). While media accessibility began modestly from two main modal-
ities –subtitling and audio description –it is now growing into many more services and
research methodologies, encompassing translation and interpreting. Still many more
research avenues are open when dealing with media accessibility and minorities. Some
accessibility services may be considered for minorities because they represent a smaller
population, as is the case with sign language interpretation. In other cases, accessibility
services are characterized by their invisibility: sound based services such as audio descrip-
tion and audio subtitles, versus image based services such as subtitles or sign language.
Buolamwini & Gebru (2018) already point at gender as an issue, and gender has not been
discussed in media accessibility research yet.
For daily chores we are increasingly dependent on machine learning and artificial
intelligence (AI). The personalization of media accessibility services is no exception and
this will lead to biased services, since they start from even models. What has been iden-
tified as AI fairness (Puri 2018, Trewin n.d.) will lead to a growing disparity (Gajane
& Pechenizkiy 2017). Although much has been written about racial and age bias in AI
systems (Treviranis 2017), little has been discussed regarding disability discrimination.
Trewin (n.d.) highlights potential dangers of relying exclusively on machine approaches
for applications for all, not just the average person. The training process for machine
models optimizes performance for cases representing big data, at the expense of border-
line cases. As we have mentioned several times in the chapter, people with disabilities are
very diverse, leading to fractioned data. Machine learning will not perform with marginal
data and will lead to discrimination across the board, probably leading to ironic situ-
ations. In the future a blind person with good English may be able to operate a self-driving
car through speech technologies, while a person with language issues and 20/20 vision
will not be allowed to drive. Media accessibility is a growing field of research towards
improving communication for all.
Further reading
• Greco, G. M. (2016) ‘On accessibility as a human right, with an application to media
accessibility’, in Matamala, A. & Orero, P. (eds), Researching Audio Description. New
approaches. London: Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 11–33.
The chapter presents how accessibility is a proactive principle and how access is a neces-
sary requirement for achieving human rights. The theoretical background is illustrated
with an example from South Africa and the interpretation of accessibility as a means, and
not an end in itself.
• Greco, G. M. (2018) ‘The nature of accessibility studies’, Journal of Audiovisual

Translation, 1(1), pp. 205–232.
This paper looks at the emergence of accessibility studies, its object of study and acces-
sibility processes and phenomena. The article starts from the analysis of media acces-
sibility and appeals to embrace its identity as an area of the wider field of accessibility
studies.
394
• Matamala, A. & P. Orero (2018) ‘Standardising accessibility: transferring knowledge to

society’, Journal of Audiovisual Translation, 1(1), pp. 139–154.
Standardization is a pre requisite towards quality, where much of the media accessibility
research focuses these days. This article describes standardization work in the field of media
accessibility with a focus on the international standardization bodies ISO (International
Organization for Standardization) and ITU (International Telecommunication Union).
• Romero Fresco, P. (2018) ‘In support of a wide notion of media accessibility: access to
content and access to creation’, Journal of Audiovisual Translation, 1(1), pp. 187–204.
This article supports the idea of media accessibility audience beyond people with dis-
abilities. It looks at the process of creation of accessible media content, and proposes the
integration of translation and accessibility as part of the filmmaking process.
Acknowledgements
This work has been partially funded by the European Union’s Horizon 2020 programme #
957252 MediaVerse, 870610 Traction, 870939 SoClose, 82215 Rebuild and by the Catalan
Government with the funded TransMedia Catalonia research group, with reference
2017SGR113.
Notes
1 www.cencenelec.eu/standards/Topics/Accessibility/Pages/DesignforAll.aspx
2 www.itu.int/en/ITU-T/focusgroups/ava/Pages/default.aspx
3 www.who.int/classifications/icf/whodasii/en/
4 https://dredf. org/captioning/netflix-consent-decree-10-10-12.pdf [retrieved 08/04/2018)
5 www.trans.uma.es/trans_11.html
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25
Audiovisual translation,
audiences and reception
Elena Di Giovanni
Introduction
The complexity of media audiences has long been at the core of the academic debate,
across disciplines and over decades. Many are the factors feeding such complexity: the
ever-changing nature of the media, in terms of production and distribution, the shifting
composition of the audience(s) and the ways in which media texts are consumed, which
make empirical research on their reception a renewed challenge.
From a translation studies perspective, the reception of translated audiovisual texts has
only recently been made the object of systematic investigation, spurred by the ever-more
frequent recourse to technologies for behavioural and psychological measures such as eye
tracking, electroencephalography (EEG) or galvanic skin response, but also fuelled by the
growing sophistication of long-standing tools like questionnaires, today administered in a
host of different ways. Another main reason behind the increasing sensitivity to the audi-
ence response to media and their (translated) texts is to be found in the significant expan-
sion of media accessibility studies (Romero Fresco 2018), for which a knowledge of the
needs and traits of the primary audience (deaf/hard of hearing, blind/partially sighted)
has always been tantamount.
In the following sections, the concept of audience will be explored in relation to the
audiovisual media, as no discussion or exploration of media reception can proceed
without a prior definition of the audience itself. Subsequently, media reception studies
will be at the forefront, adopting a twofold perspective so as to trace: (1) the evolution
of the study of media reception and (2) the development of audiences for media over
time. Section three in this chapter provides insights into some of the methods and tools
employed in audiovisual translation research with an eye on reception, so as to evaluate
their potential and praise their combinatory properties, underlining the great value of a
mixed method approach. The fourth and final section looks ahead and offers a series of
reflections on some of the new trends in audiovisual translation research (including media
accessibility) where the very notion of audience is revised and made more inclusive. The
focus is not so much on methodologies or experiments, but rather on reconceptualization,
400 DOI: 10.4324/9781003221678-29

Audiovisual translation and audiences
interdisciplinary reconfiguration and what we may here define as the inclusive shift in
audiovisual translation research.
Audiovisual media, translations and audiences

As many a scholar in media studies have put it, defining ‘audience’ is a complex, occasion-
ally daunting task and further specification is needed for the concept of audience to get
its substance.
This is precisely what Ian Christie states in the opening chapter of his pivotal volume
Audiences (2012), where, after highlighting the ambiguity inherent in the concept of audi-
ence, he suggests different types of classification. For Christie, audiences can be contem-
porary or aggregated (2012: 11), where the latter refers to the cumulative viewers of a film or
show over the years or decades in a diachronic perspective. Audiences can also be imagined
as opposed to economic/statistical, where the first category reflects a sociological approach
and the second is geared towards measuring the economic impact of viewers mainly from
a marketing perspective. Also, analyses of audience type and composition can focus
either on the individual spectator and her needs/features, or on the audience as a whole in
terms of mass behaviour. All of these and other classifications presuppose a good dose of
interdisciplinarity to be applied to whatever study, thus highlighting the cross-disciplinary
nature of the very concept of audience in whatever way we look at it.
Further interesting definitions of audiences have been provided by other scholars,
some of them particularly prominent within media reception studies: a much-quoted
work by Abercrombie & Longhurst (1998), for instance, introduces a preliminary distinc-
tion between what an audience is and what it does. Such a distinction is applied by the
authors to three types, all present in contemporary society: the simple audience, the mass
audience, the diffused audience. A simple audience is the most traditional, yet perhaps
least contemporary type of audience: when there is a clear distinction between producers
and consumers of a performance and the latter occurs in a public space, the audience
takes its simple form. Moreover, as Abercrombie and Longhurst specify, ‘simple audiences
participate in performance events which have a substantial ceremonial or sacred quality’
(1998: 44), with a social distance between the agents involved. The mass audience has
been ushered in by the advent of mass communication and technology, with the poten-
tial advantage with the potential advantage of moving the audience experience from a
local to a global sphere, but also from a public to a private setting, the latter certainly
more powerful and widespread. Mass audiences, on the other hand, tend to devote less
attention to the performance they enjoy (with involvement moving from high to medium)
and, as the authors say, ‘by comparison with performances to simple audiences, mass
audience events do not involve spatial localization, the communication is not so direct,
the experience is more of an everyday one and is not invested in quite the same way with
ceremony’ (1998: 58). The diffused audience, which results from recent social and cultural
changes, has as its main feature the coming together of consumers and producers of a per-
formance. In relating the three typologies to the is and does dichotomy, Abercrombie and
Longhurst associate the concept of audience with that of performance:
Critical to what it means to be a member of an audience is the idea of performance.

Audiences are groups of people before whom a performance of one kind or another
takes place. Performance, in turn, is a kind of activity in which the person performing
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Elena Di Giovanni
accentuates his or her behaviour under the scrutiny of others. That accentuation is
deliberate, even if unconscious. It is ‘behaviour heightened, if ever so slightly, and pub-
licly displayed; twice-behaved behaviour’ (Schechner, 1993, p. 1). This ‘heightening’
gives a certain tension to the performance and its reception by an audience.
(1998: 40)
When it comes to defining diffused audiences, performance is no longer simply an activity

that is received: as Abercrombie and Longhurst see it, a diffused audience is part of a
performance and influences it in participatory ways. In defining what a diffused audience
is and what it does, the two scholars say: ‘In contemporary society, everyone becomes
an audience all the time. Being a member of an audience is no longer an exceptional
event, nor even an everyday event. Rather, it is constitutive of everyday life’ (1998: 61).
Diffused audiences thus have the merit of shifting the focus from passive observation to
active participation, while also expanding the very notion of performance. As we shall see,
this is very much in line with innovative, contemporary trends in audiovisual translation
research.
Yet another interesting set of definitions for the concept of audience, with an eye
cast on the international dimension of this concept, was provided by Adrian Athique in
Transnational Audiences (2016). Athique, much quoted by contemporary media researchers
from different fields, wrote from an anthropological perspective and reflected on audiences
in relation to such concepts as media globalization, transnational flows and mediascapes,
recalling that globalization has so far revolved around three forms of movement: of
money, people and media content (2016: 77). Amongst the most interesting definitions
of audiences he provides are those of diasporic audiences and networked audiences: the
first is interestingly connected to notions of minority cultural and linguistic groups, as
well as to the dominating role of mass broadcasters and international media industries
since the early days of international cinema. Networked audiences, on the other hand,
evoke notions of virtual, non-synchronous media consumption and recall Abercrombie
and Longhust’s diffused audiences in their shift from a passive to an active role, shaping
the creation and distribution of media content.
Proceeding from the formal qualities of digital technologies, we naturally perceive

the audience as being comprised of various device operators who are simultaneously
interacting with malleable content and with each other. In this context, we can no
longer assume the physical co-presence of audience members, nor their simultaneous
activity in a common moment of time. While older media forms were seen to suggest
a sociable but ‘passive’ mode of reception, the networked audience is inherently an
‘active’ proposition.
(2016: 61)
The notion of networked audiences is particularly meaningful in relation to today’s con-

sumption of old and new media content, also in translation: although connected virtu-
ally and not physically, their strength is all the more tangible and is indeed shaping the
contours of media services worldwide.
One final distinction worth mentioning here, in relation to the concept of audience,
takes us back to Ian Christie and helps us focus on an extremely delicate issue when
it comes to doing research, that is, the position of the researcher her/himself vis-à-vis
402
the object of investigation. As a matter of fact, according to Christie (2012) imagined

audiences can be classified as we or as they, thus implying a stance by the researcher, who
can either observe the audience from outside, as is often the case, or s/he can see her/him-
self part of the audience, as in participatory approaches to experimental research that will
be discussed in the following sections. Choosing to be external to, or part of, the audience
under scrutiny, clearly involves a radically different approach and awareness.
To move specifically into the realm of audiovisual translation (AVT) and audience-
centred research, interesting concepts and methodologies have been explored by several
scholars in the past decade or so. Yves Gambier’s proposal of the three Rs as overarching
concepts in reception studies is particularly meaningful: audiences for audiovisual trans-
lation have to be analysed, for Gambier, in terms of response, reaction and repercussion of
the reception experience (2018). Response, as Gambier says, has so far been investigated
mainly through the lens of psychological methodologies, more and more common today
in experimental AVT studies. Reaction is concerned with shared knowledge by partners in
a communication process and with inferential processing. Repercussion, as the word itself
says, refers to the effects of a reception process on both the receiver(s) and the sociocul-
tural context they are part of/they aspire to. Besides providing operational definitions of
the three Rs, Gambier offers insights into the best methodologies to study them, while also
focusing on the variables and features to be taken into account for such studies: variables
can be of sociological or technical nature –the latter referring to typical AVT constraints –
whereas features include textual and paratextual parameters (Gambier 2018: 57).
A different but partially integrating approach is defined by Kruger and Doherty
(2018b), who highlight the great importance and the massive application of questionnaires
and interviews in film and AVT studies on reception, nonetheless encouraging the system-
atic inception of psychometric methods and tools,
The most obvious measure in determining audience reception of AVT products is

post-hoc attitudinal questionnaires and interviews. This measure is a mainstay of film
studies and will always remain an important way to obtain qualitative information.
We will here focus on a different strand in reception research that is more focused on
using psychometric instruments to determine the impact of AVT products on audi-
ence immersion, enjoyment and cognitive load. This impact includes instruments used
to measure psychological immersion (including elements such as presence and trans-
portation), perceived cognitive effort, but also comprehension, recall and learning.
(2018b: 93)
According to the authors, some of these measures can be defined as subjective, since they
imply self-rating on the part of the respondents (perceived cognitive effort, for instance).
Others are, for Kruger and Doherty, more objective: amongst them are comprehension,
recall and learning, although it seems plausible to say that the distinction between sub-
jective and objective is hardly clear-cut. In order to even out results and identify regular-
ities of behaviour, a high number of participants in reception experiments appears to be
essential (ibid.).
Further approaches to reception- centred AVT research vary greatly in their
recommendations of theoretical and empirical methodologies, focusing alternatively on
the process of reception or its effects, on the receivers, on the texts that are received.
Christopher Taylor (2016) and Roberto Valdeón’s (2018) explorations of multimodal
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analysis for audiovisual translation are indeed recommended and valuable, and so are the
studies and methodologies discussed in the section below devoted to some of the most
common tools for AVT reception research.
Historical approaches to reception studies

When aiming to provide a framework for historical approaches to media reception studies,
two major avenues appear before the researcher’s eyes: one can in fact observe the evo-
lution of these studies in multi-or interdisciplinary terms (Di Giovanni et al. 2012) and
thus analyse the strategies and techniques designed and employed over time, basically
moving along the lines of a metadiscourse on media reception research. Alternatively,
one can focus on the historical reception of individual texts or clusters of texts, either
exploring reception over the years and decades (as per the definition of aggregated audi-
ence provided by Christie), or focusing on a given time, a given text, a given audience of
the past. The first of the two avenues is clearly more theoretical and it does not neces-
sarily imply a focus on the audience as made of ‘people’, whereas the second is firmly
based on mapping and observing people’s reactions to audiovisual texts over time or
in the past. The first line of investigation thus favours theoretical reflections on recep-
tion studies of media, whereas the second one enhances knowledge of audiences, their
preferences and habits.
In relation to the first research path, interesting insights are offered by media recep-
tion scholars Daniel Biltereyst and Philippe Meers in a number of articles published
from 2012 onwards. As they observe, early endeavours to explore audience reception of
cinematic texts emerged right from the very first years of the new medium at the end of
the 19th century, mostly related to ‘the psychological and societal dangers of films and
cinemas’ (2018: 23). As a matter of fact, controversies revolving around harmful motion
pictures and the dark places where they had to be consumed resulted into various forms
of censorship and control, which, in turn, triggered an intensive stream of research on
film audiences (Gripsrud 1998) and their reactions to these new, still largely mysterious
forms of entertainment. As Biltereyst and Meers further observe, right before and after
the First World War, social scientists and psychologists started examining issues of com-
prehension and influence of motion pictures on audiences. As they report, sociologist
Emilie Altenloth, for instance, conducted a survey in Germany with the aim to map
the nature of filmgoers in Manheim, groundbreakingly focusing on gender specificities
and female filmgoers (Altenloth, quoted in Biltereyst & Meers 2018: 24). After the
Second World War, studies continued to flourish from various disciplinary perspectives
and when film studies was institutionalized as a scholarly field in the 1960s, systematic
streams of audience research began to appear. As film studies initially drew its discip-
linary substance mainly from aesthetic and literary theories, audience studies were simi-
larly inspired by such domains in their early days. In the 1970s, film theory was ignited
with psychoanalytical approaches, which also gave a boost to the study of reception.
The audience’s gaze and identification were thus made the object of several projects and
important publications. In the 1980s, reception studies further developed, under the great
influence of major theoretical perspectives including feminist theory, sociology, anthro-
pology and pragmatics.
Today, the landscape for media reception studies is so varied and rich that it seems
hardly possible to single out a few, most relevant strands. The proliferation of media and
their content that has occurred over the past two decades, as well as the relentless evolution
404
of technological resources, has fuelled multiple and diversified analytical approaches

that are in fact needed to understand ever more varied and active (diffused, networked)
audiences. Some of the most prominent methodologies and tools employed today in
reception research will be discussed below.
In relation to the second avenue outlined above, i.e. reception studies focusing on
texts and genres in a diachronic perspective, the multiplicity of possible approaches finds
its common denominator in archival research, to be carried out in film archives and
libraries, on private documents, in journals and publishing houses headquarters, etc.
Within audiovisual translation studies, both the quintessentially diachronic approach,
whereby the reception of one or more texts is observed over the decades, and the histor-
ical approach aiming to retrieve and understand the reception at the time of distribution
of the text(s), appear in the research carried out by a handful of scholars who, for slightly
more than a decade to date, have given great substance to the historical strand in AVT
studies. Amongst them Carol O’Sullivan and François Cornu, writing both together and
individually about the history of cinema through the too-often neglected lens of transla-
tion. Their approach is, on the whole, not diachronic and their interest in audiences and
reception is not primary, yet insights provided in their work are valuable and stimulating
for historical reception research. Although, as O’Sullivan and Cornu recall, in the pre-
sound era of cinema ‘films were silent, but not speechless’ (2019: 15), thanks to title cards
or commentators, it was the talkies that ‘ushered multilingualism into cinema on a world-
wide scale’ (2019: 17). Their joint work in reconstructing the history of cinema through
translation has inspired and still inspires many a study, thus pushing AVT beyond what
remains of its descriptive stage (Di Giovanni 2018a). If taken individually, Cornu has
indeed the great merit of having explored the historical evolution of dubbing and sub-
titling, in France but also elsewhere, through a seminal book (2014), whereas amongst the
many works of Carol O’Sullivan an essay on film paratext (2018) is worth highlighting,
as it helps us reflect on the role of translation in film appreciation and success. Drawing
on Genette’s theory of paratext, which can be further divided into peritext and epitext,
i.e. those elements that are internal or external to the main text, O’Sullivan applies it to
cinema and reflects on the changing role of subtitles, which were once burned onto a film
reel, thus representing peritext, whereas today they are a multi-faceted option for the
viewers, thus constituting epitext. How this impacts reception and appreciation is indeed
interesting to investigate further.
In the same essay, O’Sullivan discusses the issue which, to date, has been central to dia-
chronic investigations into the reception of film and other media, i.e. retranslation.
Retranslation is an intrinsic feature of AVT. This has not, to date, been much
investigated in AVT studies, which have tended to think in terms of the dubbed and
the subtitled version of a film. However, it is common for the same film to be subtitled
more than once into a single language for theatrical exhibition, for DVD release,
for television, on reissues of restored films). It is also not uncommon for films to be
dubbed more than once into a single language.
(2018: 270)
As O’Sullivan points out, investigations on retranslation of one or more audiovisual

texts are on the increase, from different perspectives (Zanotti 2011, 2015; Di Giovanni
2016; Mereu Keating 2016), thus contributing greatly to the exploration of what Christie
names aggregated audiences, i.e. all the people who have viewed and possibly appreciated
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Elena Di Giovanni
audiovisual texts in translation over time. Whether focusing on a close cultural and lin-
guistic environment (Mereu, Zanotti) or venturing into the exploration of the reception
of retranslations in distant settings (Di Giovanni), this approach should indeed be further
developed for the full growth and maturity of audience-centred AVT studies.
Reception studies in audiovisual translation: the tools

As Kruger and Doherty put it, ‘Much of the recent research on AVT has focused on the
examination of cognitive processing of audiovisual texts’ (2018b: 91). Indeed, this phe-
nomenon has been increasingly recorded over slightly less than ten years, in particular
since media accessibility became well-established within audiovisual translation studies.
As a matter of fact, cognitive approaches to the study of translation are not new: even
back in the days when translation studies had not affirmed itself as an independent dis-
cipline, linguistic studies geared towards translation had recorded a certain interest in
cognitive processes of production (see, for instance, Levý 1967). It was in the 1980s that
specific publications began to appear, although, as Ferreira, Schwieter and Gile point
out (2015: 4), this happened at the time ‘mostly without relying on input from cognitive
psychology’. In the 1990s, the surge of empirical research on non-literary translation led
to casting a more careful eye on psychological theories and methodologies and at the turn
of the century cognitive approaches to translation were in full bloom, as witnessed by the
great work done within the PACTE research group (2003 and subsequent publications).
Within audiovisual translation, interlingual subtitling and audio description (AD) seem
to have attracted the bulk of psychological and cognitive-based studies to date, very often
of empirical nature. In relation to subtitling, a reference to the work done by Kruger and
Doherty is here due, as their theoretical, methodological and empirical insights are of great
use to scholars wishing to embark on analogous studies. In terms of methodology, their
detailed discussion (2018b) of the triangulation of physiological, psychometric and per-
formance measures to evaluate cognitive processing of subtitling is of particular relevance.
Inspired by the studies based on triangulation for translations of different types (Alves 2015),
the scholars provide a solid set of procedural and analytical recommendations.
At a more general level, an interesting distinction made by Kruger and Doherty that is
here worth recalling is between offline and online measures: to them, the first rely mainly
on questionnaires and interviews and aim to gauge comprehension, recall, learning, cog-
nitive load and immersion. Online measures, on the other hand, are related by the authors
essentially to eye tracking and electroencephalography and they are defined as ‘typic-
ally more objective and physiological’ (2018b: 97), that is obtained through tools that
respondents cannot control.
We can say that both types of measure converge onto the overall evaluation of recep-
tion, with the second type essentially gauging perception and requiring other tools and
methods for a complete evaluation of the reception experience. A functional distinc-
tion between perception and reception in experimental AVT research can be found in Di
Giovanni (2018b).
Experimental, reception-centred research on subtitling relying on a variety of measures
is at the core of a 2015 article by Perego, Del Missier and Bottiroli, where the reception of
subtitles is, rather unusually in empirical research, evaluated against that of dubbing for the
same film and language pair. Deviating from the dichotomy defined by Kruger and Doherty
(2018a, 2018b), Perego et al. rely on what is defined by the two scholars as an offline meas-
uring tool (a questionnaire), whose complexity and scope nonetheless encompasses both
406
offline and online resources. Their multi-section questionnaire combines what are here
defined as cognitive measures (general comprehension, dialogue recognition, face-name
association, visual scene recognition) with what are named evaluative measures, including
film appreciation, self-reported effort and a rather interesting option named ‘judgments of
memory’ (2015: 8). Besides yielding remarkable results, this empirical study rather clearly
points to the great variability of psychological (cognitive) measures, especially in relation to
their classification and application to audiovisual translation research so far.
And if comprehension of dialogue is rarely included in cognitive analyses, as the focus is
not so much on the cognitive processes of comprehension but on the actual understanding
of a text or part of it, a focus on memory and its self-evaluation ought to be more system-
atically inserted in empirical studies on reception, especially as these studies are very often
carried out a certain amount of time after consumption.
Again, a combination of Kruger and Doherty’s offline and online resources, this time
more clearly separated, is found in research carried out by Agnieszka Szarkowska &
Olivia Gerber Morón (2018) focusing on the traditional, long-debated issue of reading
speed for subtitles and their reception. Spurred by the constant increase in reading speeds
across the globe, largely encouraged by streaming service colossi such as Netflix, the
two authors decided to test a considerable number of individuals (70) for three different
mother tongues (English, Polish, Spanish) and with subtitles adapted by the authors to
feature different reading speed rates. In this study, a questionnaire (offline measuring tool)
and an eye tracker (online measuring tool) were used, aiming to evaluate parameters such
as comprehension, scene and subtitle recognition, cognitive load, preferences and enjoy-
ment, again displaying a different setup of psychological measures. The analysis of data
revealed that participants seem to have no difficulties in processing fast subtitles, without
any increase in cognitive load or a significant loss of visual intake. As an unexpected
result, the experiment also revealed that cognitive load was generally higher for English-
speaking participants regardless of the subtitle reading speed, and this could be connected
with a more limited exposure to subtitling for viewers in English-speaking countries. As
often happens in experimental research on reception, unexpected but extremely interesting
results come to the surface.
In audio description, the so-called ‘psychology-based strand’ (Di Giovanni 2018c: 239)
can be largely connected with the work of Louise Fryer who, since the early years of this
decade and still today (2012, 2013, 2014, 2017), by herself and in conjunction with other
scholars, has promoted and disseminated studies focusing on the psychological impact of
audio description on end users, be they visually impaired or not. Thus, the inception of
parameters such as immersion and presence in AVT (media accessibility) research is with
all probability to be ascribed to the work of Louise Fryer, an experimental psychologist
by training and a presenter and audio describer in practice, whose interest for the reaction
and appreciation of end users dates back from the early days of her own activity. A more
detailed description of Fryer’s work is found in Di Giovanni (2018c), or even better in
Fryer’s articles and books to date.
What the future holds

With the constant increase in extemporaneous, often individual and private consump-
tion of media texts and the exponential growth of video-on-demand and streaming
platforms, all clearly accentuated by recent phenomena such as the pandemic lockdown
worldwide, mapping reception is becoming increasingly challenging. Yet paradoxically,
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Elena Di Giovanni
media audiences are today more and more proactive (Di Giovanni 2019): they influence
production and worldwide distribution, they criticize untimely distribution (and transla-
tion) choices with great resonance through blogs and social media, they are also, more
and more frequently, direct content producers. This great dynamism in the modes of con-
sumption of media texts, as well as the shifting role of audiences, necessarily leads to
reconsidering the tools and strategies to observe these audiences and their interactions
with media content.
In this section, we will briefly highlight some of the most up-to-date and innovative
trends in audience-centred audiovisual translation studies, where audiovisual translation
is made to include media accessibility unless otherwise stated.
In the past few years, a reconsideration of the role ascribed to audiovisual transla-
tion within the overall process of media content production, with a special reference to
cinema, has been promoted by Pablo Romero Fresco (2019) under the aegis of accessible
filmmaking, where ‘accessibility’ stands for all that serves the purpose of allowing any
person to enjoy a film, from translation to audio description. By supporting the need for
films to be designed as accessible from the very first conceptual steps, thus catering for
interlingual translations, captions, audio description and other forms of accessibility as
part and parcel of the production stage, Romero Fresco has also aimed to redesign the
space allocated for translators, highlighting their relevance precisely as part of the produc-
tion of a film and not just as purveyors of some sort of unavoidable ‘bonus track’ to be
added in post-production. Also, accessible filmmaking serves the purpose of promoting
and supporting the production of films for all, i.e. films that are accessible for people with
a host of different abilities. The principles of accessible filmmaking can be applied to the
making of series, of theatre and other live shows, in brief, of all media texts: within such
a framework, the audience role is indeed tantamount, as its diverse needs are at the very
core of this theoretical and empirical perspective.
A somewhat similar bottom-up approach lies at the core of another recent trend in
audience-centred audiovisual translation research, which has led to the questioning of
the very notion of accessibility as it is conventionally used in AVT, with reference to
strategies employed to ensure that media texts can be consumed by people with sen-
sory impairments. The revision of the notion of accessibility comes to the fore as, in
the practice of accessibility for media and live events (Di Giovanni 2018b), it appears
more and more evident that ‘disability’ has to be replaced by ‘alternative abilities’, and
that all of these abilities are essential to the design and equal consumption of any media
text or live event. Different abilities are in fact the essence of true inclusion, a notion
that allows us to leave behind the idea of dis-abilities and their need for access to some-
thing otherwise un-accessible. This line of reasoning, whose origins in the practice and
study of AVT can be connected to fansubbing and fandubbing, i.e. the empowerment of
consumers turned produsers (Di Giovanni 2019), leads to adopting a brand new stance
vis-à-vis the audience itself, embracing the notion of diffused audiences by Abercrombie
and Hurst as well as their diluted notion of performance as something that pervades our
lives (see above). Such a new outlook on audiences, their role but also their diverse skills,
finds support in the theories of inclusive design and design-for-all, where the people, not
the services or texts, are at the core of any new creative effort and the results thereof.
Inclusive design, like accessible filmmaking, aims to ‘provide all people with dignity,
comfort and convenience’ (Nussbaumer 2012: 33), allowing them to be independent and
participate equally.
408
Conclusion
This overview of the historical development of media reception studies, with a focus on
translated audiovisual media and other forms of entertainment, has hopefully provided
food for thought, and perhaps some provocative insights, for all young and not-so-young
students and scholars with an interest on the people behind the texts that are translated
and consumed every day. Starting from a series of necessary reflections on the very notion
of audience and the many guises it may take, in real life as well as in research, the aim
has been to highlight the complex development of the notion of audience and its quint-
essentially chameleonic nature. Indeed, audiences change over time and across space, as
they are made of people living in societies and the latter are in constant dynamism them-
selves. However, audiences can change also based on a scholar’s viewpoint and her/his
research aims.
Defining audiences is thus tantamount to setting up any reception study, especially
within a relatively young but heclectic field as audiovisual translation. Once a stance is
taken, be it external or internal, decisions have to be made as to the type of analysis, the
methodology, the tools, the expected results.
Media accessibility, here generally considered as part of the larger domain of audio-
visual translation, has had the unquestionable merit of boosting reception studies,
bringing into the spotlight the users of dedicated services such as those falling under its
umbrella: captions, audio description, audio subtitling. Today, we can say that media
accessibility studies have had the great merit of promoting and enhancing the prac-
tice of accessibility as well as turning it into inclusion, thus giving both scholars and
practitioners a more positive and constructive stance which is also, hopefully, a new
starting point.
Further reading
• Díaz Cintas, J. & Szarkowska, A. (2020) Experimental Research in Audiovisual
Translation, special issue of JosTrans, 33. Available online at: www.jostrans.org/issue33/
issue33_toc.php.
A special issue dedicated to experimental research, where most articles focus on reception
and offer a host of methodological insights.
• Kattwinkel, S. (2003) Audience Participation: Essays on Inclusion in Performance.

Westport, Connecticut and London: Praeger.
A comprehensive volume on the notion of audience participation and inclusion, to explore

what is to date an innovative research pathway in audiovisual translation.
• Willis, I. (2018) Reception. The New Critical Idiom. London and New York: Routledge.
A paradigmatic volume which offers an overview of all the essential notions and strategies
for reception-centred research.
409
Elena Di Giovanni
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Part IV
Translation in alternative
and social media
26
Translation and social media
Renée Desjardins
Introduction
The digital era requires that we (re)think the ‘materialities’ (see Littau 2015) and
configurations of translation phenomena. It can be productive to study translation
according to a specific category –e.g. audiovisual translation, localization, machine trans-
lation, self-translation –but it is difficult to ignore the fact that online and digital contexts
effectively blur the lines between these categories. For instance, the popular online video-
sharing platform YouTube is an interesting configuration (or some might even argue
amalgamation) of translation ‘materialities’: the site features subbing, dubbing, closed
captioning, automatic machine translation, and user-generated self-translation, to name
only these. Translation can be consumed digitally, on tablets, e-readers, mobile phones
and computers, online as well as on offline, and on non-digital technology. Translation
occurs not only at the user-level (user-generated translation; user-generated content), but
also at platform-level given that user preferences and geolocation can prompt a localized
version of the platform, some of which may be machine-produced output and some of
which may be the result of crowdsourcing or in-house translation, or any combination of
these. If we consider other linguistic practices such as code-switching, translanguaging and
diglossia, then the configurations become even more layered and complex (here, complex
refers to ‘complexity thinking’ as defined in Marais & Meylaerts (2019)). In this sense, it is
useful to distinguish between user-generated translation phenomena on social platforms,
social platforms that are localized (the product of crowdsourcing and/or machine transla-
tion), and embedded machine translation (to enhance the user experience or UX) on these
platforms. These delineations are not impermeable, but they do allow for a more specific
examination of translation in digital spaces, particularly on online social platforms.
It is interesting that this chapter should find itself indexed under the section header
‘Alternative and social media’. Relating translation and social media to alternative media
adds another even greater layer of complexity, as we shall see. These three terms all
represent processes and products: first, translation is as much a process of rendering one
language into another (using a very basic definition of interlingual translation, granted) as
it is the end-product of this process. Second, social media can indicate the infrastructure
DOI: 10.4324/9781003221678-31 415

Renée Desjardins
and processes that relay user-generated content as much as the term sometimes conflates
with user-generated content itself. Third, alternative media is as much a form of content
production (alternative online news media) as the result of that production (alternative
online news stories) (Holt et al. 2019).
The idea that social media constitutes a novel form of news dissemination or media
warrants nuance. Most media, by definition, are social. Humans, as Standage (2013) argues,
have always had an inherent need for sharing. In a related manner, sharing with others, i.e.
forging communities or today’s modern digital and online networking, has been crucial for
survival. Social media, regardless of the form they take, are also important vehicles for story-
telling or sharing/disseminating narratives, a point that will be revisited in a latter part of this
chapter. Inasmuch as media are part of the social world, they are ‘social media’ (see Fuchs
2014, 2017). For instance, Standage (2013) cites papyrus rolls and town criers as examples of
earlier forms of social media because each functioned as a means to share, to connect and to
spread information. In contemporary references to social media, it is generally understood
that these are the digital applications and platforms, which are usually online, that enable
users to connect, share information and forge networks or participate in communities. This
understanding relates to social media viewed as a process. In a related vein, the content and
information that is created and shared on these applications and platforms can also be under-
stood as ‘social media’. It is important to note the significant differences between offline
social media (e.g. papyrus; print books; print newspapers) and online social media revolve
around volume of production, speed of production and dissemination, and the transnational
nature of some of these online digital spaces (Desjardins 2017a). Some may find it helpful to
use the adjective ‘online’ to disambiguate traditional social media (offline, analogue, print)
from social media as it is understood most commonly today, while some may argue the use
of such an adjective is redundant.
Online social media do vary and different platforms and applications have unique
and proprietary characteristics. Van Dijck (2013), for example, has categorized social
media using four broad categories: (1) social networking sites (e.g. Facebook; Twitter);
(2) user-generated content sites (YouTube; Wikipedia); (3) trading and marketing sites
(Craigslist; eBay; Kijiji); (4) and play and game sites (FarmVille; Words with Friends).
Van Dijck’s categories can overlap and constitute a starting point to categorize platforms.
However, the second category, ‘user-generated content sites’ is rather unhelpful: presum-
ably, all social media platforms are founded on the idea of aggregating user content and
facilitating networked connectivity. As such, it may be more helpful to think of platforms
according to the type of user-generated content that is most salient. Some platforms,
such as Instagram, prioritize photo-and video-sharing, and could be described as being
ocularcentric. Other platforms, such as Spotify, focus on music streaming or podcast
aggregation, and are phonocentric. Verbocentric platforms, like WordPress, enable users
to share written verbal content, such as blogs or journal entries. As with van Dijck’s cat-
egorization, there is overlap here as well: each platform connects users in varying forms
of networks (Spotify, for instance, enables users to ‘follow’ curated music playlists, linking
playlist creators, musicians and followers) and each platform aggregates user-generated
content. Categorizing platforms by sensory salience adds more nuance in analysis. Of
course, some platforms are a mix of all three, such as the dominant and widely used
Facebook, which combines elements of photo-sharing, blogging, vlogging, and typed
verbal communication. Some platforms place salience on geolocation or geo-tracing in
the context of specific interests or activities. Strava, for instance, connects athletes and
active commuters, while AllTrails provides its users with outdoor-related content such as
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topographic maps, user-generated trail reports, weather data, and other features based on
where a user wants to recreate or is recreating. Van Dijck’s categories were published in
2013, at a time when integration and platform convergence was starting to take place. With
Facebook’s acquisition of Instagram and WhatsApp, the Facebook platform has evolved
to include features once more generally associated with the latter two, including the add-
ition of voice calling via Facebook’s Messenger, Stories and Rooms features. Ultimately,
researchers interested in studying translation and social media should be mindful to con-
sider the unique specificities of the platforms under study, as absolute classification is a
challenge in a shifting digital landscape.
Facebook is the most ‘populous’ social media platform, with 2.6 billion active monthly
users reported in early 2020 (Statista 2020a). Though Facebook’s dominance is undeniable,
it is important to note other platforms also report voluminous user traffic. For instance,
in China, where Facebook is currently banned (as of 2019), Sina Weibo is considered the
dominant social platform, with roughly 480 million active monthly users reported in 2019
Q2 (Statista 2020b). WhatsApp, owned by Facebook Inc., is a cross-platform messaging
and voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) service. In March 2020, it had over two billion
monthly active users worldwide (Statista 2020c).
So how, then, does social media connect to alternative media? Arguably, all social
platforms have the (relative and variable) potential to counteract traditional, institutional,
or mainstream media, so in this sense, they present an alternative. That said, an alternative
doesn’t necessarily mean an automatic guarantee of truth or scientific validity, especially
if we take the position that no media, whether mainstream or alternative, is ever wholly
objective. Generally, mainstream media is understood as ‘as a social system that is formed
by specific legacy news media organizational structures and traditional publishing routines’
(Holt et al. 2019: 861). Alternative, then, would stand in opposition to the mainstream.
This delineation of ‘opposed categories’ (ibid.) is not necessarily helpful, particularly in
arenas like social media where the demarcations of mainstream and alternative aren’t
always so clear or definitive. Therefore, two points warrant attention: (1) social media
users determine mainstream or alternative media relative to the perception they have of
said media; (2) it is more productive to examine the mainstream/alternative continuum
(rather than dichotomy) using a ‘relational, multilevel approach’ (ibid.). Alternativeness
can thus be examined on different, yet intersecting levels: producer-level; content-level;
organizational-level; and system-level (ibid.). In the early days of social networks, most
founders ‘vowed to keep their platforms ‘content-neutral’. The assumption was that
almost all voices, even odious ones, deserved the chance to be amplified’ (Marantz 2019,
online). Founders of social platforms, like Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg and Reddit’s
Steve Huffman, initially believed that their platforms performed an ‘anti-gatekeeping’
function and that users should be trusted to self-regulate (ibid.). It is worth noting that
many early social media entrepreneurs had backgrounds in computer science or business,
programs in which the finer points of free speech were not necessarily explicitly taught –as
a result, many believed that platforms could remain neutral, unlike traditional publishers.
Said differently, social platforms were considered ‘tools’, not ‘content’, though tools dis-
seminate and propagate content, whether offline or online, and as a result, shape public
opinion and beliefs.
For instance, the anonymous English-language imageboard site 4chan has been at the
heart of a number of controversies involving the limits of free speech. 4chan, origin-
ally modelled after a Japanese collective called Ayashii Warudo (Ellis 2018), has been
criticized for being a ‘repository for some of the worst that the internet had to offer: florid
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Renée Desjardins
racism, violent pornography, screeds from the cohort of misogynists now known as
“incels” ’ (Marantz 2019). According to technology reporters (Ellis 2018), ‘nearly every
evil of the internet begins, or picks up steam, on the site’. It even inspired spin-off site,
8chan, and both sites have been connected to various acts of white-supremacist terrorism
in California (US), in Texas (US), in Christchurch (New Zealand), and Toronto (Canada)
(Hume 2019; Marantz 2019). Although Facebook’s community guidelines differ in many
ways from 4chan and 8chan, it too has been at the centre of many controversies regarding
free speech, disinformation and fake news. Zuckerberg reportedly stated in a Facebook
post that he believed users should be the ones to determine what ideas can be expressed,
not governments or media companies (Marantz 2019) and yet, Facebook, is a media
company that has made gate-keeping decisions over the years. Though it may not have
silenced ‘alternative’ voices, it also did not step in to fact-check in instances where doing
so could have served the greater good, essentially exerting a degree of power/gate-keeping/
influence over what information circulated or gained traction on the platform. After all,
gate-keeping occurs not only when content is limited in its circulation, but also when
misinformation is enabled to propagate unchecked.1 Therefore, content-neutrality is an
untenable position given that the decision not to moderate is an intentional decision all the
same and thus an exertion of Facebook’s corporate and Zuckerberg’s individual power.
In this sense, Facebook, more specifically, but online social media more generally, are, to
use Littau’s terms (2015) not merely instruments or tools –as Zuckerberg purports –but
frameworks in which meaning-making is possible and enabled.
Translation, translation studies and online social media:

a review of extant research
Now that some of the connections between online social media and alternative media
have been presented, we can turn to how translation and translation studies intersect in
these areas. Though Facebook occupies a central, or as some may opine, hegemonic, place
among social platforms, it was not the first instance of online social networking. Early
forms of web mail (and later email), listservs, and static websites ostensibly connected
users. In 1997, Six Degrees, a site that showed degrees of separation between networked
users, was essentially the precursor to most of the online social media platforms we
know today (boyd & Ellison 2008). Friendster (launched in 2002), MySpace (launched in
2003), and Facebook (launched in 2004) followed thereafter, with the latter being origin-
ally restricted to specific users at the time of its launch and later opening to the general
public over 13 years of age in 2006 (Tabak 2004; boyd & Ellison 2008; Desjardins 2017).
In translation studies, research on the topic of online translation and digital technology
started to coalesce around 2010, although this is not to suggest that technology, more
broadly, was not a subject of import. The early 2010s, however, marked a period where
TS researchers interested in technology shifted from more ‘traditional’ technological
interests (see Olohan 2020) –like machine translation –to the relevance and impact of
digitally networked communication: scholars such as Desjardins (2011); Folaron (2010a,
2010b, 2012); Pym (2011a, 2011b); McDonough Dolmaya (2011); O’Hagan (2009, 2011);
Cronin (2013) are some examples of this early and growing interest. From there, research
looking more specifically at the intersections between online social media and translation
started to gain traction: Lenihan (2011); Mesipuu (2012); Baker (2016); Desjardins (2013,
2017a) examined different forms of translation taking place on online social platforms,
from Facebook, to YouTube, to Twitter. There was also interest in the data on translation
418
and translators that could be now collected thanks to social platforms. For instance,
McDonough Dolmaya (2011) and Olohan (2014) examined the different motivations
translators have for translating user-generated generated content, while Sutherlin (2013)
investigated the use of Twitter in crisis communication. For more on this early corpus of
research, see Desjardins (2017, Chapter 2 more specifically) and McDonough Dolmaya
& Sànchez Ramos (2019) introduction to the special issue of Translation Studies on the
subject of social translation.
Aligning with the definition proposed by McDonough Dolmaya & Sànchez Ramos
(2019), this chapter focuses on contemporary scholarship that examines the online social
media–online social translation–alternative media nexus.
Social platform translation as a gate-keeping mechanism

Many of the world’s dominant social platforms have been developed in English first and
this can be attributed to the predominance of English in key digital and technological
innovation centres, such as Silicon Valley (located in California, in the United States).
This is also the product of English’s status as a global, scientific and technological lingua
franca. In the early 2000s, and still to some extent today, Silicon Valley functions ‘as a
synecdoche for the American high-technology economic sector’ (Wikipedia 2020, online).
This is not to say some platforms weren’t developed in other languages, but these did not
generate the same user traffic, nor did they accrue the same mainstream popularity (or
notoriety) as dominant platforms like Facebook, for instance. Facebook launched a col-
laborative and crowdsourced initiative to translate (to localize, essentially) its platform
in December 2007 (O’Brien 2011), which seemed to speak to a conscious effort towards
multilingual accessibility and a better UX. Over time, Facebook boasted about increas-
ingly supporting (i.e. having its platform available in) multiple languages. However, in
2019, reports began to surface that indicated there were a few issues with Facebook’s
translated and/or localized offerings. Notably, Reuters reported Facebook claimed to
support 111 languages in March 2019; however, the reporting also found evidence of at
least 31 other languages used on the site that remained unsupported (Fick & Dave 2019).
The same report also indicated that Facebook’s ‘community standards’, a set of guidelines
about what is allowed and not allowed on the platform, was ‘officially’ translated in only
41 of the 111 languages. Said differently, only 36.9% of the languages Facebook claims
to support equally have translated community guidelines. Further, Facebook’s team
produces (if this is done in-house), or commissions (whether they leverage volunteers),
translations based on whether or not there is a ‘critical mass’ of language users (Fick
& Dave 2019) –a measure that likely favours central and hypercentral languages, rather
than peripheral languages (see Calvet 1999). Facebook is not anomalous either: YouTube,
Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat and WhatsApp all claim to support specific languages, but
community standards and platform-related information is not consistently translated to
match the number of supported languages (Fick & Dave 2019). It is worth recalling that it
took Instagram seven years since it was launched to offer platform support in right-to-left
(RTL) languages, like Hebrew and Farsi (Tepper 2017).
Facebook has historically positioned itself as a platform that was looking to ‘make
the world more open and connected’ (Constine 2017) and, in many ways, its multilin-
gual and translation activity was suggestive of this. However, examples like those pre-
viously cited suggest a more complex reality. In fact, Facebook’s opacity with regard to
some of its decision-making, testing, back-end and features is well documented. To cite a
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translation-specific example, Desjardins (2019) examined how Facebook deployed auto-

matic machine translation to generate ‘illusory’ self-translations, sometimes unbeknownst
to the producer of the post and/or the end-user. In some cases, automatic machine transla-
tion of user-generated content may not be problematic; however, automatic machine trans-
lation is not infallible and is usually only as good as the available training data (Bowker &
Ciro 2019; Fick & Dave 2019). Scarcity of reliable data or the availability of significantly
biased (training) data can produce unintended target output (see D’Ignazio & Klein
2020)2 and, unfortunately, most lay-users of machine translation on social platforms may
not be aware or have the machine translation literacy to discern whether a translation is
reliable or even whether the content was translated by a machine or a human. Labels such
as ‘See Translation’, ‘Rate Translation’, ‘See Original’ are sometimes prompted, but this
is inconsistent across and even within platforms, and many unilingual users are unaware
that these features exist and that they can be adjusted in the users’ parameters (Desjardins
2019). Gretchen McCulloch (2020), in a recent online article in Wired, observes:
The bigger issue with machine translation is that it’s not even an option for many
of the languages involved. […] Machine translation disproportionately works for
languages with lots of resources, with things like news sites and dictionaries that
can be used as training data. Sometimes, like with French and Spanish, the well-
resourced languages of former colonial powers also work as lingua francas for trans-
lation purposes. […] [as of June 2020] Google Translate supports 109 languages, Bing
Translate has 71, and even Wikipedia exists in only 309 languages –figures that pale
in comparison to the 500-plus languages on the list from the Endangered Languages
Project, all human-created resources.
The ramifications of unequal, inconsistent translation and, occasionally, of ‘illusory’ self-

translation on online social media platforms are important to consider. At a time when
lay users frequently turn to their online social networks and online social media to obtain
information, users should be able to easily identify whether content has been automatic-
ally translated by an app or a platform’s automated translation feature and information
about training data for these systems should be readily disclosed. Facebook seems to view
automated translation as a step in ‘bringing the world closer together’ –its new mission
statement (Constine 2017). Yet, automating translation for its user-base does not circum-
vent issues related to how it does or does not translate its community guidelines and other
support documentation, or issues related to training data, which may impact output and
have unintended effects. For instance, Facebook, under increasing pressure –particularly
since the 2018 Cambridge Analytica scandal that prompted Zuckerberg to testify in front
of the United-States Congress (Cadwalladr and Graham-Harrison 2017) –has started to
implement more measures to identify hate speech and terrorist propaganda (Fick & Dave
2019). These measures include community moderation by other users presumed aware
of the community guidelines, an internal review team, and automated detection (Fick &
Dave 2019). However, all three measures fall short of being able to monitor Facebook’s 111
languages equally: if community guidelines are only translated in 41/111 languages, then
how would some users know how to moderate and flag problematic content? The internal
review team is capable of engaging with approximately 50/111 languages, while automated
tools can sift through 30 languages with regard to hate speech and 19 languages related
to terrorist propaganda (Fick & Dave 2019). Though it is true that automated translation
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and language support in 111 languages is likely to facilitate everyday communication

between lay users, the gaps in service and the recourse to automation in some cases mean
that not all language content is managed, translated and moderated in quite the same
way. For users looking to capitalize on these gaps to promote hate, skew electoral results,
or negatively impact civic order, unequal language moderation opens a door. On the one
hand, more multilingualism/translation on social platforms can be seen as positive, facili-
tating communication between different communities and users in different geographic
and linguistic locales. On the other hand, the asymmetries in translation provision and in
language moderation can have deleterious effects –this is part of the ‘good’ and ‘bad’ of
translation and social media, a topic that was discussed at the 2017 Social and Media +
Society conference in Toronto (Desjardins 2017b).
Therefore, we can conceive of embedded automatic machine translation and other
translation ‘materialities’ as gate-keeping mechanisms (see White 1950), whether this is
intentional on Facebook’s or other platforms’ behalf or not. Gate-keeping is defined as
a process that controls –or, at least impacts –the flow of information from producer
to user (Vuorinen 1997). The different ways that social platforms automate or provide
translated support undeniably impacts the flow of information, perhaps not so much
in preventing dissemination, but certainly in adding filters throughout the process. To
date, Facebook and other platforms have been rather elusive in disclosing information
about some of their proprietary features. This places the burden of digital literacy and
social media literacy squarely on the shoulders of users, rather than on corporations like
Facebook Inc. Still, as new features are rolled and as these platforms evolve, it becomes
difficult for even the most discerning and digitally literate user to keep apace. Some, like
Fuchs (2017), argue that inasmuch as corporations own and operate social platforms
and that these platforms are embedded within a capitalist paradigm, the call for greater
social justice and more equitable, transparent dissemination of information stands to be
difficult to answer adequately.
In a sense, this is a ‘colonial’ exertion of power in online and digital contexts: in the
early days of the internet and of social media, there was an understanding that ‘online’
meant a space that was in many ways supposed to be far more accessible and democratic
than other physical or material spaces –a space ostensibly open to all. However, as we
have discussed, programming and computer science –and later Silicon Valley –were
not inherently diverse arenas (D’Ignazio & Klein 2020). Perhaps not intentionally from
the outset, these early digital ‘settlers’ colonized the digital space, making it far more
susceptible to Anglocentrism and other representational hierarchies (D’Ignazio & Klein
2020). Where translation studies can complement social media studies and computer
science is in the ‘decolonization’ of translation and multilingualism on social platforms.
Studies and data that illustrate the asymmetrical deployment of translation, automated
or otherwise, speak to how many social platforms are not as democratic and just as the
corporations who own them purport them to be or wish they were.3 Future research
could further address and examine how languages from the global North are dispropor-
tionately advantaged on social platforms and how this essentially inhibits communica-
tion in peripheral languages. More case studies examining how social platforms deploy
or program translation in specific languages for specific news events could also be fruitful
for comparative work between different language pairings. This would fall in line with
calls for ‘decolonizing’ online and digital spaces and multilingualism, more broadly (see
Phipps 2019).
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Renée Desjardins
Online social translation, online social activism and language resurgence

Social platforms have also played a role in significant activist movements in the last decade
(Raynauld et al. 2018). Some activist initiatives have little to do with language or trans-
lation per se, but leverage translation nonetheless to accrue engagement and promote a
given cause. In other cases, some activist groups have mobilized on social platforms to
discuss matters related directly to translation, or, in other cases, to promote and foster
language revitalization. Individuals who translate in online activist initiatives tend to self-
identify according to three main categories: those who view themselves first as activists,
who then also translate; those who are activist translators, who view translation as part of
their activism; and those who translate in the context of activist efforts but do not neces-
sarily position themselves or identify as activists (Baker 2019; Guo 2008; Tymoczko 2000,
2006, 2007, 2010).
Research that links translation studies and online social media started to gain
momentum in the late 2000s and early 2010s. This body of work also comprises case
studies and reflections that examine the use of online social media in political, civic and
activist translation efforts (i.e. the second category listed above). Here again, it is not always
productive to examine online activist initiatives in a piecemeal manner: very often, these
groups rely on multiple forms of translation (and translation ‘materialities’) to carry out
their work or to mobilize. For instance, fansubbing, or the practice of subtitling content
for ‘fans by fans’ (Diaz Cintas & Sanchez 2006) relates as much to audiovisual translation,
as to volunteer translation, digital translation (translation facilitated by digital tech-
nology), online translation (translation facilitated by online connectivity to the internet),
and online social translation (in the case of fansubbing that occurs on social platforms like
YouTube, for instance). Part of understanding activist audiovisual translation on social
platforms, then, inevitably requires that we ‘understand the internal logic of a platform,
the general rules of the OSM [online social media] game [in the Bourdieusian sense], and
the external socio-cultural circumstances at the given historical moment in which they
occur’ (Krasnopeyeva 2018: online). Neglecting any of these elements can lead to research
blindspots. For instance, by focusing exclusively on the quality of the fansubbed con-
tent, a researcher may not consider how a group or community of fansubbers took root
and began to work together. A researcher may not consider how networked translation
is an inherent component of these initiatives, particularly in situations where individual
translators are purposefully elusive and self-effacing (cf. Baker 2016, 2019). These individ-
uals and groups may seem amorphous, but many social networking sites have features that
can give ‘shape’ to these individuals and groups (e.g. follower lists; engagement metrics;
comments; shares). At the time of writing, few studies in TS4 have leveraged social
analytics to any significant extent to explore relational and networked connections in
online activist translation –and this would thus be a welcomed contribution in the future.
However, consideration for digital translator networks and digital tools is starting to gain
interest elsewhere, for instance in relation to literary translation (Tanasescu & Tanasescu
2019; Gaudette 2020). Activist movements involving translation or online translation
activism have also challenged previously established translation ‘rhythms’, like translation
in ‘zero-time’ (Charron 2005): Colón Rodríguez (2015, 2019), for instance, has shown how
‘collaborative activist translation 2.0’ has at times implemented an ethos of translation
deceleration, typically inspired by the Slow Movement (see Berg & Seeber 2016).
Online and network social activism involving translation (in any of the ways described
above) presents an alternative to offline activist translation in a few key ways, both
422
from the standpoint of activist activity, but also from the perspective of activist trans-
lation as an object of study. Specifically, online social media have specific affordances,
including content indexing (e.g. users can search for topically relevant information using
keywords or hashtags), geolocation (e.g. users can search topically relevant information
based on their location or the locale in which activist activity is taking place), networking
affordances (e.g. follower lists; friends lists; user tags), etc. Moreover, a significant way in
which online and digital media facilitate activist engagement has to do with their distinct
functional properties: while it may not be possible for someone with a mobility constraint
to go out and protest safely, a social platform provides a space to engage politically osten-
sibly removing a barrier to access. In a similar vein, someone who may not have access
to formal education or academic institutions can tap into social media conversations on
platforms like Twitter to accrue information and knowledge about a subject –sometimes
in the language of the user’s choice (particularly if these are readily used in the global
North). As Lester & Cottle (2015) state, digital media and social media (Web 2.0 media)
are an alternative in that they can be used to launch, promote and coordinate activist
initiatives/movements independently of the following variables: time, financial capital,
technical and technological capital, as well as location.
The scope of this chapter does not allow for an in-depth review of all online activist
movements involving online social translation. Given that protest movements such as the
Egyptian revolution (Baker 2016, 2019), the Printemps Érable (Maple Spring) (Colón
Rodríguez 2015, 2019; Desjardins 2017); the Taiwanese Sunflower Student Movement
(Chang 2020), and other initiatives, such as activist fansubbing and dubbing (Wang &
Zhang 2017), have been examined elsewhere, the focus here will be on the Idle No More
(INM) movement that originated in Canada (Raynauld et al. 2018), since this particular
movement is unique in that its concerns are not only political and economic (as most of
the previously cited movements), but cultural (Raynauld et al. 2018). As a result, INM
lends itself to examination not only of activist translation, but of cultural translation.5
INM took root in 2012, in a succession of political digital and online protests. The first
tweet associated with the movement was published on Twitter on 30 October 2012, by Jessica
Gordon (Coulthard 2015; Idle No More 2020). Sheela McLean, Nina Wilson, Sylvia McAdam
and Jessica Gordon, four women from Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, Canada had been exchan-
ging emails (Raynauld et al. 2018) on the subject of upcoming legislation that would negatively
impact First Nations peoples in what is now Canada (Idle No More 2020; Tupper 2014). In
the following weeks, teach-ins and other activist activities important to Indigenous Peoples
on what is now Canada proliferated throughout the country and social media, particularly
Twitter and Facebook, played a key role (Raynauld et al. 2018). Though INM was originally
intended to counter Bill C-45, the piece of contentious legislation that sought to amend the
Indian Act without First Nations’ or broader Indigenous consultation, the movement quickly
evolved with cultural and linguistic resurgence as core objectives (Raynauld et al. 2018).
The INM movement is not a translation movement per se, placing it in the category
of activist movements that leverage both online social media and translation: the groups
that the movement comprises do not identify as activist translators (or dubbers, subtitlers
etc.) explicitly. However, the attention INM has given to language, language resurgence,
and cultural revival does recall many concepts that intersect with TS and activist transla-
tion. The movement was also digitally born, making it unique in how it leveraged social
media to counter dominant narratives about Canadian history, Canadian iconography
and Canadian nationhood from its inception. The movement also prompted solidarity
among international Indigenous Peoples.
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In their study on INM and the use of Twitter, Raynauld et al. (2018: 629) posed two
questions to orient their study: ‘(1) How did INM participants and their critics use
Twitter to engage in protest action (2) In which ways and to what extent did identity and
culture shape the manifestation of the INM movement in the Twitterverse?’. The team
investigated Twitter content that indexed under the (English) hashtag #IdleNoMore.
The researchers also examined differently coded content and focused on core Indigenous
elements; the focus here is on the language-coded content. In the 1650-tweet dataset,
there were nine tweets related language and the INM movement. These tweets discussed
the use of Indigenous languages and language resurgence (Raynauld et al. 2018). This
number may appear low, but it’s worth signalling the research team purposefully triaged
some of their dataset. The fact that language and language resurgence are mentioned at
all suggests that a more targeted analysis could reveal further translation-related insights.
It is also interesting to note that #IdleNoMore content was tweeted in both Canadian offi-
cial languages (English and French) as well, though these do not appear to be the direct
product of any translation. This prompts the question of whether the #IdleNoMore
hashtag had been translated at all (for more on the translation of hashtags, see Desjardins
2017: 35, 45, 123). To date, hashtag translation has been an underresearched area in TS
and none of the protest movement case studies listed above make any mention of how
translated hashtags could be used as an analytical tool (e.g. to search indexed content) or
how protest movements or activists do or do not translate hashtags, how and why.
On her blog ‘âpihtawikosisân: law language culture’, Chelsea Vowel, a Métis public intel-
lectual, writer (she is the author of Indigenous Writes: A Guide to First Nations, Métis and
Inuit Issues in Canada (2016)), and educator from manitow-sâkahikan (Lac Ste. Anne)
Alberta,6 posted about Idle No More on 10 December 2012.7 The post briefly addresses the
contentious legislation mentioned above, but also makes reference to other issues of interest
to the Idle No More movement, including environmental and land stewardship, health and
incarceration. This particular post makes no mention of translation, but –perhaps surpris-
ingly –translation is one of the first questions raised in the comments section. A commenter
asks about whether the hashtag or movement name had been translated into French. Vowel,
posting under the user handle âpihtawikosisân, replies: ‘None that I’ve seen so far though on
the Idle No More Facebook page I noticed someone had offered to do translations. This is
definitely something that people could contribute…translations into French and any other
languages possible.’ Immediately, four other commenters offer their French translations: ‘nous
ne resteront plus en silence’; ‘ne pas rester tranquille’; ‘fini l’apathie’ –none of which would
be very functional from the perspective of content indexing (see Desjardins 2017), but that
nonetheless suggest an interest for the hashtag’s French translation.8 Popular hashtag and
activist movements are often documented on Wikipedia, and given that Wikipedia pages
are ‘translated’ (see Jones 2018 and in this volume; McDonough Dolmaya 2015, 2017),
this could be another way to see how hashtags are translated and to further understand
hashtag genealogies. In date of July 2020, the French version of the INM page indicates
the translation to be ‘Jamais plus l’inaction’.9 Oddly, of the ‘translated’ Wikipedia pages, no
Indigenous languages from Canada are represented (the page is available in French, Welsh,
English, Estonian, Latin, Russian, Tamil and Ukranian). This might be attributable to the
fact that historically, Indigenous Peoples were discouraged and punished from speaking
their languages (Boutsalis 2018), in turn having an effect on the number of speakers and the
availability and accessibility of language training. Âpihtawikosisân makes similar remarks
on her blog,10 listing other systemic issues that have limited Indigenous linguistic resurgence
in various spaces, including a focus on traditional modes of language transmission. The
424
lack of Indigenous-language Wikipedia pages likely also spoke (and speaks) to the fact
that Indigenous languages were later supported in Wikipedia’s history and that keyboards
are not necessarily adapted for some languages (Trevino 2020). It could also be that INM
efforts focused its social efforts more readily on networking sites (e.g. Facebook, Twitter) as
opposed to Wikipedia translation, though this hypothesis has yet to be validated.
Despite initial technological barriers, like language support and the dominance of
English in online contexts, the INM movement has been a catalyst for younger Indigenous
generations to reconnect with their ancestral languages as part of Indigenous cultural
and language resurgence (see Coulthard 2014; Youging 2018). In another related call to
action, as part of decolonizing and Indigeneizing education and the academy in Canada,
Indigenous educators indicate the clear connection between Indigenous languages,
Indigenous knowledge systems, and the role of translation (see Younging 2018; Cote-
Meek & Moeke-Pickering 2020). In Decolonizing and Indigeneizing Education in Canada,
Patsy Steinhauer (2020: 74) states: ‘[…] I learned the complexity of how language IS
our knowledge system […Our] language is not merely a functional tool for communi-
cation that can be relegated to linguistic classification’. To return to Twitter, still today,
Indigenous artists, musicians, and activists are taking to their accounts to indicate the
influence of Indigenous languages on the Canadian lexicon –perhaps dispelling belief
that INM has ‘lost its legs’ (Coulthard 2014: 165).
Indigenous language resurgence pursuant to INM also prompted the creation of digital
apps to facilitate language acquisition and cultural translation. The KOBE Learn app was
launched by the Keewatinook Okimakanak Board of Education (KOBE) to encourage
language teaching and retention in Ontario’s northern Indigenous communities.11 The app
allows users to learn phrases and words in Cree, Oji-Cree and Ojibwe. The KOBE Learn
website makes no explicit reference to INM; however, INM was instrumental in demon-
strating the power digital technology held for language and Indigenous resurgence and it
could be hypothesized that the app speaks to the INM calls to action for Indigeneizing
education and teaching Indigenous languages as part of the curriculum in Canada.
These examples, when abstracted from the digital and online social media contexts in
which they are embedded, may not seem connected at first glance. And the relationship
between INM and translation may not be immediately apparent. However, if we consider
online social media as a unifying ‘ecosystem’ for the INM movement (or for other online
activist movements), we start to see how language, language resurgence, linguistic justice
and cultural translation intersect. INM started as a movement dedicated to contesting
legislation related to the Indian Act, but as it evolved INM mobilized social media from
Twitter, to Facebook, to blogs, to language apps to disperse Indigenous core elements,
including, but not limited to language/translation. Examining this flow of activism also
reveals where translation is curiously absent or e-volving, as in the case of INM Wikipedia
pages available in only non-Indigenous languages in the former (as of July 2020) and, in
the latter, the variations/suggestions around the translation of #IdleNoMore in languages
other than English, be it non-Indigenous or Indigenous languages. The absence of trans-
lation and the directional flows of translation could further illuminate aspects of the INM
movement that is still currently active on online social media. Perhaps the most notable
form of linguistic and translational erasure lies in the absence of Indigenous languages
in Canada’s Official Languages Act.12 In this regard, INM activists and proponents of
Indigenous cultural and language resurgence (Indigenous and non-Indigenous) who con-
test language erasure in legislation using online social media are effectively dismantling
the exaltation (see Thobani 2007) of French and English in Canada.
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Renée Desjardins
What the INM movement also indicates, perhaps differently than other activist
translation case studies that tend to centre around audiovisual and crowdsourced
conceptualizations of translation activity, is that translation can be a subtle part of a
movement. Yet, it can also be a unifying vector or common thread for self-determination,
reclaiming of epistemologies, and a tool to present cultural narratives that present
alternatives to previously accepted hegemonic beliefs about a people’s history and national
trajectory (see Younging 2018). However, without the affordances of online social media,
such wide-ranging language activism might not be possible. To refine this analysis –but
also any other similar case study –networked analyses could also prove to be useful. Tools
such as Netlytic (a social network analyser13) and Tweet Archivist (an analytics tool for
tracking and archiving Twitter content14) can help establish the connections between users,
movements, and user-generated content. However, this should be supplemented, when
warranted, by other data collection methods inspired by intersectional, decolonized, and/
or Indigenized frameworks. Moreover, Indigenous voices/scholars must also be involved/
included in such analytical work in a meaningful, respectful way. Such methodological
refinement falls within sociological, networked, digital, decolonizedand complex (see
Marais & Meylaerts 2019) approaches in TS.
Conclusion
This chapter sought to overview key definitions related to online social media. Social
media and online social media are defined and contrasted, based on Standage’s work
(2013). Consideration is given as to how online social media function along a spectrum
of alternativeness to traditional media. Researchers interested in online social media
and translation are invited to carefully consider the affordances and specificities of the
platforms under study. The chapter also proposes a sensorial classification to supplement
van Dijck’s (2013) four broad categories.
The chapter focuses on two main areas related to the online social media–online social
translation–alternative media nexus: (1) social platform translation as a gate-keeping mech-
anism which considers broadly and specifically how translation activity on Facebook, most
notably, propagates or constrains the circulation of information and knowledge; (2) an
application of ‘complexity thinking’ (Marais & Meylaerts 2019) in online social translation
in the context of activist movements, building on a corpus of previous studies examining,
among others, Egyptian, Canadian, Taiwanese social, activist and protest movements.
Attention is given to the Idle No More movement, which has its origins in what is now
Canada, but could arguably be said to have taken root in a transnational digital space.
Future research examining translation and online social media must deploy nuanced
and complex methodologies –it is insufficient to focus only on translated output, social
platform, and individual translators. Using social analytics, TS researchers can refine the
study of translational networks, leading to the identification of translation in unexpected
areas. Hashtag translation is another engaging area: further study into hashtag transla-
tion can allow researchers to see how content relating to a specific topic or current event is
circulating online. The idea here is not to comment on the accuracy or quality of hashtag
translation –though this could be interesting as well –but rather to enable comparative
work and more comprehensive datasets in more than one language. This would com-
plement descriptive translation studies research, and both product-and process-oriented
analyses (see O’Brien & Saldanha 2013).
426
Further reading
• Desjardins, R. (2017). Translation and Social Media: In Theory, in Training and in
Professional Practice. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.
This monograph explores the relationships between translation and social media across
three broad themes: theory, training and professional practice. It includes examples from
platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter and discusses hashtag translation.
• McDonough Dolmaya, J. & Sánchez Ramos, M. (2019) ‘Characterizing online social

translation’, Translation Studies, 12(2), pp. 129–138.
This introduction to a special issue of Translation Studies provides key term definition
including online social translation. This reference also provides a comprehensive and
contemporary review of extant literature on the subject of translation and online/digital
social phenomena.
• Marais, K. & Meylaerts, R. (eds) (2019) Complexity Thinking in Translation Studies:

Methodological Considerations. London: Routledge.
Given the layered and complex materialities of online social translation, this reference
provides methodological considerations that counter reductionism and abstraction in
online and digital settings. Key chapters include Chapters 7 and 8.
Notes
1 According to reports (Porter 2020), one of the reasons Zuckerberg seemed reluctant to moderate
misinformation or fake news on Facebook was premised upon the idea of the ‘backfire effect’ (cf.
Nyhan & Reifler 2010), a principle that supposes that users who believe in misinformation will
become further entrenched in these beliefs when presented with fact-checked information that
debunks the myths or faked content. The ‘backfire effect’ had currency in the early 2010s, but has
since been shown to be inconsistent with users’ actual behaviour towards fact-checked content,
even when this content opposed their views or beliefs (Porter 2020; Wood & Porter 2018).
2 ‘It is important to acknowledge the elephant in the server room: the demographics of data
science (and related occupations like software engineering and artificial intelligence research)
do not represent the population as a whole. […]. The problems of gender and racial bias in
our information systems are complex, but some of their key causes are plain as day: the data
that shape them, and the models designed to put those data to use, are created by small groups
of people and then scaled up to users around the globe. […] When data teams are primarily
composed of people from dominant groups, those perspectives come to exert outsized influence
on the decisions being made –to the exclusion of other identities and perspectives’ (D’Ignazio &
Klein 2020: 26–28).
3 At the time of writing, social platforms have come under increased public scrutiny. Facebook’s
own employees are now finding some of the company’s stances on free speech and lax moder-
ation untenable, going so far as to stage virtual protests (Frenkel et al. 2020).
4 In French or English or cited in the reviewed literature (which included citations from other
languages as well) for this chapter.
5 I acknowledge that I am non-Indigenous and a settler scholar examining an Indigenous protest
movement. The intent is not to speak on behalf of or for INM or to ‘represent’ (Rizk 2013) those
involved in the movement as immutable objects. I seek to examine more specifically how trans-
lation and language–as objects of study –have played a role in the evolution of this movement
(for more on decolonizing methodologies, see Smith 2012; Strega & Brown 2015). My intent is to
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Renée Desjardins
do so in a way that demonstrates respect to Indigenous communities, worldviews, and languages.

I hope to show, however minimally, that translation on social platforms can be a way to promote
a cause more widely and effectively and, in so doing, I hope to engage in a form of scholarship
that hopefully does not take away from Indigenous communities or speak for them.
6 https://apihtawikosisan.com/about-2/
7 https://apihtawikosisan.com/2012/12/idle-no-more/
8 There have also been blog discussions elsewhere about the translation of the hashtag into
Indigenous languages, for example, in Ojibwe: https://decolonization. wordpress.com/2013/02/
07/how-do-you-say-idle-no-more-in-anishinaabemowin/
9 https://fr. wikipedia.org/wiki/Mouvement_Idle_No_More
10 https://a pihtawikosisan.com/2 013/1 0/r oadblocks-t o-e ffective-i ndigenous-l anguage-d
evelopment/
11 http://koeducation.ca/article/kobe-learn-helps-keep-native-languages-alive
12 https://laws-lois.justice.gc. ca/eng/acts/o-3.01/
13 https://netlytic.org/index.php
14 www.tweetarchivist.com/
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27
Non-professional translators
and the media
Michał Borodo
Introduction
Launched in 2008, Viki, a global streaming platform with crowdsourced subtitles, offers
access to so-called K-dramas, that is, Korean television dramas, translated by a community
of thousands of non-professional fan translators, or fansubbers, in over 200 languages.1
Between 2011 and 2014, Mosireen, a media activist collective documenting the Egyptian
Revolution of 2011, produced 250 videos which were published online with the help of
activist subtitlers and which ‘have been watched over six million times on YouTube; re-
broadcast and re-mixed countless more’.2 In 2005 and 2006, fan-organized actions, some-
times referred to as the first and second Emerald Revolutions, took place in Poland,
including petitioning and bombarding the publisher with emails demanding that Polish
readers gain access to the translations of Harry Potter simultaneously with the Anglophone
readership. Diverse in scope and nature, these initiatives attest to the strong commitment
and importance of volunteer, fan and activist translators in contemporary media. This
chapter aims to explain how non-professional translation relates to the media and reflects
on how the media allow and further the proliferation of non-professional translation.
While different types of media where non-professionals translate are mentioned, more
detailed consideration is given to audiovisual translation, activist translation and Web-
based fan protests and networks. More specifically, following a discussion of the nature
and relationship of non-professional translation to the media, the chapter explores the area
of audiovisual translation known as fansubbing, then discusses activist translation with
a focus on socially and politically engaged citizens and mediators, while the final section
concentrates on networking and amateur translations of Harry Potter. The chapter also
reflects on how non-professional translation challenges some well-established concepts in
translation studies as well as our traditional understanding of the media.
What is non-professional translation?

Non-professional translation is a broad and multifaceted territory, only recently
recognized as a legitimate research field by the translation studies community, so far
432 DOI: 10.4324/9781003221678-32

Non-professional translators and the media
mainly concerned with professional translation practices. However, involved in a variety

of cultural exchanges, translators and interpreters without formal training or institution-
ally sanctioned qualifications have been with us for ages. Şebnem Susam-Saraeva & Luis
Pérez-González (2012: 157) even argue that perhaps ‘it is professional –rather than non-
professional –translation that should be taken as the exception within the wider context
of translation’, constituting ‘merely one sub-type of translation, rather than the norm-
setting, prototypical form’. The scale and diversity of non-professional translation activ-
ities seem to indicate that perceiving translation as a predominantly professional practice
may be indeed too narrow. The ability to translate rather appears to be a long-standing
and deeply ingrained aspect of human activity that surfaces in case of necessity and in
favourable conditions, such as those offered by technology and new media.
Depending on the context, agenda and research perspective, non-professional transla-
tion has been referred to with different names by translation scholars. This ‘terminological
ambiguity’ is mentioned by Minako O’Hagan (2011: 11), who points to such terms as
community translation, translation crowdsourcing, user-generated translation and collab-
orative translation. What these labels all have in common is that they refer to ‘translation
performed voluntarily by internet users and (…) usually produced in some form of collab-
oration often on specific platforms by a group of people forming an online community’
(2011: 14). Hence, O’Hagan’s preferred term is community translation. Maeve Olohan
(2013) and Anthony Pym (2011: 5) prefer the term volunteer translation, which emphasizes
the willingness to perform translation tasks by those who are sufficiently motivated
to devote their free time and creative energies to translation without remuneration by
choice. Other names used to refer to non-professional translation practices include ama-
teur translation, pro bono translation, social translation, activist translation, fan transla-
tion, pirate translation, wiki-translation, and more specific terms, such as fansubbing and
fandubbing (the creation of subtitles and dubbing by fans), romhacking (the translation
of video games) and scanlating (the translation of comics). Depending on the context,
these terms either draw attention to the type of material that is translated or metonymic-
ally refer to various aspects of translation activity. In the world of interpreting, there exist
still other terms, such as natural translation, introduced by Brian Harris (1976: 96) to
denote ‘the translation done in everyday circumstances by bilinguals who have no special
training for it’, ad-hoc interpreting or child language brokering. These labels and terms
are not merely indicative of diverse agendas and research perspectives but also ‘serve as
a powerful reminder of the fact that non-professional translation and interpreting are
as widely established and diversified, if not more so, than professional translation and
interpreting’ (Susam-Saraeva & Pérez-González 2012: 157).
The terms interchangeably used in this chapter include non-professional translation,
in line with Susam-Saraeva & Pérez-González (2012), volunteer translation, in line with
Olohan (2013), and fan translation, in reference to translation initiatives of fandom
members. As noted by Rachele Antonini et al. (2017: 7), unlike the word ‘unprofessional’,
‘non-professional’ concentrates on ‘who’ rather than on ‘how’. Rather than drawing
attention to the supposed lack of translation skills or the allegedly low quality of the
translated product, it draws attention to a socio-cultural positioning of translators who
have not received institutionally sanctioned qualifications. Volunteer translation, defined
by Olohan (2013: 3) as ‘translation conducted by people exercising their free will to per-
form translation work which is not remunerated, which is formally organized and for the
benefit of others’, also adequately describes the nature of many translation projects. It is
433
Michał Borodo
even broader in scope than non-professional translation as it additionally encompasses

translators with professional background and formal training who may decide to willingly
participate in unpaid collaborative translation activities.
In their cutting-edge edited volume, Susam-Saraeva & Pérez-González (2012: 152) dis-
tinguish such types of non-professional translation and interpreting as: (1) civic involve-
ment in the public sphere and services in the face of the declining financial commitment
of the state, (2) engagement in the re-structuring of the media and publishing sector in
contemporary digital culture, and (3) non-professional mediation related to migration,
resettlement and displacement. In Borodo (2021), I distinguish three categories of non-
professional translation depending on the party initiating the translation process and
the nature of the translated product. These types include grass-roots entertainment-
oriented projects (translations performed by fans, i.e. scanlations or fansubs), top-down
crowdsourcing enterprises (largely carried out by ‘the internet crowd’ but initiated by
a company or organization, i.e. the translation of Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, TED
or Wikipedia) and grass-roots social activist initiatives (of various alterglobalization
or anti-military translation communities). The present chapter explores in more detail
three media-based types of non-professional translation, concentrating on translating
fansubbers, activists and harrypotterians. Yet, before focusing on these specific areas,
it is worth reflecting on the ways in which non-professional translation proliferates in
the media.
How is non-professional translation related to the media?

Historically, what is new in the current phase of the development of non-professional
translation is that it has been materially facilitated by the internet –a mass medium of
broadcasting and communication also offering widely and easily accessible technological
tools, infrastructure and distribution channels in the context of Web 2.0. Internet users
are not merely recipients of content in the spheres of information or entertainment, but
generate such content in the form of news stories, videos, book reviews, blogs, encyclo-
paedic entries, etc., which successfully compete with the more traditional media, means
of communication and sources of knowledge, such as newspaper opinion columns,
professional television programmes or printed encyclopaedias. Involved in participa-
tory digital media culture, viewers refuse to remain ‘at the very end of the production
chain’ (Bold 2011: 1) and directly intervene in the media landscape, for example, through
alternative forms of mediation of television entertainment in opposition to the offi-
cially released translated versions of their favourite shows (Casarini 2014). Volunteers
have thus taken over some of the tasks previously performed by professionals and are
actively engaged in co-creating the Web, which may be perceived as a promising stage
in the evolution of the internet (O’Reilly 2005), or as an invasion of amateurs making
inroads into the territories traditionally dominated by professionals (Keen 2007). For
non-professional translators, the Web also constitutes an endless resource of content and
tools and a dynamically evolving infrastructure which makes their work possible –it is a
source of media products and texts to translate, a platform offering various types of soft-
ware and machine translation services, a space for sharing and collaboration, an envir-
onment for hosting websites and a highly efficient distribution network. In this sense, the
global medium of the internet allows and furthers the proliferation of non-professional
translation.
434
From a global perspective, internet users’ involvement in the digital media culture may
be understood in terms of interconnectedness, networks and flows (Held et al. 2004: 16),
which influences the mechanisms of interaction, production, mediation, distribution and
power. Global flows are observable in the realm of media entertainment, information,
software, bestselling books, calls for action or political manifestos occurring in what
Arjun Appadurai (1990) refers to as mediascapes, ideoscapes and technoscapes, whereas
all-pervasive and ever-expanding networks have been famously defined by Manuel Castells
(2000: 500) as ‘the new social morphology of our societies’. This all happens in a situ-
ation when in recent decades we have come to interact endlessly and automatically with
the media, and where computer-mediated communication pertains to practically every
domain of life. Characterized by multi-faceted decentralization, flexibility and pervasive-
ness (2000: 385), the internet networks have led to the formation of multiple new virtual
zones of contact. As observed by Castells (2000: 402), ‘[t]‌he unifying cultural power of
mass television […] is now replaced by a socially stratified differentiation, leading to the
coexistence of a customized mass media culture and an interactive electronic communi-
cation network of self-selected communities’. Such self-selected communities can also be
discerned among non-professional translators, who, grouped around shared interests and
values, are capable of taking collective action. Organized into technologically advanced
networks, they respond to the globally circulating content, facilitating and amplifying,
but also remoulding and redirecting cultural and informational flows and generating their
own materials.
Generating such materials, however, may be seen as problematic from the perspec-
tive of professional translators and copyright holders. The translation industry has been
so far characterized by a hierarchical model ‘based on clear-cut division between the
commissioning and translating agents, with the former –whether individual or corporate
clients, political or religious institutions, publishers or media –acting as initiators of the
translation process’ (Susam-Saraeva & Pérez-González 2012: 151). It is the commissioners
and patrons of translation who have traditionally decided about the issues of selection
and distribution while the professional translators have carried out the translation pro-
cess. Networking volunteer translators undermine this model and the logic of commercial
mechanisms of production and distribution. By facilitating access to globally circulating
television programmes, foreign films or Harry Potter books for various local audiences,
they can bypass copyright holders and replace professional translators, remoulding and
redirecting global cultural flows of texts and media products.
Many non-professional translation enterprises are facilitated by crowdsourcing and
social networking. With regard to crowdsourcing, Wikipedians, for example, may submit
their translations of articles available in other language versions of the online encyclo-
paedia which are then collectively scrutinized by other Wikipedians (McDonough
Dolmaya 2014), whereas Facebook and Twitter users may be first asked to submit their
translations of various language items from the original sites and then collectively vote
for the best translation choices (Kincaid 2009; Parfeni 2011). As noted by Pym (2011), the
advantage of such crowdsourcing projects is that, rather than being solved in the mind
of a single translator, translation problems are ‘socialized’ and solved in the process of
more open decision-making by users who ‘can judge better than any external expert the
appropriate balance of brevity and familiarity for this particular social network’. On a
less positive note, such actions might have a detrimental effect on the translation pro-
fession –according to David Katan, ‘[i]‌f we move to the year 2025 (or thereabouts), the
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Michał Borodo
Google Translator apps will have improved to the extent that technical, low-risk, low
ambiguity, translating and interpreting can be safely delivered with minimal human inter-
vention’ and ‘[c]rowd-sourcing will have increased in both quantity and quality so that
most social media and much audiovisual translation will bypass the professional’ (Katan
2015: 12). Just like crowdsourcing, social networking may take different forms in the con-
text of media entertainment and social activism, with like-minded, tech-savvy internet
users either forming stable structures where members adopt a variety of roles, or short-
lived virtual communities, when they spontaneously connect together to only briefly work
on a project united by a common goal or a cause. Examples of such initiatives of non-
professionals will be discussed in more detail below.
Fansubbers
Back in 2006, Jorge Díaz Cintas and Pablo Muñoz Sánchez referred to fansubbing as ‘the
most important manifestation of fan translation’ which ‘turned into a mass social phenom-
enon on the internet, as proved by the vast virtual community surrounding them such as
websites, chat rooms, and forums’ (2006: 37–38). This still holds true today but fansubbing
has since then turned into an even more diverse territory, encompassing various projects
and practices of enthusiasts of Japanese anime, American television series or Asian tele-
vision dramas. Fansubbers’ activities are based on collaboration and networking and they
can perform a variety of roles within a group they belong to, being responsible for linguistic
transfer, quality assurance, administrative duties, graphic and technical issues, and distri-
bution. They can adopt the roles of ‘raw’ providers, translators, timers, typesetters, editors,
proofreaders, encoders (Díaz Cintas & Muñoz Sánchez 2006: 38–39), channel managers
(responsible for unlocking and closing episodes for translators and managing the team),
‘forumers’ (contributing and monitoring comments and posts), ‘segmenters’ (breaking
videos into segments, a prerequisite for creating subtitles) and ‘subbers’ (responsible for
translation ‘proper’) (Dwyer 2012: 222). Fansubbers may have different motivations for
joining volunteer translation communities, such as: filling the gap on the audiovisual
market by translating the titles which are overlooked or unlikely to be released officially,
pursuing a creative pastime, getting involved in the activities of a fandom, becoming part
of a vibrant online community, developing language and technological skills, and trans-
lating media products restricted to commercial platforms in order to make them access-
ible for more viewers for free or when there is a perceived delay between the original and
the translated media product official release dates. In the current age of digital media
technology, networking and increased consciousness of contemporary global culture this
perceived delay may be a very subjective matter. US television series, by far the most
popular foreign media products among non-anime fansubbers, are often subtitled within
24 hours of the original episode’s airing in North America (Dwyer 2019: 440).
It is worth exploring the relationship between volunteer translators’ practices and the
professional world, as one can point to both similarities and points of tension here. For
example, analysing the Italian fansubbing scene, Luca Barra (2009: 518, 521) observes
that aiming to optimize and effectively manage their work, fansubbers reached a semi-
professional level of organization, characterized by a hierarchical structure within a com-
munity based on a number of contributions and seniority, ‘fan career’ opportunities and a
recruitment process for new members, all of which mirror the practices of the professional
world. Moreover, according to Barra (2009: 519), the standard of volunteer translations is
sometimes comparable to that produced by professionals, although problems with quality
436
might also happen, especially given that, as noted above, fansubbers often produce the
subs fairly quickly and the translation may be released on the next day after the original
airing of a US programme (2009: 520). On the other hand, making inroads into the terri-
tories traditionally occupied by professionals, fansubbers’ actions may interfere with the
interests of copyright holders, as they intervene ‘in the traditional dynamics of the audio-
visual industry by acting as self-appointed translation commissioners’ (Pérez-González
2007: 265). As noted by Łukasz Bogucki (2009: 49), they also ‘rarely work with classics,
as the intention behind their work is to make local viewers familiar with recent film
productions’, which may have a detrimental impact on official film distribution. In some
cases, distributors and copyright holders may even decide to take legal action against trans-
lating volunteers, although the relationship between copyright holders and fansubbers
does not necessarily lead to a conflict of interests. Firstly, some fansubbers will stop dis-
tributing their translations once it has been announced that officially licensed translations
will appear on the market (Díaz Cintas & Muñoz Sánchez 2006: 44). Secondly, unofficial
versions may initially increase the popularity of a particular title before it is officially
released and for this reason fan translators may be tolerated for the long-term benefit of
wider dissemination of some media products (O’Hagan 2009: 101).
Translations produced by volunteer translators may differ from those prepared
by professionals, with Tessa Dwyer (2012: 226) pointing to four characteristic traits
distinguishing anime fansubbers’ translation practices, which include (a) formal innov-
ation, (b) the use of a foreignization strategy, (c) collaborative methods and (d) genre
expertise. Unlike professional subtitles, fansubs tend to be more experimental and inter-
ventionist, using more expressive means of mediation. Whereas professional audiovisual
translators have as a rule been external to their target audience, suppressing their visi-
bility in compliance with professional standards, in fansubbing the roles of the viewer,
virtual community/fandom member and self-appointed mediator merge. Being an integral
part of the community for which they translate, often better acquainted with the speci-
ficity of a given genre or media product, and unconstrained by professional standards,
fansubbers engage in dialogue with other community members and more boldly intervene
in translated content. For example, they may introduce different font types within the
same programme, use colours to differentiate between characters, insert headnotes at the
top of the screen, create subtitles longer than two lines or a karaoke effect for opening
and ending songs (Díaz Cintas & Muñoz Sánchez 2006: 47). Fansubbers may also produce
more ‘personalized’ subtitles, for example, with characteristic phrases that will be recog-
nizable for a fan community, a dedication or a signature introduced into their translations
(Barra 2009: 519–520). They may even produce highly sophisticated, stylized subtitles that
in terms of colour, font and positioning on the screen blend with and interact with the
visual of a particular scene (Pérez-González 2012a: 347). Pérez-González (2012b) writes
in this context of the ‘co-creation’ paradigm in which consumers of media participate as
co-producers of transmitted media content. He distinguishes between what he refers to as
more conservative, self-effacing, ‘industrial subtitling’ and ‘transformative subtitling’, the
latter more creative, expressive, experimental and drawing attention to the act of transla-
tion and mediation.
Another distinguishing feature of anime-related fansubbing is subbers’ preference for a
foreignizing translation strategy. According to Díaz Cintas & Muñoz Sánchez (2006: 46) ‘it
seems safe to assume that consumers of fansubs are generally exposed to more foreign cul-
tural idiosyncrasies than other viewers’. This may be done by preserving family surnames
rather than first names as forms of address, signalling social distance with the use of
437
Michał Borodo
such suffixes as ‘-sensei’ (for a teacher) or ‘-kun’ (for a boy) or inserting notes and glosses
explaining cultural referents at the top of the screen (ibid.). Through such practices, fan
translators visibly stamp their presence on the translated text and make themselves dis-
tinct from professional translators, who by definition remain invisible and for whom ‘one
of the golden rules has always been that the best subtitles are those that pass unnoticed to
the viewer’ (ibid.). The translator visibility is also achieved through the use of headnotes,
which may contribute to a disturbing and challenging viewing experience. As noted by
Pérez-González (2012a: 344), they ‘open up a new space for the interaction between the
translator and the viewer of the audiovisual text in question, where the former gains max-
imum visibility’. On the other hand, the type of the adopted translation strategy seems to
be dependent on the genre of the translated media product. Barra (2009: 519), for example,
distinguished between the literal, ‘loyal’ and ‘purist’ approaches of Italian science-fiction
fan translators, making use of various explanatory comments, and the more free, ‘playful’
and ‘lighthearted’ culturally assimilative approaches of fansubbers of American sitcoms.
Fan translations of anime mentioned above constitute only one existing model of
fansubbing, however. An alternative model is examined by Dwyer (2012) in her study of
Viki, a crowdsourcing-based internet platform offering access to media content subtitled
by an amateur community of thousands of volunteer fan translators in over 200 languages.
Dwyer (2012: 225) convincingly demonstrates that ‘to equate fansubbing exclusively with
anime subculture, media fandom or a not-for-profit mindset ultimately proves too rigid’,
calling for a broader perspective on the fansubbing scene within translation studies. The
subtitled media content that dominates on the Viki platform are so-called K-dramas,
that is, Korean television dramas, but it also includes mainland Chinese, Taiwanese and
Japanese films and television series. This is a very different kind of translating practice,
running counter to much research concerning non-professional subtitling. Thanks to the
website’s dedicated software, Viki members can collaboratively create subtitles in a wiki
format in real-time based on the successive improvements’ of the work of previous viewers.
It is work-in-progress –even several hundred Viki viewers can participate in creating a
fansub of one episode of a TV series (2012: 218). Another distinguishing feature of Viki is
the site’s streaming format of subtitled content delivery –unlike in the case of many other
fansubbing enterprises, Viki translations cannot be downloaded (2012: 222). Unlike much
of foreignizing and experimental anime fansubbing, Viki content is also mediated with the
use of conventional subtitling methods –the default, standard subtitles are displayed at
the bottom of the screen against a transparent background in pale white font. The add-
itional options do allow for some experimentation on part of the viewer, however, such as
using a different font type, colour, size, or background colour.3
What differentiates Viki from other fansubbing enterprises is its commercial nature –more
specifically, the subtitles are created by Viki members for free but the company monetizes
media content, receiving revenue from adverts and viewer subscriptions, which raises some
ethical questions. Depending on the perspective adopted, this may be viewed as a form of
empowerment, allowing fans to get involved in the popularization of their favourite media
entertainment, or as a form of exploitation of free labour. Considering this, one may ask
after Dwyer (2016, unpaginated): ‘So, is this fan translation or does it constitute corporate
crowdsourcing’ comparable to that implemented by Facebook or Twitter to quickly obtain
user-generated translations? According to Dwyer (ibid.) it is a hybrid of both:
It is commercial, harnessing the free labour of fans to aggressively mine new revenue
streams, yet it remains a community nevertheless, one powered by fans and their love of
438
TV series and the like. It solicits translation from the crowd yet offers multiple forums
for community discussion and engagement, and encourages users to suggest new con-
tent, advocate for subtitles in their own language and self-organise subbing groups.
While Viki members are not paid for their work, they can earn perks for their
contributions. For specific numbers of user-generated subtitles or segments, they can
achieve the status of ‘Qualified Contributors’ with different levels of specialization,
which translates into access to ad-free, HD and exclusive media content, special prizes,
badges on profile pages and official certificates from Viki. This, by the way, again
mirrors the practices found in the professional world, for example, the certification
programmes and badges offered by multinational translation companies such as SDL.
In 2013, the Viki platform was purchased by the Japanese e-commerce giant Rakuten,
reportedly for $200 million (Shu 2013), and the year after the acquisition the number
of monthly active users grew from 22 million to 35 million users –not only in Asia
but Europe and Latin America which at the time made up 40 per cent of the traffic
(Corbin 2015). As a combination of a digital media distribution network and a social
media network, Viki, a global streaming platform with crowdsourced subtitles, cur-
rently remains one of the most noteworthy examples of fansubbing, and, as observed
by Dwyer (2016, unpaginated), the site’s ‘three core ingredients (fans, subtitles and
streaming) are currently situated at the forefront of changes affecting the media indus-
tries as a whole, not just media translation’.
Activist translators
Despite the ‘inherent slipperiness’ of the notion of activism, Mona Baker observes that
(2019: 453), ‘both activists and scholars tend to associate the concept with anti-establishment
initiatives, and often with specific issues that exceed national and social boundaries’. With
their diverse socio-political agendas, these initiatives challenge established, mainstream
values, promote alternative viewpoints and advocate changes in society. The relation-
ship between activism and translation can take different forms and may include activist
translators who are a part of or identify with the translation profession as well as activists
who may become involved in translation activities but who nevertheless perceive them-
selves as journalists, editors or social activists in the first place rather than professional
translators (Guo 2008: 10–11). With volunteer translators on stage, the field is even more
heterogeneous. For example, some individuals may be part of a stable virtual network
involved in translation projects on a permanent basis, while others may become spontan-
eously involved in only a brief episode of translation activity that happens to be concurrent
with their socio-political views. Pérez-González (2010) even uses the term ‘non-translators’,
discussing the actions of politically engaged activists only fleetingly bounding together to
translate on an ad hoc basis but not forming an established community of translators.
If we adopt a broad definition of activism, translating volunteers may be involved
in a variety of high-risk to low-risk translation initiatives. Consider, as an example of
involvement in a high-risk situation the following account of Samah Selim, a member of
Mosireen, a collective participating in the production, translation and circulation of docu-
mentary video clips during the Egyptian Revolution of 2011 (as cited in Baker 2016: 5):
In the heat of the battles, many of which lasted for days, new videos would be
uploaded to Youtube by the Mosireen filmmakers and sent on via email link to the
439
Michał Borodo
translators’ network for immediate subtitling, sometimes as many as five or six a day.
I would often find myself rushing back from the fighting and tear gas to whichever
friend’s apartment I would be squatting in at the time to do a speedy subtitling job on
a video document of the battle I had just left at the doorstep, with panicked people
coming and going in a steady buzz of TV, laptops, cell phones and frantic discussions
all around.
Political activists everywhere seek to undermine a political regime they consider unjust,
but it is different to do so in a totalitarian state or in a democratic one which guarantees
the human rights of activists. Thus amateur translators/journalists from Western countries
devoting their free time to the translation of web articles and blog entries foregrounding
the themes which are not covered in their respective target cultures may not risk much.
The latter, however, will also have their own socio-political goals and agendas stemming
from dissatisfaction and disagreement with mainstream values and dominant public dis-
course. Just like such forms of social activism as petitioning, letter writing or boycotting
a business or specific media, these initiatives are an expression of alternative viewpoints
and aim to make changes.
Activist translators differ with regard to the kind of mediated material and the type of
networks they can belong to. They can form a well-established community cooperating
on a number of projects on a regular basis. For example, in terms of its organizational
structure, the translation community within Global Voices, a citizen media platform fea-
turing articles on current events from around the world which tend to be neglected by
mainstream media, is referred to by Chris Salzberg (2008, unpaginated), as ‘a cluster of
satellite translation teams, each allocated a sub-domain of the main site’. According to
the project’s website, ‘Global Voices is an international and multilingual community of
bloggers, journalists, translators, academics, and human rights activists’ who, running the
site in over 50 languages, aim to ‘leverage the power of the internet to build understanding
across borders’ and it is emphasized that it is specifically ‘volunteer contributors’ who
are ‘the engine that makes Global Voices run’.4 Alternatively, volunteers can spontan-
eously connect among themselves to concentrate on a specific initiative that they may to
varying degrees associate with and then disband, possibly switching to other initiatives
of interest. Pérez-González (2010) refers to such fluid and ephemeral networks of like-
minded activists as ‘ad-hocracies’, illustrating the process of their collective involvement
in the discussion and mediation of a television interview –a potential challenge to the
dominant distribution networks. As observed by Pérez-González (2014: 209), such short-
lived, demand-driven, ‘non-linear models challenge and undermine the traditional organ-
ization of the media industry in the form of elite-controlled structures, where corporate
and institutional agents dictate the terms under which media content has been tradition-
ally produced, distributed and consumed’.
The most popular mode of audiovisual media translation in the context of social
activism seems to be subtitling. This is, first, because adding subtitles to a video on the
internet is cheap, easy and can be done relatively quickly, and second, because, unlike
dubbing and voice-over, it is more impersonal, not disclosing the identity of the voices
of mediators in high-risk situations (Baker 2019: 454). Subtitling activists can be very
proactive in selecting and shaping the stories which they circulate internationally. They
can translate their own material as well as subtitle content, such as a television documen-
tary, and then re-circulate it through social networking and video-sharing websites among
the audiences for whom the material was not originally intended, thus intervening in the
440
dynamics of international media networks (Pérez-González 2016). Empowered citizens

can also appropriate material by directly intervening in it through translation, openly and
subjectively articulating their criticism and political views in the subtitles added to a polit-
ical speech (Pérez-González 2013) or privilege one interlocutor over another in a subtitled
interview through the use of bracketing, a series of question marks and the positioning
of lines on the screen (Pérez-González 2014: 214). Just like fansubbers, and unlike profes-
sional audiovisual translators, ‘amateurs make their presence felt within the subtitles, now
turned into sites of narrative negotiation that allow for an ongoing co-construction of an
affinity space with online audiences’ (Pérez-González 2013: 169).
Harrypotterians
It is not only activists and fansubbers who may attempt to intervene in the dynamics of
global networks and flows. Two types of initiatives will be presented below with regard
to Harry Potter fans’ organized actions in Poland –one being a fairly diplomatic attempt
to exert influence on the publishing industry dictating the terms under which the series
was to be distributed, the other aiming to radically disrupt the commercial mechanism of
production and distribution by replacing professional mediators and bypassing copyright
holders. Both these initiatives are related to the fact that, since professional translators
of Harry Potter only received a volume for translation after the original had had its
Anglophone premiere, non-Anglophone fans would normally gain access to subsequent
volumes in their own languages months after the privileged English-speaking readership.
Disappointed with the prospect of having to wait for the Polish translation, and faced
with frustrating, unwanted spoilers, some Polish fans decided to give vent to their dissat-
isfaction, taking part in some translation-related initiatives. One of them, the so-called
Szmaragdowa Rewolucja [Emerald Revolution], its name referring to the colour of the
sixth volume’s cover (of the American version), ‘broke out’ in the summer of 2005 after
the publication of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince. It was the initiative of fans
who bombarded the Polish publisher Media Rodzina with emails, demanding that the
publisher take steps to make the book available in translation much sooner than officially
scheduled. The initiative received some publicity from Polish media, yet turned ineffective,
with the publisher sympathizing with fans but explaining that this was not feasible due
to the time required for translation and production. In November 2006, several months
before the publication of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, the final volume in the
series, another fan-organized action took place. Known as Harry Potter dla Wszystkich
[Harry Potter for Everyone], it was also referred to, through analogy with the 2005 initia-
tive, as the Second Emerald Revolution. This time the readers decided not to address the
Polish publisher but Bloomsbury and Scholastic, demanding, in a petition signed by 4,000
fans, that the volume be published in different languages simultaneously. The petition
highlighted the fact that non-Anglophone fans were treated by the publishers as a second-
rate readership and pointed to various negative consequences of the translated volume’s
late arrival in Poland, including the release of pirate translations, which, fans argued,
would be read ‘without scruples’, unless the publishing policy changed.5
Since these initiatives did not have the expected effect, some Polish fans adopted more
radical tactics, creating their own pirate translations and making them available online for
other fans for free. Tentative attempts of this kind took place in Poland in 2003, and then
in the summer of 2005, after the publication of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince,
when a group of fans under the banner of Armia Świstaka [Marmot’s Army] produced its
441
Michał Borodo
amateur translation only four weeks after the publication of the original (‘Od tłumaczy
sów kilka’ 2007). In 2007, the group translated volume seven, Harry Potter and the Deathly
Hallows, which had its Anglophone premiere on 21 July 2007. Consisting of 27 members (22
translators and five editors) the group managed to finalize the translation on 20 August 2007,
that is once again one month after the Anglophone premiere and five months before the
publication of the official Polish translation, which took place on 26 January 2008 (HPNews
website). The translation of the volume was a collaborative project –each translated chapter
was first checked by editors, then placed on the group’s internal forum for a day for other
translators to suggest potential changes, and only then placed, in instalments, on the group’s
website for other Polish fans (ibid.). Each instalment was posted with a brief comment from
the group’s leader, in which she also responded to various suggestions and comments sent
by other members of the Harry Potter fandom community concerning, among others, the
translation choices made by group members, fans’ alternative versions of some expressions,
translation errors, the translation of the title, etc. Some of these suggestions were taken into
account by amateur translators, and while the translation as a whole was produced by group
members themselves, there was an ongoing interaction with the larger fandom community
these translators were a part of (ibid.).
Such fan initiatives as the two Emerald Revolutions and fan-generated translations of
Harry Potter may be viewed as an attempt to accelerate and redirect global cultural flows
of a highly desirable text by networking fans in a situation when they are entitled to gain
access to the official translation long after the privileged Anglophone readers obtain access
to the original. One can draw an analogy with fansubbers here. When Dwyer (2019: 441)
comments on global language hierarchies and politics, she observes: ‘[w]‌hen fans demand
instant access to the latest episode of an imported television series, they assert their rights as
global citizens or “netizens”, with speed symbolizing a measure of equality’. Polish Harry
Potter fans’ actions may also be viewed as an attempt to assert their rights as netizens and
as a form of local protest against being treated as a ‘second-rate readership’ by the global
publishing industry. Non-professional Harry Potter translators threw down the gauntlet
to the professionals, directly competing with them, because the professional world did not
meet their expectations. Unsurprisingly, the unofficial translations attracted the attention
of the Polish publisher, who dismissed such enterprises as violation of copyright, claiming
that fans illegally made use of the universe created by the original author and the Polish
translator, Andrzej Polkowski. To counter non- professional translators, the publisher
monitored the internet, forcing the closure of the websites where the translations were
available for download, although no punitive measures were taken against the translators.
Conclusion
Concentrating on the field of non-professional translation and the media, this chapter
has been an attempt to demonstrate its scale, nature and to understand its underlying
mechanisms and heterogeneity. The fansubbing enterprises, social activist initiatives and
Harry Potter projects discussed in this chapter attest to this heterogeneity, being both
non-for-profit and profit-based, both top-down and bottom-up, in conflict and in sym-
biosis with the professional world. What they have in common is that they proliferate as
technologically advanced communities facilitating and amplifying, but also remoulding
and redirecting cultural and informational flows of globally circulating media content.
They thus undermine the logic of commercial mechanisms of production, selection and
distribution, changing our traditional understanding of the media –no longer centralized,
442
state-owned and one-directional, as in the past, and not simply decentralized, segmented,
customized and controlled by media conglomerates, but increasingly interactive and
multidirectional, shaped and co-created by its audiences.
Further reading
• Baker, M. (2016) ‘The prefigurative politics of translation in place-based movements of
protest: subtitling in the Egyptian Revolution’, The Translator, 22(1), pp. 1–21.
An in-depth analysis of volunteer subtitling undertaken by social activist collectives

documenting the Egyptian Revolution of 2011.
• Dwyer, T. (2012) ‘Fansub dreaming on ViKi: “Don’t just watch but help when you are
free” ’, The Translator, 18(2), pp. 217–243.
A study focusing on a global streaming platform with crowdsourced subtitles ViKi,

with a comprehensive discussion of the scale and heterogeneity of the international
fansubbing scene.
• Susam-Saraeva, Ş. & Pérez-González, L. (2012) ‘Non-professionals translating and

interpreting: participatory and engaged perspectives’, The Translator 18(2), pp. 149–165.
An analysis of non-professional translation and interpreting in today’s networked society,

with an insightful introduction byŞebnem Susam-Saraeva and Luis Pérez-González.
Notes
1 www.viki.com/press
2 www.mosireen.com
3 www.viki.com/
4 https://globalvoices.org/about/
5 http://hpnews.pl
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ticipatory and engaged perspectives’, The Translator, 18(2), pp. 149–165.
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28
Alternative journalism
and translation
Marlie van Rooyen
Introduction
Alternative journalism is a ‘fluid concept’ (Bekken 2008: 162) that serves as ‘a comparative
and a broader term’ (Atton & Hamilton 2008: 2) to encompass a variety of journalistic
practices that are in opposition or at least different to those practised in dominant and
mainstream media. These practices include reporting on news and real-life events through
participation in a non-professional and non-profit setting (Harcup 2013: 12). Alternative
journalists seek to select and cover different stories according to different news values, as
well as to provide visibility to different sources and voices (Harcup 2013: 12). As a result,
alternative journalism is most often defined in terms of what it is not and thus, how it
differs from dominant media practices (Atton 2009: 265).
The history of alternative journalism shows an inherent and strong connection with
the grassroots (Bekken 2008: 163). This form of journalism came to the fore in ‘the under-
ground press of the 1960s, the punk fanzines of the 1970s and the direct-action papers of
the 1990s’ (Atton 2002: 1). Other forms of media include newspapers, magazines, radio,
television, internet blogs, pamphlets, fanzines, street art and street theatre and music
(Atton 2007: 18). However, the medium or format is not necessarily a distinguishing factor
when defining alternative journalism, although some formats have been more prevalent
than others, with the internet probably being the most popular medium over the past few
decades (Bekken 2008: 165). The actors involved in performing alternative journalism
include protestors, nonconformists and members of peripheral political organizations
(Atton 2011: 15).
Alternative journalism often equates to media practices referred to as citizen jour-
nalism, citizens’ media, or radical, underground, independent, autonomous, collaborative,
convergent, activist, advocacy, democratic, emancipatory, grassroots, social movement,
tactical, participatory or community-based journalism (Atton 2007; Atton 2015; Atton
& Hamilton 2008; Bekken 2008; Dowmunt & Coyer 2007; Mowbray 2015). Furthermore,
the practices of alternative journalism are defined differently in different contexts. To illus-
trate, the progressive-alternative press gave voice to the realities of people at grassroots level
in South Africa (Wigston 2007: 42). In the Middle East, for example, messages by a single
446 DOI: 10.4324/9781003221678-33

Alternative journalism and translation
citizen journalist could be posted and reposted by other activists on different platforms,
for example blogs, Facebook pages and Twitter (Radsch 2011: 63). These messages were
not only in Arabic, but also ‘translated into other languages’ (Radsch 2011: 63).
In 2001, Rodríguez hinted towards the value of language in alternative media, saying
that minority languages should be included in public discourses (Rodríguez 2001: 4). As
further illustration of the importance of language and inevitable translation, Bekken
(2008: 163), highlights the relevance of translation in the distribution of news via news
agencies, such as the Pacific News Service (PNS), established during the Vietnam War.
The agency later became known as New America Media and was responsible for the syn-
dication and translation of news and information included in various newspapers with an
ethnic origin (Bekken 2008: 163).
References to translation in alternative journalism are still very scarce. In this chapter,
however, we put forward that translation is omnipresent in alternative journalism and
cannot be ignored. The chapter is structured as follows: first, a presentation of theor-
etical approaches to the development of alternative journalism; second, an overview of
different forms of alternative journalism; third, an overview of research on the intersec-
tion between translation and alternative journalism; and, in conclusion, a brief look at
possible future research.
Alternative journalism and its media

Over the past two decades, there has been a considerable growth in the body of knowledge
on alternative journalism and the inclusion thereof in academic programmes across the
world (Mowbray 2015: 21). Chris Atton (2002: 8) is at the forefront of this trend, seeking
to offer a theoretical framework that makes provisions not only for political and resistance
media, but also a framework for literary and creative media, for example film, music, zines
and electronic communication. Atton prefers the term ‘alternative journalism’ because it
is more inclusive (2013: xi) and emphasizes that this does not imply that he denies John
Downing’s (2001) notion of ‘radical media’ or Clemencia Rodríguez’s (2001) ‘citizens’
media’.
Alternative journalism can be distinguished in terms of the prominence of a number
of practices that share a certain view of journalism (Atton & Hamilton 2008: 1). These
journalistic practices are prevalent in multiple hybrid ways and in specific contexts (Atton
2003: 269). Alternative journalistic organizations are not hierarchical and vertical, but
rather horizontal and reciprocal. As a result, the interactions between the sender (writer)
and receiver (reader/ listener) have become blurred making it difficult to distinguish
between news reports and the role-players on grassroots level (Atton 2003: 269). It is at
this point where the focus turns to the importance of participation and the role of the
participant.
In mainstream media, the most socially and politically influential individuals have
been the main contributors to the news. For example, the argument is that mainstream
media would rather contact a university professor to comment on the outcome of a
national election than citizens affected by the results of the election; or mainstream media
interviewing a minister of education about the effect of Covid-19 on school curricula
rather than the teachers who are responsible for teaching the material. In alternative jour-
nalism, however, ordinary people and citizens become the spokespeople and authoritative
voices for communities (Atton 2015: 1). In other words, readers and listeners participate
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Marlie van Rooyen
and engage in alternative media to ensure that their voices are heard (Couldry 2015: 45). It
is through alternative journalism that citizens as members of society get a ‘voice’ that they
otherwise would not have had –in fact, they become the ‘expert voices’ (Atton 2009: 268).
Hence, audience members, whether readers, viewers or listeners, have an alternative public
space to become involved in and debate politically and socially relevant topics (Atton
2002: 35). Community media journalists also engage from the bottom-up with the aim to
address the void left by the dominant media (Forde 2009: 5).
Alternative journalism is practiced through different forms of media, including, but
not limited to, local alternative media, fanzine journalisms, online newsletters, news
websites, blogs and independent news agencies or news companies. In South Africa, for
example, community media was viewed as the ultimate definition of ‘alternative media’
(Hyde-Clarke 2010: 4). Local alternative media, such as community radio in South Africa
became the ‘voice of the oppressed’ (Mhlanga 2010: 156) and the ‘people’s media’ (Bosch
2010: 141).
The term fanzine, in essence, refers to a form of journalism where self-publication
is a notable characteristic (Atton 2002: 55). The editorial team usually consists of one
editor and a limited group of contributors who would simultaneously be involved in all
aspects of production, such as writing, typing up, layout, printing, dissemination of the
publication and financial matters (Atton 2002: 55). According to Atton, fanzine jour-
nalism has grown from the need to include topics of interest such as football, film, comics
and popular television series that are not included in mainstream publications (Atton
2009: 270). In comparison to local alternative media, fanzine journalism can be shared
beyond geographical borders to serve a dedicated readership (Atton 2009: 271).
Another major contributor in terms of alternative journalism are weekly newsletters,
such as SchNEWS. Initially SchNEWS appeared in A4-format on a weekly basis (Weekly
SchNEWS 2014) and was eventually also published on a news website. SchNEWS, was
established in Brighton in 1994 (Weekly SchNEWS 2014), and by 2005 the publication was
distributing information to more than 800 grassroots organizations (Weekly SchNEWS
2006). The newsletter distributed news service emails across the globe with some of these
publications translated into a number of languages, including the odd site in Russian
(Weekly SchNEWS 2006).
The internet allows for cost-effective and time-efficient distribution of alternative
news (Bekken 2008: 165). A prominent example is Indymedia (or Global Network of
Independent Media Centres), created in 1999 in Seattle, US to cover the World Trade
Organization protests at the time (Indymedia, 2020). The aim was to establish an online
network that could distribute news about topical issues on grassroots level as events
unfolded, whether being protests or violence (Indybay 2020). Indymedia are available
in more than 50 countries with about 200 autonomous media organizations (Bekken
2008: 164), providing material in almost 30 different languages (Pickard 2012: 1).
The online platform of blogs echoes the contributions found in fanzines that focus
on alternative journalism on a local level (Atton 2009: 271). Blogs include the personal
accounts of professional journalists, but also alternative opinion pieces and first-hand
accounts of the normal citizenry (Atton 2009: 271). Other forms of social media, such
as Facebook and Twitter have become platforms to distribute news –both mainstream
and alternative. In 2019, Facebook added a new News Tab that provided access to user-
specific news according to topic or publication (Hutchinson 2019). Facebook gathers
news from what they argue to be reputable news sources, fact-checked for misinforma-
tion, including local voices. To curb the spread of misinformation (or fake news) via
448
social media, Facebook launched a third-party fact-checking program in 2016 (Facebook

Journalism Project 2020). A network of certified fact-checkers scrutinize the uploaded
material. Although Facebook does not indicate the list of news sources included on its
News Tab, they do emphasize that local news companies should ensure the authenticity of
their content, but simultaneously provide ordinary people the opportunity to share infor-
mation (Facebook Journalism Project 2020).
The alternative news agency, Inter Press Service, was established in 1964 as an agency
with the mission to provide ‘a voice to the voiceless’ focused on ‘development, global-
ization, human rights and the environment’ (IPS 2020). The agency’s objectives include
providing access to marginalized news and content, building capacity and empowering
journalists, and disseminating information between civil society policy-makers, donors
and individual readers. According to Joye (2009: 15), IPS forms part of a broader net-
work of non-governmental organizations engaged in international concerns regarding
development.
IPS works closely with independent news organizations, such as Al-Jazeera (2020).
Funded by the Qatari government, Al-Jazeera was established in 1996 to provide an
alternative perspective to television stations at the time in the Arab world (El-Nawawy
& Iskandar 2003: 22). Al-Jazeera was, for example, the only news organization that
broadcast live footage of the Al-Qaeda leader, Osama bin Laden in October 2001 shortly
after the first US attacks on Afghanistan (El-Nawawy & Iskandar 2003: 21). US media
houses would broadcast the visuals of Al-Jazeera with their own translations of political
speeches (El-Nawawy & Iskandar 2003: 22), but they were soon criticized for the very
poor translations of the Arabic (ibid., 147). In 2003, Al-Jazeera launched an English-
language website for its Western audiences. The website was followed by the establishment
of Al-Jazeera English in 2006 –an English language news channel. Al-Jazeera English is
in a complicated position where it is viewed as mainstream in some parts of the world, but
as alternative by others (Figenschou 2011: 355). This is an example of a news organization
being on the continuum between alternative and mainstream media where the position
will depend of its context and distribution. Al-Jazeera illustrates that alternative news
outlets come in different forms, whether commercial or non-profit (Forde 2009: 3). In add-
ition, it exemplifies that the terms used to describe this form of media often overlap, for
example ‘alternative, independent and radical media outlets as well as community media
outlets’ (Forde 2009: 3).
Translation in alternative journalism

Over the past two decades, there have been a significant number of research outputs within
the discipline of translation studies on news translation, mostly exploring mainstream
media. Key studies presenting literature reviews on journalistic translation research include
the works by van Doorslaer (2010), Holland (2013), Valdeón (2015; 2020) and Davier
(2019). In his 2015 overview of journalistic translation research, Valdeón refers to the
limited research on translation of alternative news media (2015: 644). In turn, Hernández
Guerrero (2017: 295) states that there is a need to investigate translation activities and
practices of emerging media forms, such as new independent media on the internet or any
form of media based on digital technologies and interactive components. According to
Hernández Guerrero (2017: 295), only a limited number of scholars investigate transla-
tion in alternative journalism and those that do mostly focus on translation in relation to
activism and volunteerism.
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Marlie van Rooyen
There are, however, a number of research projects related to convergence in jour-

nalism, online media, social media and new media (Valdeón 2020: 7), but these studies
are not necessarily examples of investigations into the translation of alternative journal-
istic practices. The question is whether they should be included in a discussion of trans-
lation practices in alternative news media. Acknowledging its inherently fuzzy borders,
we limit the discussion to research focused on alternative journalistic practices where the
author clearly indicates the opposition to mainstream journalism. The discussion includes
examples from literature investigating the role of translation in alternative news agencies,
independent online news sites, foreign media translation agencies, blogs and multilingual
community journalism.
In the 2009 seminal work on news translation, Bielsa and Bassnett investigated transla-
tion at global news agencies, such as Agence France-Presse and Inter Press Service. They
recognized the importance of alternative news agencies, defined as entities that differ from
dominant news models in terms of purpose and functions (Bielsa & Bassnett 2009: 50). The
case of IPS is particularly interesting due to its view of language and translation, because
it acknowledges smaller languages that facilitate interaction between different groups of
people (Bielsa & Bassnett 2009: 50). The overall approach to news coverage differs between
the dominant and alternative model, with IPS not being in competition with larger media
organizations and rather offering additional content (Bielsa & Bassnett 2009: 51). Bassnett
and Bielsa provide descriptions of the day-to-day activities of journalists (translators) at
both AFP and IPS. In the dominant model, journalists, who are not specifically trained as
translators, produce translations and thus translation activities are subsumed within the
news production process (Bielsa & Bassnett 2009: 81). At IPS, however, the translation pro-
cess is markedly different, particularly with reference to what is referred to as ‘the hybrid
figure of the translator-editor’ (Bielsa & Bassnett 2009: 82).
In 2004, Russian news was dominated by a series of events following a school hostage
situation in Beslan. Harding examines the journalistic and translation practices at two
autonomous online media websites, namely Kavkazcenter and Caucasian Knot (Harding
2012: 339–340). Both platforms view themselves as an alternative to the dominant media
outlets and specifically the Russian government (Harding 2011: 43). News is published
in more than one language and therefore the inevitable need for translation emerges
(Harding 2011: 43). Harding followed a social narrative approach to identify the features
of reporting by the alternative online sites versus the reporting by the mainstream media
(Harding 2012: 340). Her aim was to establish if these two non-professional online sites
were voicing alternative narratives to the dominant government and mainstream media
outlet, RIA-Novosti (Harding 2012: 348). In the case of Kavkazcenter, the autonomous
online website challenged the government’s official narratives to create an alternative per-
spective on the events (Harding 2012: 350). Harding’s analysis showed that the English
translations of Kavkazcenter’s texts do not have any evidence of a third-person narrator
with its witty and bitter tone that is characteristic of the Russian narrative (Harding
2012: 352). Thus, Kavkazcenter’s lost its original focus on the Russian government and
instead the focus remained on the hostage-takers (Harding 2011: 58). Similarly, in the
case of the translated narratives of Caucasian Knot’s reports, various aspects are missing.
Harding (2011: 58) explains that Caucasian Knot did not include a variety of different news
stories, nor approach stories from a local point of view. A number of voices are missing
from Caucasian Knot news coverage, for example eyewitnesses and non-governmental
organizations (Harding 2012: 357). As a result, the translated narratives of this news site
omitted all the characteristics that distinguished it as an alternative news platform.
450
Hernández Guerrero analyses an autonomous French online platform, Mediapart, to

determine whether translation plays a role in this form of alternative journalism (Hernández
Guerrero 2017: 295). Mediapart also makes news available in English and Spanish with
two groups of contributors, namely staff members producing news texts for Mediapart’s
journal and members of the Mediapart’s so-called ‘Club’ (Hernández Guerrero 2017: 298).
Both the English and Spanish sites have a selection of content translated from French
and the additional ‘club’ section where readers in the respective languages can share their
comments and contributions (Hernández Guerrero 2017: 298–299). Mediapart English,
established in 2010, includes English material from a US online news magazine, ProPublica,
while Mediapart Español, created in 2013, has access to Spanish material from the
digital newspaper, infoLibre (Hernández Guerrero 2017: 298–299). Hernández Guerrero
(2017: 302) argues that the characteristics of alternative journalistic translation are similar
to that of mainstream news, where translation is viewed as only one of the journalist’s
many tasks and includes the selection, reorganization, prioritization and distribution of
news texts. However, in the translation of some stories from French, the ironic nuances of
the source text disappeared in both the English and Spanish versions (Hernández Guerrero
2017: 303). Furthermore, the role of translation in the media, as it was traditionally viewed,
is redefined due to a new online media landscape (Hernández Guerrero 2017: 305). In com-
parison to mainstream journalistic translation practices, the new forms of online media rely
on more than only translation for multilingual platforms (Hernández Guerrero 2017: 305).
As explained above, some parts of the material is kept in French to maintain the flavour of
the original project, while other content is translated through engagement with the audi-
ence and sourced from English and Spanish online platforms to gain a new readership in
the respective languages (Hernández Guerrero 2017: 305).
The next example is based on the case of the non-profit Korean website and media
translation agency, NewsPro. The organization was launched in 2014 and is run by the
civil activist group Citizens Fighting for Social Justice (NewsPro 2014). NewsPro defines
itself as a leading organization in alternative journalism (NewsPro 2014). They appoint
staff translators working in English, Japanese, Chinese, French and German, as well as
staff writers who are responsible for news analysis pieces where they can present their
different standpoints (NewsPro 2014). The aim of Kim’s (2019: 148) investigation is to
study NewsPro’s translators and their transediting practices in order to determine whether
the non-profit website controls the flow of news and information. Kim (2019: 148) found
that the translators include articles that have not appeared in mainstream outlets in South
Korea, which implies that NewsPro is producing alternative content through transla-
tion. Thus, at NewsPro, translators are transeditors who aim to create alternative content
(Kim 2019: 149). Kim (2019: 15) found that in some instances the mainstream media in
South Korea restrict or silence civic organizations. As a result, NewsPro would include
articles that contrast with those of dominant media outlets (Kim 2019: 162). NewsPro
thus communicated an alternative voice through the selection of the news texts, framing
and reframing, transediting and presenting a different perspective. In contrast to litera-
ture that finds that news translation and the news translators are mostly invisible, Kim
(2019: 165) shows that the process and actors are visible through interventions such as the
selection, translation and circulation of news reports.
Blogs are an online platform providing a journalist or ordinary citizen with the oppor-
tunity to share personal reflections and specific viewpoints on events. Ergil (2019: 168)
investigates the translation of content produced for the activist translation blog, Translation
for Justice (TfJ). This platform was established in 2013 in Istanbul, Turkey during a turbulent
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time of unrest when members of the public only had access to the government-dominated
information of the mainstream media (Ergil 2019: 182–183). The aim of TfJ was to provide
the audience with access to alternative news sources that would allow them to form their own
stances towards the events and situations in Turkey (Ergil 2019: 182–183). Ergil (2019: 184)
also emphasizes the visibility of the translator through this blog, as opposed to the invisible
translator. According to TfJ, translators play a significant role in knowledge flows (Translate
for Justice, 2020). In effect, this emphasizes the role and agency of the translator.
What becomes evident from the above is that translation practices in alternative news
outlets significantly contribute to communicate dissident voices and viewpoints. This is
especially true in cases where the news is translated into minority languages where the
speakers of these languages would otherwise not have access to the news. On the one
hand, translation in alternative journalism contributes to communicating dissident voices
and viewpoints, making it visible and audible to readers and listeners. On the other hand,
though, Harding (2011, 2012) illustrates how certain nuances, such as a third-person voice
in a news item, could get lost during the translation process.
In research on the translation of news in mainstream media, we have already witnessed
the multiple strategies involved in the translation process, for example those highlighted
in the translation of radio news: transference, indigenization/domestication, cultural
substitution, generalization, specification, omission/deletion, and rewriting to achieve
localization (Van Rooyen & Naudé 2009: 272). These forms are even more prominent in
alternative journalism practices. One example is where Mediapart, a French online plat-
form, employs a mix of strategies to create two sister platforms, Mediapart English and
Mediapart Español (Kim 2019). These include translating a part of the site from French
into English and Spanish, respectively, while including material from contributors (the
audience) and online media platforms in English and Spanish (Kim 2019). There is thus an
added focus on the hybrid practices of translating, rewriting, editing, recontextualization,
etc. already evident from journalistic translation research. This hybridity is taken fur-
ther when it also becomes visible in the nature of the translator-journalist or journalist-
translator. For example, at IPS (Bielsa & Bassnett 2009: 82), translators who are not
necessarily journalists are responsible for translations. These individuals are referred to
as ‘the hybrid figure of the translator-editor’ (Bielsa & Bassnett 2009: 82). What specif-
ically comes to the fore, is the visibility of the translator in alternative journalism. The
news organization NewsPro stated that they make available alternative content to provide
access to these stories that would otherwise not be included in the dominant media (Kim
2019). In this context, the translator becomes an active agent. In the next section, and
related to the visibility (or not) of translation in alternative journalism, I present a case
study on the translation of community radio news in South Africa.
Alternative journalism and translation in community radio

in South Africa
The nature of the project (Van Rooyen 2019a, 2019b) was exploratory with the aim to
describe, understand and explain the news translation production process; situational trans-
lation practices and activities; and the actors involved. In South Africa, resistance or alterna-
tive press emerged at the time of the ongoing struggle against apartheid (Wigston 2007: 40).
The reporters involved in alternative media wanted to provide a voice for the often-invisible
communities to highlight their issues and concerns. Community radio enabled the partici-
pation of audience members, with listeners being able to engage in daily activities of the
452
radio station to express their views about issues at grassroots level in their local language(s)
(Gunner et al. 2011: 6–7). Due to minimal costs and ease of access, community radio has
become the preferred form of media for poorer societies (Milan 2009: 600). In addition, com-
munity radio makes provision for audience participation and has the power to mobilize com-
munities (Bosch 2010: 141). Govender (2010: 184) highlights that these radio stations aim to
relay the stories of the specific community in their language(s). One historic example from the
South African context is Radio Freedom –established as a ‘pirate’ radio station of the African
National Congress (ANC), which broadcast mainly in English, but also in isiZulu, isiXhosa
and a little Afrikaans (Lekgoathi 2010: 151).
The case presented in this discussion is based on data collected from a community
radio station in the most central province of South Africa, the Free State. The radio
station is situated in a township, Botshabelo, about 60 kilometres from the Free State
province capital, Bloemfontein. In this area, journalists have limited access to the internet
and equipment such as computers. In this case, I found that the multilingual commu-
nity radio news context provides ample examples of translation (whether interlingual or
intralingual) (Van Rooyen 2019b: 271). The conceptual framework for this research is
sociological, employing an actor-network theory approach (Latour 2005).
The aim of this study was, amongst others, to investigate how the same stories (thus
news events) are translated, transformed or adapted across different alternative media
platforms, in this case a community radio and a community newspaper (Van Rooyen
2019a: 158). The study provides a description of how I followed the production of a news
story from the moment three members of the governing party’s youth league entered the
radio station with information about an upcoming political march. The aim of the march
was to protest against the legal system regarding the practice of the early release of
criminal suspects on bail (Van Rooyen 2019a: 167–168). In this case, multiple language-
and translation-activities occurred, for example a conversation in Sesotho where the
youth league members conveyed information regarding the news event, the journalist
taking down notes in English and a radio news report written in Sesotho (Van Rooyen
2019b: 188).
On the day of the march, I accompanied the news writer to the political event. Once
again various forms of translation occurred, for example, people singing struggle songs in
Sesotho, while they were holding protest posters in English including the words ‘enough
is enough’, ‘law enforcement for criminals’ and ‘no bail to criminals’ (Van Rooyen
2019b: 189). The different discourses shared at this event included a memorandum written
in English and a recorded voice note of the youth league member speaking in Sesotho
to the local residents. The reporter took down notes in English while speaking to the
youth leaders and recorded two disgruntled members of the community in Sesotho (Van
Rooyen 2019a: 168). Returning to the news office, the journalist prepared a news story
in Sesotho by including his Sesotho and English notes as sources, the hard copy of the
memorandum written in English, as well as audio recordings in both English and Sesotho.
Different forms of interlingual and intralingual translation had thus taken place (Van
Rooyen 2019b: 192).
It was particularly interesting that the radio journalist explained that he also wrote news
articles for a local community newspaper. Even though the two organizations, the radio
station and the newspaper, were not related, the management of both media outlets were
aware that the journalist repurposed his own local news stories (Van Rooyen 2019a: 169).
In mainstream media, where competition and profit margins are the driving factors,
one would rarely witness this form of collaboration or repurposing of material between
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Marlie van Rooyen
different media organizations. Translation in alternative journalism was not only visible in
this case study, but it also contributed to sharing information in different languages across
non-related media platforms. The journalist thus created his own opportunities for growth
and experience (and probably some form of remuneration, although payment in these
settings is often very limited). The news writer was innovative and presented his news
items in different media formats across media platforms. As an individual, he imitated a
form of convergence that was not facilitated through any specific organization or institu-
tion (Van Rooyen 2019a: 170).
The examples referred to offer evidence of multiple translations (both interlingual and
intralingual). Interlingual translation occured between source texts in Sesotho received
from the youth league members, written down in English and thereafter translated into a
Sesotho radio news report. In order to compile a news report in Sesotho on the day of the
political march, the journalist referred to a number of source texts, including an English
memorandum and interviews with various participants on the day of the event in Sesotho
and English. Thereafter he wrote a radio news story in Sesotho and a news item for an
English community newspaper, published in an edited intralingual version that appeared
in the hardcopy of a local community newspaper (Van Rooyen 2019a, 2019b). We learn
from this single example of alternative journalism in community media that news transla-
tion stretches our conceptions of source texts and target texts, illustrating the complexity
of the news production and translation processes involved.
Conclusion
Research on the intersection between translation and alternative journalism is still scarce,
in spite of the ever-growing literature on alternative journalism and journalistic transla-
tion. However, researchers now have more and more readily available access to alterna-
tive journalistic texts online. From the study of translation in alternative journalism it
becomes evident that in some cases the voices of the community become audible or visible
through translation. In other cases, however, there is a loss of nuances in the translation of
news and the voices of ordinary citizens are camouflaged through the translation process
and ultimately in the translated news item(s). In alternative journalism, the translator has
the potential to exert agency and become more visible. It is especially important to note
that researchers can learn from the complexity of translation in alternative media settings,
such as the case study presented.
However, we are faced with a number of challenges to access alternative forms of jour-
nalism in informal contexts, for example a community news pamphlet in a rural area. As
researchers, we will have to think innovatively and creatively in terms of research meth-
odologies, for example using digital ethnography in combination with textual and content
analysis or online interviews with multimodal (discourse) analysis. Therefore, in addition
to ongoing intralingual and interlingual research on journalistic texts in alternative media,
there are opportunities for intersemiotic and multimodal research, especially in the age of
new media technologies and social media.
At the time of writing this chapter, the world as we know it has changed. The out-
break of the Covid-19 pandemic in December 2019 has captured the world on all levels
of life. In February 2020, Director-General of the World Health Organization, Dr
Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, declared that news (and other) coverage of the pan-
demic has created an ‘infodemic’ (World Health Organization 2020). In the case of
COVID-19, ‘many journalists, policy makers, and academics have echoed the WHO
454
and stressed that misinformation about the pandemic presents a serious risk to public
health and public action’ (Brennen et al. 2020: 2). The ongoing need for immediate
access to information has challenged fact-checking for both mainstream and alter-
native journalism, but also for translation. As researchers in journalistic transla-
tion research we cannot ignore the additional layer of complexity as misinformation
circulates across the world.
In South Africa, for example, the government declared a war against any form of ‘fake
news’ distributed via social media or any other similar platforms, threatening with pros-
ecution and jail time. Unfortunately, this has led to a negative perception of news spread
through social media sources, one of the main forms of media in the modern age of
alternative journalism. Moerdyk (2020) opines that, in this time, media consumers might
place more trust in traditional forms of media, such as television, radio and newspapers,
produced mostly by professionals. He reflects negatively on the fact that ‘social media
content is largely populated by ordinary people’ (Moerdyk 2020). It is a pity that these
perceptions are clouding the views of the industry, which Moerdyk represents, warning
consumers against the dangers of online information.
To date, we have not seen any studies on the translation of misinformation (often
referred to as ‘fake news’). With researchers from journalism studies delving into the
changing media landscape post- Covid, translation studies scholars need to include
the implications of translation on the spread of different forms of misinformation. As
researchers in journalistic translation, we will have to be aware of these problematics in
journalism and media studies in order to continue research on translation work, whether
it is traditional mainstream media or alternative media.
Further reading
• Aragrande, G. (2020) Fascinating Transitions in Multilingual Newscasts: A Corpus-
Based Investigation of Translation in the News. Cham, Switzerland: Palgrave Macmillan.
This study investigates the role of translation in multilingual journalism. The author
investigates whether defining translation could make news outlets aware of the complex-
ities of translational actions in the news production process. It is specifically the final
chapter that relates to the topic of alternative journalism, arguing that the multiple layers
of translation and editing in alternative journalism become more visible.
• Bailey, O. G., Commaerts, B. & Carpentier, N. (2008) Understanding Alternative Media.

New York: Open University Press /McGrawHill.
In this volume, the authors provide an overview of theoretical approaches to alternative

media, and discuss a number of case studies linked to these approaches, including com-
munity radio, blogs, ethnic-religious groups, civil society forums and social movement
groups.
• Harcup, T. (2016) ‘Asking the readers’, Journalism Practice, 10(6), pp. 680–696.
The author provides one of the few studies on the audiences of alternative journalism. He
explores audience views and finds that people tend to lean towards alternative journalism
due to their dissatisfaction with the content provided in mainstream media.
455
Marlie van Rooyen
• Lievrouw, L. A. (2011) Alternative and Activist New Media: Digital Media and Society
Series. Cambridge: Polity Press.
In this publication, Lievrouw provides an overview of the development of alternative

media, with a specific focus on new media technologies and the role of the internet. The
book provides a review of the literature on alternative and activist new media, as well as
culture jamming, alternative computing, participatory journalism and alternative political
movements.
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29
Subtitling practices in
Islamic satellite television
Yasmin Moll
Introduction1
Iqraa is a transnational Islamic satellite channel founded in 1998 by a Saudi media mogul.
It airs Arabic language preaching programmes which are sometimes subtitled into English
by a dedicated team of translators based in Cairo, Egypt. These translators imagined
themselves at once to be ‘preachers by proxy’ and ‘cultural mediators’ for a subtitle-reading
audience that was radically different from the audience of the programme’s original broad-
cast in Arabic. They desired that the subtitling audience be as edified and entertained by
Iqraa’s preaching programmes as the Arabic-language audience was presumed to be.
This chapter explores the ways in which translation at an Islamic television channel
like Iqraa was a key site for enacting a religious reformist ethic attuned to both a compel-
ling this-worldly representation of Islam and the individual otherworldly consequences of
translating incorrect interpretations of divine revelation. It focuses on how even while all
of Iqraa’s translators argued over their subtitling strategies from within an Islamic frame,
they nevertheless did not espouse a single ‘Islamic’ translational ideology but a multipli-
city of ethico-religious idioms, all claiming the mantle of the Islamic, to make sense of
and justify their translation choices.
The material I present here is not what the translators themselves –who hold advanced
degrees in linguistics and translation studies –would write about the issues involved in
English to Arabic audiovisual translation. I do not attend here, for example, to how written
English subtitles render either the formal linguistic structures of Arabic (e.g. gendered
pronouns), or the conventionalized rhetorical devices of Arabic Islamic preaching (e.g.
vocal dramatizations of referent shifts). Instead, my interest is in explicating subtitling as
animated by specific, at times conflicting translational ideologies, scrutinizing translators’
practices of critique for the pragmatic assumptions they embed about what communi-
cation is and how it works in the world. What, for translators, were both the social and
individual consequences of using words in translation in particular ways? Answering this
question involves looking at subtitles not on screen, but off.
DOI: 10.4324/9781003221678-34 459

Yasmin Moll
Religious responsibility and the stakes of translation

In 2011, a year into my ethnographic fieldwork on Islamic television production in Egypt,
a small crisis erupted in the audiovisual translation centre of Iqraa. The main workflow
at the centre was divided between Egyptian translators, who were responsible for creating
English subtitles of the original Arabic programmes, and foreign editors, who were tasked
with ensuring that these translations sounded ‘native’ in English. The crisis began when
the translated script of a new programme was assigned to Adam, a newly hired Muslim-
American editor.
Instead of editing the translation, Adam sent the centre’s manager and head translator
a scathing indictment of the whole premise of the series. Called ‘Muslim wa Aftakhir’
(‘Muslim and Proud’), each episode of the programme–shot in Nepal –featured obser-
vational footage of Hindu devotional rituals with on- location commentary by the
programme’s host, a young Saudi preacher. The programme was slotted for broadcast on
Iqraa’s just launched sister channel, Iqraa International, targeting primarily Anglophone
viewers in North America, Europe, Asia, Africa and Australia. Adam told the manager
that a more apt name for the programme would be ‘Muslim wa Ahtakir’ (‘Muslim and
Contemptuous’). He felt that the Islamic preacher made Hindu worship sound ‘silly’ and
‘meaningless’, with the implicit message being that all Hindus are destined for hell.
‘Even if one believes that all religions besides Islam are damned’, he wrote in his
comments on the script, ‘is it advisable to announce this on international television?’
By contrast, the translation manager, Randa, felt that it was a moral imperative for an
Islamic outreach (daʿwa) channel to extoll the virtues of Islam. This imperative was also
tied to the make-up of the intended audience –Muslims born in the West who might be
ashamed of their religion due to its vilification in popular culture as well as non-Muslims
who were interested in learning more about Islam.
‘This isn’t a travel show and we are not doing interfaith dialogue’, Randa complained
to me. ‘We are calling people to Islam’. While there were contexts that called for an ecu-
menical tone, such a tone would be inappropriate on a programme aimed at strengthening
Muslims’ commitment to their religion and attracting others to it. At the same time,
Randa agreed with the editor that the Arabic-language polemics of the programme might
be jarring to Western sensibilities; she was frustrated, however, by his refusal to ‘manipu-
late’ the source text to render it more culturally resonant.
Unlike editors, Iqraa translators saw their task as twofold: to act as ‘cultural
mediators’ responsible for countering perceived Western stereotypes about Muslims
through subtitles, on the one hand; and, on the other, to be ‘preachers by proxy’ transmit-
ting correct and relevant religious knowledge to viewers, a task that at times necessitated
departing from the content of the programmes they subtitled. The first aim is the familiar
one (to American anthropologists, at least) of making the strange familiar, or at least
difference intelligible. The second aim involves exercising a moral thoughtfulness aimed
at producing true religious knowledge and thus Godly persons. To accomplish both of
these aims, Iqraa translators drew in complex and sophisticated ways on a variety of
resources, including Biblical translation strategies, postcolonial theory, professional
translation manuals, Euro-American cultural norms, Qur’anic moral imperatives, and
their own life experiences. In pursuing both of these goals, translators saw themselves
as authorized and qualified to appraise, debate, modify –in other words, critique –the
ideas, textual evidence, and rhetorical devices utilized by Iqraa preachers in their original
Arabic-language programmes. Here, the fact that the content being translated fell under
460
Subtitling in Islamic satellite television
the rubric of religious knowledge and that Muslims were translating this content had
important implications for how translators conceived their relationship to the texts they
worked with.
For Iqraa translators, ‘manipulation’ of the source text was the skilled and sensitive
enactment of the cross-cultural competence necessary for the successful accomplish-
ment of these tasks. A recurring idea I heard during my fieldwork from translators was
that they were not translating language (lugha) but culture (thaqafa). This required an
ability to traverse and momentarily adopt a multiplicity of cultural viewpoints –including
another culture’s view of one’s own culture –in order to determine the best way to trans-
late a specific utterance. This ability was glossed as manipulation, a long-standing and
heavily theorized concept in translation studies. To the editor Adam, however, manipu-
lation sounded like a euphemism for lying. As will become apparent, Adam and Randa’s
differing stances index not only distinctive epistemologies of authorship and meaning, but
also of critique.
I learned about the ‘Muslim and Proud’ incident when Randa asked me to re-edit one
episode’s dubbing script to give the irate American editor an example of what successful
manipulation looks like. My task was to mitigate the condescending tone of the preacher
in the text I produced, while retaining his original intent of highlighting Islam as the
only uncorrupted monotheistic religion. Apt tone, the evaluation of which was variable
and not always explicitly articulated, was nevertheless very important to the Egyptian
translators who cared a great deal not only about how Islam was represented in the West,
but also about how Muslims represented Islam to the West.
Iqraa translation strategies, motivated as we will see by both the professional and pious
aspirations of translators, took shape within power-laden global mediated regimes that
also claimed to represent Islam through invocations of ‘uncovering’ or ‘unveiling’ its
‘real’ meanings. These social texts –whether Hollywood films (Shaheen 2008), Western
news coverage (Said 1981), or memoirs by (ex)-Muslim women (Abu-Lughod 2013) –
constituted the imaginative horizons of both the translator and her (un)intended viewers.
Within these frequently Islamophobic representational circuits, Islamic television channels
were framed as problematic purveyors of religious-based hate and violence. Islamic
channels were regularly targeted, for example, by MEMRI, a Zionist organization that
sends subtitled clips from Middle Eastern television channels to American news outlets
and the United States Congress free of charge. Translation studies scholar Mona Baker
(2010: 120) characterizes MEMRI as specializing ‘in circulating translations of carefully
selected Arabic source texts to elaborate a narrative of Arab societies as extremist, anti-
Semitic and a threat to Western democracies’.
Iqraa translators thus felt that they had to be very careful with their subtitles as
compared to their colleagues in non-Islamic channels. For them, subtitles were about
reclaiming representational power within a context marked by political, economic and
military inequalities between Muslim countries and the West. It was about showing, in the
title of the offending preaching programme, how one could be both Muslim and proud
of it. In this way, subtitles could contest prevailing Western discourses on Islam. But such
subtitling strategies had to be themselves represented in specific ways. Indeed, translators
sometimes used with others the terms ‘trans-creation’ or ‘adaptation’ instead of manipu-
lation in part because they were anxious that the negative connotations of the word
manipulation in everyday English could lead to their translation strategies being seen as a
cynical attempt to mislead. When Randa was invited to participate in a European confer-
ence focused on manipulation in translation, she worried that her presentation on Islamic
461
Yasmin Moll
audiovisual translation could be used to ‘tarnish’ further the image of Muslims in and to
the West despite manipulation being the explicit theme of the scholarly gathering.
This unease extended to my own potential re-presentation of Islamic television daʿwa
in general and Iqraa in particular. During the early days of my fieldwork, Randa at times
worried vocally about my own agenda in researching the channel –she later ‘confessed’
(the word choice is hers) that her fears were allayed only when she watched a documentary
film I had made on Muslim fashion designers in New York City. She judged the film an apt
translation of the Islamic imagination of female modesty for an American audience. But
Randa also judged me a religious novice who might, through my ethnographic writing,
inadvertently incorrectly convey ‘the Message of Islam’ to an international readership.
As this chapter explores, the task of the translator was to faithfully convey the preacher’s
words insofar as these words were faithful to God’s words. Meaning was not fixed by the
authorial intention of the speaker, the preacher, but was rather his attempt to discover
divine intention, an attempt that was inherently open-ended and inconclusive. Speech in
this specific context was not a window onto an internal, individual subjectivity. The ori-
ginal text was not the original Arabic broadcast, but rather the ‘Message of Islam’ as
interpreted by each translator. Consequently, fidelity to God at times necessitated betrayal
of the preacher in the form of textual interventions that bypassed the preacher’s Arabic
speech to tacitly create a new, more correctly Islamic, programme through the English
subtitles. In this way, translation, I argue, was not only interpretive but furthermore a
practice of critique. This critique was both external and internal. It was external in the
sense that it aimed to challenge non-Muslims’ criticisms of Islam in order to show the
religion’s true nature to an imagined audience of religious neophytes. And it was internal
in sense that it was directed at other Muslims’, the preachers, interpretations of Islam. In
both cases, this critique was conducted from within the normative theological terrain of
the Islamic tradition.
The geopolitics of translation

The global circulation of Iqraa’s subtitles –and the anxieties this circulation engendered –
was made possible by the channel’s satellite footprint spanning four continents. The trans-
lation centre was set up to subtitle into Arabic foreign (usually American) films acquired
by Iqraa’s parent company the Arab Radio and Television (ART) network, and into
English Egyptian films. By the mid-2000s, however, the translation centre had a new role
as ART’s subscription based English entertainment channels floundered with the emer-
gence of free-to-air channels in the region offering the same content; the translation centre
from then on worked solely on subtitling Arabic-language programmes airing on ART’s
Islamic channel Iqraa. The centre had an even greater degree of organizational autonomy
than other departments as it recruited its own staff in Egypt and controlled the entirety of
its operations once the Arabic-language video file entered the subtitling workflow.
The evolution of the centre’s mandate to being exclusively concerned with religious
audiovisual translation took place under the watch of its manager, Randa, who brought
to her job dedication, passion, and an attention to the detail that continually impressed
me. Randa oversaw a close-knit group of four full-time translators and editors and about
half a dozen freelancers who worked from home. Iqraa’s translators –who were from
middle-class urban backgrounds –all held bachelor degrees from Egyptian public uni-
versities, usually from departments of either linguistics or English. In addition, there
were eight other staff members respectively responsible for cueing episodes, researching
462
religious textual references using in-house computer databases, and coordinating the
standard production cycle of cueing-translation-editing-revision that each episode of a
programme went through.
Cueing involves indicating the in and out times for each individual subtitle in a way that
meets the ‘golden rule’ –each subtitle should be synchronous with the verbal utterance it
translates. The cuer divides a transcribed version of the original audio into the units to be
subtitled, each audio usually five to six seconds in duration. The translator then creates
the subtitles following the spatial constraints of the screen and the temporal constraints
of the Arabic audio unit. Iqraa translators aimed at 13 characters per second, and no
more than two lines of text with each line accommodating up to 35 characters. This text
was super-imposed, centred, on the bottom third of the screen. Given these time-space
constraints, the subtitling of Arabic speech into English text necessitated a translation
that paraphrased and condensed rather than rendered word for word. The skill of the
translator lay to a large extent in creating meaningful and coherent equivalents of the
Arabic oral into English writing within these limitations and also within the unfolding
narrative of the programme itself, so that a viewer tuning in at any point could begin to
understand its focus within a few subtitling units. At the end of the subtitling produc-
tion cycle was Randa, who personally signed off on each episode subtitled. Randa often
boasted that her team worked within parameters that were on par with European Union
ISO 9001 standards. (This is an internationally recognized and prestigious certification of
‘quality management’.) And in conversations with me about what led them to pursue this
career, all the translators used words like ‘love’ and ‘passion’ –they enjoyed the cadences
of the English language and spent much of their free-time playing with this language,
whether through writing short stories, poetry, or translating things for fun. Most of them
explicitly told me that the fact that they were working in ‘Islamic translation’ was inci-
dental to how much they enjoyed the actual practice of subtitling. At the same time,
the translators felt that their dedication to Islam motivated them to excel professionally
because they personally believed in the religious tradition whose ‘messages’ they were
conveying. Translators worked hard to produce quality work because they considered the
excellence of their subtitles reflected not only on them as professionals, but also on Islam
itself. In their phrasing, they were nothing less than ‘ambassadors of Islam’ to the rest
of the world, a world in dire need of their translation efforts given geopolitics after the
attacks of 9/11.
The attacks of 9/11 catalysed a major rethinking of the translation strategies best
suited to fulfilling Iqraa’s daʿwa mandate. Most of the translators understood the US
government declaration of a ‘war on terror’ as a ‘war on Islam’ and felt that the plausi-
bility of such a war among ordinary Americans hinged on the representation of Islam
by US media outlets (they cited Fox News as one particularly egregious example) as a
civilizational other. They began to see their own existing translation strategies as contrib-
uting to this problematic othering.
Before 9/11, translators usually transliterated key Arabic terms –for example, writing
‘Allah’ in English, instead of translating the Arabic word to ‘God’. Manager Randa
described this as a ‘foreignizing’ method that asked the non-Arabic speaking, potentially
non-Muslim audience, to decipher the meaning behind the Arabic words, rather than re-
presenting those words in terms that made both linguistic and cultural sense to them.
Randa spearheaded the gradual ‘domestication’ of the subtitles produced by Iqraa, where
the use of transliterated Arabic words was kept to a minimum and preference was given
to translating the Arabic into what were seen as English equivalents. The shift in strategy
463
Yasmin Moll
from foreignization to domestication sought to reclaim, at the most basic level, the intel-
ligibility of Islam to an audience that was presumed to include not only well-meaning if
misinformed viewers, but also, if intermittently, hostile ones. Such intelligibility enabled
counter-critiques of Western critiques of Islam all the while being itself a critical rejoinder
to the othering upon which Western critiques rested.
In using terms like foreignization and domestication, Randa was referencing of
course the long-standing debate in the history of translation reignited with the publica-
tion of Lawrence Venuti’s influential The Translator’s Invisibility (1995). Venuti argued
that the dominant translation norm of fluency/domestication –whereby according to
him the translator aims to erase, or render invisible, his own labour–is in fact ‘an ethno-
centric reduction of the foreign text to target-language cultural values’ (Venuti 1995: 2).
By contrast, Venuti calls for a foreignizing translation that registers the socio-linguistics
differences of the source text from the target culture, thereby, he argues, challenging the
norms of the latter. Within this framework, a ‘good’ translation sounds like (reads like)
a translation –it is non-idiomatic, non-fluent, leaves un-translated key words or phrases.
For such postcolonial translation theorists, foreignization is a practice both of resistance
and resistant to cultural imperialism.
For Iqraa translators foreignizing translations made the Arabic content seem inco-
herent, child-like, and even extra-terrestrial in a reception context that greatly militated
against a sympathetic reading of Islamic preaching programmes. Foreignizing translations
made possible the perpetuation of source-culture misperceptions about the target culture
as they left in the original terms that may have entered the source language lexicon in
highly selective ways. For example, translators felt the non-translation of an Arabic word
like jihad served not to subvert the target cultural norms about what Muslims believe
in –that Islam is a ‘religion of war’, for example –but reinforced them in glossing over
the other possible contextual meanings of a word like jihad (e.g. not ‘armed struggle’, but
‘personal struggle’). Domestication of language was thus in an important sense a domes-
tication of otherness aimed at challenging negative appraisals of Islam by non-Muslims.
‘I didn’t want us to sound like aliens’, Randa explained. ‘I didn’t want to reconfirm the
stereotypes. I wanted to show that we are normal people, that we have much in common.’
With this in mind, Iqraa translators appropriated textual strategies usually associated
by theorists (and like-minded anthropologists) with ethnocentrism and domination to
speak back to the negative representations of the source culture by the target culture.
Randa, contra Venuti’s prescription, adopted a domestication strategy precisely as a
counter to the representational othering that the previous strategy of foreignization had
left unchallenged. The production of what translators glossed as ‘idiomatic’ subtitles
became the normative standard of what ‘excellent’ and ‘successful’ translation looked
like. An Anglophone target audience ideally should read such subtitles without having
cause to consider that they translate a prior, non-English text. By contrast, foreignizing
translations indexed an amateur-ness and a lack of source language mastery that marked
the subtitles in some fundamental sense as awkward approximations of English, rather
than ‘just’ English.
These representational burdens of translation were intimately entwined to theological
obligations. For Randa and other translators at Iqraa, apprehending the ‘truth’ of Islam
was predicating on making the religion intelligible to those yet to embrace it. The moral
imperativeness of such intelligibility hinges on positioning the assumption of potential
commensurability within given resources of the Islamic tradition, namely the Qur’an and
the Prophetic example. The domestication translation strategy was therefore normatively
464
located as internal to Muslims’ own religious tradition. Translators cited in this regard the
Qur’anic verse ‘And never have We sent forth any apostle otherwise than [with a message]
in his own people’s tongue, so that he might make [the truth] clear unto them’ (Qur’an
14: 4). The Message of Islam was one that could –indeed must –be conveyed within the
idioms of the people it was addressed to. Iqraa translators viewed Classical Arabic as the
best language available to humankind, a view common across the region and intimately
tied to the Qur’anic avowal of Arabic’s centrality to its revelation (Haeri 2000, 2003).
But they equally believed in human diversity, linguistic and otherwise, as itself indicative
of divinity, following the Qur’anic verse: ‘And among His wonders is the creation of the
heavens and the earth, and the diversity of your tongues and colors …’ (30:22). And what
mattered here was not the particular form of the language but what it communicated.
At the same time, to speak another language is to understand another point of view,
mode of life, and also to at times see yourself as you are seen by others. This type of
moral thoughtfulness, or the capacity to think otherwise, was crucial to becoming a com-
petent translator. In the early days of my fieldwork in the translation centre, a senior
translator, usually Nawal, would give me feedback on my edits. After what was for me a
particularly frustrating feedback session, I asked her at what point did she stop making
my rookie mistakes, such as rendering literally Arabic proverbs, or not textually flagging
in English Qur’anic verses as such. Nawal said that happened when she stopped trans-
lating for herself.
‘In the beginning, you don’t see the cultural other or the religious other, so you are
speaking from your point of view alone. You are translating as if you are talking to your-
self, to the people living here in Egypt with us.’
She credited working with the foreign editors as helping her to be able to think other-
wise. Nawal said they would come to her saying they did not understand her translation,
so she would have to rephrase it to explain it and then she begins to get into the habit of
asking herself ‘is this understandable? Will others get it?’
‘Once I gained this awareness’, she went on, ‘I was willing to change and to think from
others’ point of view so that I can get my own message across better.’
The assumption of the possibility of mutual comprehensibility is what enables criti-
cism of miscomprehension or, indeed, of deliberate misrepresentation.
Debating translation strategies

A small group of translators at Iqraa did not always agree with the centre’s official pref-
erence for domestication. Their reasons echoed those of postcolonial critiques: domes-
tication was injurious to the source language-culture. One translator put it to me in
this way:
I am not going to use words to make it easier for the target culture at the expense of
the source culture. We are going to present Islam the way it is, and if the viewer wants
to know more, he has to do research, we are not going to pamper or spoon-feed him.
If I am watching a program on physics, but I don’t actually understand physics, that’s
too bad. Some might say it is best to simplify, but if simplifying comes at the expense
of the source [culture], that is a problem.
For this translator, the intelligibility of the sophisticated theology of Islam potentially
came with an unjustifiable price-tag: betrayal of ‘Islam the way it is’. She then gave me a
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concrete illustration, a common one within the dissenting camp, of the distorting dangers
of foreignization:
For example, translating sayyidna (our master) ʿIsa as Jesus or the Messiah –these
two names have specific connotations contradicting the fundamental Islamic con-
ception of this person, our masterʿIsa. Using Jesus or the Messiah confirms in a way
[Christians’] distorted versions of this person. ʿIsa is not Jesus –there is a big diffe-
rence between the two. For them Jesus is the son of God, and this is certainly not
what ʿIsa was.
For this dissenting translator, the danger was not the Qur’an or Islam would continue to
be unfamiliar, but that its distinctive theological claims –and therefore its divine truth –
would be grossly misrepresented through being rendered familiar. Using ‘Jesus’ for the
Qur’anic figure of ‘Isa would elide the ways in which the latter –son of Mary and prophet
of God –is very different from the former in the Islamic creed. This elision was problem-
atic because of the translators’ perceived moral responsibilities to impart through their
subtitles correct religious knowledge. Of course, the translators championing domesti-
cation equally cared about fidelity to Islamic theology and its accurate conveyance to
others –but they reasoned that this should be accomplished using terms and names that
were recognizable to non-Muslims even as they were given new definitions and content in
use. In other words, ‘Jesus’ could come to pragmatically signify the Qur’anic ‘Isa.
Iqraa translators explicitly debated these issues among themselves through modes of
reasoning that invoked ethical claims –grounded in religious texts –about what ‘true Islam’
demands. In an online Iqraa discussion on ‘Islamic translation’, a dissenting translator put
his frustration with the domestication policy in strong terms. ‘I am tired pampering our
viewers and spoon-feeding them’, he wrote. ‘We should now IMPOSE our dear Arabic
culture and help it muscle its way through to our audiences.’ This translator was linking
the use of Arabic linguistic forms (in transliteration) to the transmission of Arabic culture
itself, a culture that was in danger of being lost to viewers through a translation tailored
to their own socio-linguistic references. Randa immediately disagreed with this model,
making clear the metapragmatic norms underlining domesticating translations. ‘For com-
munication to be successful’, she wrote in response,
one needs to make sure to deliver clear messages. If we are to propagate Islam, we need
to try to speak in the tongue of those we are trying to present the message of Islam to.
All prophets spoke the tongue of the peoples they preached to, which I believe is the
right approach. Communication is not a fight, where one tries to impose on another,
it’s a genuine attempt to be understood.
In this sense, the task of the translator at Iqraa was similar to the task of the preachers
they subtitled –the preacher translated Qur’anic stories and tales of the prophets into a
vernacular idiom (e.g., colloquial Egyptian) aimed at rendering such stories closer to the
everyday experiences of his viewers. Similarly, domestication aimed to create what Tarek
Shamma (2009) in a different, although related, context has called a ‘shared ground of
experience’. Language, correctly manipulated, creates a world in common; the problem
with the foreignization approach was that it rendered it a mere medium for describing a
world presumed to be radically different while ironically insisting on an irreducible rela-
tionship between meaning and form.
466
For domesticating translators, linguistic diversity compelled a particular ethical orien-

tation towards others, one of taʿarruf, or mutual knowing, as referenced in the verse ‘[We]
have made you into nations and tribes so that you might come to know one another…’
(49:13). Intercultural communication was a practice valued by God –it was up to humans
to learn each other’s languages to make it happen. To be clear, the shared ground of
experience for translators did not operate according to a sort of ecumenism whereby all
religious traditions are held to be ‘equally true’ or even essentially the same. Translators
regarded the historical religion of Islam as the final revealed and most perfected one and
took religious difference, as we saw in the opening pages of this article, quite seriously. But
God does not will that all human beings be Muslim and human beings, Muslims included,
must find a way to act in common despite not practicing and believing in common. This
was less about finding a non-religious language from which to speak, a way of overcoming
religious difference, but about using religious language and imaginaries to meet ethical
standards held in common despite religious difference.
In this way the second part of the oft-quoted taʿarruf verse becomes important for
translators: ‘…Verily, the noblest of you in the sight of God is the one of who is most
deeply conscious of Him’. Comprehensibility and mutual knowing were not only divinely
obligated goods in themselves, but also ends to establishing the right conduct fostered by
God-consciousness. The cultivation of such a consciousness, in turn, hinged on knowing
the ‘true message’ of Islam. And this meant at times taking directly on others’ –including
Muslims –distortions of it, as I now illustrate by turning to the relationship between
translation and internal critique.
Critical translation
The translation strategies I have detailed so far hinged on an attempt to find culturally
resonant equivalence, whether on the representational or theological plane, with the aim
of providing an implicit critique of the negative appraisals of Islam imagined to be preva-
lent in Western societies. In addition, Iqraa translators saw their subtitles as an exercise in
another type of critique, one directed at other Muslims.
Their subtitling practices created what translators described as ‘parallel programs’ –
that is, the original Arabic-language programme and the English-subtitled one. This was
only possible –and, crucially, morally responsible –because of what the original text
was and of who was doing the translating. The specific nature of their work gave Iqraa
translators a moral responsibility that would have been lacking if they were translating
what they called ‘ordinary’ (i.e. non-religious) content.
At first glance, translators’ concern to make sure Islam was ‘attractive’ seemed to
incorporate, not resist, Western norms. For example, one day Nawal, one of the older
translators in the centre, was working on an episode where the preacher was listing all the
reasons people should marry, noting that of these love was the least important. Nawal
came over to my work-station to ask me to watch this part of the episode with her.
‘Westerners are going to hear this talk and think that Muslims are mutakhlifin (back-
wards)’, she moaned. By this point in my fieldwork, I had gotten to know Nawal and her
family quite well. She had married her husband of 35 years not because she was in love
him, although she had certainly liked him, but because he was her first-cousin, kind and
honest, and she felt he would take good care of his family. From what I could tell, she was
quite happy with the marriage and always spoke highly of her husband. Nawal’s expressed
hesitancy with translating this text, then, was not because her own ideals or experiences
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contradicted what the preacher was proposing, but rather because they contradicted the
norms of the target culture –or rather confirmed them with regards to what Muslims were
like when it came to spousal intimacy.
But is accommodation to Western cultural values the only way to understand this textual
intervention? What would happen if we shift focus from the inequality of languages and
their associated life-worlds to the position of the translator herself vis-à-vis the specific
content she is translating?
As we continued to watch, the preacher elaborated that a man should be especially
grief-stricken at his wife’s death because then a major source of his hasinat (divine rec-
ompense for good deeds) was eliminated. This is because, he explained, women are weak
and need their husbands to look after them, thereby causing the latter to accrue hasinat.
Again, Nawal hesitated. This time, she emphatically disagreed with the preacher’s charac-
terization of women as always weak and dependent, dismissing it as Islamically incorrect.
But she also worried aloud that such a characterization dovetailed with Western stereo-
types about, if not Muslim women, then at least what Muslim men thought of women.
In the end, Nawal decided to use the time-space of the preacher’s utterance about wifely
death and hasinat to write the following subtitle:
Women enjoy a special status in Islam.

Those who support them receive God’s mercy.
From Nawal’s perspective, there was nothing doctrinally incorrect about this translation.
Women do in fact hold a ‘special status’ –which was the preacher’s point. However, while
he provided some particularities of this special status –women are weaker than men,
therefore more dependent –the English translation was deliberately ambiguous about
what is it that makes women ‘special’, especially as all gender referents were dropped in
the choice of ‘those’.
Like most of the other translators, the basis of Nawal’s self-authorization as a proxy
preacher stemmed from her self-identification as a pious Muslim –one, in fact, in no need
for the religious guidance offered by most of Iqraa’s programmes and preachers. The
translators I worked held many of the preachers they subtitled in low regard, citing basic
mistakes in their Qur’anic recitation, their dubious commentaries on Qur’anic verses, or
their faulty citation of Prophetic sayings with weak chains of transmission. Translators
told their family members to always take anything they heard from television preachers
with a large grain of salt. Somewhat paradoxically, this content required great deliber-
ation and care precisely because it was so dubious while being categorized as religious.
The content also needed extra scrutiny because its intended audience, in the case of both
the Arabic original and English translation, was imagined as religious neophytes in great
need of basic Islamic knowledge.
My point is that Iqraa translators believed that working with Islamic programmes
made the source text, what the preacher was saying, subject to critique. They contrasted
this with subtitling what they glossed as a ‘technical text’, something like a computer or
medical program –in those cases, they had to translate with a total ‘faithfulness’ to the
source text, without much consideration or attention to the accuracy of what was actually
being said. With preaching programmes, however, the task of the translator was not to
‘literally’ translate but rather to attempt to understand the meaning behind the speaker’s
words and to rephrase it in a manner appropriate for the target audience. This meaning
was not fixed by the intentions of the speaker but rather by the intentions of God and the
468
Prophet, whose words both the preacher and the translator were interpreting, the preacher
in Arabic audio and the translator in English written subtitles. While these two inter-
pretations co-occurred on the television screen, the need for a second arose because the
subtitler felt the Arabic interpretation of ‘religion’ (al-din) was erroneous.
Both of these interpretations were grounded in the collective authority of past com-
mentaries, but the other-worldly consequences of interpretation were individual. Religious
programmes were thus also different from technical ones because the translators would
be morally responsible for their further dissemination through subtitles in a qualitatively
different way –they would be responsible before God. The translator, as the last person
having altered the words before the scale of the audience is widened, was left as the person
most responsible for words even as the original continued to simultaneously exist as
Arabic speech.
This general norm encompassed fine-grained distinctions. A book on atheism by an
atheist should be ‘faithfully’ translated because a Muslim’s intention in reading such a
book would be, presumably, to find out how atheists really think in order to more effect-
ively debunk them. But working for an Islamic outreach channel entailed a different
translation strategy because while viewers tuned in to learn more about Islam, they actu-
ally did not know very much about religion even as they were invested in the authority
accrued to Islamic preachers by being on television. The translator here had a responsi-
bility to make sure that what was being promoted as ‘Islam’ on screen was in fact Islamic.
But she only had this responsibility because she possessed the requisite religious know-
ledge (in her estimation) to be able to critically evaluate what the preacher was saying
and because what he was saying was itself an interpretation of God’s words as revealed
in the Qur’an.
This approach to translation is not idiosyncratic. The 13th-century Arabic dictionary
Lisan al-Arab defines a translator, a mutarjim, as an ‘interpreter of language’, mufassir
al-lisan, literally ‘of tongues’. As Islamic studies scholar Brett Wilson (2014) shows, in
Muslim contexts practices of interpretation, tafsir, and translation, tarjama, defined one
another and were often difficult to distinguish. He traces how this constitutive relation-
ship had important consequences for Qur’anic translations in the modern period, with
Islamic scholars grounding the legal reasoning behind the permissibility of Qur’anic
translation in an equivalence between tafsir and tarjama. The two discursive practices
carried a similar risk of error, for both the interpreter and the translator must make a
discretionary choice about apt meaning and ‘maybe the chosen meaning is what God
intended and maybe it is not’ (Wilson 2014: 211). Within subtitling on Islamic televi-
sion, this historically significant dynamic of acts of translation as always already acts
of interpretation (to put it in the form of the postmodern truism) unfolds beyond the
actual words of the Qur’an to words about the Qur’an. The relevant question then is
less the degree of equivalent correspondence of the translation to the original text, viz.
the preaching programme, and more its conformity to God’s will as interpreted by each
translator through the mediation of Qur’anic revelation. This theory of translation made
its practice a space of argument and debate not only, to use Talal Asad’s (1995) terms,
about the text but with the text.
As I have already intimated, these translational contestations had personal other-
worldly consequences that were at times determinative of what was translatable and what
was not. Translation choices within this general religious imperative were further contin-
gent on distinctions related to the specific utterances under consideration. For example,
translators could not translate ideas, rulings, or statements of belief that they felt to be
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Yasmin Moll
religiously incorrect if such discourses were presented as rulings that might be taken up
by viewers in their daily life. Here is how Yara, one of Iqraa’s translators, parsed it for me:
Let’s say a preacher says that the hijab (head-scarf) is just a cultural habit and is not
a religious obligation. That is of course false. But I will translate what he said and
make sure to put some linguistic markers around the statement [for example prefacing
the statement with ‘I believe’] so that the viewers understand the statement as one
person’s opinion. But let’s say the preacher talks about an issue as if it is a religious
ruling –for example, he says a fiancé has the right to see his betrothed’s hair. I can’t
translate that at all.
Like the statement about the head-scarf, this statement contradicted the consensus among
Islamic scholars on this issue –however, unlike the first statement, this statement was not
just (albeit falsely for Yara) descriptive, but also potentially prescriptive. Yara could not
translate it because doing so would make her morally liable for the sin incurred by a viewer
who then demands to see his fiancée’s hair.
Now, I do not want to give the impression that Iqraa translators were continu-
ally attempting to subvert Islamic preachers’ intended messages through their sub-
titling practices. In addition to the ‘technical’ manipulation imposed by the time-space
constraints of the subtitles that I discussed earlier (or for that matter by the formal lin-
guistic properties of Arabic), translators had a variety of purposes in mind when sub-
titling. One purpose was keeping the attention of viewers for the entire duration of an
episode. Translators assumed that their audience was ‘fickle’ –viewers will quickly switch
the channel if they find the programme boring. Accordingly, one of the translator’s key
jobs was to produce stimulating copy, which could mean departing at times from what the
speaker is actually saying. Many of the older preachers especially reiterated key points
or details a number of times throughout a 30-minute episode; while this was a common
rhetorical technique within the genre of a religious lesson (dars din), which was what
most of the programmes were, translators described it as ‘tedious’ for non-Arabs. On the
third or fourth repetition, translators usually ignored what the preacher was saying and
introduced new material –for example a particular vivid detail to the Qur’anic story the
preacher was relaying that they knew independently or a summary of what they under-
stood to be the moral point (qima) of the story, a point that the preacher himself may
never have mentioned.
For example, one episode featured a Saudi preacher discussing an incident that
occurred during the Prophet’s life-time where a man urinated inside the mosque. The
preacher described in minute detail the steps the Prophet took to purify the mosque after
this incident. Rather than subtitle this, Yara used the time-space of the verbal utterance to
underscore how the Prophet gently dealt with the man who urinated, writing
This incident shows us that

We need to have patience with those who are
not yet aware of the proper comportment in a mosque.
When I asked her about this departure from the source-text, she explained that the
preacher was correctly assuming that a Muslim audience living in Arab countries would
know this story and the ethical virtue (patience) that it exemplifies –a Western audience,
on the other hand, would have no idea, and might conclude that this story was actually
470
just about how to properly clean a mosque that has been urinated in. Since translators
were subtitling for an audience presumed to have very little contextual knowledge of the
issues being discussed on various programmes, they often expressed frustration by what
they saw as ‘laziness’ on the part of the television preachers –this was especially true
of Saudi preachers, they argued, who sometimes do not finish a sentence because they
assumed that their viewers could fill in the blanks correctly.
Other interventions include correcting in the subtitles a Prophetic saying or
Qur’anic verse the preacher mangled, correcting dates or place names, or attenuating
empirically dubious assertions about, say, the way global financial markets work. For
example, Randa once phoned me on a day off to ask I had ever heard about a law
in a Western country stipulating that the state has a right to seize a citizen’s savings
after such savings exceed a certain amount. She told me that in the episode she was
working on a preacher claims that a Muslim living in a Western country told him that
the government takes people’s bank savings after a certain threshold. That’s why, the
preacher continued, Westerners go on five-star luxury vacations –they want to spend
their surplus savings before the government seizes it. As Randa read the transcript,
I started to laugh quietly.
‘Yes’, she practically shouted into the phone, ‘this is laughable, embarrassing! What
am I going to do? I told them [upper management in Saudi Arabia, which selects which
programmes to translate] we shouldn’t subtitle this preacher’s programmes, he is idi-
otic, but no one listens.’ The next time I was at work I asked Randa what she ended
up doing and she said she simply changed ‘Western countries’ to ‘some non-Muslim
countries’ and was hoping viewers will think the preacher was referring to defunct com-
munist regimes.
At times, however, translators were frustrated not by a preacher’s elliptical or long-
winded manner, or even his factual inaccuracies, but by the very ideas he was expressing
regardless of the valuation of such ideas by a Western audience. It is at these times
that translation became, most explicitly, a form of internal critique. Here the fact that
translators saw their work as daʿwa, a moral responsibility for which God will hold them
accountable, is key. Translation choices were entwined with broader assumptions about
authorial responsibility and the relationship between translation and critique that were
not always shared by Iqraa’s foreign editors.
Editors like Adam argued passionately about the programmes –whether they were
right or wrong, boring or compelling. But they did not go so far as to argue with them in
the sense of responding to the content with new content intended for the same screen. For
the editors, the preaching programmes were an original source text that had to be faith-
fully publically conveyed, even if privately lampooned. They were operating through an
epistemology that views translations as replacements of the original through the further
presumption of the stability of meaning across the movement from one linguistic code
to another. In other words, their anxiety about manipulating the subtitles was informed
by their sense that because the English translation stood on its own precisely through
standing in for the original Arabic, both had to mean the same thing.
This concern with, or understanding of, individual authorship and autonomy was
different from how the Egyptian translators were thinking about matters. For them,
subtitles had an authorial autonomy that was limited not by the autonomy of the preacher
but by the autonomous authority of divine revelation. The original Arabic programme
was merely an interpretation of the real original source texts, the Qur’an and its embodi-
ment in the Prophetic example.
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Conclusion
In summary, subtitling practices at Iqraa worked through a complex and perceptive
appraisal on the part of the Egyptian translators as to both the representational and theo-
logical burdens engendered by the global circulation of their subtitles. This appraisal was
informed by the perceived needs of an audience overwhelmingly imagined as Western,
even if Muslim, and governed by a general principle to transmit only correct religious
knowledge. Fidelity to God could and did at times, however infrequent, demand a betrayal
of the preacher being subtitled. For translators, this was a moral imperative as the original
Arabic-language programme was in the end, like its subtitles, merely an interpretation of
the ultimate source-text of divine revelation.
Within this setting, translation was not only enabling of critiques of external
representations of Islam but itself a form of internal critique directed at other Muslims.
Here, the stakes of translation were not just getting it right linguistically or even prag-
matically, but getting it right by God, for which translators as individuals would be
held accountable in the Hereafter. But what God wants, and how to best convey this
to others, was deeply contested from within the Islamic tradition as lived and under-
stood by Egyptian participants in the country’s Islamic revival and from without by the
foreigners they interacted with. Indeed, the assumptions enabling these kinds of trans-
lation strategies as a moral practice were not shared by most of the foreign editors who,
while also adopting an evaluative stance towards the preaching programmes they worked
with, hewed to a different notion of authorial intention and associated translation ethic.
Subtitling in Islamic television thus became at times a site of struggle not only between
competing epistemologies of translation and mediation, but also of critique.
Recommendations for future directions in research on Islamic audiovisual translation
include: ethnographic fieldwork on the reception of subtitled programmes by viewers; com-
parative research on subtitling practices across religious and secular channels in the Arab
world; and, finally, theorizations of the work and effects of translation beyond the impasses
of commensurability and incommensurability, of domestication and foreignization.
Further reading
• Gal, S. (2015) ‘Politics of translation’, Annual Review of Anthropology, 44, pp. 225–240.
This review article focuses on the actual doing of translation, offering a comprehensive
critical overview of recent ethnographies of translation practices across diverse settings,
including in religious context.
• Zadeh, T. (2012) The Vernacular Qur’an: Translation and the Rise of Persian Exegesis.
Oxford: Oxford University Press.
This ground-breaking book approaches scriptural translation as a social practice through a

focus on the rise of vernacular translations of the Qur’an into Farsi during the premodern
period (8th–12th centuries). In doing so, it contributes to a comparative theory of trans-
lation drawing on Islamic sources.
• Nermine El-Gebaly (2012) ‘Accommodating audience needs in Islamic subtitling: a case

of manipulation?’Meta, 57(2), pp. 423–438.
472
This article discusses subtitling strategies on Islamic television from a practitioner per-
spective with a special attention to rethinking the negative valence of ‘manipulation’ in
translation studies.
Note
1 This chapter is based on the article ‘Subtitling Islam: Translation, Mediation, Critique’, published
in Public Culture, 29(2), 2017. doi: 10.1215/08992363-3749093.
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30
NGOs, media and translation
Wine Tesseur
Introduction
Non-governmental organizations (NGOs) are non-profit organizations which are nei-
ther government departments nor commercial businesses and which aim to serve the
public good. Many provide humanitarian and development assistance, and are involved
in advocacy and global policymaking activities, for example at the United Nations.
NGOs are also important providers and translators of information and play a key role
in today’s globalized information and knowledge society (Castells 2000; Cronin 2003).
These organizations are thus powerful political players that influence the world we live in.
Because of their position in society and politics, it is important to understand how NGOs
handle their communication and translation activities.
The organizations that this chapter focuses on are international NGOs (INGOs),
meaning that they work in different countries, and are led by humanitarian, develop-
ment, environmental and human rights related objectives. Examples include Oxfam, Save
the Children, Christian Aid and Amnesty International. The mandates of such INGOs
generally describe their organizational mission as working to end poverty and injustice,
and they are led in their work by such values as equality and inclusion. The information
that INGOs produce, translate and share with their beneficiaries, partner organizations,
donors and the broader public is intended to serve their organizational mission and can
be expected to be designed according to these values. For example, INGOs will commu-
nicate about their humanitarian interventions and the living conditions of their benefi-
ciaries in the traditional media in order to raise public awareness of injustice and poverty.
Furthermore, INGOs may use new media channels, such as social media and other
mobile phone applications, to attract donations as well as to interact directly with their
beneficiaries.
The research reviewed in this chapter generally deals with international NGOs that
have their roots in the Global North, mostly in the UK and the USA, and that are
active in various countries in the Global South. Despite this chapter’s focus on Northern
INGOs, it is important to acknowledge that INGOs that have their roots in the Global
South are on the increase. Their growing success can be considered as directly linked to
474 DOI: 10.4324/9781003221678-35

changes in the sustainable development agenda, which favour localization and partici-
pation from Southern actors (Davies 2012). Despite these changes, providing humani-
tarian and development assistance are two areas of work in which Northern INGOs are
still the largest players. For example, figures of humanitarian spending show that over
the last decade a handful of Northern INGOs have continued to dominate the humani-
tarian market by accounting for nearly a quarter of expenditure (ALNAP 2015). These
organizations include Médecins sans Frontières (MSF), Save the Children International,
Oxfam International and World Vision International (ALNAP 2015).
Yet the legitimacy of Northern INGOs and their ability to speak, advocate and design
projects for those in need is increasingly questioned in various circles, including by
academics, journalists and those working in the NGO sector (Bond 2015; Doane 2016).
Scholars have criticized INGOs for lacking close ties with local civil society in the coun-
tries where they work (Banks, Hulme, & Edwards 2015). They have argued that the trans-
formational agenda that INGOs work towards is often not rooted in local values and
expertise. This disconnect is usually partly ascribed to the increased power of Northern
governmental donors (e.g. US Agency for International Development (USAID) or the
UK’s Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office (FCDO)). INGOs have started to
receive more funding from such donors over the last few decades, and with this, the power
of Northern-based donors to shape INGOs’ activities according to their own values and
priorities has also expanded (Banks et al. 2015). So, despite INGOs’ goals of inclusion and
equality, international aid is generally understood as marked by strong power imbalances
between actors in the Global North and South (Banks et al. 2015; Bond 2015; Doane
2016). Academics have also pointed out that English as a former colonial language and
as a language that is strongly associated with technology and progress forms part of this
power imbalance, and that more attention should be paid to local languages in sustainable
development efforts (Bamgbose 2014; Crack 2019).
The current chapter will engage with these discussions from the perspective of INGOs’
media and translation activities. It explores how INGOs use media to communicate with
beneficiaries and the wider public, what languages they choose to communicate in, and
what role translation plays within these communications. By way of introduction, the
chapter presents a brief overview of how INGOs are structured and provides examples of
how they tend to organize their translation work. It then moves on to the role of trans-
lation in INGOs’ media-related work. First, it explores INGOs’ position as alternative
global news providers. Next, the chapter discusses the potential that new media tools offer
to INGOs to communicate more directly with their beneficiaries. In each of these cases,
the role of translation is explored in more depth. The chapter draws on scholarly literature
from a variety of disciplines and subdisciplines that have engaged with NGOs and media,
including translation and interpreting studies, journalism and media studies, development
studies, international relations and disaster management.
International non-governmental organizations and translation

Traditionally, INGOs have their headquarters in the Global North, where strategic
decisions are taken, and have field offices in the countries where they implement projects.
It is notable, however, that several INGOs have started to change their organizational
structures in recent years. For example, INGOs such as Oxfam International and Save
the Children International have federated into more horizontal organizational structures,
in which all country members have similar decision-making power. Others have moved
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(part of) their headquarters away from the Global North (Smedley 2014). Amnesty
International for example has reduced the size of its headquarters in London, and has
relocated some of its headquarter jobs to newly founded regional hub offices (Bonallack
2018). These changes in the INGO sector have been described as triggered by a com-
bination of factors, including a fall in donor income and the need to reduce operational
costs, as well as a response from INGOs to questions about their legitimacy (Smedley
2014). Amnesty International’s restructuring was designed to move Amnesty closer to the
grassroots level, and is thus a prime example of how questions on legitimacy can lead to
organizational change (Shetty 2015).
Changes in organizational structure may be expected to trigger different language
needs. However, INGOs’ institutionalized translation practices have continued to focus
predominantly on the same languages. It should be noted here that research on language
and translation policy and practice in INGOs is limited, and that the following insights are
derived from key publications that deal with a handful of large UK-based international
NGOs, i.e. Amnesty International, Christian Aid, Family for Every Child, Oxfam, Save
the Children and Tearfund (Footitt, Crack & Tesseur 2020; Tesseur 2018).
Languages for which INGOs commission professional translation typically include
former colonial languages such as French, Spanish and Portuguese, with English being
the traditional source language. Arabic has also gained in importance in recent years.
Underlying these language choices is the fact that broad geographical regions can be
covered by using a relatively limited number of languages, thus there is a high return
on financial investment (Tesseur 2014). Professional translation tends to be reserved
for a small selection of documents, i.e. those that are strategically important to INGOs
to enhance their reputation and showcase their work. These typically include reports
targeted at donors and/or media outlets, and other material that highlights the work and
achievements of INGOs, such as press releases and promotional videos. In other words,
they concern material that is not primarily intended for INGOs’ beneficiaries. Translation
of these materials is usually commissioned through the services of an external professional
translation agency (Footitt et al. 2020). However, some INGOs have established small
internal translation departments, where project managers outsource most of the work to
freelancers (Footitt et al. 2020). These include Amnesty International, Oxfam GB and
Oxfam International, Save the Children UK and Tearfund (Tesseur 2017; Bonallack 2018;
Sanz Martins 2018). With its own Language Resource Centre, Amnesty International has
by far the most extensive internal translation service, with a team that is geographically
spread out across various regions (Bonallack 2018).
INGOs’ professional translation practices raise questions on the extent to which trans-
lation that prioritizes information flows from English into other (mainly former colonial)
regional lingua francas serves INGOs’ aims of inclusion and equality. For example, one
issue is that choosing to translate into a lingua franca ignores the reality that many local
communities and organizations do not speak these languages and are thus denied access
to information, and second, by prioritizing translation from English, there is a risk that
skewed power balances in which information and knowledge flows in one direction, i.e.
from the Global North to the Global South, are maintained (Narayanaswamy 2017).
A key reason for INGOs to limit professional and institutionalized translation services
is because translation is difficult to fund. Institutional aid donors often limit the budget
that INGOs can spend on administration, and translation costs are usually considered
as falling into this category (Footitt et al. 2020). The case of Amnesty International is
somewhat different: as a human rights movement, Amnesty prides itself on working
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independent from government. Amnesty raises funds through contributions from individ-
uals, membership fees and fundraising activities, rather than from governmental donors
and it therefore tends to have more leeway in how it uses its funds. It is also noteworthy
that Amnesty’s changes in organizational structure have led to an increased demand for
translation into English, although English continues to be the primary source language of
Amnesty texts (Bonallack 2018). In sum, these observations indicate that INGOs’ organ-
izational structures can have an influence on INGOs’ translation needs, but that donors’
rules and regulations may make it challenging for INGOs to conduct (more) translation
work. Footitt et al. (2020) argue that the responsibility for recognizing the importance of
languages in INGOs’ work does not only lie with INGOs, but also with their donors.
The previous paragraphs describe INGOs’ use of professional translation, which tends
to be relied on for key documents and key working languages that cover wide geographical
regions. By contrast, translation into and from local languages is usually dealt with on a
more ad-hoc basis by INGO staff themselves, although translation is not usually part of
their job descriptions and they have not been trained in translation (Footitt et al. 2020).
Local translation needs include for example health information that needs to be translated
into communities’ languages, or success stories from beneficiaries that are included in
donor reports and are translated from local languages into English. Next to written trans-
lation, there are also many oral translation needs in INGOs’ programming work. The
task of interpreting is usually undertaken by a variety of actors, including in-country
staff, staff from partner organizations, or members of the community that the INGO
is aiming to work with (Footitt et al. 2020). INGOs sometimes also rely on volunteer
interpreters, who may not be from the same community, particularly in crisis situations
(Federici & Cadwell 2018). These ad-hoc approaches to translation and interpreting in
INGOs’ country programmes also apply to media-related activities, as will be discussed
in more detail below.
In sum, INGOs are involved in a variety of translation and interpreting processes
when mediating between beneficiaries, their donors and the wider public. There are key
differences in INGOs’ translation practices for documents targeted at external audiences,
such as donors and the media, for which they frequently rely on professional translation,
and translation into and from local languages, which is often not accounted for in project
budgets and tends to be conducted by multilingual aid workers or volunteers. The discus-
sion below aims to shed light on how these practices affect NGOs’ media work.
INGOs, global news and translation
INGOs as global news providers

The way in which international NGOs have engaged in media coverage has changed
significantly over the last two decades (Fenton 2010). Humanitarian organizations and
advocacy groups have been active in media production for many years, for example, by
publishing their own periodicals and disseminating information and images related to
their work through the media to further their cause. In an effort to increase their press
coverage, INGOs have started to professionalize their approach to news production in
recent years by hiring former journalists and investing in media equipment (Cottle &
Nolan 2007; Fenton 2010). INGOs now frequently produce multimedia packages and
make them available free of charge to news organizations (Cottle & Nolan 2007; Fenton
2010). Research has also demonstrated that mainstream media such as newspapers and
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television frequently rely on INGO-provided material (Van Leuven & Joye 2014; Wright
2018b). In addition, research by, amongst others, Franks (2013) and Wright (2018b) has
shown that there is also a longstanding tradition of journalists (freelancers and others)
accompanying NGO workers on fieldtrips to work on news stories together. The bound-
aries between NGO news production and the traditional media are thus often not clear-cut.
Researchers have explored the drivers of this phenomenon from two key
perspectives: firstly, they have explored why INGOs are keen to act as news providers,
and secondly, they have investigated why traditional media would be interested in using
INGO-produced content. From the perspective of INGOs, engaging in news production
heightens their chances of media attention, which can positively affect fundraising income
(Franks 2013). In addition, engaging in news production allows INGOs to strengthen their
advocacy work. Raising public awareness of poverty and human rights issues through
media coverage allows INGOs to gain wider support and increase their pressure on
policymakers. In other words, INGOs’ motivations for acting as news providers have been
described as stemming from objectives that aim at increasing their fundraising income,
brand awareness, and organizational effectiveness. These aims are different from those
of mainstream media outlets, which traditionally aim to provide objective and impartial
news coverage.
Given these diverging aims, one may ask why traditional media outlets use the news
content provided by INGOs. In the literature from journalism and media studies, the key
reasons for this are generally attributed to the vast changes in the political economy of
the traditional news industry (Powers 2014; Wright 2018b). Firstly, the shift from print
to online news has led to a decrease in income from sales and advertising. Consequent
cost saving measures have included reduced foreign news budgets, which have nega-
tively affected travel funding and the number of foreign correspondents in news outlets
(Fenton 2010). Journalists are now required to do more in less time because of cost-saving
measures and due to the nature of online news, which is fast-paced and needs constant
updating (Fenton 2010; Sambrook 2010; Cooper 2018). These changes mean that it has
become increasingly attractive for mainstream journalists to rely on others to provide
them with content, and INGOs have stepped in to provide media content from areas that
are difficult to access because of financial and security reasons.
The increasingly fuzzy boundary between the media work of these organizations has
given rise to a polarized debate in journalism and media studies over the last two decades
(Cottle & Nolan 2007; Beckett 2008; Sambrook 2010; Franks 2013; Lugo-Ocando 2014).
Some scholars have highlighted the positive potential of INGOs stepping in as news
providers and have for example argued that these changes could enhance social engagement
and bring more diversity into journalism (Beckett 2008; Sambrook 2010; Yanacopulos
2015). However, the majority of debates have focused on the negative implications of
INGO-media interaction both for INGOs and the traditional media.
INGOs’ objectives to use media coverage to advance their financial income and organ-
izational effectiveness have been described as potentially harmful to their core values and
public image (Cottle & Nolan 2007; Fenton 2010; Kalcsics 2011). For example, Cottle &
Nolan (2007) suggest that in an aid field that has become increasingly competitive and
crowded and in which donor funding is decreasing, INGOs’ strategies for gaining media
attention have become characterized by a pervasive ‘media logic’ that contradicts INGOs’
ethical humanitarian principles. This media logic consists of strategies such as working
with celebrities, pitching news packages that will appeal to known media interests, spending
time and resources on safeguarding their organization from media scandals, and linking
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stories of humanitarian disasters to the Western home country by foregrounding the role
of INGO delegates as ‘stars’ (Cottle & Nolan 2007: 875). INGOs have been accused of
being complicit in reproducing a single, dominant worldview, which all too easily depicts
people in poverty as passive, waiting to be ‘saved’ by Northern aid workers (Davies 2008;
Franks 2013; Lugo-Ocando 2014). Franks (2013) has argued that INGOs’ involvement
in news production may lead to a decontextualized account of the complex realities of
poverty and inequality. Mainstream media, from their end, have been accused of readily
accepting the stories produced by INGOs, thus risking the loss of their critical independ-
ence (Davies 2008; Franks 2013).
Gaps in research: translation and interpreting in INGO news production

Ensuring that news relating to INGOs’ work represents a variety of views means listening
to a variety of voices that are linguistically diverse. Yet the debates on NGO news pro-
duction have tended to focus on news reporting in English, and have given little consider-
ation to the multilingual origins of news and the translation processes that are naturally
involved. However, more recent research on NGOs as news providers has started to
shift the focus of debate from polarized discussions that are often based on sweeping
generalizations towards the need to analyse the heterogeneous and complex nature of
NGO news production (Powers 2017; Wright 2018b; Isharaza 2019; Ong 2019; Nolan,
Brookes & Imison 2020). This emerging body of research aims to better understand the
motivations, perceptions and perspectives of the actors involved in INGO news produc-
tion processes (Wright 2018b).
It is within this context that the role of translation has started to attract some attention,
most notably through Wright’s (2018a) analysis of how INGO beneficiary voices are
represented in news stories in the traditional media. Wright (2018a) analyses two cases
of INGO news production, one concerning Save the Children UK, and one on Christian
Aid. In both case studies, Western journalists visited areas in the Global South where
INGOs were working. The trips were largely organized by staff from the INGO media
teams based in the Global North, and Southern INGO staff provided language mediation
during the visits. In accordance with the ad-hoc interpreting practices described above,
these staff members were not trained in interpreting but subsumed this role as part of
their day-to-day job.
In her analysis, Wright (2018a) asserts that the INGO staff members from the Global
North that were involved in news production and that had organized the trips had an
inadequate understanding of linguistic and cultural mediation, with interpreting often
considered as ‘a largely logistical issue, akin to booking flights, travel permits or a driver’
(2018a: 97). This led to visitors ‘not devot[ing] much time to briefing the local fieldworkers’
(2018a: 97), resulting in practices that undermined the INGOs’ commitment to empower
local people by representing their voice in global media. In one case, the interpreter was
not told that a news story was being produced for a major global media outlet, but was
under the impression that data was being collected for a donor report. This led to inad-
equate informed consent, with beneficiaries not made aware that their story would appear
in global media. In another case, the interpreter was asked to speed up the interpreting
process and was not able to elaborate on culturally specific terms, resulting in a reduc-
tion and simplification of beneficiaries’ speech. Wright (2018a) concludes that although
the two INGOs in these examples had engaged in internal discussions on what it might
mean to give ‘voice’ to their beneficiaries, their practices, and particularly their lack of
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understanding of translation as a complex and culturally specific process, undermined

their organizational values and aims. Wright’s (2018a) analysis is a case-in-point of why
practitioners as well as researchers should pay attention to the role and complex nature
of translation in INGO news production processes. Her two case studies illustrate the
underlying power dynamics between different actors, and demonstrate how discourse can
change in translation.
Yet up until now, translation and interpreting studies has paid little attention to the
role of translation in INGOs’ news production. Research on this topic would be well
suited in a discipline that increasingly considers translation as a social activity which is
influenced by various actors and institutional norms (Wolf 2007). Two notable exceptions
from translation studies allow for some further insight into the variety and complexity of
translation and transformation processes involved in reporting NGO content: Hawker’s
(2018) account of the journey of Amnesty International human rights testimonies from
witnesses to audiences; and Tesseur’s (2013, 2014) account of the translation of Amnesty’s
press releases. Taken together, these case studies provide a reasonably comprehensive
account of Amnesty International’s discursive and translation processes from testimony
collection to reporting.
Drawing on ethnographic data and interviews with Amnesty researchers, Hawker
(2018) identifies at least four different stages of translation of Amnesty’s testimonies
from Arabic-speaking witnesses, which can be summarized, somewhat simplified, as
follows:
(1) An Amnesty researcher records a witness’s account in writing.

Language: the witness speaks Arabic. The Amnesty researcher speaks either Arabic or
English (if English, an interpreter provides language mediation). The researcher takes
notes in Arabic and/or English.
(2) The Amnesty researcher digitizes the account by typing up the notes.
Language: the digitized notes are taken in a mix of English and Arabic. Direct quotations
are typed in Arabic and fact-checked with the witness, colleague and/or interpreter.
(3) 10–20% of casefiles are used in reports, campaigning and media products. When this
happens, the researcher selects segments and quotes from their notes.
Language: the report is written in English, so any notes in Arabic are translated.
Colleagues may assist in providing idiomatic phrasings. Shorter material, for example,
for online media, is sometimes also produced directly in Arabic.
(4) The report is now finalized and sent to the Amnesty’s Language Resource Centre, a
separate department.
Language: a professional translator translates the full report into Arabic (and poten-
tially other languages). The translator checks specific terminology and phrasing with
the researchers who wrote the report.
The translation process of Amnesty’s human rights testimonies is complex, involving

different actors and transformations: from verbal to written, from conversational to
formal style, etc. Given the sensitivity of the type of evidence collected by Amnesty, careful
steps are taken to ensure that the voice of the witness is represented accurately. Amnesty
International’s 2008 Guidelines for Writers state: ‘Where possible, provide quotations in
the original language or give the reference for this. This is particularly important if you are
using personal testimonies’ (Amnesty International 2008: 12). While this is a noble aim,
Hawker (2018) challenges the very notion of ‘the original’ in her analysis, thus mirroring
480
observations from researchers investigating news translation (Bielsa & Bassnett 2009: 16).
She argues that the different norms of written and spoken English and Arabic imply that
there could ‘not be a verbatim “accuracy” of a specific witness’s utterance’ (2018: 85).
In addition, her analysis shows that human rights testimonies are always ‘co-produced’,
involving various actors such as Amnesty researchers, interpreters and translators.
Both Wright’s (2018a) and Hawker’s (2018) case studies draw attention to the com-
plexity and variety of translation processes in INGO news production and reporting.
Amnesty International’s practices of meticulously recording, translating and reporting
witnesses’ voices appear vastly different from Wright’s (2018a) account on the mediation
of aid beneficiaries’ voices, in which interpreters were given insufficient time and infor-
mation to mediate beneficiaries’ voices in an adequate way. Yet attempting to explain this
contrast as simply caused by differences between organizations would disregard other
aspects that influence translation practice, such as the target audience and the purpose of
a text. For example, Amnesty’s testimonies can have legal functions and can serve to build
factual evidence that could potentially be used against violators of human rights in court.
Therefore, accuracy is of the utmost importance.
Tesseur’s (2013; 2014) case study on Amnesty International press releases can fur-
ther illustrate the point that translation processes in INGOs can vary even within one
organization, and that text type and target audience play an important role. Her analysis
demonstrates that the care that Amnesty staff take with the quotations from witnesses
does not extend to quotations by other speakers. In a corpus of English press releases
and their translations into Dutch produced by the Flemish Amnesty office, quotations
from Amnesty staff members (e.g. Amnesty researchers) were frequently attributed to
other speakers in the translations, usually to Flemish Amnesty staff. In a research inter-
view, a Flemish press officer argued that this practice increased the chances of local media
reporting, as journalists were more likely to pick up the press release in their reporting
if they had access to a local spokesperson (Tesseur 2013). Whilst this media logic made
sense, the practice was not shared among all Amnesty sections and staff (Tesseur
2014). These diverging translation practices, Tesseur (2014) argues, pointed to varying
conceptualizations among staff of what translating for Amnesty International implied.
For some, like the professional translators employed by Amnesty’s Language Resource
Centre, translation was portrayed as an activity in which one needed to be ‘faithful’ to
the original text. Others, however, such as the Flemish press officer, viewed translation
as a means that should serve Amnesty’s organizational goals, i.e. to enhance attention to
human rights abuses and end human rights violations.
Tesseur (2014) links these different understandings of what translating for Amnesty
International means to broader internal discussions on Amnesty International’s organ-
izational aims and values. Whilst for some, Amnesty’s voice should be defined locally
(as for the press officer), allowing for diversity, for others, Amnesty’s message and voice
should be closely controlled by a central entity such as headquarters or the Language
Resource Centre in order to protect Amnesty International’s reputation as a highly
regarded and neutral human rights expert. These sorts of dilemma’s also raise questions
on translation, such as, what languages does Amnesty ‘speak’ and translate from and
into? What prominence should be given to representing a multilingual set of voices and
what resources should be dedicated to this? These are questions that have started to be
discussed in Amnesty, where staff of its Language Resource Centre aim to raise the pro-
file of language as a core component of a holistic approach to diversity and inclusion
(Bonallack 2018).
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In summary, in journalism and media studies, critics have expressed concern that
INGOs’ function as news providers puts their organizational values at risk, but the link
between producing INGO news content that represents a diversity of voices and transla-
tion has largely remained overlooked. Yet case studies on Save the Children, Christian Aid
and Amnesty International demonstrate that translation is a complex process in INGO’s
content production that influences who is represented and in what way. This research
indicates that INGOs’ organizational values may be at risk if the role of translation and
its complexity are not considered.
New media forms and multidirectional communication
NGO advocacy and development efforts, new media and translation

Traditional media are suitable channels for INGOs to disseminate information related
to their work to the wider public. Conversely, new media forms, supported by better
and cheaper mobile connectivity, present INGOs with opportunities to engage in more
dynamic and multidirectional forms of communication with their beneficiaries. The term
new media here refers to ‘those digital media that are interactive, incorporate two-way
communication and involve some form of computing’, thus including amongst others
social media, mobile apps, blogs, and online communities (Logan 2010: 4).
Mainstream development discourse has included much enthusiasm about the demo-
cratic potential of Information Communication Technologies (ICTs), since at least the
1990s. The World Bank’s World Development Report for 1998/9 (World Bank, 1998),
titled Knowledge for Development directly tied the paradigm of development as knowledge
capacity to the use of ICTs. Within this paradigm, knowledge is considered as essen-
tial for developing countries to experience progress. The Global North is considered as
having the scientific and technical knowledge necessary to ‘develop’, and ICTs are viewed
as channels that will allow this knowledge to become widely accessible and end global
inequality (Narayanaswamy 2017).
In recent years, new media specifically have been heralded as providing potential to
engage citizens more closely in advocacy campaigns and in democratic projects. In the con-
text of transnational advocacy, optimists have argued that the advance of social media and
other online spaces has allowed INGOs to create and restructure their networks to include
a wider variety of voices, such as those of local activists (Reese 2015; Yanacopulos 2015).
However, there is a dearth of literature on how INGOs may be using translation to engage
with a more linguistically diverse network. For example, little is known about how INGOs
may translate tweets, Facebook posts and other online material to reach a wider audience.
On the local and national policy level, NGOs have been involved in projects on e-
democracy and e-governance that use new media forms such as mobile phone applications
as platforms where citizens can receive and share information. The underlying idea of
these initiatives is that ‘citizen-led social accountability’ mechanisms are a key solution
to making public services more effective and transparent (Sharma, Raj & Shadrach
2006; Narayanaswamy 2017). Yet evaluations of such projects have shown that the opti-
mism about the democratic potential of ICTs to enhance citizens’ participation is often
unfounded. Rather, ICTs ‘tend to mirror existing inequalities, thus reinforcing and under-
pinning, rather than challenging, exclusion from the knowledge society’ (Narayanaswamy
2017: 74; cf. Srinivasan 2017). One of the potential pitfalls of the use of ICTs is the lack of
(local) language support. An experimental study by Alathur, Ilavarasan & Gupta (2011),
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for example, reported that a lack of multiple language support was considered as one of
the underlying factors that resulted in non-participation of citizens in an e-democracy
project in India.
Despite INGOs’ values of equality and inclusion, reports and studies on the use of new
media in advocacy efforts are remarkably silent on the role of languages and translation.
This linguistic blind spot can be illustrated by the low profile of language and transla-
tion issues in reports and research literature reviews published in the international aid
sector on digital empowerment for women and girls (Gurumurthy & Chami 2014; Spuy &
Aavriti 2017). Women and girls tend to have lower access to education and are therefore
more likely to face literacy and language barriers, yet reviews on digital empowerment
for girls and women do not generally engage with the critical role of language. A notable
exception is a report on the ‘digital divide’ between women and men in nine countries,
which reported that women and girls experienced barriers in accessing online content,
firstly, because of a lack of (digital) literacy, and secondly, because English language
knowledge was often required to be able to navigate the internet and mobile applications
easily (World Wide Web Foundation, 2015). Within NGO programming itself, there are
examples of good practice of projects that focus on women and girls and that have turned
to translation to enhance accessibility of online platforms (Narayanaswamy 2017; Plan
International 2018). However, these multilingual approaches are generally underreported.
When reports do mention language, this tends to be only in passing, describing language
as a logistical issue without further critical engagement.
NGO humanitarian interventions, new media and translation

Whilst the success of using new media for democratic uses may be limited, social media
networks such as Twitter and Facebook have unquestionably transformed the nature of
communication and information sharing in humanitarian crisis. The Haitian earthquake
is considered the first major disaster during which people sought help via social media
platforms (Harvard Humanitarian Initiative 2011). This changed the type and amount
of information that was available to INGOs and other responders to organize their
humanitarian interventions. In the scholarly literature on disaster preparedness and man-
agement, the potential benefits of these new digital platforms and technologies for crisis
communication have been a key area of focus ever since the Haitian earthquake (Harvard
Humanitarian Initiative 2011). Some crisis technology initiatives have for example sought
to develop new ways to collect, categorize and prioritize information collected from social
media such as Twitter (Cadwell et al.2019).
However, when considering languages, translation researchers have argued that many
of these initiatives have focused on English only, and have disregarded the role of other
languages in crises (Cadwell et al. 2019). Translation scholars and practitioners involved
in the International Network on Crisis Translation (INTERACT)1 have started to raise
awareness of the low profile of languages and translation in crisis settings, including in
initiatives that mine data and information from social media. Cadwell et al. (2019) have
argued that when a crisis happens, there is a need for translation, particularly in light of
increased globalization and urbanization (O’Brien 2019). Research from the INTERACT
project has demonstrated that language and translation needs are often not adequately
considered in disaster preparedness plans (O’Brien et al. 2018). In addition, research has
shown that aid workers are often not aware of the linguistic needs of the communities that
they set out to help (Translators without Borders 2019).
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One example that illustrates this is Rogl’s (2017) analysis of the volunteer translation
networks that emerged after the Haitian earthquake in 2010. Rogl (2017) demonstrates
that these networks played a key role in supporting the coordination of the international
emergency response by offering translation and interpreting services. Translators without
Borders, also an official partner in the INTERACT project, was a key actor in coord-
inating a large amount of the translation work. In her analysis, Rogl (2017) describes
how volunteers with multilingual skills organized themselves in Facebook groups and on
other online networks to exchange information on linguistic needs and to offer their ser-
vices. Although NGOs were not involved in organizing or coordinating these groups, Rogl
(2017) points out that NGOs made use of the emergency messages translated by these
volunteer networks to coordinate their response. This example illustrates that NGOs and
other humanitarian actors were largely unprepared to deal with the linguistic realities of
the disaster context in which they started working.
Another problem of crisis communication and related technology initiatives is the
overt focus on social media. Cadwell et al. (2019: 300) argue that crisis communication
is about ‘more than tweets’. The authors assert that there is often an assumption that
translation in crisis settings is largely concerned with communications directed towards
affected communities, but that this understanding may not be adequate. The authors
analyse a corpus of translations provided by Translators without Borders in one par-
ticular crisis setting to illustrate this point. The findings indicate that public messaging
only constituted 8% of the corpus, whilst training material was the largest volume at 60%
and surveys was the second most requested text type for translation at 21%. Although the
authors indicate that the data needs to be interpreted with caution, these findings merit
some further reflection.
Keeping in mind our focus on new media, the finding that 21% of the corpus consisted
of surveys is relevant here. Surveys are a key tool for INGOs to record beneficiary needs
and to keep track of their programming progress. Growing pressure from institutional
donors to demonstrate value for money requires good quality data, preferably recorded
digitally, so that INGOs can demonstrate informed decision-making and effective use of
public funds. In recent years, INGOs have started to switch to ‘Digital Data Gathering’,
a term used to describe the process of collecting data by ‘using an electronic handheld
device such as a smartphone or data pen’ (Matturi 2016). Data collection software such
as CommCare and Kobo Toolbox are now widely used by aid workers to input data dir-
ectly on mobile phones and tablets, with the data then automatically uploaded to a server
once internet connection is available. Such software has been heralded for its potential
to improve speed, efficiency, and accuracy of data collection (Matturi 2016; Dauenhauer
et al. 2018). In addition, these programmes have a built-in feature that allows aid workers
to design surveys in multiple languages, including support for a variety of local language
fonts (Dimagi 2019).
However, the idea that the use of these tools will help eliminate human error, including
language and translation errors, may be too optimistic. Firstly, translation and language
issues that inhibit traditional paper-based surveys are likely to continue to affect digital
data collection if they are not carefully considered. For example, research by Translators
without Borders has shown that one of the issues with humanitarian surveys is that
enumerators, i.e. the people conducting the survey, often poorly understand key termin-
ology. The study reports that only 48% of enumerators of a survey in north-eastern Nigeria
understood the word ‘infertility’ (Translators without Borders 2018). Secondly, not all
484
languages are written languages, and funding for translation is limited, so even if digital
data gathering tools allow the option of designing multiple language versions, enumerators
will still frequently be expected to sight-translate survey questions from English into their
local language, and translate the responses back into English. Thirdly, built-in translation
features in software can enhance the illusion that translation is a straightforward word-
for-word process, leaving little space to discuss the specific meaning of key concepts and
check if enumerators have understood them. The meaning and cultural appropriateness of
certain terms can differ depending on the specific local community, and so relying on one
translation that has not been produced with the local context in mind can be problematic
(Footitt et al. 2020). Publications in the field of development studies and humanitarian
technology, however, tend to disregard the complexities of translation that are involved in
this type of data collection (Matturi 2016; Dauenhauer et al. 2018).
In summary, new media tools provide potential benefits as well as limitations for
INGOs in their aims to communicate more directly with their beneficiaries. Overall, lit-
erature from development studies and disaster management show a lack of consideration
for the role of languages and translation when engaging with new media. In translation
and interpreting studies, research on these topics is limited, but has been growing in recent
years, particularly through the INTERACT project.
Conclusion
This chapter has reviewed literature on INGOs and their media practices. It has
demonstrated that languages and translation generally have a low profile in research from
various disciplines that engage with NGOs and media. This low profile can be considered
as symptomatic of a wider neglect for languages in the international aid sector, which
has been noted in recent research led by language and translation researchers (Footitt
et al. 2020; O’Brien et al. 2018). This chapter has argued that the absence of reflection on
the role of languages and translation can result in practices that are at odds with NGOs’
values of inclusion and equality, because they may overlook the importance of linguistic
inclusion and diversity.
Translation and interpreting studies have only just started to investigate these issues.
There is scope for translation and interpreting scholars to contribute to debates in jour-
nalism and media studies about INGO media practices. By investigating the role of trans-
lation in depth, translation researchers can contribute to discussions on how successful
INGOs are in their efforts to represent their beneficiaries and in mediating different
voices and views between beneficiaries, donors and the wider public. For translation and
interpreting studies, such research would be an important contribution to the growing
body of sociologically oriented research. Future studies could employ ethnographic
approaches as well as interview and desk-based methods to contribute new insights to
the discipline. Furthermore, this type of research can lead to recommendations to the aid
sector, as indeed has been the case for Wright’s (2018a) study. As a result of her research,
Wright was invited by the Disaster Emergency Committee to develop a set of guidelines
intended for visiting press officers who work with local fieldworkers as interpreters
(Wright 2015).
Considering INGOs’ use of new media channels, another fruitful avenue for future
research is that of machine translation (MT). Cadwell et al. (2019) discuss the poten-
tial use of post-edited MT for crisis related information. Although caution is in order
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about the risks involved in employing MT in crisis contexts, and post-editing is required
(O’Brien 2019), these tools do offer new opportunities for INGOs to support their multi-
lingual practice. What is needed, then, is activist and collaborative research with INGOs
that can assist these organizations in how to use these new tools ethically and practically.
Overall, the critical role that translation scholars can play is to provide evidence that
can demonstrate to INGOs and their donors that translation is not a neutral and straight-
forward process, but that translation or non-translation may have an impact on aims of
inclusion and equality.
Further reading
• Narayanaswamy, L. (2017) Gender, Power and Knowledge for Development. New York
and Abingdon: Routledge.
This book explores information flows between the Global North and South and whether
or not access to information aids development. The author critically reflects on the role
of NGOs in the South who act as intermediaries of this information, and on the role of
translation and ICTs in information flows.
• Tesseur, W. (2018) (ed.) ‘Translation and interpreting in non-governmental organizations’.

Special issue of Translation Spaces, 7(1).
An edited journal issue that brings together articles that explore various aspects
of translation and interpreting practice in NGOs. Contributions include work by
translation scholars as well as translation managers from Oxfam GB and Amnesty
International.
• Wright, K. (2018b) Who’s Reporting Africa Now?: Non-Governmental Organizations,

Journalists, and Multimedia. New York: Peter Lang.
A detailed critical analysis of news production processes involving various actors from
major news organizations and NGOs. Drawing on case studies, the book explores issues
of political and moral value underpinning NGO media collaboration.
• Yanacopulos, H. (2015) International NGO Engagement, Advocacy, Activism: The Faces

and Spaces of Change. Basingstoke & New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
This book provides excellent insight into the ‘spaces’ in which INGOs live, operate and
organize themselves, including digital spaces and INGOs’ use of networked campaigns
for global justice.
Acknowledgement
This work was supported by funding from the Irish Research Council and from the
European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under the Marie
Skłodowska-Curie grant agreement No 713279 for the ‘Translation as Empowerment’
project (https://sites.google.com/view/translation-as-empowerment).
486
Note
1 https://sites.google.com/view/crisistranslation/home
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31
A Deaf translation norm?
Christopher Stone
Introduction
Since the 1950s we have started to see greater access to broadcast television for sign lan-
guage users (Ladd 2007) globally. The first programme in the UK to have British Sign
Language as the language of the programme was in the 1950s called For Deaf Children
succeeded by Vision On through the mid-70s. The first news programme was News Review,
which began in the 1960s and comprised 30 minutes of weekly news and current affairs.
These programmes (often) have deaf anchors or presenters, presenting to their deaf com-
munities in their national sign languages. News Review also regularly included a news
story of relevance to Deaf viewers –something that we still see, for example, in Finland,
where there is a news broadcast after the main news presented by a deaf news reader,
delivered in Finnish Sign Language, with one or two news stories from the Finnish Deaf
community as well as a news headlines summary.
We also see news programmes of interpreted news, where the in-vision interpreter either
works from the spoken language, the autocue, and/or a pivot interpreter (Stone & Russell
2014) into a sign language. Starting with a small inset interpreter in the corner of the screen
this has developed to the sharing of the screen with presenters (Allsop & Kyle 2008; Stone
2009, 2019), being present for emergency disaster announcements (McKee 2014), being
live-streamed contemporaneously rather than being broadcast in-vision, and Deaf media
solutions and community journalism that work in parallel with other implementations of
mainstream access, e.g. dailymoth.com.
Unlike in other areas of sign language interpreting and translation we see far greater
engagement with deaf people from deaf communities delivering the in-vision interpretation
during broadcast television, etc. (Stone 2009), hence the deployment of the pivot interpreter.
They follow a ‘Deaf translation norm’ that appears to be a community role made public
during the 20th in some instances, and the beginning of the 21st century in others.
This chapter will explore the role of a Deaf community model of interpreting and
translation, i.e. a Deaf translation norm (Adam, Carty & Stone 2011; Stone 2009). We
will examine its history in bi-and multi-lingual Deaf communities and its influencing
role on media translation. We will also explore the role of community membership in
490 DOI: 10.4324/9781003221678-36

ensuring a target language text is constructed drawing upon the multimodal nature of the
rendering of media broadcasts and pre-recorded programmes that satisfies the needs of
sign language using deaf peoples. In this way we start to explore how the acquisition of
these norms occur. We will look at examples from Europe, Australia and North America.
A history of Deaf community translation acts

Initially it is important for us to look at the notion of a Deaf translation norm and
examples found in history. Deaf people have been in existence for time immemorial and
form part of the diversity of humanity (Fererri 1906). We catch sight of these individuals
obliquely when mentioned by authors throughout history, but it is rare that their stories
are specifically told; if they are, then those deaf people are perceived as curiosities rather
than as serious subjects of study.
One of these accounts tells us of a married couple, both deaf, who lived in Weymouth,
Massachusetts, in the 17th century (Carty, Macready & Sayers 2009). Here we see, at a
time pre-dating institutionalized congregated education for deaf children, a family using
sign language (presumably a variant diachronically related to modern day British Sign
Language) and engaging in signing discourse with those in the area. When wanting to
become a member of the Puritan Church, the wife is examined by the Church Elders
and her sisters (both hearing) act as lay interpreters, while her (deaf) husband acts as
her scribe/lay translator. This appears to be the first recorded instant of a deaf person
working as a lay translator.
This constellation of lay interpreters and a lay translator raises questions such as: were
the sisters unable to render the message faithfully? why was a sight translation from sign
language to written English needed and/or desirable? etc. It also points to the role of
deaf people within deaf social networks (including families) and communities as lan-
guage brokers and lay translators and/or interpreters. This role has neither diminished as
networks and communities have grown in size, nor as institutional interpreting services
have been delivered. Although we are also starting to see the institutionalization of deaf
translation in some countries, as will be described below, which often starts from deaf
people coming together in institutional contexts.
Deaf people have congregated together in larger urban centres, either through enforced
congregation as with the Ottoman empire 1500–1700 (Miles 2000), or through other insti-
tutional acts such as congregated education in the form of Deaf Schools (or Asylums)
from the 18th century onwards (Van Cleve 2007). Here we have seen urban sign languages
emerge (Jepson 1991), often becoming the named national sign languages when this is
deemed to be politically desirable (see Stone & Mirus 2018, for further discussion on
national sign languages as constellations of local or regional sign languages).
Within these congregated educational settings, we find accounts of deaf students
supporting each other with language brokering and lay translation acts. These could be,
for example, because a deaf student does not understand the speech (or sign language
use) by a teacher (Adam et al. 2014); or in support of fellow pupils writing home to their
families (Adam, Carty & Stone 2011), etc. These acts (anecdotally) appear to be com-
monplace, with an expectation that when classmates translate or interpret into sign lan-
guage this will be produced in a way that follows deaf sign language using cultural norms
appropriate to the sign language community. Or follow the written language norms of the
mainstream community so that the written language is unmarked, obscuring lower levels
of literacy that some deaf pupils might have. This desire for renditions that are unmarked
491
Christopher Stone
appear to be a desire for covert translation (House 2010), where the rendition functions as
an equivalent within the target culture.
There are also instances of rural communities with higher incidents of deafness in the
population where we see the emergence of a local ‘shared’ sign language (Groce 1985;
Kusters 2014). In all of these settings we see that people other than deaf people learn
their sign languages, children born into those families learn sign languages, and during
interactions with those who do not know their sign language(s) there can be a need for
sight translation (in literate communities) and interpreting. We still see that community
members have preferences over who will interpret for them, so being deaf or being raised
in the community is not reason enough to be asked to undertake lay translations. There is
some expectation that some norm will be followed.
The expectations of the social networks/communities establish an initial norm (Toury
2012) such that the translation product will be something that adheres to Deaf Community
norms, i.e. the target language and culture, rather than adherence to the norms of the
source language. In this regard, when possible, the translation then functions as a covert
translation (House 2015) in that the translation ‘is not marked pragmatically as a transla-
tion text of a source text but may conceivably have been created in its own right’ (2015: 66).
And clearly preferences on lay translator would be governed by those able to achieve this
initial norm.
In urban areas it has been common for there to be social centres, which might also be
sites for spiritual and welfare services, where deaf people congregate. These centres are
often called Deaf Clubs (in English speaking countries) and are often important phys-
ical places for deaf people to gather, use their language, and to reidentify and redefine
what it means to be deaf amongst one’s peers. Deaf communities within urban centres
are often bi/multi-lingual, institutionalized education serves some members well and
others less so. Even though deaf people who are sign language users are not educated
as monolinguals, they have varying levels of literacy. This, as with many communities,
creates the space for language brokering to occur by community members for community
members (Adam, Carty & Stone 2011). The choosing of those who broker, the types of
brokering they engage in, and the expectations of how they will fulfil this role is (at least
historically) in many ways determined by the community itself (Toury 2012). This is also
something that some community members desire, as translation and interpreting becomes
institutionalized and deaf communities’ voices are either excluded, or less well received by
the powers that be.
Within Deaf Communities and deaf social networks (Friedner 2011), as with many
minority and minoritized language communities (Piller 2016), there has often been a great
desire for access to information and informational support which remains the case today,
as can be seen when communities also become virtual communities (Shoham & Heber
2012). With varying levels of education and educational success, there are community
members who are known to understand and read the written language(s) of the wider
community. They often have roles within community organizations (deaf clubs, sports
clubs, etc.) and are in positions of trust. Some of these trusted individuals appear to be
chosen by the community as language brokers. Their role may have included either (his-
torically) reading the newspaper and then providing a sign language version for less lit-
erate community members at the deaf club (Stone 2009); or watching the broadcast news
via subtitles/captioning, understanding current affairs, and then sharing that information
with their community members. They might also include multi-professionals (Pym 2014),
i.e. professional deaf people, or those raised in deaf families, working in the community
492
with the additional responsibility to interpret, such as clerics/religious workers trained via
the Deaf Welfare Examination Board in the UK from 1928 (Corfmat 1990).
As Deaf communities and social networks are of a size and number that means com-
munity members are known to each other, the roles they play in the community are known,
and with that knowledge of engagement and interaction comes trust. This ‘trust’ appears
to be one of the factors in the deaf translation norm that supersedes training and can be
seen in other community facing interpreting work, not just signed language interpreting
for deaf people (Edwards, Temple & Alexander 2005). Part of this appears to be that
known information sharers in the community are also then trusted to provide access to the
wider world and are able to follow a covert translation norm.
Even so, that does not mean that all bilinguals would be asked to perform these trans-
lation acts. Often one of the factors involved is identity, asking those in your community
or social network who are bilingual and can sign, i.e. a deaf person asking another deaf
person. And this may be motivated by power asymmetries but also due to a sense of reci-
procity, or giving back to the community which includes languaging skills (Forestal 2015).
The role of sign language interpreting and translation in the media

Deaf associations and organizations were often ‘early adopters’ of film and video as this is
a natural medium to record sign language (Schuchman 2004). This technological advance,
that enabled the preservation of sign languages in a time when their survival was question-
able (and some would say still is), opened up the possibility of further sharing signed news
with communities. Similarly, and more recently, the internet as a technology has opened
up the possibility of sign language virtual networks and communities, as well as covert
translations of mainstream media to sign language users, including most recently public
health announcements on Covid-19. These shared films, and later videos, broadcasts, or
webcasts provide a space for interpreters and translators to engage in a continuation of
the deaf translation norm. First let us look at the establishment of normative practices of
information sharing on screen.
Around the world we have seen the emergence of Deaf media and Deaf maga-
zine programmes (see Table 31.1 for a selection). Seeing Deaf people take the lead in
presenting information to the community has in many ways created a model for infor-
mation to be given in a public medium, and a desire for Deaf presenters (Allsop & Kyle
2008; De Meulder & Heyerick 2013). Many of these programmes were lobbied for by deaf
and hearing allies. In some cases, this means that some deaf programmes started with
hearing presenters who know sign language. Often through lobbying (see Ladd 2007, for
an explanation of this process in the UK), deaf presenters are then brought in to present
programmes. Often the people brought in to present are bilingual deaf people, many of
whom in the first generation are known to be trusted and who have undertaken language
brokering in the community. As with all norms, that does not mean this is the rule but a
trend (at least in the UK, Stone 2009).
Part of the process of these programmes involves working with written scripts and
autocue. This type of news and media translation has been analysed (see Vuorinen 1997
amongst others who consider audience design). The decisions about what is translated and
what is not rests with the programme team, including the scriptwriters and presenters. The
goal of these programmes is to create a covert translation of the scripts; the programmes
are magazine programmes for the deaf and should be part of community journalism –by
the community for the community. And this was echoed in Flanders Belgium when the
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Christopher Stone
Table 31.1 Deaf magazines programmes presented in sign languages including news broadcasts
(Stępski, nd) *denotes no longer broadcast
Programme name Country Broadcast from Deaf presenters
Sehen statt Hören Germany 1975 from 1990

Prisluhnimo tišini Slovenia 1980 Yes
Táknmálsfréttir Iceland 1980 Yes
Televizní klub neslyšících Czech Republic 1980 from 1991
See hear UK 1981 Yes
News Review* New Zealand 1987 Yes
Sign of the Times* Ireland 1988 Yes
Uutiset viittomakielellä Finland 1994 Yes
Viikko viitottuna Finland 1994 Yes
Hands On* Ireland 1995 Yes
Zprávy včeském znakovém jazyce Czech Republic 2000 Yes
En lengua de signos Spain 2008 Yes
Správy v slovenskom posunkovom jazyku Slovakia 2013 Yes
Viipekeelsed uudised Estonia Nd Yes
Deaf community wanted news presented by a Deaf newsreader rather than for the news
to be interpreted (De Meulder & Heyerick 2013).
For many members of regional and national Deaf communities the broadcasting of
Deaf media presented in regional/national sign languages by Deaf people creates a norm
that can be emulated when engaging in translation or interpreting tasks within broadcast,
streamed and webcast media. This further embeds a deaf translation norm within this work.
I have previously explored the work of deaf people rendering broadcast regional news
into British Sign Language in the UK (Stone 2005, 2009). Part of this study involved semi-
structured interviews with deaf professionals and explored the model they engage in when
undertaking their rendering work. The goal of the interviews was to find out motivations
for the translation and to explore if there were any norms in deaf people’s practices within
this setting. Let us consider those now.
Norms within mainstream news interpreting in the UK

Firstly, unlike in the historical tradition, and to some extent Deaf magazine programmes,
we see that within the broadcast news, deaf individuals do not have agency to choose what
is being rendered to the audience. One informant explained: ‘some of the reports are really
coming from hearing culture, but we have to deliver the information, we can’t edit it or
change it, but just deliver it’ (Rebecca) (Stone 2005: 129).
In the historic tradition, the initial norm is one of deaf language brokers choosing
what they see as relevant to the community or translating what they are asked to by the
community. We can see this tradition becoming public in British Sign Language access
to information projects in the UK supported by the Greater London Council (as was).
The London Deaf Video Project (LSVP) funded from 1983, which became the London
Deaf Access Project in 1991, was a Deaf-led project with all deaf staff and presenters
choosing relevant information from the public sector to be re-presented in British Sign
Language for the London Deaf Community (personal communication, Lesley McGilp,
March 2020).
494
For news broadcasts decisions are made by the editors rather that the deaf translators.
This does not mean that the British Sign Language translators have no agency, but it does
to some extent constrain the choices available to the professionals. The editors may or
may not be mindful of the translation process the deaf professionals undertake, but often
initial conversations are had with members of the broadcasting team, including fellow
newsreaders and floor managers, to foster understanding. This can then lead to a greater
sensibility by the production team as a whole, whereby some newsreaders collaborate with
deaf professionals adjusting scripts and/or readings sections slower so that some linguistic
challenges can be alleviated.
One example of such a collaboration would be with proper nouns. The produc-
tion of names using a manual representation of letters –known as fingerspelling –in
sign languages typically takes more time than saying a name in a spoken language. If
translators are in the same studio as the newsreaders, and there has been the oppor-
tunity to develop good team collaborations then newsreaders have been known to say
names and pause or to read sections with names in more slowly to support the work of
the translator (Stone 2005, 2009). This use of agency on the part of the deaf translator,
drawing the newsreader’s attention to this need, and ensuring that space is given for
information to be rendered in an appropriate way, demonstrates their understanding of
their community’s need.
This notion of being a bilingual deliverer of information to the deaf community is evi-
dent, stemming from the historic tradition. Another informant states that:
If the text is clear then I can produce the information clearly, if the information is
complex I don’t repeat it complexly, as the audience would not understand it, I need
to make changes, what it means exactly, then I ignore the script, change the delivery,
so that I say exactly what the story means, then add the details and build it up, so that
it matches the meaning of the script. (Clark).
(Stone 2009: 128)
The operational norm is also driven by the overall desire for a covert translation. The
script per se is not seen as something that must be adhered to, more that it guides the trans-
lation that we see. Due to lack of access to information in signed languages, and varying
levels of literacy, some of the assumptions of cultural knowledge in the original script
are not appropriate for some members of the deaf audience. Typically, those members
of the community who will not understand the assumed cultural references, are also the
members who will benefit least for the subtitled English. There is, therefore, a need:
to create a clear mental picture for them [the Deaf audience], which means that I have
to try to digest the information, and then think how I can sign output which gives
them a clear mental picture, by creating a clear picture for myself, then think that’s it,
I want the Deaf audience to have the same mental picture as me, not sign it so that the
Deaf people have to build their own picture, bit by bit (Georgina).
(2009: 129)
This effort is to ensure that the product is highly comprehensible for the target audience.
And, in further analysis, shows that the Deaf translation norm includes prosodic features
(blinks and head movements) to segment the British Sign Language text into phrases
and discourse units (Boyes-Braem 1999) understood to be ‘sentence’ and ‘paragraph’
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Christopher Stone
markings. Furthermore, the head movements form embedded structures that interrelate
different idea units, forming a high level of cohesion in the text.
In addition to the prosodic structure of the text, editorial decisions are made in the
restructuring and presentation of the covert translation. As Rebecca says:
there is background information on the news, the news from 6 to 25 past has lots of
information and I read that to find out what they are talking about, then look at my
script, much reduced information, if I feel it can be delivered as is I do it, if there is
one word that is difficult, I can take information from the larger script, add it, so that
it has the same meaning, with that background information, I only started doing this
recently and Clark is the same, it’s good restructuring and adding background infor-
mation, so that it is clear … really for a Deaf audience it’s only 30 seconds, what I
feel is appropriate information from the larger script, I can’t tell the script writers that
their summary is poor, so I add information, just one or two pieces so it’s clear.
(Stone 2009: 131)
Although the deaf in-vision translator-presenter cannot choose the script they can modify
what information is presented. This agency further promotes the notion of a covert trans-
lation where the information that can be expanded upon is still taken from the news
script. Accurate information can be found within longer news broadcasts to ensure that
the information is clear for the deaf audience. This implies that while the initial norm of
television broadcast news constrains the Deaf translation norm, the operational norms of
re-editing and representing a deaf audience an appropriate summary create a space for the
Deaf translation norm to be reasserted. This is mentioned by several of the informants,
including Clark, who notes:
on Newsweek or the headlines we are always talking about changing to match the
audience … we have to find out what the background information is, the script may
not be clear, and so we need the background information so that we can put those
in and sign it so that it is understood by the audience, we need to put in cultural
information.
(2009: 132)
And so, the historic tradition in many ways is followed. Potential institutional barriers
are navigated so that the constructed Deaf audience receives a product that they are
expecting. In many ways this enables us to see the co-constructed ‘social role’ of the deaf
professionals. The community places trust upon them to provide a British Sign Language
version of the news, the conceit being that it is not a translation, i.e. it is covert. The deaf
professionals feel the weight of this responsibility, as community members, and as trusted
language brokers who, now in a professional space, are still expected to provide an appro-
priate British Sign Language product.
Expectations and norms within new media

In his seminal essay, Toury (2012) introduced the notion that translations should be
seen as culturally significant and that translatorship includes playing ‘a social role, i.e.
to fulfil a function allotted by a community’ (2012: 168). We can see from the discussion
496
above that there is a historical tradition within deaf social networks and communities for
bilinguals to support those with less literacy or understanding of the mainstream. These
bilingual individuals are often the ones chosen to present, and then become publicly seen
as interpreters and translators in broadcasts, video media and more recently webcasts, etc.
This is a norm rather than a rule, i.e. this is something that is typically seen rather than
mandated or obliged; it is a pattern that we see emerging from the system.
While within mainstream interpreted broadcasts it is the editors (most often not from
deaf communities) who provide the source language, in new media (webcasting, etc.)
there is a space for greater levels of agency. Here we see Deaf organizations also taking
advantage of new forms of media to provide news and information to the wider com-
munity. The faces of this information are Deaf community members, often known for
their roles as presenters, or with other professional roles in the community that include
presenting information. These multi professionals are then engaging in a long tradition
of deaf translation norms that are often overlooked at an institutional or training level
by governments, local authorities, commissioners of translation, and sign language inter-
preter education.
This translation norm can drive the desires of the community when wanting to decide
on the public face on interpreting and translation. Moreover, in some contexts with new
media and new domains of translation, while we see collaboration between deaf and
hearing colleagues, much of the translation activity is driven by deaf translators.
In Brazil we have seen the institutional acceptance of Brazilian Sign Language (Libras)
not only on a policy level but also in the generation of Libras educational materials at
tertiary education levels. In this context we see that: ‘Hearing people functioned more
like coworkers with regard to the translation process because the actual translation of
the pedagogical materials was carried out solely by Deaf translator-actors’ (Müller de
Quadros, Xavier de Souza & Ramalho Segala 2012: 38). The goal of the translators is to
‘minimize estrangement’ (2012: 39) and a Deaf translator is used in preference to other
translators.
It is not, however, sufficient to be culturally adept and linguistically fluent, nor is it
assumed today that this can occur without training (see De Meulder & Heyerick 2013 for
an example in Flanders). Müller de Quadros et al. suggest that the translators:
also need to know how to present themselves as actors, ‘TV hosts,’ if you will, and to
have an artistic spirit, to know how to use body language, gesture, mime, and other
performing strategies for the camera since translation into sign language is from a
written text into a visual, spatial, and recorded signed text. These translators are
essentially performers.
(2012: 25)
This performance element of presenting a signed language ensures that there is a ‘material
presence of the body of the translator’ (2012: 25). This presence, that brings co-authorship
to the fore, is perhaps at the core of the Deaf translation norm. Seeing someone, whose
face you recognize, whose fluency is marked by their signed language production, and
whose authority to do so is known by community members due to their close ties to the
community.
We see similar discussions in the US regarding the press conferences on the Covid-19
outbreak in a variety of states. The Registry of Interpreters for the Deaf (RID) in the
US, that is the principal body that assesses and certifies interpreters, issued a position
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Christopher Stone
statement on 9 April 2020.1 The position statement states: ‘Deaf interpreters … play a
vital role in conveying highly consequential information to large and diverse populations
of Deaf people … it is crucial to consistently incorporate a Deaf interpreter when pro-
viding interpreting services for press conferences’. And so, we see that with ever expanding
media and higher levels of access to society at large, the once private role of the deaf
interpreter is now made public and fully endorsed by, and in some cases expected by, pro-
fessional sign language interpreter associations.
Conclusion
When we consider the history of deaf communities and social networks, and the roles
that members of these communities and networks have played in providing translation for
others within the communities and networks (be that as a lay translator or, more recently,
professionally) we can see that this has established a community norm. This long view of
the translation norms in many ways fulfils the call from Morini (2015) to consider transla-
tion norms diachronically. This deaf translation norm is still in operation and appears to
be the intersection between attitudinal and behaviour norms (Malmkjær 2005) and clearly
is desired by the community.
The deaf translation norm appears to be informed by the desire for the target language
that is used being unaccented, or ‘native’ like. In some ways this mirrors what we see from
the Paris School of conference interpreting in that in this model interpreters ideally work
into their native language and it is normalized in high level meetings and international
institutions such as the EU or the UN. However, it would appear that part of the desire for
a deaf translation norm is also bound to the authorship of the translator-actors through
the material presence of their body in the translation.
As more deaf people are gaining access to translator and interpreter education, the
numbers of deaf people able to engage in professional translation and interpretation
increases. I previously (Stone 2009) contended that the Deaf translation norm is not
something that is exclusively performed by deaf interpreters and translators. My position
is that, if taught and developed during interpreter education, it might be possible for those
highly fluent in a signed language(s), and hearing, whether raised in a Deaf community or
social network, or socialized into one, to engage in this norm.
It would be interesting to see ten years on whether this position still holds true. It
would also be of interest to explore how different dimensions of this norm, such as
the political, empowerment, language ownership, etc. (De Meulder & Heyerick 2013)
change over time.
Further reading
• Adam, R., Carty, B. & Stone, C. (2011) ‘Ghostwriting: deaf translators within the Deaf
community’, Babel, 57(4), pp. 375–393.
This article analyses the lay translation work of deaf people in the UK and Australia
working between signed languages (British Sign Language, Australian Sign Language
[Auslan], and Australian Irish Sign Language) and written English, between signed
languages, and as liaison interpreters.
498
• Adam, R., Stone, C., Collins, S. & Metzger, M. (eds) (2014) Deaf Interpreters at
Work: International Insights. Washington, DC: Gallaudet University Press.
This volume is a collection of chapters written by working deaf interpreters and

translators, that touches on personal histories, working in deaf–non-deaf teams, working
in deaf–deaf teams for deafblind people and developments in deaf interpreter assessment
and accreditation.
• Ladd, P. (2007) ‘Signs of change –sign language and televisual media in the UK’, in
Cormack, M. & Hourigan, N. (eds), Minority Language Media. Clevedon: Multilingual
Matters, pp. 229–247.
A description of the evolution of sign language programming on television in the UK.
• Stone, C. (2009) Towards a Deaf Translation Norm. Washington, DC: Gallaudet

University Press.
An analysis of deaf people undertaking the regional broadcast news in the UK that
explores the process and product of these professionals and their reflections on their work.
Note
1 https://rid.org/rid-position-statement-cdis-at-press-conferences/
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Allsop, L. & Kyle, J. (2008) ‘Translating the news: a deaf translator’s perspective’, in Kellett Bidoli,
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32
Online translation communities
and networks
Dingkun Wang
Introduction
Participants in contemporary communication networks can create and spread their
own media in sophisticated styles, diverse formats and ever-growing quantities. They
tend to engage interactively at digital platforms where virtual communities are built and
sustained. Many of these online communities are involved in the translation and circula-
tion of media products, through which they become senders, receivers and producers of
information in the dynamic ecosystem of media convergence. Online translation commu-
nities and networks recognize difference among audiences and provide them with alter-
native means to access information. They are able to utilize such knowledge to render the
meaning of distributed contents and transform them into resources for unique audience
experiences which are still largely unattainable from mainstream industrial domains. By
enhancing the sociability of digital production-consumption (prosumption), online trans-
lation communities have participated in the continuous diversification and expansion of
traditional and new media.
This chapter provides a selective survey of existing research in user-oriented online
translational engagements. Drawing on recent sociological research in convergence cul-
ture, the following sections will situate the topics in community building, translation
quality, and social and industrial activities in the broader context of digital intermedi-
ation so as to showcase the prominent and emerging phenomenon of user-driven trans-
national media exchange. It will reference the previous studies surrounding four main
questions: (1) how is translation competence developed and translation quality assessed
within a given online community? (2) how has the community-based model of transla-
tional media engagements (re)shaped the online environment? (3) what added values can
online translation communities provide to their peer-audiences and hence to their soci-
eties? And 4) what are the implications of online translation communities for the cultural
politics of mediated online interaction? In addition, it will highlight some underexplored
domains with reference to the global-local digital waves arising from East Asia. In view of
the wide variety of genres and media involved, this chapter focuses on the translation of
audio(/)visual texts and relevant interactions facilitated by digital platforms.
DOI: 10.4324/9781003221678-37 501

Dingkun Wang
Prosumers, digital platforms and media convergence

Toffler (1980) coined the term ‘prosumer’ to refer to consumers who are at the same time
producers ‘spending their leisure time to create goods, services or experiences for their
own use and satisfaction’ (Qiu 2010: 19). Whereas the top-down, industrial mode of dis-
tribution prioritizes the easiest ways to orient consumers to its products, participatory
culture generates an open and community-based digital environment for production
and sharing; this dynamic online experience values and fosters novel means of gener-
ating social connections and new identities. Media realism and its asymmetric relation-
ship to the audience, as enforced predominantly by expert representation, is disrupted by
the conjoined, bottom-up media engagements of ‘produsage’ (Bruns & Schmidt 2011).
‘Produsage’ engenders a vibrant ecosystem of value co-creation for prosumers to work
(indirectly) with the culture industry to enhance the value of the products, services, and
user experiences they utilize (Romero & Molina 2011).
The dynamic online engagements of users extrapolate Bourdieu’s (1984) framework of
cultural intermediaries beyond the ‘new middle class’ and contextualized market actors
whose production and consumption of symbolic goods intersect multiple regimes of
mediation (see also Callon, Méadel & Rabeharisoa 2002; Muniesa, Millo & Callon 2007).
Cultural intermediaries are associated not only with material products but also with
services, ideas, and behaviours in digital intermediation –an online interactive process
which ‘incorporates the agency of platforms, social media influencers and increasingly
algorithms’ (Hutchinson 2019: 2). More than merely hosting content, a digital platform
combines four main functions at the interface between users, regulation and practice. It
facilitates computational infrastructures for networked communication and program-
ming; it maintains architectural frameworks for all those who are involved; it sustains fig-
urative communication of data for future systemic improvement; and it enables political
actors to endorse and perpetuate their beliefs (Gillespie 2010). After platformization, i.e.
‘the rise of platform as the dominant infrastructural and economic model of the social web
and its consequences’ (Helmond 2015: 1), platforms can be constructed from data in terms
of their content and user engagement through a built-in application program interface
(API). As an architectural device, an API enables third parties (often platforms) to operate
by the affordances of the host platform. Platformization makes the distributed contents
increasingly programmable and therefore increasingly influences the means and patterns
of online engagement (especially how certain contents become popular). Yet, whereas
programmability regulates online produsage with the norms, strategies, mechanisms and
economies that determine the dynamics between users, mass media, platforms and social
institutions, user-oriented engagements can, in turn, influence the flow of communication
and information on the embedded platform.
Jenkins (2006) stresses that media convergence is more than a concerted assemblage of
media functions but simultaneously a sociocultural shift which grants consumers more
opportunities to actively seek out new information by forging novel connections among
dispersed media contents. Convergence occurs in cognitive assemblages of networked
individuals rather than through technological appliances. Consumption collapses with
processes of pooling resources and combining individual skills or collective intelligence,
which transform recreational life within popular culture into an alternative source for
ordinary citizens to accumulate media power.
Lévy (2013) states that collective intelligence is formed through ‘combining or coordin-
ating unique elements and facilitating dialogue’ (2013: 100). From a cognitive perspective,
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Online translation communities and networks
online communities are formed ‘through an autopoetic process of construction, repro-

duction and transformation of knowledge ecosystems’ (ibid.). The cognitive processes of
participants lead them to task-oriented co-creation and knowledge management, which
are in turn driven by material, intellectual and social motivation mechanisms for reaching
the optimal goals of collaboration (Malone, Laubacher & Dellarocas 2010). Within
the knowledge production of a given collective intelligence, the notion of probability
challenges existing modes of knowing while contesting the very status of the object in
terms of searching, gatheringand archiving practices. The nature of archives continues to
undergo escalating fundamental changes in the networked digital space where the gigantic
formation of knowledge is at once dynamic, emergent, interactive and to some extent cha-
otic. With a shift from a mechanistic to a quantum view of the world and data, archives
in online media are built and sorted in terms of probability rather than objectivity, which
entails an uncertain relation between representation (i.e. what is visually displayed on
screen) and perception (i.e. what is seen, received and thereby absorbed by users) (Hartley
2011: 160). Hartley (2011) observes that the probability archive of universal contents in
the global network system is organized in accordance with quantum theory. It enables
population-wide, user-based mediation of ideas and knowledge, in which the status and
existence of a mediated object undergoes the observer effect (i.e. the changes caused by
the act of observation on observed phenomena). Information uploaded to the probability
archive is (re)mediated, debated, (re)edited, archived or deleted by expert and non-expert
users, and hence subject to the principle of uncertainty.
Furthermore, Jenkins, Ford & Green (2013) designate spreadability as the flow of
ideas with an open-ended logic of participation, highlighting the ways media contents
are received and circulated by interacting, interconnected users in easy-to-share formats.
The creation and circulation of spreadable media prioritize the diversity of audiences who
approach various media contents in different ways while negotiating their spectatorial sub-
jectivity within and beyond their social circles. By motivating interactive sharing, spread-
able media engender localized networks of active engagement with all available channels
to access anything worth knowing. Instead of complying fully with cooperative agendas,
spreadable media provide users with platforms to organize and respond to capitalized
media contents. Spreadable content consists of a wide range of narrative practices which
comprise non-digital platforms and those native to the digital space. Every sound, image
and hence story is spreadable through all available media, while the networked public
consume and participate in the media according to their own needs. No matter when and
where, legal or illegal, they will try their best to gain access to the desired digital contents.
It is from this profound and currently unfolding transformation in digital habitats that
translation communities and networks arise to facilitate alternative means to access the
superabundant but still unevenly distributed media contents.
Four questions to be further answered in translation studies

Within online translation communities, cultural intermediaries network with each other
to form autonomous, virtual communities where their co-creational labour is advanced
without full compliance with institutional and business imperatives. Taking actions in their
digital habitats, cultural intermediaries extend the reach of the translated products and
constantly engineer diverse media environments for the sustenance of their engagements
with the networked public. As defined by Ito (2008), the networked public comprises
‘a linked set of social, cultural and technological developments that have accompanied
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Dingkun Wang
the growing engagement with digitally networked media’ (2008: 2). Research attention
has been dedicated to the motives for participation in particular sites of user-generated
translation (McDonough Dolmaya 2012; Olohan 2014) and the self-identification and
negotiation of participants on their insider/outside statuses (Fabbreti 2018; Wongseree,
O’Hagan & Sasamoto 2019). Methodological breakthrough has been achieved by recent
genealogical and ethnographical studies on the micro identity politics in citizen media
(Pérez-González 2016; Yu 2020). Meanwhile, tension continues to arise when it comes
to the legitimacy of online translation communities, as most of them are operating
without industrial affiliations and mobilizing in grey zones of shadow economies and
dissident ideologies (Lee 2011; Leonard 2005; Wang & Zhang 2017). Despite this, online
communities of user-generated translation will continue to expand as a ‘disruptive force’
(Orrego-Carmona & Lee 2017: 5) which is bound to transform the infrastructures of
liberal-democratic and authoritarian societies from within.
As the translating cultural intermediaries continue to push ethical and legal bound-
aries, several questions have arisen.
(1) How is translation competence developed and translation quality assessed within a given
online community?
As collaborative translation continues among an expanding group of internet users, a

sense of community arises and forges among them consistent and sustaining ties based
on shared commitment, skills, and purposes (O’Hagan 2011). The lived experience within
a given online translation community involves, at a minimum, human participants, the
media contents to be translated, the rules of conduct, affinitive bounds based on shared
values and commitments, social networking technologies, (self-developed) applications
(mostly for translation), and the social environment beyond the Web (Li 2020; Wongseree
2020). A well-established translation community operates through complex interactions
among its members, who support and negotiate with each other in developing translation
competence and technological expertise. A translation community enforces a hierarchy
among its members, depending on their length of membership, the extent of their dedi-
cation, and their contribution to the community. The hierarchy functions as a genera-
tive force to sustain the social interaction between newcomers and veterans, peripheral
participants and core members, and ordinary contributors and decision-makers, rather
than as a repressive force exploiting user-productivity at both organizational and discur-
sive levels.
A collective-intelligence community can develop high- level intelligent capabilities
which enables collaboration to surpass the sum of separate, individual intellectual outputs
(Salminen 2014). To remain effective, online communities also work to ensure adequate
levels of transparency among participants and in relation to the wider society in terms of
privacy, security, and mutual trust (Prahalad & Ramaswamy 2004). Individual knowledge
can be incorporated into the organized network of social knowledge through creative
conversation between participants. The social knowledge will be shared and transformed
from implicit to explicit under the condition of trust, which simultaneously leads to fur-
ther questions and dialogue within a given online community. The explicit knowledge
will be stored and circulated in platform-based data streams (e.g. resources available at
fansubbing platforms) for future consumption, evaluation, and interpretation. The shared
data form flows of externalized knowledge will re-enter a further process of internal-
ization, in which the data flow is integrated into the personal knowledge of individual
504
participants and therefore joins new cycles of ‘socialization, questioning, dialogue, for-
malization, recombination’ (Lévy 2013: 104).
The quality of produced translations can be evaluated in terms of ‘the need and
circumstances of the agents who engage with the translation’ (Orrego-Carmona 2019: 199).
The skopos, or functional quality, would remain diverged and relative rather than mono-
lithic and fixed among community members, geographic locations, anticipations of users,
and contexts of evaluation (Jiménez-Crespo 2017: 122). In addition, Chesterman (2004)
views translation quality in terms of production conditions, i.e. the time, resources, and
human and technological supports available for the production of the translation; and
reception conditions, to which a translation must be effectively relevant, and which guar-
antees the sustainability of trust between target audiences and the presented translation.
The target audience will reject the presented text if they find the quality inadequate.
Online translation communities are familiar with the expectancy norms in a given target
context of circulation, i.e. the established expectations concerning particular kinds of
translation. They understand both the production and consumption of the media and
are able to transform their knowledge into resources for unique audience experiences in
compliance with the corresponding expectancy norms. Bearing this in mind, two further
questions arise:
(2) How has the community-based model of translational media engagements (re)shaped
the online environment?
(3) What added values can online translation communities provide to their peer-audiences
and hence to their inhabited societies?
As an essential component in this global phenomenon, user-generated content represents

a space of creativity and resistance where the audience-turned-digital citizens translate
and circulate their works with like-minded users. They are more deeply involved in the
production and spread of information, which occurs across platforms at an astonishing
range and speed. Studies have shown that online translation communities often provide
a space for translation students and early-career professionals to sharpen their skills and
develop interpersonal networks which will benefit their long-term career development
(Luczaj, Holy-Luczaj & Cwiek-Rogalska 2014; Meng & Wu 2013). More recently, the
community-based model of translation is being explored in relation to the social inter-
action within a given community and between the translating cultural intermediaries and
other social agents (McDonough Dolmaya & Sánchez Ramos 2019). Affective connection
is essential to develop their mutual trust. Audiences who are affectively attached to a given
community will find them trustworthy, ‘based on the use-value of intercultural mediation
to the user-oriented communication, rather than the reliability and quality of the wide
range of user-created content’ (Shim et al. 2020: 844). In comparison, the absence of
such affective connections often leads to distrust, as conveyed by those who question the
moral commitment and translation competence of fansubbing communities (Wongseree,
O’Hagan & Sasamoto 2019: 6–7).
Once trust is reinforced, for networked digital citizens the fine line between cultural
intermediation and activism is obscured. Take fansubbing for instance: translations
of subtitling produced ‘by fans for fans’ (Díaz-Cintas & Sanchez 2006) open alterna-
tive spaces for active audiences to take control over commercial audiovisual products.
Fan-subtitlers (fansubbers) act ‘effectively as self-appointed translation commissioners’
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Dingkun Wang
(Pérez-González 2007: 71) to translate a wide variety of genres, languages and media
disseminated through TV channels, movies and video games. In authoritarian societies,
fansubbing and other forms of translatorial media engagements seek to defend them-
selves against the tight ideological and political control of state-sanctioned surveillance
of the translation, circulation and consumption of media products (Díaz-Cintas 2018).
As digital citizens in the unfolding platformization of the Web, the digital generation of
cultural intermediaries master the power of media convergence to pursue change and
social justice. Whereas non-political communications such as gossiping and (micro)celeb-
rity culture can be mobilized for political actions in the alter-globalization movements
and activism against neoliberal elite-centrism (Gerbaudo 2017), cyber-populism can also
instigate the politicization of online translation communities through digital intermedi-
ation. For instance, sexual and gender minority groups are self-motivated to participate
in the translation of queer popular culture, community-building and queer world-making
activities and therefore raise the public awareness of sexual and gender (in)equality within
their biased, heteronormative social environments (Guo & Evans 2020; Jiang 2020). As
Jenkins (2006) speculated nearly 15 years ago, the convergence between recreational life
and cultural politics has become the reality we live in.
(4) What are the implications of online translation communities for the cultural politics of
mediated online interaction?
In his observation of social interaction, Erving Goffman (1969) distinguishes between

the ‘front region, ’ where individuals and groups comply with the here-and-now situation,
and ‘back region’, which is reserved for those ‘actions and aspects of the self which are
felt to be inappropriate, or which might discredit the image that the individual is seeking
to project’ (Thompson 2020: 11). Drawing on this distinction, Thompson (2020) added
‘mediated online interaction’ as a new category of interaction which is ‘brought into
being by the computer-mediated communication that takes place in online environments’
(2020: 6). On the one hand, all participants in a given mediated online interaction are
aware that their utterances, expressions, and communicative outputs can be accessed by
a broader range of people dispersed around the globe; by accessing the circulated infor-
mation, these distant others are simultaneously promoting that interaction by making
comments or intervening in various other ways (Thompson 2020: 15). On the other hand,
the online information flow is sustained by two-way interactions between virtual sites and
platforms and networked individuals. As the platforms constitute the actual medium for
the networked individuals to interact, future research should reflect both the interaction
between networked individuals and platforms and that between networked individuals via
platforms.
In addition, the leakage of back-region behaviour (or information) into the front
region is prominent in user-oriented online engagements with popular culture franchises.
For instance, fans of DC Comics had their wishes granted by director Zack Snyder, who
announced the upcoming official release of his alternative version of Justice League
(referred by fans as the ‘Snyder Cut’) on HBO Max. The movie was initially directed by
Snyder but underwent substantial changes due to his departure in the latter phase of pro-
duction. The cinematic version largely diverged from Snyder’s original design and was met
with a poor response from fans. Fan narratives about Snyder’s original script and leaked
footage and visual designs of his version began to circulate online, which led to a persistent
call for the release of the Snyder Cut. Is this a victory for fans or a corporate strategy to
506
orient fans’ attention for further profit exploitation? Leakage, among other actions and
interactions enabled by the digital mediality, should not be celebrated uncritically.
Online translation communities also purposefully subvert the established power
relations between languages. Evidently, English as a lingua franca is increasingly utilized
for effective communication without passive compliance to the rules of grammatically
correct usage. It is deliberately downgraded by the digital generation of global justice
activists who tend to apply linguistic hybrids rather than being subjugated by the global
power of the lingua franca (Baker 2013). That being said, English still plays a significant
and mostly dominant role in the promotion of emerging popular media genres to global
audiences. For instance, English-language ‘genesis files’ (Nornes 2007: 235) are produced
at first to initiate the platform-based translational relay of webtoons, the South Korean
innovation in digital comics (Yecies et al. 2019). Different from other graphic narratives
which are produced and distributed online via, for example, ComiXology, webtoons
comply with visual verticality in the arrangement of panels and narrative progression,
transforming the movement of page-turning in reading paper-based comic books into
scrolling and tapping (Cho 2016). On the English-language Line Webtoon site –launched
by the major Korean parent platform Naver Webtoon in 2014, and now the largest
webtoon platform of its kind –there are over 17,000 Asia-based volunteer users trans-
lating more than 200 series into 11 languages. Exceptions to this approach have occurred,
such as the 131-episode superhero series Sidekicks which was ‘unofficially translated’ into
Indonesian, Thai, Vietnamese and Traditional Chinese, using the original Korean rather
than English genesis files (Yecies, Yang & Lu 2020).
Despite this impressive level of activity, for how long and to what extent will the
translating crowd be able to maintain their sense of community and their autonomy in
face of the corporatization of user-productivity? In search for answers to this question,
it is worthwhile for translation studies to respond to the latest train of thoughts which
reinterprets ‘digital labour’ as an ‘empty signifier’ (Gandini 2020). Labouring activities
in contemporary platform societies consist of a heterogeneous set of practices which do
not necessarily coincide with exploitation in the corresponding contexts of work (Jarrett
2018). Despite geopolitical differences, similar varieties of paid and unpaid work mediated
or facilitated by digital platforms for contracted and independent personnel continue to
expand across fields such as domestic labour, creative industries, and public services (see
van Dijck, Pulle & Da Waal 2018). Therefore, critiques will delve beyond ‘the relation-
ship between capitalism, work and technology in the 21st century’ to focus on ‘logics that
are peculiar to digital work platforms’ (Gandini 2020, 9) and expand the understanding
about their technological infrastructures and their functioning and criticalities as media
objects. To that end, research will remain vigilant to the ways new media literacy –‘a set
of perspectives that we actively use to expose ourselves to the mass media to interpret
the meaning of the messages we encounter’ (Potter 2013: 237–238) –is shaped but is also
simultaneously reshaping mediated online interaction between networked individuals
via platforms. Some crucial implications may be derived from previous explorations of
fansubbing as a non-representational practice.
Fansubbing as a non-representational practice

Subtitling allows target audiences to eavesdrop on unfamiliar languages spoken by the
on-screen characters. Encounters with multiple languages within the same film can easily
be elided due to the cinematic apparatus, which stresses spatial and temporal constraints,
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Dingkun Wang
precision of synchronization, and instantaneity of transmission. Subtitlers represent

the best condensed version of the source information even at the expense of the prag-
matic and sociolinguistic complexity of the original conversational interaction (Remael
2003: 237). Luis Pérez-González (2014) critiques a representational practice of subtitling,
which is still dominant, that constructs ‘selected aspects of reality –including ethnic-,
nation-, class-and gender-based identities –through the medium of film’ and propagates
such a framed reality through the ‘homogenising audiovisual translation practices
favoured by the industry’ (2014: 34). He stresses that the industrial approach to subtitling
prevents audiences from having a more involved viewing experience; the subtitles transmit
the meaning to the audiences but cannot channel the interaction between them and the
narrated event on screen (Pérez-González 2012). In comparison, co-creating individuals
apply an innovative subtitling apparatus with instrumental and referential functions
to guarantee ‘an immersive, spectatorial experience for their viewers’ (Pérez-González
2012: 347).
In line with non-representational theory, which emphasizes ‘a differential, expressive
process of becoming, where much happens before and after conscious reflexive thought’
(Thrift 2009: 503), subtitling should be approached as ongoing actions and events.
Subtitles are not evaluated in terms of referential precision and synchronization with the
meaning and pragmatic clues expressed in the original, ‘but on the basis of their affective
contribution to the materiality of audio-visual texts and their transformational impact
on the audience’s experience of self-mediated textualities’ (Curti 2009: 205). Fansubs are
responsive to diverse spectatorial subjectivities and foster alternative aesthetics of recep-
tion by delivering both familiar and unfamiliar information to the audience. The familiar
comprises meanings and concepts which are considered universal but are inaccessible to the
target audience due to language differences only. The unfamiliar includes those meanings
alien to the target-language cognitive frame because of cultural differences and irrecon-
cilable gaps between the source and target language. Fansubbers tend to fill such gaps by
retaining the relevant source information intact whilst at the same time intruding into the
source audiovisual text through annotative practices of remediation or highly performa-
tive self-mediation. With sophisticated technological capacities, fansubbers ‘manipulate
media texts and reform conventional representations of reality through transformative
subtitling to effect aesthetic change’ (Pérez-González 2013: 10). They strike a balance
between cultural adaptation for the sake of comprehensibility and cultural explanation
for the sake of authenticity, and therefore involve audiences in a process of intercultural
communication. The original and the target audience are adapted to each other through
non-representational, interventionist mediations which uncover ‘the differences that com-
mercial subtitling tries to gloss over’ (Pérez-González 2012: 349). For example, a line such
as ‘Why don’t we talk about it after we make love?’ (Two and a Half Men, Episode 10
of Season 8: 2010) can be translated as ‘我们何不“日后再说”’ (wo men he bu ‘ri hou zai
shuo’)1 which realizes a punning effect in translation through the phrase ‘日后再说’ (ri hou
zai shuo), which means both ‘to talk about something later’ and ‘to talk about something
after making love.’ The Chinese character ‘日’ renders explicit the taboo of sexual inter-
course and makes the Chinese subtitle more vulgar than the original English phrase.
In The Big Bang Theory (Episode 1 of Season 3: 2010), the fansub shows ‘你变成面
目可憎的大JJ霸主’2 (ni bian cheng mian mu ke zeng de da JJ ba zhu) for the line ‘you
were acting like an obnoxious, giant dictator’, in which the character on screen (Howard
Wolowitz) combines ‘dic-’ with ‘-tator’, in a way that is immediately obvious. The fansub
contains precisely the meaning of ‘obnoxious’, ‘giant’, and ‘dictator’ and recreates the
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double entendre by using ‘JJ’ as the substitute for ‘鸡鸡’ (ji ji; penis), inserting the sequence
of syllables of the original pun obliquely. In other cases, the one-way transmission of
meaning from the screen to the audience is replaced by an affective triangulation between
the fansubber, the original narrative, and the audience. Through subtitles, fansubbers
divert the meaning of the source information by transforming commercial popular cul-
ture products into vehicles of personal or collective values (Deuze 2006). For example, in
a scene from 21 Jump Street (2012), when the camera focuses on a multiple-choice quiz,
the majority of the fansubs display a message from the fansubber to the audience, in
which the fansubber mocks himself for being unable to translate the chemistry jargon. By
presenting this non-translation information, the fansubber injects an empathic voice into
the original at the point in the narrative where the undercover police officer finds him-
self sitting in a high school chemistry class and has to take a quiz. In lieu of translating
what is shown on screen, the fansubber displays a humorous response (as below) to the
question ‘How is a covalent bond different from an ionic bond?’ which, when translated
into English, can be read as follows:
a. The subtitler does not understand the content of the original, b. The subtitler has
not majored in chemistry, c. The subtitler could not translate (the source information)
d. This subtitler said, ‘FUCK’.
共价键不同于离子键在于？ a:字幕哥不知道 b:字幕哥不是学化学的 c:字幕哥翻不

出来 d:字幕哥FUCK了3 (gong jia jian bu tong yu li zi jian zai yu? a: zi mu ge bu zhi dao
b: zi mu ge bu shi xue hua xue de c: zi mu ge fan bu chu lai d: zi mu ge FUCK le)
English letters are blended with Chinese characters to communicate the intended meanings
in manners that defy conventional usage. Instead of being instances of code-mixing,
which highlight the boundaries between Chinese and English, the corresponding subtitles
are produced to bridge the here-and-now communication with the audience by ‘orches-
trating languages, modes and media available in the repertoire of language users’ (Lee & Li
2020: 399). Do such translanguaging moments also exist in non-representational subtitling
elsewhere in the world? And if so, how do they play out and under what circumstances?
Answering these two questions can be the task of future research.
Besides, fansubbers also seek to open alternative channels of interaction within the
diegetic space of the original by inserting explanations on contextual information, cul-
tural and historical references, and intertextual allusions. In House of Cards (2013–2018,
Netflix), the Chinese fansubbing community YYeTs provided post-narrative notes to
explain some of the elements in American politics in light of real-world events (Wang
2017). Elsewhere, in Spider-Man: Homecoming (2017), the YYeTs fansubbers displayed
textual inserts besides an arrow-like sign which points at one of the cameo figures on
screen. The note informs the audience that that figure is Howard Stark, the father of Tony
Stark (aka Iron Man). Although overlooking this detail might not affect the audience’s
comprehension of the plot, the fannish reminder highlights for the target audience the
intertextual world-building in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, not to mention that the
movie is about how Iron Man trains and recruits Peter Parker (aka Spiderman) as an
Avenger.
Non-representational subtitling also corresponds with what Vidal Claramonte (2012)
considers a ‘minor translation’, by which the translator seeks to ‘open an in-between,
interconnected, plural, reversible space, susceptible to constant modification’ (2012: 279)
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Dingkun Wang
in order to ‘reproduce and perpetuate the already resistant and subversive discourse
expressed in the source text’ (2012: 280). In a fansubbed version of V for Vendetta (2005),
the translation of source-language speech is in traditional Chinese characters which are
pronounced the same as or similar to that in the regional vernacular speech of wu yu.4 The
subtitles reinforce the fact that China is a multilingual country with 129 languages spoken
by 56 ethnic groups (Sun 2007).
In China, Mandarin is widely known as the official language and the language of the
Han ethnic group, which forms 91.51% of the Chinese population. The Sinitic family
consists of seven branches of regional languages, or fang yan, of which the grammar, phon-
ology, syntax and vocabulary can vary significantly even within the same branch (Norman
1988). There is Guan Hua in northern and south-western China, which later developed
into Mandarin, Wu (i.e. wu yu) in south-eastern Chinese provinces and regions in Jiangsu,
Shanghai and Zhejiang, Yue (i.e. Cantonese) in southern provinces of Guangdong and
Guangxi, as well as Hong Kong, Min in Fujian province, Xiang in Hunan province, Gan in
Jiangxi province, and Hakka or Ke Jia Hua in southern China (Chao 1943). Despite their
distinct and self-contained characteristics ‘as diverse as the several Romance languages’
(Chomsky 1986: 5), the seven groups of fang yan have so far been considered ‘dialects’
of Mandarin. DeFrancis (1984: 57) considers neither ‘language’ nor ‘dialect’ sufficient
in conveying the ambiguity and obscurity of fang yan and instead, coins ‘regionalect’ as
an umbrella term. Such linguistic diversity of the Han ethnic majority in China has long
been forced into a precarious state by China’s historically unilingual language policy and
planning.
Instead of using the officially prescribed Putonghua (the standardized version of
Mandarin which has been the national lingua franca since the 1950s) and its written form
Simplified Written Chinese, the fansubbers resort to fang yan as their target language of
cinematic storytelling. The non-representational approach enables them to disrupt the
monolithic, homogenous linguistic discourse around ‘the Chinese language’ and engages
the target audiences (predominantly, the local speakers of wu yu) in an immersive experience
of the idiosyncrasies of on-screen speech. The translation visualizes sociocultural-specific
connotations (which are often attached to issues of identity) by experimenting with ‘the gen-
esis and maintenance of interpretation and thus meaning’ (Thrift 2009: 503). It enables the
mediation of subtitling to ‘exceed and potentially disrupt given orderings’ (Thrift 2009: 505)
as an act of reality construction in the participatory cinematic domain of human agencies,
where subtitles are not subject exclusively to the meaning of the audiovisual text but inter-
vene ‘in the process of narration and renarration that constitute all encounters’ (Baker
2013: 1–2). The use and visualization of regionalects can have ‘a disruptive transgressive
effect’ (Johnson 2013: 71) on the national lingua franca. Rather than constraining the scope
of inquiry to the feasibility and intelligibility of fang yan subtitles to the national audience,
research should reflect the weight and durability of this aspirational practice in relation to
the transglobal mobility of Sinophone articulations at ‘places of cultural production out-
side China and on the margins of China and Chineseness’ (Shih 2007: 6).
As cultural intermediaries in the digital sub-field, fansubbers frame commercial audio-
visual products in their co-creational network which expands across dispersed global
locations. Genre-specific knowledge and technological competence enables them to claim
authority in intercultural brokerage and thereby open ‘new participatory sites for the
expression of subjective spectatorial experience’ (Pérez-González 2012: 337). In doing so,
fansubbers reinforce their impact on the viewers, whose perceptions and experience of
subtitling are constantly re-shaped.
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Propositions on future research directions

Kazuo Ishiguro (2017), in his Nobel Lecture, championed diversity beyond ‘the elite first
world cultures’, and lent his support to a redefinition of ‘good literature’ which would
encompass new and aspiring means to create ‘important and wonderful stories’. He once
again reminded us of the importance of tracing the ways in which such stories travel in the
digital plenitude. Meanwhile, recent developments in cultural and media studies consider
produsage to be the gateway to answering the broader question of how general audiences
interact with all kinds of contents distributed in all forms of media within and beyond
the online environment (Bird 2011; Jenkins 2014). The extrapolated paradigm will also
enable future research in translation studies to identify and engage with new and aspiring
approaches to digital storytelling and cultural intermediation across virtual and physical
dimensions.
Digital storytelling refers to fiction and non-fiction narratives which are composed
through various forms of mediated interaction via digital platforms. Jenkins (2006)
identifies three modes of digital storytelling. First, multimedia storytelling assembles
interrelated contents in the form of text, video, audio, interactive media, and static images
to create an integrated experience within the same platform. The second is transmedia
storytelling, in which storytellers use digital platforms and a number of other commu-
nication channels to compose and spread a given story while maintaining the relevance
of the involved media as essential components to the overall experience of the story uni-
verse. Audiences of transmedia storytelling often actively trace and identify the scattered
but interrelated plots and contextual information in order to have a holistic comprehen-
sion and experience of the story. Finally, in cross-media storytelling, some narratives are
created within a specific medium but can be found and consumed elsewhere. It should
be emphasized that the user-oriented experience often trespasses the boundaries between
the three modes, as participants are affectively connected to each other in their individual
and collective social, culturaland artistic engagements. They share, learn and improve
their knowledge and skills through ‘information mentorship’, by which ‘what is known
by the most experienced is passed along to novices’ (Jenkins 2006: 7). Content creators’
experiences of media can be centred on the function of computational devices. In lieu
of techno-determinism, such media life is shaped socially in bottom-up processes of aes-
thetic speculation by the users who predict what new ways of storytelling will appear
based on their individual and collective experiences of information and communication
technology.
Despite the consistent scholarly engagement with digital storytelling, the dearth of
knowledge is especially present in terms of the contribution and impact of the user-driven
cultural intermediation practised on popular media platforms. In particular, nascent
digital storytelling trends, as found in webnovels, digital comics and video produsage, are
thriving across Asia’s expanding creative industries and among their global fans, thereby
impacting on the collaborative production, circulation, and translation of this wide-
ranging digital content. Most noticeably, (trans)creators of webtoons exploit the thriving
regional digital platform environments for the global expansion of the Korean digital wave
and its revitalized links with Southeast Asia. Meanwhile, the cross-platform, transmedia
adaptations of online literature, especially in the format of web series, are reaching global
audiences mainly through fan translation. Presently, as vehicles for transmedia-IP –a net-
work of interconnected media, popular culture, and merchandise emanating from a single
creative source –webnovels and webtoons are cultivating new audiences and participatory
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Dingkun Wang
cultures beyond Asia. The symbiotic coteries of content creators and adaptors in the new
ecosystem of transmedia storytelling translate and then transform original works across
multiple languages, formats and platforms, magnifying the global spreadability of the
digital contents.
In addition, video remix provides an alternative approach to the interpretation of
(translated) audiovisual information at linguacultural interfaces. Instead of reiterating
the mediated meaning of the original, creators of remixed videos (remixers) tend to
subvert the pre-distributed meaning for individual and collective articulations of cul-
tural and political views (Kuhn 2012; Gallagher 2018). Through video remix, cultural
intermediaries perpetuate civically relevant and often provocative contents online by
aligning themselves with commercial platforms’ mechanisms of production and com-
munication. Creators of remixed videos (remixers) combine their egalitarian practices
with sophisticated algorithms which are initially developed by the industry to constantly
monitor the uploaded contents and decide what is important and for whom. Remix
should not simply be understood as a form of communication on digital platforms; it
should also be perceived as an interpretive cultural practice which has no fixed bound-
aries and domains of action. In this respect, research may explore the ways popular
texts are poached by cultural intermediaries in their effort to exploit the distributed
creativity of popular culture franchises for dislocated, cross-relational recreation. For
example, during the Chilean anti-neoliberal movement in 2011, local dubbing actors
who performed in the official Chilean Spanish-dubbed version of the Japanese anime
series Dragon Ball contributed their voices in a symbolic live performance of assembling
genkidama (collective life force, or ‘spirit bomb’). Through their voices, characters from
the original joined the assemblage of protesters in their weaponized popular-cultural
imagination of the collective energy (Diaz-Pino 2019).
Further inquiries can concentrate on the emerging force of ‘Asianization’ (Funabashi
1993; Chang 2014) which enables the distributed creativity of webnovels, webtoons, and
video produsage to disseminate the region’s shared values and traditions through advanced
technology, storytelling techniques and sophisticated visual styles. Studies could also illu-
minate how the dynamic range of Asian popular digital media is being consumed beyond
the region, albeit in uneven ways. Pathways to ‘digital Asianization’ are being accelerated
by the often competing cultural waves breaking across Asia and afar. These waves have
afforded fans around the world novel forms of digital interaction and integration, thus
impacting on the everyday digital environments of the creative industries. Future explor-
ation of these dynamic environments will show how new forms of popular digital content
are translated and how their reception is transforming screen-based narratives across mul-
tiple languages and platforms.
Conclusion
The power and spreadability of interconnected media ecosystems will continue to mag-
nify the new aesthetics of produsage in communities and collectives of cultural inter-
mediaries. New developments and trends in translation and communication studies have
shed light on the ways cultural intermediaries are re-defining cultural and creative indus-
tries while searching for new opportunities to overcome the challenges which arise from
the platformized environment of digital intermediation. That being said, the innovations
brought by user-generated translation to community-based intercultural engagement, col-
laborative meaning-making and the like have yet to be fully investigated and understood.
512
By monitoring the complex tensions and cultural shifts at the forefront of mediated online
interactions, future research will contribute to further understanding the continuing trans-
formation of the cultural ecology in the rapidly shifting landscape of media convergence.
Translation studies has shown so far the tip of the iceberg of collaborative produc-
tion, circulation and translation of wide-ranging digital contents. Future research can illu-
minate how translation spreads novel forms of digital interaction and integration among
different audiences and online infrastructures, by what or whose criteria user-translators
evaluate potential translation choices in their decision-making processes, and how cul-
tural intermediaries continue to transform the digital environments of the creative indus-
tries and everyday lived reality more broadly. Accordingly, there is still much to be learned
about the reception of user-translated media in light of different commenting features
which enable participants from around the globe to reflect on the production and the end
results of translations. Through individual and comparative case studies, one can see and
appreciate how such cultural intermediaries have approached the portrayal and preser-
vation of original narrative content and how they have intervened with some personal
inconsistencies. Suffice to say that these research methods have the potential to investi-
gate interpersonal inconsistencies or capacities in online translation communities on a
granular level. Last but not least, not only do online translation communities enjoy some
social prestige, even though this may not have been their chief goal, but their entangle-
ment with the produsage of creative industries has also contributed to economic profit.
Research has yet to shed light on what distinctive yet overlapping forms of value have
been generated from the audience-community-platform triad of digital intermediation.
Further reading
• Dwyer, T. (2017) Speaking in Subtitles: Revaluing Screen Translation. Edinburgh:
Edinburgh University Press.
A wide-ranging and insightful exploration of the cultural-political, economicand techno-

logical developments of screen translation in histories of the screen media, which can be
a formidable companion to Pérez-González’s monograph.
• Pérez-González, L. (2014) Audiovisual Translation: Theories, Methods and Issues. London:

Routledge.
One of the earliest and most significant interdisciplinary projects in audiovisual transla-
tion which laid the theoretical and methodological foundations for conceptual and critical
research and remains an essential reference for studies in translation and media culture.
• Hutchinson, J. (2017) Cultural Intermediaries: Audience Participation in Media

Organisations. Cham, Switzerland: Palgrave Macmillan.
A work offering new critical insights into the nature of cultural intermediaries, based on
rigorous intellectual conversations and experiments with program developers, corporate
platforms and interfaces, and digital audiences, in relation to a wide range of challenges
posed by automated media systems to human societies and the potential positive use of
sophisticated algorithms for societal change and political participation.
513
Dingkun Wang
• Athique, A. & Baulch, E. (eds) (2019) Digital Transactions in Asia: Economic,

Informational, and Social Exchanges. London and New York: Routledge.
• Baulch, E., Flew, T. & Li, L. (eds) (2019) ‘Communication, culture, and governance
in Asia: the shifting institutional bases of digital Asia studies’, Special Section of
International Journal of Communication, 19.
Two timely interventions into the contemporary scholarship in digital communication

studies which provide up-to-date accounts of digital developments and internet cultures
in Asia and critical insights for future interdisciplinary and intersectional projects.
Notes
1 This translation is provided by the leading Chinese fansubbing community YYeTs (ren ren ying
shi). The SubRip Subtitle file can be found at the community’s website (www.rrys2020.com/sub-
title/21729; accessed on 15 July 2020).
2 This translation is provided by the leading Chinese fansubbing community YYeTs (ren ren ying
shi). The SubRip Subtitle file was retrieved from the community’s website (www.rrys2020.com/
subtitle/20370; accessed on 15 July 2020).
3 These fansubs were produced by the defunct fansubbing community dbfansub (dian bo zi mu zu).
The SubRip Subtitle file was retrieved from the community’s website https://subhd.tv/d/3072889
(accessed on 15 July 2020).
4 The fansubs were produced by WSHD. The SubRip Subtitle file was retrieved from: https://
subhd.tv/a/304423 (accessed on 15 July 2020).
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33
Wikipedia and translation
Henry Jones
Introduction
Wikipedia is the world’s largest free online encyclopaedia and a prominent feature of
today’s media landscape. At the time of writing in August 2019, the platform contains
close to 49 million articles, written in 303 different languages, making it one of the most
impressively comprehensive repositories of human knowledge ever created (Wikipedia,
‘About’). At least partly for this reason, Wikipedia consistently receives over 15 billion
page views a month and ranks globally as the fifth most popular website (Alexa 2019;
Wikimedia, ‘Wikipedia Page Views’). Unlike other sites which attract similar levels of
user traffic and attention, however, every word of Wikipedia’s content and almost all of its
organizational structures have been developed by a vast, transnational community of vol-
unteer contributors (Wikipedia, ‘About’). This is because, rather than limit contributions
to a select group of professional writers, scientists, historians and other scholarly experts
as previous attempts at encyclopaedia-building have generally done (Hartelius 2010),
Wikipedia has harnessed the affordances of wiki technologies to present itself as the
encyclopaedia that ‘anyone can edit’ (Wikipedia, ‘Main Page’). Indeed, all visitors to the
platform are actively encouraged to engage directly in the text production process and may
do so without the need to secure publisher approval, or even the need to register with the
Wikimedia Foundation (the non-profit organization on whose servers the site is hosted).
As such, Wikipedia has been viewed as one of the most successful examples of the new
‘participatory’ web and promoted as a clear illustration of the democratizing potential
of networked digital communication tools to enable mass collaboration between physic-
ally dispersed individuals on an unprecedented scale (Bruns 2008; Jones 2020; Meikle &
Young 2012).
Kim Park’s (2011) meta-analysis of Wikipedia-focused research across all disciplines
between 2002 and 2010 showed that a total of 1,746 academic publications on this topic
had already been indexed in the Web of Science and Scopus databases by the end of
this first decade of Wikipedia’s existence. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the vast majority of the
earliest investigations into the platform came from the fields of computer and informa-
tion science, with only 1% of this body of research having been conducted by humanities
518 DOI: 10.4324/9781003221678-38

scholars. Nevertheless, as the contributions to more recent edited volumes such as Lovink
& Tkacz’s (2011) A Wikipedia Reader demonstrate, the platform has since developed
into the object of a highly multidisciplinary field of research, attracting media theorists,
digital ethnographers, geographers, philosophers, political scientists and historians. These
scholars have explored, for example, the unique culture of the online volunteer commu-
nity (Reagle 2010), the impact of its demographic composition on encyclopedic content
production (Graham 2011; Bear & Collier 2016), and the complex processes of collabor-
ation and negotiation that characterize knowledge creation in this context (Swarts 2009).
Connections have also been drawn between developments in Wikipedia and broader
socio-economic changes, occurring both on-and offline, most notably in the context of
‘media convergence’ (Bruns 2008).
Despite the breadth and depth of this body of scholarship, research on Wikipedia
has largely tended to neglect the global and multilingual character of the encyclopaedia
(Fichman & Hara 2014: 1). Specifically, comparatively little attention has been paid to the
activities of Wikipedians working in languages other than English, or to the ways in which
linguistic and cultural barriers are negotiated by this transnational community. Moreover,
as Shuttleworth (2017: 311) has recently noted, the role of translation in the construction
of the site’s content remains a distinctly under-researched area of investigation. The aim
of this chapter is to consolidate current understanding of translation in Wikipedia and to
provide a useful starting point for future investigations into this translating community
and its practices. I also consider the practical and ethical challenges facing (translation)
scholars working in this environment, and attempt to underline the potential of research
into Wikipedia for understanding the impact of digital tools on the world of transla-
tion today.
Translation in Wikipedia
Wikipedia began as the brain-child of two Americans, Jimmy Wales and Larry Sanger,
and was initially intended as an English-only project (Lih 2009: 139). Nevertheless, as
documented in Lih’s (2009: 133–167) detailed history of the site’s early development, the
idea of expanding Wikipedia into a multilingual platform emerged within just a few weeks
of its inception in January 2001. Indeed, not only were many of the first participants
native German-speakers –a result of a particularly strong ‘hacker’ subculture in Germany
at the time (Lih 2009: 139) –but contributions made in languages other than English were
also uploaded among the encyclopaedia’s first articles. Archived copies of messages sent
to the project’s first mailing list reveal that the community did not quite know what to
do with such non-English additions. On 28January, for example, one proto-Wikipedian
posted: ‘The Photo Electric effect article is in German. How do we feel about multilin-
gualism? What is the policy –to accept alternate languages/translations, or to only accept
English articles? I know this opens a can of worms, but…’ (06:10:43, 28January 2001,
Wikipedia-1). Extensive discussion ensued within the burgeoning community but, by mid-
March, it appears that Wales was convinced of the need to set up ‘some alternative lan-
guage wikipedias [sic]’:
I want to set up some alternative language wikipedias. French and German would
be good, and Cdani has offered to not inflict his terrible English on us if we make a
Catalan wikipedia.:-) (I’m just teasing, but he has expressed an interest.)
(Wales, 01:24:53, 16 March 2001, Wikipedia-1)
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Henry Jones
As Lih (2009: 139) explains, this multilingual expansion was not nearly as straightforward
as it first appeared, particularly given the inadequacies of early versions of the platform’s
UseModWiki software for storing and rendering non- roman alphabetic characters.
Nevertheless, by the middle of June 2001, additional versions of the wiki site had been
created in Catalan, Chinese, Esperanto, French, German, Hebrew, Italian, Japanese,
Portuguese, Russian, Spanish and Swedish (Wikipedia, ‘International Wikipedia’). Still,
the question of the status and purpose of these other language Wikipedias remained con-
tentious: the early Wikipedians debated whether, for example, the French Wikipedia should
aim simply to provide French speakers with access to the English-language site’s articles
by translating these directly across into the new version, or whether French-speaking
users should instead be encouraged to create their own original content, and thus to work
entirely independently of the site’s other linguistic communities. As the exchange between
Sanger (‘LMS’) and ‘Astronomer’ below shows, the group consensus eventually settled on
the latter option, although the utility of translating text already published within another
language edition of the platform was recognized:
How are the various Wikipedias going to be coordinated, if at all? Will we have sev-
eral quite different articles in different languages? Will English be a lingua franca? […]
there are millions of French people who don’t know English but who do know enough
to write excellent encyclopedia articles on all sorts of topics that have nothing specific-
ally to do with France or French. Why should they be discouraged by anyone? –LMS
>>I agree with Larry that the international wikipedia don’t need to be translations of
the english wikipedia, but encyclopedias in that language for themselves. Contributors
of the international versions that read english can look for inspiration, or simply
translate from english wikipedia if they wish, but if they don’t (or can’t) they should
be able to just write away… […] I really hope, that the international wikipedias can
be in the future a source for the english version, a cross fertilization would be great…
(remembering the ‘fertile soil’ metaphora…–AstroNomer
(Wikipedia, ‘Non-English Wikipedias/Coordination’)
Close comparisons of Wikipedia articles published today on the same topic in different
languages clearly demonstrate the extent to which this complex relationship between the
encyclopaedia’s alternative language editions continues to persist all these years later. For
example, while Shuttleworth (2018: 244) finds that the majority of the latest version that
he studies of the Russian-language article documenting the assassination of Russian pol-
itician Boris Nemtsov is the result of original composition (in Russian), he shows that it
also includes a certain amount of translation of selected sections from the English edition;
similarly, the Ukrainian text appears to have arisen mostly through a monolingual process
of ‘homegrown’ volunteer collaboration, but its authors have additionally supplemented
their work by translating an extended passage from the Russian Wikipedia (2018: 245).
The Czech text, on the other hand, was first created by translating the Russian edition’s
article in its entirety, but this initial similarity has subsequently ‘decayed’ over time as
further contributions have been made by Czech Wikipedians, without reference to the
Russian source text (2018: 247). Thus, although each language edition’s coverage of this
event cannot be seen as in any way equivalent from a linguistic point of view, or even
similar in terms of the account they provide of the assassination, these articles have not
evolved entirely independently either. Rather, and much as in the field of mainstream news
520
translation, practices of parallel authoring co-exist with practices of direct translation

between language editions (Shuttleworth 2018: 236; see also Rogers 2013).
Most of this translation between Wikipedia articles occurs on an extremely ad hoc
basis. In the same way as other forms of text production progress within the site almost
entirely as the result of a user-driven process of collaboration, ‘interwiki’ translation too is
reliant on the initiative of individual Wikipedians and largely proceeds without any organ-
izational or editorial involvement by the Wikimedia Foundation (McDonough Dolmaya
2015: 3; Shuttleworth 2017: 311). Certainly, there exist in Wikipedia a number of more
formal subprojects which aim to promote and co-ordinate translation between editions
at a community-wide level. These include, for instance, ‘Translation of the Week’, a
subproject which encourages participants to work together to translate the first paragraph
of an English Wikipedia article in order to improve the coverage of important topics in
‘smaller’ language Wikipedia editions (e.g. Welsh –see Wikimedia, ‘Translation of the
Week’); and the ‘Healthcare Translation Task Force’ which aims to bring ‘high quality,
easy to understand health information into as many languages as possible’ (Wikipedia,
‘Healthcare Translation Task Force’). Yet, as discussed by McDonough Dolmaya (2015)
in her study of the article translation and revision process taking place via another such
subproject, the ‘Wikipedia: Pages Needing Translation into English’ page, even within
these more organized translation-oriented schemes, the impetus driving activity forward
is entirely provided by self-selecting volunteers. What is more, neither the Wikimedia
Foundation nor Wikipedia as an organization have any form of official translation policy.
In fact, despite McDonough Dolmaya’s (2017: 10) compelling argument in favour of the
development of such a document, it is highly unlikely –as the researcher herself admits
(2017: 11) –that any attempt at managing translation within the platform in this way (i.e.
from the top-down) would ever be accepted and implemented by so large and heteroge-
neous a community of self-governing volunteers.
This lack of institutional oversight has two significant consequences for transla-
tion scholars interested in Wikipedia. First, it means that widespread attempts to clas-
sify Wikipedia translation as ‘crowdsourced’ are subject to a certain amount of debate
within the field (O’Hagan 2016: 941; Shuttleworth 2017: 312). As O’Hagan (2016: 941)
has written, for example, drawing on the work of Brabham (2013), most definitions of
crowdsourcing emphasize the top-down and centrally organized nature of this emerging
phenomenon: crowdsourced translation is translation that is explicitly ‘solicited’ through
an open call to the ‘crowd’ by for-profit businesses such as Facebook, LinkedIn and
Twitter, or by non-profit organizations such as TED and Translators without Borders (see
also Dombek 2014; O’Hagan 2009). Translations made in the context of Wikipedia, on
the other hand, are for the most part unsolicited. They are organized from the bottom-
up, with translators working for the most part ‘under their own steam and in isolation’
(Shuttleworth 2017: 311). Arguably, therefore, Wikipedia translation is perhaps more
accurately described as ‘user-initiated’ (Dombek 2014: 27) or ‘user-generated’ (Perrino
2009) and classed among other volunteer-driven translation projects such as most anime
fansubbing (Pérez-González 2007).
The second consequence of the decentralized manner in which translation between
Wikipedia editions proceeds is that we simply have no way of knowing how much of
this interwiki translation activity actually goes on within the platform (Shuttleworth
2017: 328). As Shuttleworth (2018: 258) discusses, community guidelines such as those
at ‘Wikipedia: Translation’ do recommend that users highlight the presence of translated
material, first by including a statement to this effect in their ‘Edit Summary’ and then by
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Henry Jones
Figure 33.1 A Wikipedia translation ‘banner’ (source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/

Talk:2nd_arrondissement_of_Lyon).
placing a banner such as that featured in Figure 33.1 below on the ‘Talk’ page discussion
forum associated with the article translated from another edition. These banners
are hyperlinked, enabling the creation of comprehensive lists of all Wikipedia pages
making use of the template, lists which might be analysed by researchers with the aim of
understanding what kinds of article tend to get translated in a variety of different language
pairs. Nevertheless, such banner-placing procedures are not universally followed by users
and many acts of translation remain ‘undeclared’ (Shuttleworth 2017: 328). Ultimately,
this means that the only failsafe means of establishing whether an encyclopaedia article
contains translated material, Shuttleworth (2017: 317) suggests, is to manually compare
the target text with possible sources. Given that this could potentially involve comparing
not only the latest version of each Wikipedia article under scrutiny with its equivalent
in up to 302 different language editions, but also all previous versions of the source and
target texts archived in every page’s ‘Revision history’, this is clearly an extremely complex
and painstaking process, and one that would be impossible to implement on a site-
wide scale.
The picture of the role of translation in the production of Wikipedia is further
complicated by the findings of Jones’ (2017; 2018a) analysis of a small corpus of English-
language encyclopaedia entries written about a selection of cities from around the world.
By examining the references placed at the foot of the latest version of the ‘Paris’ article,
for example, Jones (2018a) notes that over half (55%) of the 319 original sources listed
here are written in French, a finding which would suggest translation is not limited merely
to the transfer of already published Wikipedia content between language editions, but
that it is also inextricably bound up with the processes of content creation itself (Jones
2018a: 272; see also Shuttleworth 2018: 250). Admittedly, it is possible that some of these
French-language sources might have been imported into the encyclopaedia via another
English- language publication without the Wikipedian(s) concerned having engaged
with them in their original form and language. Nevertheless, further investigation does
indicate that the translation skills of certain contributors have been put to considerable
use in their search for and appropriation of suitable ‘raw materials’ for the English text
(Jones 2018a: 281–287). Indeed, we find that it is through a complex process of multi-
source, multi-agent translation that the information published in official census reports
and employment statistics produced by the French national statistics agency (INSEE)
are identified, selected, summarized and synthesized for Wikipedia’s English-speaking
readers (Jones 2018a: 281). Jones’ (2017, 2018a) analysis thus signals the importance of
recognizing the extent to which practices of Wikipedia translation and Wikipedia editing
overlap, and thus the inadequacy of the traditional binary distinction between original
author and translator in this context.
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Finally, further studies have highlighted the translation of proper nouns and other
culturally specific items between languages as the focus of a significant amount of debate
among members of Wikipedia’s intensely multilingual and multicultural community.
Most notably, through a case-study focused on the construction of the English Wikipedia
article about Tokyo, Jones (2019) has shown how the question of how to translate city
names often causes especial difficulties for the community. In the case of the Japanese
capital in particular, the problem derives from the peculiar administrative status of this
locale: on the one hand, we find that one faction of Wikipedians involved in the pro-
duction of this page appear to have supported the view that the encyclopaedia should
insist on the need to remain ‘factual and technically correct’ at all times, and conse-
quently believe that the only proper translation of Tokyo’s official Japanese name (東京都,
‘Tokyo-to’) is ‘Tokyo metropolis’, not ‘Tokyo city’ as early versions of the Wikipedia text
initially implied (Photojpn. org, 01:25, 16 April 2005, Wikipedia, ‘Tokyo/Talk Archive
1’). These users repeatedly point out that the government abolished the ‘city’ status [市,
‘shi’] of Tokyo in the 1940s and therefore that Tokyo is not a city under Japanese law.
‘[I]‌sn’t it time’, one group of translator-contributors asks in November 2005, ‘to stop
calling Tokyo a city?’ (Fg2, 21:06, 28 November 2005, Wikipedia, ‘Tokyo/Talk Archive
1’). This translation solution is, however, seen as ‘perverse’ by other contributors working
on this text who posit that stating Tokyo is not a city is no more than ‘a legal techni-
cality’: ‘[i]n common usage both inside and outside Japan’, one Wikipedian suggests,
‘Tokyo is thought of as a city, albeit an extremely large one with a unique govern-
mental system’ (D. Meyer, 23:00, 4 July 2006, Wikipedia, ‘Tokyo/ Talk Archive 2’).
The analysis of such Talk page debates thus further reveals the extent to which trans-
lational concerns are tightly bound up in the process of constructing a multilingual
representation of all human knowledge (see also Jones 2018b). It also foregrounds the
variety of forces which have a bearing on the process of translation in this environ-
ment: in this case, ongoing struggles for authority between lay and bureaucratic systems of
knowledge.
Wikipedia’s translators: profiles and motivations

It is likely due to the overlapping nature of the roles of translator, contributor and editor
within Wikipedia that McDonough Dolmaya’s (2012) analysis of the demographic
profiles of those users who have explicitly volunteered to translate Wikipedia’s articles
correspond so closely with the results of surveys of the wider Wikipedia community at
large (Wikimedia 2011). For instance, in parallel with McDonough Dolmaya’s (2012: 173)
survey which showed that 84% of her 75 respondents were male and 76% were under
35 years of age, Wikimedia’s own survey in 2011 also found that the vast majority (91%)
of its 4,930 respondents were male and under 40 (72%). Moreover, McDonough Dolmaya
(2012: 173–174) additionally found that only 30% of her survey participants had received
some sort of formal training in translation and just 15% were primarily working in a
translation-related field, suggesting it is only in a minority of cases that individuals who
consider themselves to be translators end up translating content for the encyclopaedia.
Instead, these volunteer translator-contributors come from a wide variety of professional
backgrounds, including the IT sector, education, engineering, administration, sales and
business; even among the 27 students who responded to the questionnaire, only four were
enrolled on language-related degree programmes.
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Henry Jones
As McDonough Dolmaya (2012: 175) goes on to argue, the question then arises as
to why these individuals are giving up their time and effort to translate content for free
between Wikipedia editions. Once again, the researcher finds that the responses of those
participating in Wikipedia translation projects correspond very closely with those of the
wider community: her translator-contributor respondents were primarily motivated by
the desire to ‘make information available to other language speakers’ (2012: 182), a reason
that can clearly be seen as an only slightly more specific iteration of the desire to ‘share
knowledge’, cited by 71% of Wikimedia’s survey respondents as the most significant factor
motivating them to continue volunteering for the project. Other important motivations
that McDonough Dolmaya (2012: 182) identifies include the fact that participants find
the project intellectually stimulating (68%) and the wish to help Wikipedia as an organ-
ization (56%). Interestingly, these too are cited as more significant rationales than any
more translation-specific motivations, such as the possibility of improving competency
in translation (42.7%) or simply gaining knowledge of the source (36%) and/or target
languages (28%).
Shuttleworth’s (2018) analysis of the shifts that occur in translation in the context
of the ‘Assassination of Boris Nemtsov’ article shows that Wikipedia’s contributor-
translators may often be rather less altruistic or politically neutral in their motivations
than they are prepared to admit in an email survey. By comparing the ways in which
users working within the Russian and English wiki communities each present a comment
made by Nemtsov just a few weeks prior to his death, Shuttleworth (2018: 255–256)
shows how translation participates in the reframing of events for different sets of
readers: while the Russian version attempts to move any potential responsibility away
from the Russian president, in the English version, Nemtsov appears to suggest he
feared Vladimir Putin would kill him, and the article thus points the finger of blame
directly at the head of state.
Jones’ (2017, 2018a, 2018b) investigations into translation-related Talk page debates
lend further support to this view of the often highly politicized motivations of Wikipedia’s
translating communities. Discussions over the question of how to translate the city of
Istanbul’s name into English, for instance, appear to have been the site of a bitter ‘edit
war’ between Turkish and Greek nationalist factions operating within this article-focused
community, with each group accusing the other of pushing politically motivated trans-
lation solutions intended to erase their opponents’ cultural heritage from the English-
language encyclopaedia’s coverage of the city (Jones 2018b). Most notably, in 2006,
attempts were made by a group of Greek-speaking Wikipedians to display in the lead
of the article the Greek name for the city (Κωνσταντινούπολη) alongside the Turkish
toponym (İstanbul), the justification being that this was the name by which this locale
was known in the source culture for a large proportion of its history (17:39, 9 October
2006, Wikipedia, ‘Istanbul/Talk Archive 2’). As one user additionally points out, the city
also remains an important centre in Greek culture today as the seat of the Patriarch of
the Orthodox Greek Church (15:05, 23 June 2006, Wikipedia, ‘Istanbul/Talk Archive 2’).
This move is repeatedly blocked by a group of Turkish users, however, who argue it forms
part of a systematic effort to ‘promote [a]‌ultra natioanalistic [sic] Greek POV [Point Of
View]’ and distort all articles remotely related to Greek culture (12:05, 2 December 2006,
Wikipedia, ‘User: NikoSilver/Talk’). A Greek-national Wikipedian then retaliates with a
similar claim about his accusers, arguing his only option in the face of such ideologically
contentious Wikipedia editing is to fight back with a linguistic form of guerrilla warfare:
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if the greek name will not be added here as the turkish is in Alexandroupoli, Komotini,
Xanthi, Thessaloniki, Symi, etc etc, i will begin by removing the turkish name from
all those articles and many more… If this article has become ‘protected’ by turkish
nationalists and the admins are not interesting in intervening, that’s the only semi-
solution … I’ve spoken and i will do it.
(15:02, 20 October 2006, Wikipedia, ‘Istanbul/Talk Archive 2’)
Clearly, a whole host of motivations provoke readers to engage in the processes of transla-
tion, editing and original writing through which Wikipedia content is produced.
Wikipedia as a tool for translators and translation researchers

The body of research discussed so far in this chapter has examined only the activities
of users working to contribute content to Wikipedia through some form of translation.
On the other hand, interest in Wikipedia from within the field of (media) translation
studies also comprises analyses of the use of Wikipedia by professional translators, as
well as investigations into the utility of Wikipedia as a new tool for translation researchers
more generally. For example, in Torres Domínguez’s (2012: 8) survey of 509 translation
professionals and students based in 59 countries worldwide, the researcher found that over
70% of her respondents cited Wikipedia as one of the resources they regularly use in their
work, a figure that was surpassed only by dictionaries of various formats (e.g. bilingual
and monolingual, general and specialized) and internet search engines. Alonso (2015)
has subsequently followed up on this finding with focus groups and an online survey of
her own in order to concentrate specifically on professional translators’ perceptions of
Wikipedia as an information source. The results of this analysis indicated an even higher
proportion of translators make use of Wikipedia whilst translating, with just 5.1% of
respondents replying that they never consult the encyclopaedia. We can only conclude
that this new media phenomenon has quickly become a prominent resource in the modern
translator’s toolkit.
One of the reasons why the site is so popular, Alonso (2015: 100) suggests, is that it can
be used not simply as an encyclopaedia for finding background information about a topic,
but for a variety of purposes at different stages in the translation process. Most notably,
translators value the combination of text and images present within the site’s articles as
a means of quickly checking that they have correctly understood a term, along with the
possibility of switching between different language articles written on the same subject.
As Alonso (2015: 107) also finds, however, most professional translators do remain reti-
cent to tell other members of their immediate professional circle that they use Wikipedia
in these ways, with 63.6% of the survey’s participants responding that they would not like
to let their project managers and superiors know about their reliance on Wikipedia. This
suggests that, although evidently valuable as a translation aid, Wikipedia has still to shake
its reputation in society at large as a somewhat unreliable reference work.
Finally, Torres-Simón’s (2018) paper shows the potential of Wikipedia as a tool for
translation researchers, and specifically as a source of ‘big data’ mirroring society’s col-
lective understanding of certain topics. Indeed, by looking up the entry ‘Translation’ in
all of the language editions of Wikipedia for which an article on this topic is available
(93 languages), Torres-Simón (2018: 2) demonstrates how the multilingual encyclopaedia
can be used to find out which concept of translation is most commonly shared among
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Henry Jones
the global public and the extent to which this varies between different linguistic commu-
nities active on Wikipedia. The results of this analysis show some remarkable similarities
across languages and cultures. For instance, 46 of the 52 articles that feature an image
alongside their text show the Rosetta Stone, suggesting this icon is widely accepted as an
appropriate symbol for translation (2018: 7), and the idea of translation as an activity
‘changing a text in one language into a text in the translator’s mother tongue’ remains
by far the most common conceptualization circulating in the Wikipedia-mediated world
(2018: 12). That said, an intriguing level of variety can still be found: the debate over the
advantages and disadvantages of machine translation and the use of CAT tools is the
most commonly mentioned topic in the dataset, but it still only features in 56% of the art-
icles. Likewise, discussion of the different types of translation (e.g. classifications by
genre or media) are only found in 42% of entries (2018: 9). Moreover, there are numerous
topics that are only ever mentioned in one version of the site: the Japanese edition, for
instance, is the only one to highlight the importance of volunteer translation in the wake
of natural disasters, while the Hungarian is the sole entry to discuss intralingual forms
of translation (2018: 10–11).
Wikipedia as a research environment: practical and ethical challenges

Torres-Simón’s (2018: 4) article is also interesting for the way it reflects on the methodo-
logical challenges posed by the Wikipedia environment. Indeed, in addition to the difficul-
ties associated with locating translated material in Wikipedia highlighted above, there are
a number of significant practical and ethical issues with which the translation researcher
intent on studying Wikipedia must necessarily engage. Given the aforementioned aim of
this chapter to promote further research into this phenomenon, these concerns are each
addressed in the following paragraphs.
The first challenge facing the prospective Wikipedia researcher is that the encyclo-
paedia as a dataset is in a state of ‘constant flux’ (Torres-Simón 2018: 4). Unlike most of
the non-digital texts with which translation studies have been historically concerned (e.g.
books, newspapers, films), the online platform’s articles are significantly less easily iden-
tifiable as fixed and concrete ‘objects of study’ (cf. Littau 1997: 91). Rather, they are fluid
and ephemeral: all content is always and openly subject to change, and what we read one
minute could be transformed the next. Indeed, as Torres-Simón (2018: 4) notes, the size
and shape of any given text published within the platform can vary dramatically over the
few months in which the researcher conducts his or her investigation, new encyclopaedia
entries of relevance to one’s research questions may be created, or entire pages can poten-
tially even be deleted, leaving little trace in the archives aside from a short discussion at
‘Wikipedia: Articles for deletion’.
Bruns (2008: 137) has suggested that for Wikipedia as a knowledge resource this mut-
ability surely represents one of its most ground-breaking strengths, allowing contributors
to fix errors and keep its articles up to date with current affairs with much greater accuracy
and timeliness than any of its rivals (e.g. Encyclopaedia Britannica). For researchers, on
the other hand, this feature does have major implications in terms of methodology design.
Torres-Simón’s (2018: 4) solution to this problem is to identify a specific date (31January
2015) and to analyse only the contents of the encyclopaedia as it appeared at this point
in its development. As she argues, this is practically-speaking the only realistic means for
her to compare the 93 different language articles on which her study focuses (2018: 4).
As Rogers (2013: 201) argues, however, such an approach is ultimately limited in its
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explanatory potential and its capacity to ‘take seriously the units of analysis Wikipedia
has to offer’. This is because, to paraphrase Bruns (2008: 138), single versions of wiki
pages (i.e. texts examined at a specific time and date) are best thought of as comparable
to single frame of a television broadcast. The problem is that, while this frame ‘may con-
tain valuable information in its own right’, it must always be borne in mind that it ‘forms
only part of a larger, moving image’ (Bruns 2008: 138). In other words, we must recognize
that the texts published on Wikipedia cannot be conceptualized as finished and complete
products, but only as dynamic and forever embryonic traces of an unfolding, never-ending
process. Thus, to privilege the content of the latest version of an article and to set it in
isolation from its previous formulations is to neglect its transient nature and to assign it a
fixedness that cannot be justified in this digital environment.
In light of this conclusion, we can suggest that research into translation in Wikipedia
benefits most productively from a focus on the processes rather than the products of trans-
lation in this context. Such an approach can be observed in the studies by McDonough
Dolmaya (2015); Rogers (2013); Shuttleworth (2017, 2018) and Jones (2018a, 2018b, 2019),
all of whom make extensive use of the site’s comprehensive ‘Page History’ archives and/or
‘Talk Page’ discussion forums. In these contributions, analysis does not concentrate solely
on investigating specific versions of the texts in their dataset; emphasis is instead placed
on identifying the series of revisions and modifications that have been made over time,
explaining the rationale that may have lain behind the introduction of such changes and
understanding the role of translation in this collaborative content production activity (cf.
Pérez-González 2014: 163–5; 2017: 30).
However, this apparent solution to the problem of data instability leads us to another
challenge facing media translation researchers. Indeed, as Shuttleworth (2018: 240–1)
notes, such is the abundance of material available to the researcher in this open platform
that we are invariably confronted with the impossibility of deep and sustained engage-
ment with the vast majority of this potential dataset. The English-language ‘Paris’ article
on which Jones (2018a) focuses, for example, has 17,505 previous versions stored within its
Page History and its Talk page discussion forums are so extensive that they have had to be
sub-divided chronologically by the community into 18 ‘Talk Archives’, which altogether
run to a total wordcount of 380,000 words. The researcher is consequently left having
to exclude far more than they include, and to devise effective strategies for filtering their
dataset in as logical a manner as possible.
Whatever the data selection strategies adopted, we are inevitably faced with the dif-
ficulty of making generalizations about the encyclopaedia on the basis of what we
have observed within only a minuscule subsection of its content. Indeed, according to
McDonough Dolmaya (2015: 5), researchers are in most cases limited by the sheer size
and heterogeneity of the Wikipedia project to being able to show the reader only some
of the various kinds of translation activity that transpire within this environment. Given
the lack of top-down editorial control and oversight, practices that take place within one
selection of articles may not necessarily be taken as representative of the practices of the
Wikipedia community as a whole. For example, it is certainly the case, as Lih (2009: 145–
158) shows, that the Japanese and German Wikipedias have developed according to a very
different set of cultural norms and expectations in comparison with the English version
of the site, and as a result attempts to generalize across all language editions should be
treated with a healthy dose of scepticism. Instead, we must take extra care to highlight the
partial and provisional nature of our findings, and to seek to understand the limitations
of our approach (see also Shuttleworth 2018: 242; Jones 2018a: 288).
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Henry Jones
Moving on to the question of research ethics, and as Saldanha and O’Brien (2014: 47–
48) have discussed, the ethical dilemmas involved in internet-mediated translation studies
are frequently highly complex and often considerably more so than in traditional offline
contexts. This is primarily due to the ways in which the development of the Web has
‘thrown public and private together in the same space, blurring that traditional liberal
distinction’ (Saco 2002: 100). These blurred boundaries raise significant concerns around
notions of consent and the right to privacy for researchers interested in such phenomena,
and internet research ethics have been the focus of extensive discussion across a variety of
disciplines in recent years (see e.g. Zimmer & Kinder-Kurlanda 2017).
With Wikipedia-focused research, there is certainly no consensus on best practice and
scholars have proceeded with varying levels of caution, weighing the inarguable import-
ance of avoiding causing harm to members of this community against the need to main-
tain the authenticity and validity of the analysis. Writing from my own perspective,
readers will notice that in this chapter and in previous case-studies (Jones 2017, 2018a,
2018b, 2019) I have chosen to quote directly from Talk page discussions and occasionally
to include the user names of the individuals concerned. This is justified, in my opinion, by
two features somewhat peculiar to the Wikipedia context. First, there is the fact that these
forums are fully open to the general public and –more importantly –that, like Wikipedia’s
encyclopaedia content itself, these discussions are explicitly intended to be read by any
and all visitors to the site. Second, and quite unlike Facebook for example, users operate
under a self-chosen pseudonym and are not required to provide any personal details
about themselves that they are not comfortable sharing. Users are instead entirely free to
populate their profile pages with as much or as little about themselves as they wish: some
profile pages are entirely blank, while others do contain a significant amount of informa-
tion on the individual concerned, although usually this relates more to their interests and
Wikipedia editing activities than biographical details.
It must be said, however, that some researchers choose not to name or quote specific
individuals at all in their analysis (e.g. Shuttleworth 2018; McDonough Dolmaya 2015),
while others appear largely unconcerned about this issue. Most notably, Rogers (2013: 201)
comments in his conclusion that ‘[i]‌t would be convenient for the researcher to have IP
addresses of the registered editors as well, so as to be able to automate a geolocation
analysis of all the editors of the articles’. Given that one of the foremost reasons why
Wikipedians choose to register an account with the site, rather than continue to contribute
to the encyclopaedia anonymously, is that this allows them to edit without publically
revealing their IP address (which can be used to trace their physical location), this would
seem a step too far (see Wikipedia, ‘Why create an account?’).
Conclusion
As this chapter has attempted to show, translation plays an important role in the con-
struction of the free online encyclopaedia Wikipedia. What is more, given the variety and
innovative nature of translation activities taking place in this site, Wikipedia constitutes a
valuable object of study for translation scholars seeking to understand the impact of digital
technologies on the world of translation in the 21st century. A small group of researchers
has already begun to probe the activities of Wikipedia’s contributor-translators, but a sig-
nificant amount of research remains to be done in this field. For example, more attention
needs to be paid to the fluid, ever changing nature of Wikipedia as a whole. As in many
analyses of online translator communities, the underlying assumption has so far been that
528
the Wikipedia community constitutes a relatively stable entity; little attention has been
paid to the ways in which the demographic composition of this collective of volunteers
has changed over time (perhaps as a result of rises in global internet penetration rates)
and how these changes might be affecting translation practices in Wikipedia. Archival
research into the early development of the multilingual platform would help highlight the
inadequacy of any attempts to portray Wikipedia as a fixed and unchanging entity. This
historical research may also help reveal in more detail how decisions taken in the very ini-
tial stages of the project continue to affect the community’s practices today, nearly twenty
years hence.
New technologies additionally promise to open up further avenues for translation-
related research. Most notably, although still in development and available only as a ‘beta’
version, the platform’s ‘Content Translation Tool’ shows exciting potential for scholars
interested in Wikipedia translation. This application presents the user with an interface
specially designed to facilitate the translation of content between language editions: source
and target text are presented side by side, and the software can also help with the format-
ting of a translation, the creation of wikilinks to other relevant articles, and source refer-
encing. Of particular interest is the fact that the tool offers users a machine translated
version of their chosen source article, encouraging them to post-edit this output rather
than translate it from scratch, as a means of speeding up the translation process (see
Figure 33.2). Therefore, future studies could usefully explore the ways in which this new
functionality of Wikipedia’s technological environment might be shaping the translation
strategies adopted by the site’s translator- contributors. Moreover, as McDonough
Dolmaya (2017) has briefly shown, the Content Translation Tool also tracks the progress
of its users over time, detailing for example statistics on the most common language pairs
and directions for this form of translation, as well as the numbers of translators using the
tool in each language combination (Wikipedia, ‘Special: Content Translation Statistics’).
As the software is rolled out more generally to the wider Wikipedia community and
integrated much more substantially into work processes, this will surely develop into an
Figure 33.2 Wikipedia’s Content Translation Tool (source: https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aide:

Outil_de_traduction).
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Henry Jones
invaluable resource for scholars interested in gaining a broader overview of the amount of
translation activity taking place within the multilingual encyclopaedia.
Finally, we should also highlight the as yet unexplored potential of corpus analysis
tools in the context of Wikipedia translation. Corpus-based methodologies are now well
established in translation studies as approaches which can offer a means of dealing with
large bodies of translated text in a much more effective and efficient manner than would
be possible by manual methods alone (Bernardini & Kenny 2020). It is therefore reason-
able to suggest that the application of corpus-based methods to the analysis of Wikipedia
could dramatically improve our ability to engage with the scale of the encyclopaedia as
a potential dataset. The problem of identifying translated ‘pairs’ of articles remains a
complex one but the TransBank team at the University of Innsbruck has successfully
developed a 2.3 million-word parallel corpus of articles translated between 44 language
editions of the site (Aghaebrahimian et al. 2020). This involved automatically extracting
source and target texts by means of machine learning neural network technology, and
subsequently enlisting the help of the Wikipedia community itself to enrich these bitexts
with pertinent metadata (including the native language, gender, age, training and educa-
tional background of the authors of each translation). The corpus is not yet available
to the wider research community and, for a variety of technical as well as more prac-
tical reasons, this corpus still only presents a small collection of all translations published
within Wikipedia. Nevertheless, the TransBank project clearly demonstrates the poten-
tial of computer-assisted strategies as a means of identifying and processing translated
material in Wikipedia. Monolingual corpora too –such as the BYU English Wikipedia
corpus1–could prove helpful in answering the kinds of questions posed by Torres-Simón
(2018): for instance, searching on terms such as ‘translation’, ‘translator’ and ‘translate’
and identifying patterns in the ways in which these items are used across the encyclopaedia
could valuably help build a picture of attitudes held towards translation within specific
language communities producing content online.
Further reading
• Fichman, P. & Hara, N. (eds) (2014) Global Wikipedia: International and Cross-Cultural
Issues in Online Collaboration. Washington DC, USA: Scarecrow Press.
An innovative collection of studies focusing on the multilingual and multicultural

dimensions of Wikipedia’s content and community.
• Lih, A. (2009) The Wikipedia Revolution: How a Bunch of Nobodies Created the World’s
Greatest Encyclopedia. London: Aurum Press.
An excellent source of insight into the early development of the Wikipedia project, written
in collaboration with community members.
• Lovinck, G. & Tkacz, N. (eds) (2011) Critical Point of View: A Wikipedia Reader.
Amsterdam: Ten Klein Groep.
A multidisciplinary assortment of essays reflecting on the successes and failures of the

first decade of Wikipedia’s existence.
530
• Reagle, J. M. Jr. (2010) Good Faith Collaboration: The Culture of Wikipedia. Cambridge,
Massachusetts: MIT Press.
An in-depth exploration of Wikipedia’s culture, carefully set in its historical, technological

and cultural context.
Note
1 https://corpus.byu.edu/wikipedia.asp
References
Aghaebrahimian, A., Stauder, A. & Ustaszewski, M. (2020) ‘Automatically extracted parallel
corpora enriched with highly useful metadata? A Wikipedia case study combining machine
learning and social technology’, Digital Scholarship in the Humanities. doi: 10.1093/ llc/
fqaa002.
Alexa (2019) ‘Wikipedia. org’. www.alexa.com/siteinfo/wikipedia.org.
Alonso, E. (2015) ‘Analysing the use and perception of Wikipedia in the professional context of
translation’, JoSTrans, 23, pp. 89–116.
Bear, J. & Collier, B. (2016) ‘Where are the women in Wikipedia? Understanding the different psy-
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533
Index
Note: Page locators in bold and italics represent table and figures, respectively.
Aarseth, Espen J. 370 alternative news agencies: importance of 450;

Abercrombie, N. 401 news-gathering networks of 184
Accented Cinema: Exilic and Diasporic Altre Modernità 50
Filmmaking, An (2001) 311 Amara, usage of 112–13, 357
accessibility modalities and minorities, American Sign Language (ASL) 328
in translation 387–8; disability and Amnesty International: data and interviews
impairment 390–3; empowering accessibility with researchers 480; discursive and
386–7; interactive accessibility 390; media translation processes of 480; human rights
accessibility and services 388–90; services 480; Language Resource Centre 481;
presentation modes 390; in video games 374; translating for 481–2
visual accessibility 389 Amsterdam, publications in 157
acetate films in film industry, Anglophone journalists, treatment of translated
introduction of 293 speech 47
Across Languages and Cultures (journal) 177 animated cartoon series, national adaptation
activism and translation, relationship between of 80–1; see also internationalization and
439; see also non-professional translation localization, of media content
activist translation: and collaborative media anime fansubbers’ translation practices 437–8
translation 114; in newsgathering 226; and annual television markets 78
translators 439–41; see also non-professional Antonini, R. 324
translation application program interface (API) 502
Act on the Protection and Promotion of Arabic-language programmes: audiovisual
Cultural Diversity 387 translation to English language 459;
Actor-Network Theory (ANT) 16, 17 subtitling of 462
African National Congress (ANC) 453 Arabic-to-English translation practices 48;
Agence France-Presse (AFP) 161, 183 of news articles 238
Agence Havas 160 Arab Radio and Television (ART) network 462
agenda-setting: between journalist and fixer Arab Spring revolution, fixers role in 221
222; role of news agencies 184; see also archives and databases, in audiovisual
foreign news translation 292–3
Alexieva, B. 338, 341–2 Ardelean, C. 377
Alfar 209 Argentine magazines, translation of 209
Al-Jazeera 163, 449 Armstrong, Guyda 19
Allan, S. 258 Asahi Shimbun (Japanese daily) 58, 60
AllTrails, usage 416–17 Assassins’ Creed game 376
al-Qaida group statements, analysis of 236 Associated Press (AP) 184
Alternate Reality Games (ARGs) 125 Association for UK Interactive Entertainment,
alternative journalism 449–52; community The (UKie) 369
radio in South Africa 452–4; concept of Association of European Journalists 46
446–7; and its media 447–9; translation in Athique, Adrian 402
449–52; see also journalism Atton, Chris 447, 448
534
Index
audience: and audiovisual translation 401–8; Belle, Marie-Alice 19

news translation research 265; reception Benestad Hågvar, Yngve 123–4
studies in audiovisual translation 324–5 Berglez, Peter 60
Audiences (2012) 401 Berlingske in Denmark, translations 157
audio accessibility 389 Bernal-Merino, M. A. 370
audio description, importance of 392 Berners-Lee, Tim 353
audiovisual industries, in Europe 82 Betz, Mark 311
Audiovisual Media Accessibility Focus Beyond the Subtitle: Remapping European Art
Group 388 Cinema (2009) 311
Audiovisual Media Services Directive, The Biblioteca Digital del Patrimonio
(AVMSD) 388 Iberoamericano (BDPI) 203, 204
audiovisual translation (AVT) 93–4, 401–4; Bielsa, E. 110, 179, 251
activist translators 439–41; approaches to Big Brother 82
media reception studies 404–6; from Arabic big translation history (BTH) 201–3, 212
to English language 459; of communication bilingual: competence among fixers, reliability
4, 23, 91; dubbing industry in mediation and of 223, 227; institutionalized education, for
distribution 320; fansubbers 436–9; in films deaf communities 492; intertitles, in Chinese
306–7; future perspectives of 329–31, 407–8; film industry 287, 291; journalists and fixer
Harrypotterians 441–2; historical approaches 220; see also foreign news
to media reception studies 404–6; history Biltereyst, Daniel 404
of 284–95; and media accessibility 384, Birth of a Nation, The (1915) 285
434–6; media and audiences 401–8; media black and white movies, popularity of 284
interpreting theories and study methods 337; blind and visually impaired players, method for
methodological challenges 291–5; micro and game accessibility 374–5
macro perspectives 286–7; newer dynamics blogs, online platform of 448, 451–2
in 325–8; news translation 124–7; non- Boletín Titikaka 209
professional translation 432–42; paratextual bonimenteur, in French 287
research 124–7, 131–2; policy of 285; quality, book history models, expansion of 18
factors affecting 327; reception studies book production: and circulation, models on
in 406–7; research and debates on 322–5; 18–20; industrialization of 20–1
stakeholders in 102; technical innovations book series proliferation, characteristics of
and 287–91; of television content 319–21, 21
325–8, 329–31; written and oral 4 book trade, introduction of 20
augmented reality (AR): mobile games 372; Bourdieu, P. 502
and virtual reality (VR) 377 Boyd-Barrett, O. 184, 186
Australian Associated Press (AAP) 185 Branston, G. 51
Australian media organizations 185 Braun, Joshua 76
Australian version, of MasterChef 83 Brazilian translations, in Argentina 200
authenticity 35, 150, 311, 315, 322, 329, 336, Brazilian Sign Language, acceptance of 497
344–7, 449, 508, 528 Breaking Bad 126
authorship in literary history, concept of 97 Brexit referendum 164
automatic machine translation, of user- Britain, expansion of press 160
generated content 420, 421 British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC):
autonomous online website, analysis of 450 headlines used in 241; Mundo news web
avvisi a stampa (notices) 156 texts, use of headlines 241; translation and
language services in 162; World translation
Bachleitner, Norbert 16, 20 into Spanish, by BBC Mundo 237
Baker, M. 113, 114 British Sign Language 490; access 494;
Baker, Mona 461 for London Deaf Community 494;
Barnhurst, K. G. 67 translators 495
Barone, Vincent 48 broadband connections, use of 185–6
Barra, Luca 436–7 broadcast: critical theory 345–6; events, media
Barthes, R. 96 interpreting in 341–4; of interpreter-mediated
Bassnett, S. 110, 234, 236 interaction study 345–7; journalists, on
Bastianich, Joe 84 translation 47; quality and quality assurance
Bebawi, S. 63 346–7; television for sign language users 490;
Beck, Ulrich 74 see also media interpreting
535
Index
broadcasting: communicative ethos of 344–5; cloud subtitling: definition 357;

developments in 35; infrastructure for platforms 112–13
38; investments in 29; and print medium, CNN’s transmission of speech, by Indonesian
differentiation of 38 president 49
Bruti, S. 324 Code of Good Subtitling Practice 323
Bucaria, Chiara 126 cognitive approaches, to the study of
Burnett, P. 386 translation 406
business-to-business (B2B) organizations 183 Coldiron, A. E. B. 16, 18, 19; views on print
business-to-customer (B2C) model 187 culture and translation 16
byensa in Korean 287 collaboration and media translation practices,
interconnection between: participatory forms
Cadwell, P. 485–6 of media translation 112–15; professional
Caldwell, J. 82 and commercial contexts 109–12; translation
cameras in film shooting, evolution of 288 crowdsourcing and impact of
Canada’s broadcasted news, translation in 46–7 technology 115–16
Canudo, Ricciotto 284 collaborative fan translation activities, research
Carroll, M. 323 on 114–15
Castells, Manuel 1, 4, 5, 39 collaborative media translation 109–14
Castillo, P. 338 collaborative translingual activities 112
Castro, O. 386 collective authorship in news organizations,
cataclysmic effects, of printing press 18 principle of 110–11
catastrophic events, reporting of 69 collective-intelligence community 504–5
Caucasian Knot website, study on 450 Colombo, A. 22
Cave of the Silken Web, The (1927) 293 colour meaning potentials, in multimodal
Centre for Contemporary and Digital History analysis 147–8
(C2DH) 202 CommCare, usage of 484
Chalaby, Jean K. 76 committed translation in newsgathering,
channel brand identity and paratext 126 risks in 226
channel idents, paratexts in 129 communication: about politics 44; on global
Chaume, Frederic 306 scale 28; and translation 14–16
Chen, Y. 242 Communication Studies 172
Chesterman, A. 235, 505 communicative affordances 35–6
Chiaro, D. 324, 340 communicative change history, phases of 29
China: CGTN, services of 162, 163; film communicative ecosystem and translation
introduction in 284 mediaspace 23
China’s Challenges 49 communicative ethos: of broadcasting 344–5;
Chinese film industry: French intertitles in of oral cultures 34–5
287–8; history of 287; research on translation communicative technology: protocols to use
of early cinema in 291–2 36–7; transformations in 41
Chinese subtitles for foreign films 290 community: digital environment 502; media
Chinese translations, of Donald Trump’s journalists, role of 448; model of translation
English tweets 47 505; radio in South Africa, translation
Choi, Sharon 319 in 452–4
Christie, Ian 401–3 comparallel corpora, concept of 178
churnalism’ phenomenon 185 comprehension tests 269
cinema: as art and industry, emergence of computational technology and translation
284–5; mobility, in film translation 302; history, intersection of 203
technological developments 305 Consalvo, Mia 123
Cinema Babel: Translating Global Cinema consequentialist ethical approaches 256
(2007) 311, 312 content circulation history, phases of 82
Cinematic Journeys: Film and Movement content production process, in media 51
(2010) 308 contextual and analytical approach, in global
citizen journalism 219, 244, 255, 446 journalism 67–9; see also global journalism
Clausen, L. 63, 235 Convention of Rights of Persons with
cloud-based technology tools, for professional Disability (CRPD) 384, 387, 390
translation 354, 357–8; see also World Convention on the Protection and Promotion
Wide Web of the Diversity of Cultural Expressions 387
536
Index
Conway, Kyle 47, 171 Declaration on the Rights of Persons

corantos of foreign news 156 Belonging to National or Ethnic, Religious
corpora-based studies 324, 356; see also World and Linguistic Minorities 387
Wide Web Decolonizing and Indigenizing Education in
corpus-based research: analysis of AVT Canada (2020) 425
293–5; translation studies for 293–5; in web De Marco, Marcella 306
accessibility 359 Dencik, L. 63
Corpus of Contemporary American Department for International Development
English 356 (DfID) 475
cosmopolitanism: new cosmopolitanism 252, Der Weduwen, A. 164
255; relationship with translation 179; descriptive framework, of interpreting practice
sociological concept of 274 338, 339
Cottle, Simon 69 descriptive translation studies (DTS) 323
Couvée, D. H. 156 de-territorialization of production 76
Covering Islam (1997) 62 diasporic audiences 402
co-writing of legal texts 98 Díaz Cintas, Jorge 50, 436
Creacion/Création 202 Dicken, Peter 75
crisis communication and social media 484 digital age: and cloud technologies 293;
critical discourse analysis (CDA) 4, 29, 186, importance of 1; international media
241, 266, 268–9, 336, 344 content in 77; materiality and internet-
Cronin, Michael 15, 313 distributed television 76; media culture,
Crosland, Alan 288 viewers participation in 434–5; networks,
cross-pollination processes, effect of 83 importance of 75; paratexts, application of
crowdsourcing: localization processes in 360–1; 129; platforms and media convergence 502–3;
model in media translation 115–16; and print-media libraries, development of 204–5;
online collaborative translation 115 social relations in 37; storytelling, modes of
Cuban War of Independence, The (1898) 204 511; technology on media, impact of 92–3;
cultural-imperialist analysis 74, 76 translation practice in 17; see also translation
cultural intermediaries network and online studies (TS), in media practice
translation communities 503–4 Digital Data Gathering 484
cultural proximity, on programme success 83 Digital Humanities Laboratory (DHLAB) 202
culture peg 64; and culture link techniques 65–6 digitalization: effects of 92; of periodicals, in
cyberbullying, in social media 35 National Libraries 201; role of 283
Digital Library of Latin American
data collection software, for INGOs 484 Heritage 204
data visualizations, of Ibero-America dilmaj in Persian 287
periodicals 203 Directive on the Accessibility of Websites and
Davier, Lucile 46, 242 Mobile Applications 387–8
Davies, N. 185 disability model, choice of 392
deaf community model, of interpreters 490 disabled and impaired persons, media
deaf community norms: expectations and accessibility of 390–3
norms within new media 496–8; mainstream Disaster Emergency Committee 485
news interpreting in UK 494–6; sign discourses, of food product 141–2; see also
language interpreting and translation in food products marketing, multimodal
media 493–4; translation acts, history communication in
of 491–3 Disk 202
deaf game users, subtitling preference 374 documentation and terminology processes,
deaf magazines programmes, presented in sign WWW in 354–7; see also World Wide Web
languages 494 Doherty, S. 403, 406, 407
deaf media and deaf magazine programmes, domestic and foreign news, Spanish relaciones
emergence of 493 translation 156
deaf social networks and communities, for domestication: in English literary translation
bilinguals 497 236; and foreignization of video games
deaf translation norms 7, 491 375–6; of international news production
deaf viewers, news programmes interpretation 235–6; in news production studies 235–6,
for 490 238, 271
Deaf Welfare Examination Board (UK) 493 Don Juan 288
537
Index
dubbed video games, intralingual 254–8; relativity concept, use of 252; social
subtitles in 374 responsibility 257; synergy between 258–60
dubbing, in cinema: emergence of 289; of Europe: interest in periodical studies 201;
foreign TV programmes 79–80; industry National Libraries, role of 164
in audiovisual products mediation and European Accessibility Act (2019) 388
distribution 320; studios, effects of SARS- European Alliance of Press Agencies
Covid 19 320; translation of films 302–3; (EAPA) 163
see also film translation; internationalization Europeana Newspapers 164
and localization, of media content European Society for Periodical Research
dubbing, in video games: cost of 374; Japanese (ESPRit) 201
games 374 Evans, Jonathan 124
Düring, Martin 202 Evans, M. 63
Ďurovičová, Nataša 304–5, 310–11 everyman approach, for news writing 68
Dutch media, reliance on news agency 185 Everyman News: The Changing American Front
Dutch newspapers, publishing of 157 Page 67
DVDs: advantage of 305; subtitling of video Extensive Hypertext Markup Language 353
games 374; television content and 322 externally hired interpreters, in news broadcasts
Dwyer, Tessa 115, 304, 438 and interviews 340; see also media
interpreting
Edwards, K. 373 Eyes Wide Shut 96
Egyptian Revolution, documentation of 432 eye-tracking 267–8, 270, 276, 324–5, 328
Ehrensberger-Dow, M. 243
Ehrlicher, Hanno 203 Facebook: acquisition of Instagram and
Ehrman, Maud 202 WhatsApp 417; automatic machine
Eisenstein, E. 37 translation 419–20; community guidelines
electronic communication system, 418; crowdsource localization processes
characteristics of 5 361; crowdsourcing 435; gate-keeping
Eleftheriotis, Dimitris 308 mechanisms 421; multiple languages in 419;
Emerald Revolutions, in Poland 432 in news distribution 448–9; popularity 417;
end-user license agreement (EULA) 372 regulations on use 36; subtitles 390; Translate
England: corantos in 156; translated foreign 358; user-generated content 353; uses 416
news publishing 156 fact-checking program, for news authenticity
English and Chinese: news transediting in check 449
Taiwanese press 237; translated headlines 240 FactCheck in the US 164
English film titles, translations into Turkish fake news, prevention of 164
language 126 fansubbing: fansubbers’ activities 436–9; as
English into Greek translations, of news non-representational practice 507–10; usage
headlines 240 and activities of 114–15; see also
English-Japanese news translation, non-professional translation
process of 238 fan translation 433; audiovisual translation
English language: Al-Jazeera for website 449; activities 114–16; fan subtitling and rubric of
in audiovisual translation 331; blending paratextuality, research 125; see also
with Chinese characters 509; headlines, non-professional translation
Arabic translations of 240; in international fanzine, definition 448
politics 45–6; as lingua franca in gaming Federation International de Traducteurs, The
community 374 (FIT) 361
English-Polish translations, analysis of 238 Fernández Costales, A. 376
Enli, G. 345–6 fidelity/faithfulness, in translation studies
Entertainment Software Association (ESA) 255
369 Filmer, D. 266
Entertainment Software Rating Board film industry: collaborative AVT in 111–12;
(ESRB) 373 evolution 283; transition during First World
Ergil, B. 451 War 284–5; see also audiovisual translation
Ethereal (Nonsense Arts 2019) 370 (AVT); Chinese film industry
ethical concepts, in journalism and translation Film Socialisme (2010) 313
250–1, 254–8; interplay between 251–4; film studies, approaches in 308–13; see also film
journalism ethics and translation ethics translation
538
Index
film title translation and paratext, Foucault, M. 143

analysis of 126 Fox, A. 156
film translation: audiovisual translation and France: banlieues and social realities,
306–7; historical perspectives of 304–5; complexities of 275; competition with
political interference in 52; research on Hollywood 285; domination on languages in
302–4; transformative aspects of 307–14 20th century 208
Final Fantasy 375 Francophone journalists, treatment of
Final Fantasy X 375 translated speech 47
fingerspelling, in sign languages 495 Frandsen, Finn 123–4
Finnish News Agency (FNA) 187 Free Online Machine Translation (FOMT) 354
Finnish Sign Language 490 French–German–English corpus, macro-
Finnish translation practices 21 analysis of 188
fixers: definition 217; in dialogue translation French intertitles, in Chinese film
and trans-editing 225–6; in foreign industry 287–8
newsgathering 218–20; influence on Fujii, A. 233
newsgathering process 221–3; in international
newsgathering 217; in media interpreting, Gaceta de Caracas (periodical) 161
hiring 340; mistranslation of information Gagnon, C. 46
in 227; multiple roles of 220–1; role of Gambier, Yves 126, 323, 403
218; tainted information by 226–7; and Game Developers Conference 377
translation 223–7 game localization see video game localization
Flanagan, M. 361 Game Newspaper 287
Floros, Georgios 252 game translator, role of 378
focus groups 187, 194, 266–7, 270–6, 525 Gardens Between, The (2018) 372
Fólica, Laura 202, 203 gate-keeping process: definition 233; on social
food products marketing, multimodal platforms 421
communication in 136–9; discourses of gazettes: Gazeta de Guatemala 161; Gazeta
141–3; semiotic choice 140; semiotic material Nueva 156; Gazette of the United States 158;
in 140–1; shift to multimodal communication popularity of 156
143–5; social practices and discourses 143 General Advertiser 158
Footitt, H. 477 General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade
For Deaf Children 490 (GATT) 283
Fordist’ factory practice 162 generalizations in media interpreting 337
foreign correspondents, activity of 161–2 Genette, Gérard 19, 122
foreign films, control on 52 genres, media interpreting in 341–4
foreignization process, in news translation Gerbaudo, P. 40
236, 271–5 Gereffi, G. 76
foreign languages: in cinema, coping with German Deutsche Presse-Agentur, The
289–91; in films 289; intertitles, in Chinese (dpa) 184
film industry 287–8; quotations, translation German newspapers 156
241; translations, Iqraa translators in 460–4 German reports, translation into Russian
foreign-language versions (FLVs) 289 language 157
foreignness preservation, impact of 236 German Wikipedias, development of 527
foreign news: domestication of 235–6, 238; Giddens, Anthony 74
and feature coverage 68–9; newsgathering Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, The (2016)
process 221–3; reporting, fixers role in 130
217–27; translation of 223–7; see also global Glee and Breaking Bad (2014) 126
journalism global and local strategies, in news
foreign television programmes, popularity translation 235
and development of 78–9; see also global circulation: of formats 81–2; of
internationalization and localization, of television formats 81–4; of TV products and
media content media 85
Forest of Bliss (1986) 313 global crises, reporting of 69
Forlì corpus of Screen Translation (Forlixt 1) 294 globalization: characterization of 1; of media
format-localization, process of 82; see also and culture 74–5; of politics, on news media
internationalization and localization, of and translation 45–6; telecommunications
media content and media in 75; and translation 15
539
Index
Globalization, Internationalization, Hartley, J. 503

Localization and Translation (GILT) hashtag translation, study on 424, 426
industry 370 Havens, Timothy 82
global journalism 58; cultural/national Hawker, N. 480
stereotyping and domestication of news Hawley, Caroline 225
64–6; global outlook 66–9; global perspective headlines, of news story: functions of 239;
69–70; rise of 59–61; scepticism towards translation of 239–41
61–3; theorists, observation of 67 health-related food product, multimodal
global media ethics 63 communication in 136–9
global media products, in international Heretical Empiricism 308
markets 77 Hernández Guerrero, M. J. 173
global news and translation 477–82 Hodder, Ian 17
Global North, INGOs in 475 Holland, R. 49
global production networks, emergence of 75 Hollywood: adoption of synchronous sound
Global South, NGOs in 474 305; films, collaborative subtitling of 111–12;
global value chain 76 Golden Age of 285; interlingual remake in
Global Voices, translation community in 440 305; sound era 285; studios in sound and
Goffman, Erving 31, 506 image synchronicity 304
Goody, J. 37 Holy Roman Empire’s censorship laws 158
Google Translator apps: improvement of 436; Hosington, Brenda 19
use by translators 355 Hoskins, C. 78
Graham, T. 47 Houlbrook, M. 161
Grand Theft Auto IV (2008) 376 House, J. 101
graphic depictions and stylistic effervescence, House of Cards, Chinese fansubbing 509
of news 67; see also global journalism Huguenot refugees, newspaper publication 157
Gray, Jonathan 122, 123, 128 human-computer interaction, WWW
Great Dictator, The (1940) 313 role in 354
Greco, G. M. 389 Human Post Editing 357
Greek translations, of English news articles 237 human rights model, of disability 392
Guardian, The 58, 60, 252 Hussein, Saddam: analysis of speeches of 236
Guerrero, Hernández 449, 451 hyper-intertextuality age, evolution of 29
guerrilla translation 312 Hypertext Markup Language (HTML) 353
Guidelines for Writers (2008) 480
Gurevitch, M. 235 Ibero-America: periodicals study, literary
Gutiérrez Lanza, M.D.C 52 translation 203–4; print-media libraries,
conservation 204; research on cultural
Hafez, K. 63 transfer 200
Haitian earthquake, social media platforms Ibero-American Institute of Berlin 204
for 483–4 Idle No More (INM) movement 423–6
Hajmohammadi, A. 51 I Kathimerini 240
Halliday, Michael 139, 140 Impresso project 202
Handbook of Journalism Studies, The (2009) independent news organizations and IPS 449
254, 271 Indigenous language, resurgence to INM 424–5
Handbook of Mass Media Ethics, The industrial audiovisual translation, collaborative
(2009) 254 work in 111
Hanitzsch’s worldwide research project, industrialization of book production 20–1
importance of 173 industrial print and translation 20–1
Hannerz, U. 217 Indymedia, creation of 448
Harding, S.-A. 450 in extenso translation 224–5
Harris, Brian 433 infoLibre 451
Harry Potter: fans’ organized actions in Poland informational capitalism, Castells’
441–2; Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows approach to 5
441, 442; Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Information and Communication Technology
Prince 441; Harry Potter dla Wszystkich (ICT) 75, 482
441; Harry Potter:Wizards Unite 372; Lego information in cinemas, direct and indirect
Creator:Harry Potter 372; Polish translation sources of 291–2
of 441–2; readers access to translations 432 Innis, Harold 13
540
Index
InoSMI, application 175 internet: communication 39; and digitization,

institutional factors on translation practices, emergence and development 92; distributed
impact of 51 television 321; history of 353; news
institutional translation 52–3 agencies 185–6
integrated design, in food packaging 144; Internet Movie Database (IMDb) 328
see also food products marketing, Inter Press Service (IPS) 163, 184, 449
multimodal communication in interpretational and contextual methods,
Interactive Machine Translation (IMP) 357 in global journalism 67; see also global
Interactive Software Federation of Europe journalism
(ISFE) 369 interpreter: for deaf community 490–1; in
interlingual translation 170; in cinemas 304 INGOs’ news production 479–80; mediated
International Association of Sound and broadcasts 339; mediated TV events 342; in
Audio-visual Archives (IASA) 293 newsgathering, importance of 219
International Classification of Diseases intersemiotic translation 170
(ICD) 391 intertextuality and re-semiotization 30–1
International Classification of Functioning, intertitles in AVT history, use of 287, 291
Disability and Health (ICF) 391 interviews 84, 96, 113, 129, 187, 219, 222, 226,
International Classification of Impairments, 258, 270, 345, 440–1, 481, 485
Disabilities and Handicaps (ICIDH) 391 Intolerance, success of 285
International Conference on Interpreting intralingual translation 170
Quality, The (ICIQ) 346 investment in shows and paratexts quantity and
International Covenant on Civil and Political quality, connection between 126
Rights (ICCPR) 384 Iqraa channel, translations in 459
International Federation of Film Archives, The Iqraa translators, role of 460–4, 470
(FIAF) 292 Iranian students’ News Agency (ISNA) 52
International Federation of Journalists 160 Iraq post-2003 conflict, reporting of 218
International Index to Film Periodicals 292 Iron Lady, The (biographical drama): Chinese
International Index to TV Periodicals 292 subtitled version of 47–8
internationalization and localization, of media Ishiguro, Kazuo 511
content 74–5; in computing industry 98; I Simpson 81
economic internationalization, effect of 74; Islamic satellite channel 459
future challenges in media circulation 84–6; Islamic satellite television, subtitling
ready-made TV shows 78–81; television practices in: critical translation 467–71;
formats 81–4; trends and inquiry 75–7; in geopolitics of translation 462–5; religious
video games 378 responsibility and stakes of translation
International Journalism Festival 225 460–2; translation strategies 465–7
international media and journalism 59–63 Italy: fansubbing scene, analysis of 436;
International Network on Crisis Translation national mediations and dubbing 80–1;
(INTERACT) project 483–4 news-type pamphlets 156
international non-governmental organizations Ito, K. 503–4
(INGOs) and translation 475–7; global news Ivarsson, J. 323
and translation 477–82; new media forms
and multidirectional communication 482–5 Jaber, F. 252
international press news, translation of 234 Jacobs, T. 340
international programmes, licensing of 82; Jakarta Globe 163
see also internationalization and localization, Jakarta Post 163
of media content Jakobson, R. 170
International Standardization Organization, Japan: foreign films distribution 293;
The (ISO) 388 translation in news production 253
International Standard Serial Number Japanese: games dubbed in English 374;
(ISSN) 202 newspapers, translation practices in 174–5;
International Telecommunication Union person, access to audiovisual content 392;
(ITU) 388 Wikipedia, development 526, 527
international television and filmic content, role Japanese Kyodo News, The 184
of translation in 319 Jazz Singer, The (1927) 288
Internazionale translation, analysis on Jenkins, H. 502
237 Jiménez-Crespo, M. A. 115, 116
541
Index
Jones, Henry 23, 124 Kim, K.-H. 111

journalator, definition of 174 Kim Park, T. 518
journalism 155, 250–1; collaborative 113; kinds of 103
conceptual and disciplinary importance Knowledge for Development (1998/9) 482
169–71; contemporary 162–4; from early Kobo Toolbox, usage 484
modern period to 19th century 156–9; ethical Kohlberg, L. 256–7
aspects of 254; future perspectives 178–9; Korean film Parasite, linguistic and cultural
globalization of 59–61; history of 155; mediation in 319
institutionalization of 160; interdisciplinary Korean television dramas, translation of 432
potential of 171–2; interplay between Koskinen, Kaisa 46, 50, 52–3
translation ethics and 251–4; journalism Kress, G. 143
ethics and translation ethics 254–8; language Kruger, J. L. 403, 406, 407
and translation 162–4; methodological Kuipers, Giselinde 82
focus 176–8; news translation 113; and kuranty, in Russia 157
professionalization 159–62; synergy between
258–60; transformations 92–3 La Gaceta Literaria, publishing of 209–10
Journalism (2011) 171 language diversity in film industries, coping
journalism and translation: conceptual with 289–91
and disciplinary importance 169–71; language mediation, usage of 98
contemporary 162–4; from early modern Language of Displayed Art, The (1994) 139
period to 19th century 156–9; ethics and, Language Resource Centre 481
interplay between 251–4; future perspectives Lanzillo, Amanda 18
178–9; interdisciplinary potential of La Revista 206, 208, 210, 211
171–2; journalism ethics and translation Latin America, local publishing markets in 204
ethics 254–8; methodological focus Latin American magazines, translation of 209
176–8; news translation in history 172–6; Le Droit 244
professionalization of 159–62; synergy Leftwich, Adrian 45
between 258–60 Le Monde diplomatique 240
Journalism Studies 172 Lévy, P. 502–3
journalist-as-translator 110 Lexicographic resources 355
journalistic text translation, role of 110–11 Liang, L. 47
journalistic translation practices: ideological Libération, translation 237
factors 51; paratextual framework for 131; Library: of Congress 205; of Portugal 205; of
translation ethics in 252; in translation Spain 205
studies 176 Lights of New York (1928) 288
journalistic translation research (JTR) 178 Li, J. 49
journalistic translators, role of 233 linguistic: accessibility, in translation studies
journalistic values 189 384, 386, 389, 390; analysis, multimodality
journalists: and fixers 217, 220–1; headlines 139–40; transfer process, effects on 223
translation 240; as interpreters in media 340; lip synchronization, in foreign TV programme
non-translation strategies of 46; strategies of translation 80
translation 233–7; as translators 233–7, 240; literacy, in sustainable development 38
see also foreign news literary and cultural transfers, studies on 200–1
journals and newspapers, information on literary and non-literary translators, on online
AVT 292 information 354–5
literary translation and periodical research
Kalantari, E. 51, 52 199–200; challenges 211–13; current
Kang, J.-H. 50, 111, 237 perspectives 199–201; historical perspectives
Kapsaskis, D. 314 201–3; Spanish-language periodicals in the
Kapuscinski, Ryszard 161 20th century 203–10
Karina, F. S. 76 Littau, Karin 14
Kavkazcenter website, study on 450 live-broadcast simultaneous interpreting (SI) 338
Keewatinook Okimakanak Board of Education Lobato, Ramon 76
(KOBE) 425 local alternative media 448
Keywords (1976) 3 local and national journalism, globalization
Keywords in News and Journalism Studies of 63; see also international media and
(2010) 254 journalism
542
Index
local and national policy level, NGOs in 482 national stereotyping and domestication of
local assistance for journalists, need for 219 news 64–6; discourse in interpreting, features
localization: in computing industry 98; in video of 342; ethics and journalism 254; global
games 378 outlook 66–9; global perspective 59–61,
localized translation, on social platforms 415 69–70; infrastructure studies, importance
London Deaf Access Project (1991) 494 75; institutions, translation policies of 50–3;
London Deaf Video Project (LSVP) 494 language policies 51; mass media, translation
Longhurst, B. 401 in 232; message, construction of 63;
Lorenz, L. 185 monitoring organizations 219; outlets, media
Loupaki, E. 237 interpreting in 341–4; political power of 44;
ludonarrativity, in video games 371 scepticism towards 61–3; studies, concept
of paratext 123–4; technology in history of
machine translation (MT): in game localization translation, role 14–15; and their content,
377; INGOs’ use of 484–6; integration with distinction 1
human translation 377; on social platforms media and translation studies 13, 14–18; early
415; and translation memory (TM), modern book production 18–20; mediality,
integration 357 translation and the 21st century 23;
Maclean, Douglas 291 periodicals 21–3; quality assessment
macrostrategies, in news translation 235–6 101–3; text and authorship, concepts of
macro-textual strategies, in news 94–8; theoretical background 13–14;
production 235 translation and industrialization of book
Mad Men, paratexts of 130 production 20–1; translation and translation
Madrid magazine, Lusophone authors in 210 unit, concepts of 98–101
magazines: translated languages and media culture and language, interactions
translators in 208; translators and authors, between 30; communicative affordances
network of 209 35–6; communicative ethos 34–5;
Magical Encyclopedia 375 participation framework 31–4; protocols of
Maier, I. 157, 158 use 36–7; social relations and institutions
mainstream cinema, translation in 314 in communication 37–41; text and
Mangiron, C. 373, 374 discourse 30–1
Manifesto of the Seventh Art 284 Media History 172
MapModern–Social Networks of the Past 202 media interpreting 336–7; across media
Mapping Hispanic and Lusophone Modernity, outlets, broadcast events and genres 341–4;
1898–1959 202 heterogeneity in 337–8; hiring processes and
Maritime VHF two-way radio, protocols of practices in 340–1; interpreting modalities
using 36 338; problematic issues 337; quality and
mass self-communication 39, 40 quality assurance 346–7; theories and
MasterChef 85; Italia 83–4; US 84 methodologies for study of 344–6; working
Matsushita, K. 172, 174, 238, 253 conditions 338–41
McBride Commission 62 media paratextual studies 123–4; in audiovisual
McCulloch, Gretchen 420 and news translation 124–7; concept of 122;
McDonough Dolmaya, J. 520–1 future perspectives of 130–2; methodological
McGann, Jerome 14 issues 128–30; theoretical issues 127–8
McKenzie, D. F. 14 Mediapart, usage of 452
McLaughlin, M. 188 media reception studies, in audiovisual
McLeod, Randall 19 translation 406–7; future perspectives 407–8;
McLuhan, Marshall 13 historical approaches 404–6
McNair, Brian 44 mediascape, role of news agencies in 184–5
meaning potentials of iconography, in media tools: impact on translation 23; for
multimodal analysis 148–50 INGOs 475, 485
mechanical printing press to Europe, media translation: collaboration in 109–12;
introduction of 38 impact on tools 23; participatory forms
Médecins sans Frontières (MSF) 475 of 112–15; policies in 50–3; political
media: accessibility, in translation studies communication and multilingualism in 45–8;
386, 387, 388–90, 392; coverage, criticism practices in politics 44, 48–50
of 62; coverage, INGOs’ objectives 478–9; Meers, Philippe 404
and cultural diversity, forms of 77; cultural/ Mejías-Climent, L. 374
543
Index
MEMRI, subtitled clips sent 461 multimodal translation studies,

Message of Islam 462, 465 emergence of 23
Methods in news translation’ 177 multiplatform journalists 185–6
Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM) 289 multiple audiovisual translation modes,
Mével, Pierre-Alexis 131 use of 325
Meylaerts, Reine 50 multitrack Moviola system 289
microblogging and social media, Muñoz Sánchez, Pablo 436
emergence of 35 Muslim and Proud incident 461
microstrategies, in news translation 236–8 Mutz, D. 67
Middle East news translation, in Europe 157
minority in translation, analysis 386 Name and Nature of Translation Studies, The
Mirus, R. 78 (1972) 385
Mittell, Jason 125 Napoli, Phil 77
mobile phone: affordance of 35–6; expansion narrative-oriented games 372
of WWW 353; human translation, rise of 353 narrators, in silent movies 287
modalities of film translation 302 national and global media, role of 61; see also
Modern Language Association Journal international media and journalism
(2006) 201 national and local newspapers, translation
Moerdyk, C. 455 in 161–2
monolingual corpora, translators use of 356 National Library of France 205
Montgomery, Martin 32 national-mediation for TV content, in global
Moran, Albert 81, 82, 83 circulation 79–80
Mossop, Brian 50 national method, of film translation 303
Motion Picture, Broadcasting and Recorded national wire services, news-gathering
Sound Division (MBRS) 293 networks of 184
motion picture industry, launch cinema as 284 natural language processing, methods of 205
Moviola system, use of 288–9 natural translation 433; see also non-
multi-language versions (MLV) 289 professional translation
multilingual: institutionalized education, Netflix 283; advantages 92; guidelines for
for deaf communities 492; institutions, in interlingual subtitling 327; infrastructure,
political communication 46; mediators, for geopolitics of 76; paratexts analysis in
translation 208; technical writing, usage relation 129
98; TV productions, increasing number Netflix Italia, delay of TV series 320
329; versions, in US studios 289; world of Netherlands newspapers, freedom of 157
political communication, media role 45 networked audiences 402
multilingualism and translation in film 311 networking: for professional and
Multilingual Screen: New Reflections on Cinema non-professional translators 358; volunteer
and Linguistic Difference, The 311 translators 435
multimedia interactive entertainment software Nevitt, M. 159
(MIES) 370 New Amsterdam 320
multimedia translation 2, 4; use of 94 New Formalism 16
multimodal approaches, to audiovisual Newman, S. 161
translation 324, 403–4 news: headlines as paratext, study on 125–6;
multimodal communication 136–9; in linguistic and information, dissemination of 159;
analysis 139–40; potentials of iconography journalism, role of 40; media, role in political
in 148–50; principles and concepts of 140–3; communication 45, 47; organizations, affect
shift to 143–5; tool kit for analysing 145–50; of globalization 70; translator, assertive role
in translation research 150–1 110; see also journalism
multimodal corpora, collection and analysis news agencies: in 21st century 184–6;
of 294; see also audiovisual translation characteristics of translation in 189–91,
(AVT) 189–94; conceptual and theoretical
multimodal studies: in health-related food consequences for 191–4; global news
product 136–9; in linguistic analysis 139–40; agencies, news-gathering networks of 184;
principles and concepts of 140–3; shift to international 218–19; lexical transfer 190,
multimodal communication 143–5; tool 191; London newspapers reliance on 185;
kit for analysing 145–50; in translation research studies in 186–9; state financial
research 150–1 support to 185
544
Index
news broadcasts and interviews, externally objectivity, in journalism studies 255

hired interpreters in 340; see also media Object-Oriented Ontology 16
interpreting O’Brien, S. 111
newsgathering process: influence of fixer on Offence Taker, position of 33
221–2; phase of journalism, translation 218; offline and online social media, differences
role of translation and interpretation in 221; between 416
see also foreign news O’Hagan, Minako 374, 433
newsgathering translation, strategies of 224–5 Olohan, Maeve 23, 433
newspapers: beginning 156; translation of on-demand digital TV paratexts, analysis 127
quotes 242–3 on-demand platforms, for entertainment 320,
news production: of INGOs 480; processes 322, 329
of translation in INGO 480; process in Ong, Walter J. 34
globalized world 162; prominence of online: collaborative media translation 112;
translation in 157; translation ethics 252–4 dictionaries, use of 355; and network social
NewsPro, translators are transeditors 451 activism in translation 422–3; resources, use
news translation 232–4; and audiovisual of 355; social translation, social activism and
translation, paratext in 124–7; headlines language resurgence 421–6; technologies, for
and quotations 239–44; news production translation 357; terminology databases, for
processes 233; paratextual framework professionals 355; translations of Trump’s
for 131; for political communication 46; inaugural speech, analysis 244
principal strategies in 234–8 online social media (OSM) 421–6
news translation research: interdisciplinary online translation communities and networks
potential of 171–2; traditional topics 501; digital platforms and media convergence
in 172–6 502–3; fansubbing as a non-representational
Newsweek Hankuk Pan 110, 237 practice 507–10; future research 510–12;
newswires: collective authorship in 192; role of mediated online interaction 506–7; in
of 184–5 translation studies 503–7
New World Information and Communication on-screen and off-screen levels of
Order (NWICO) 62 communication, in TV interpreting 338
New York Post 48 open-source games and CAT tools 378
New York Times, The 58, 60, 162–3, 242, 253 Oprechte Haerlemse Courant 157
Non-aligned News Agencies Pool Optical Character Recognition 205
(NANAP) 163 oral and print cultures, comparison of 34
non-anime fansubbers, subtitling 436 oral history project, for AVT history research
non-authorial agency, work on 20 295; see also audiovisual translation (AVT)
non-authorial textual determinants, oral translation, in INGOs’ programming
importance of 14 work 477
non-governmental organizations (NGOs) Oren, Tasha 81
474; development efforts, new media Orientalism 62
and translation 482–3; humanitarian O’Sullivan, C. 313–14
interventions, new media and Oxfam International 475
translation 483–5
non-media clients, for news agencies 183 Pacific News Service (PNS) 447
non-professional Harry Potter translators Paladin of the Sky (VGStorm 2013) 370
442 Palmer, Jerry 225–6
non-professional interpreters, practice of hiring Paloposki, Outi 21
340; see also media interpreting Pan-African News Agency (PANAPRESS)
non-professional translation 432–4; activist 184
translators 439–41; fansubbers 436–9; Pan European Game Information (PEGI) 373
Harrypotterians 441–2; and media 434–6; parachute journalism, usage 219
volunteer and professional translators 437 parallel corpora, translators use of 356
non-representational theory, subtitling in 508 Parasite (Korean film) 319
non-translation strategies, of journalists 46 Parasite in Italy, availability 321
North America, interest in periodical paratext term usage, benefits 128
studies 201 paratextual elements, typology of 122
Nottingham-Martin, Amy 127, 128 paratextual framework, for journalistic and
Nouvelles de la République des Lettres 157 news translation research 131
545
Index
paratextual media studies 123–4; in audiovisual print in early modern period and translation,
and news translation 124–7; concept of intersection 19
122; future perspectives of 130–2; Genette’s print journalists, on translation 46
theory 405; methodological issues 128–30; product-oriented research, about news agencies
theoretical issues 127–8 187, 188–9; see also news agencies
Parks, Lisa 75 professional intermediaries, efforts of 81
participation framework, concept of 31–4 professionalization of journalism 159–62
participatory Web tools, utilization of 112 professional translation and WWW 354;
Pásmo 202 see also World Wide Web
Paterson, C. 185 ProPublica 451
Pavia Corpus of Film Dialogue, The prosumer, definition 502
(PCFD) 294 Proz and Translator’s Cafe 358
Pedersen, J. 327 public broadcaster’s news coverage, motivation
Pérez-González, Luis 112, 113, 125, 307, 63; see also international media and
434, 440 journalism
periodical digitization projects, on Public Opinion (1922) 61
Ibero-American case 203 publishing industry and print
periodical genre, heterogeneity of 202 communication 29
periodical publications: challenges 211–13; Pym, Anthony 238, 253, 377
current perspectives 199–201; historical
perspectives 201–3; of Spanish-language quality assessment and control: of translation
periodicals in the 20th century 203–10 101–3; views and models of 101–3
periodicals: historical periodicals and literary questionnaires 100, 188, 267, 295, 400, 403, 406
translation 202; intersection between media quotation: rhetorical approach in 257;
and translation 21–3 translation of 241–3; translingual
Perrin, D. 243 process of 243
personal digital assistant (PDA) 369 Qur’anic translations, consequences for 469
Pettit, T. 95
physical transportation of news 158 Race in Translation:Culture Wars around the
player agency in game localization 378 Postcolonial Atlantic 311
play-focused games 372 Radio Freedom, establishment of 453
Pöchhacker, F. 338 radio, interpreter-mediated data research
Podkalicka, A. 162 on 342–3
policies in media 50–3 Radsch, C. C. 48
Polish Harry Potter fans 441–2 Rantanen, T. 156, 184
political and religious institutions, influence on reader-based methods 269
newspaper printing 158 Reading Images (2006) 139
political awareness and media translation 48 ReadWriteWeb 353
political communication, in news media: reception and translation, study on 271;
impact of political institutions on news in audiovisual translation 406–7; effects
media 51; multilingualism in 45–8; policies of ‘sending the reader abroad’ 271–5;
in 50–3; political message transmission, print focus-group study 271–5; future of 407–8;
and electronic media 45; practices in politics historical approaches to 404–6; notion of
44, 48–50; translation practices in 44 diffused audiences in 408; see also translated
Polkowski, Andrzej 442 news, reading of
Portuguese language edition, headline of 239 Reckwitz, Andreas 5
Portuguese-speaking authors, place of recontextualization process, in translation 234
publication and origin of 210, 211 RedD 202
postal services, in European news network Reese, Stephen 61
158 Registry of Interpreters for the Deaf, The
post-editing machine translation (PEMT) 354 (RID) 497–8
Posthumanism 16 Reiss, K. 95
power, journalism and translation, relaciones de sucesos 156
connections of 157 Relacion o gazeta de algunos casos
pragmatic objectivity, concept of 255 particulares 156
Printemps Erable 423 religious translations, stock images in 21
Printers without Borders 18 Remael, A. 385
546
Index
re-mediations, on translation impact 23 setsumeishi in Japanese 287

Renaissance, translation and textuality in 18 Shahaf, Sharon 81
retranslation 177, 405–6 Shanghai News 292
Return of the Cisco Kid, translation of 290 Shiller, Robert 239
Reuters: establishment of 160, 161; global Shohat, Ella 309
influence of 184; Reuters Handbook Show Sold Separately 122
of Journalism 187, 242, 253; translate Shuttleworth, M. 527
quotation in 242 Sidiropoulou, M. 240
Revista Azul 203 sign language: interpretation and translation of
Revista internacionalde arte 202 493–4; users, broadcast television for 490
Revista Moderna 203 silent movies: technologies in 287; transition
Revistas Culturales 2.0 project 206 of 288–9
rewriting process, in translated news 234 Silicon Valley model of long-distance
rhetorical approach, in quoting 257 localization 77
RIA-Novosti (Russian news agency) 186 Silverblatt, Art 52
right-to-left (RTL) languages 419 Silvester, Hannah 127
risk management: theory application, in Simil sync, application of 322
translation strategies 238; in translation Six Degrees 418
studies 253, 377 Skopos theory 100, 259, 375
risk mitigation, in news translation 238 smartphone: affordance of 36; app
Rodríguez, Clemencia 447 localization 358
Rogl, R. 484 sociability, in broadcasting communicative
Roig-Sanz, D. 202 ethos 34–5
Romero-Fresco, P. 112, 294 social activism, audiovisual media translation
Ross, Jonathan 126 in 440; see also non-professional translation
Routledge Handbook of Audiovisual Translation social media 415–18; crisis communication and
124, 125 484; future research on 426; gate-keeping
Russia: newspaper translation 157; Wikipedia mechanism 419–21; and microblogging,
translation 520 emergence of 35; and news agencies 186;
online 418–19; as platform of journalism
Said, Edward 62 164; reactions of people to 33; social
Sarkozy, Nicolas 271 activism and language resurgence 421–6; and
SARS-Covid 19 pandemic, audiovisual translation 415–18; use of smartphones in
translation process 320 development of 36
Save the Children International 475 social networks: and deaf communities 492–3;
Savi, Mario 163 Social Networks of the Past project 203,
Scammell, C. N. 194 209, 214n4
Scannell, P. 34, 35, 345 social relationships, in communication 37–41
SCATE project 355 social semiotic model of language,
Schäffner, Christina 44, 172, 174, 234 multimodality of 140
Schjoldager, A. 235 Song of China (Chinese film) 291
Schmitz, Ulrich 124 sound systems in film, development of 288–9
SchNEWS, creation of 448 soundtracks development 289
Schultheiß-Heinz, S. 158 South Africa: community media in 448; news
screen translation, usage of 93–4 agency, translation in 186; translation in
scribal culture 39 community radio 452–4
secondary orality and primary orality, Spanish Efe, The (Spanish news agency) 184;
difference of 38 El País (newspaper) 162, 239–40, 243; Gacetas
Second Emerald Revolution 432, 441 (1618) 156
semiotic codes, of a film 97 Spanish-language periodicals in the 20th
semiotic material, in food marketing 141; century, literary translation in 203–10
see also food products marketing, Spanish National Library 203
multimodal communication in Spanish publishing industry, development 204
semiotic resources: multimodality in 140; tool Speaking in Subtitles: Revaluing Screen
for analysing 145–50; see also multimodal Translation (2017) 312
communication Spider-Man:Homecoming (2017) 509
Sesotho radio news report 454 Splendore, S. 82
547
Index
Stafford, R. 51 texts, in translation studies: authorship of

Stam, Robert 309 94; gameplay 372; linguistics, trends in
Standage, T. 416 95; methods in news translation research
Star Wars 313 265; storytelling video games 372; text and
Stecconi, U. 385 discourse, concepts of 30–1
Stetting, Karen 109, 174, 233 Thing Theory 16
StopFake project 164 Thompson, J. B. 506
story-telling style, in news writing 67 Times, The 160
Straubhaar, J. D. 78 Toffler, A. 502
subscription video on demand (SVOD) 92, 320 Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon, The
Subtitle Edit, usage 357 (NBC’s talk show) 319
subtitling and dubbing in cinema: history Toronto G20 protests (2010) 164
of 285, 290; social activism and 440–1; Toury, G. 496
in translation of films 302–3; of video TRACE project or TRAducciones
games 374; see also film translation; non- CEnsuradas 294–5
professional translation transcreation: in marketing and advertising
subtitling for the deaf and hard of hearing industry 98; in video game localization 375
(SDH) 328 transediting: definition 174, 233; in extenso
Susam-Saraeva, Şebnem 433–4 translation and 225; fixers use of 225–6; in
Swiss national Keystone-ATS 188 print media 98; in situ 226
synchronized films, making of 305 transeditor: definition 109; role of 110
synchronized sound, introduction of 304 transformation and manipulation processes, in
Syrian humanitarian disaster, translation news translation 235–8
ethics in 252 transformative aspects of film translation
systemic functional linguistics (SFL) 139 307–14; see also film translation
translanguaging: and language mediation 98; in
Ta Kung Pao (Chinese newspaper) 292 non-representational subtitling 509
Target of Offence 33, 34 translated news, reading of: foreignized
technological developments: in cinema 305; in approach on readers 271–5; research on
game development 377; in media 28 readers 266–71
technological innovations, in book translate-edit-publish (TEP) 357
production 20 Translating Popular Film (2011) 311, 313
technologies in cinema development, translation: in 17th century, research on 157;
impact of 287–91; see also audiovisual competence and quality assessment, in online
translation (AVT) community 504–5; factory-turned-dialogic
technologization, in semiotic resources model 162; between other languages 157–8;
144–5; see also food products marketing, protocol, in fixer/journalist translation
multimodal communication in strategies 223
technology-driven game domain, Translation and the Making of Early Modern
establishment 369 English Print Culture (1473–1660) 19
TED Open Translation Talk initiative 113, 358 Translation for Justice (TfJ), aim of 451–2
television: content in language combinations Translation Goes to the Movies (2009) 313
324; formats, international circulation Translation in Other Professional Contexts
and national mediation of 81–4; media (TOPC) 259
interpreting in 341–4; personalized uses of 5; translation memory (TM) tool, usage 357
shows, international circulation and national Translation Studies 14, 419
mediation 78–81; translation, audiovisual translation studies (TS), in media practice
translation and distribution 319–31; 1, 14–18, 313–14; conceptual and
see also audiovisual translation (AVT); methodological issues 2–5; early modern
internationalization and localization, of book production 18–20; interaction of
media content 13; media in digital age 5–7; mediality,
Tele Züri 243 translation and the 21st century 23;
Tempo 163 periodicals 21–3; quality assessment 101–3;
terminological tools, for translators 355–6 research on 2, 384–6; text and authorship,
Terzi, L. 391 concepts of 94–8; theoretical background
Tesseur, W. 481 13–14; translation and industrialization
Teutsche Kriegs-Kurier (1672–1679) 158, 159 of book production 20–1; translation
548
Index
and transformation 7–9; translation and Verschueren, J. 234

translation unit, concepts of 98–101 VHS technology, application of 124, 305
translator: definition of 469; difference with video game localization 370–2; benefits of
journalist 109; role of 113; strategies 373–4; creativity of 375; critical issues
of 233–4 in current research on 372–6; cultural
Translator’s Invisibility, The (1995) 464 adaptation in 373; domestication and
transmedia: interpreting concept 343–4; foreignization issues 375; early literature on
storytelling, development of 372 373; end-user license agreement (EULA)
Transnational Audiences (2016) 402 372; multimedia interactive entertainment
Treasures from the Film Archives 292 software (MIES) 370; research trends and
trolling, in social media 35 future directions 376–9; role-playing 375;
Trump, Donald, sequence of tweets: Chinese for target rendering 375; training in 378;
translations of 47–8; in Farsi 48; incivility transcreation in context of 375; translation
in 37; reactions on 29, 31, 31–4; Twitter's strategies in 375; user interface (UI) 373
regulation on 36–7 video games 372–3; accessibility of 374;
Turner, Graeme 77, 83 augmented reality (AR) mobile games
Twitter: crowdsourcing 435; in news 372; dubbing of 374; economic and
distribution 448–9; for political cultural globalization of 369–70; Harry
communication practices 47; Rules 36–7; Potter-inspired 372; Japanese games 374;
translation on 47; translators in 358 live streaming 376–7; localization of see
Tyler, N. 386 video game localization; ludonarrativity
Tymoczko, M. 48 in 371; narrative-oriented 372; playability
typographic meaning potentials, in multimodal of 371; players and fans, influence of 378;
analysis 145–7 transmedial 372
video-sphere into graphosphere,
UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with transition of 95
Disabilities (CRPD) 391–2 video-streaming platforms 92
UNESCO Universal Declaration of Linguistic Vietnam News 162
Rights 384, 393 Viki platform 432; from fansubbing enterprises,
United Kingdom (UK): mainstream news differentiation 438–9; purchase of 439;
interpreting in 494–6; University of translations in 438; Viki solicits fan
Warwick 172 translation 115
Unites States (US): Agency for International Virtual Identity Authority File (VIAF) 205
Development (USAID) 475; Associated virtual reality (VR) gears 369
Press (AP) 161; CNN 163; journalism in 158; Vitaphone sound effects, use of 288
National Association of the Deaf 328 voice-over technique: Anglophone journalists
University of Tübingen (Germany) 206 use of 47; in film translation 302, 305; and
University of Warwick (UK) 172 free commentary, synchronicity 102–3;
Universo Trump 243 journalist’s translation and 46; media
UseModWiki software 520 interpreting 338; translation 243
user-driven transnational media exchange 501 volunteer translation 433–4; see also
user-friendliness of AVT 102 non-professional translation
user-generated: content sites 353, 416; Vuorinen, E. 251
translation on social platforms 415
user-oriented online translational engagements, Wang, D. 52
research in 501 Ward, S. J. A. 255
users of WWW, role of 353 Washington Post 242
Us versus Them, fundamental contrast 40–1 Watt, I. 37
Waugh, D. C. 157, 158
Valdeón, R. A. 49, 155, 172, 233, 237 Web 2.0 Internet users 353, 434
Van Dijck, J. 416 Web as Corpus (WaC) 356
Van Dijk, T. A. 236 web-based: cloud technologies, impact of 357;
van Doorslaer, Luc 174, 385 digital culture 35; machine translation 354;
Van Leeuwen, T. 143 paratexts problems, solutions 130; platforms,
Veil of Happiness, The (1910) 290 collaborative translingual activities 115–16
Venuti, Lawrence 236, 271, 464 Web Content Accessibility Guidelines
Verbocentric platforms, usage of 416 (WCAG) 387
549
Index
Web for Corpus (WfC) 356 World Health Organization Disability

web localization, usage 358–9 Assessment Schedule II (WHODAS II) 391
websites, most visited 353 World Literature, Transnational Cinema,
Weldon, Michelle 67–8 and Global Media. Towards a Transartistic
Western media: discrepancy in news coverage Commons 311
62; influence of 76 World Wide Web 353–4; cloud-based
Wikipedia 518–23; activist movements in 424; technologies 357–8; communication
Content Translation Tool 529; Indigenous and networking for translators 358; in
languages in 424–5; methodological and documentation and terminology processes
ethical challenges 526–8; participation 354–7; evolution of 354–9; future research
model to translation 360; roles of translator, trends 361–2; new translation modalities
contributor and editor 523–5; as tool for 358–9; translation collaboration and 359–61;
translators and translation researchers 525–6; translation processes and translation events
and translation 518–23; translation ‘banner’ 354–9; translation revolution and 357–8
522; user-translated content 353 Wright, K. 479–80
Wikipedians, translations of articles 435
Wikipedia Reader, A 519 Yonhap News Agency, in South Korea 187
Williams, Raymond 3, 15, 200 YouTube: online videos 415; subtitled videos in
Wilson, Brett 469 360, 389, 390; translation studies on 295, 418;
Winseck, Dwayne 76 user-generated content 353
Wolff, establishment of 160, 161
Women Film Pioneers Project 292 Zappavigna, M. 33
World Bank, World Development Report Zelizer, B. 258
(1998/9) 482 Zhang, Meifang 125
World Economic Forum 239 Zhang, X. 52
WorldFixer, application 217 Zhaoyin Feng 47–8
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The Routledge Handbook

of Translation and Media

Esperança Bielsa is Associate Professor at the Department of Sociology, Universitat

Routledge Handbooks in Translation and Interpreting Studies provide comprehensive

The Routledge Handbook of Translation and Activism

For a full list of titles in this series, please visit https://​www.routledge.com/​Routledge-​

Edited by Esperança Bielsa

Introduction: translation and/​in/​of media 1

1 Media and translation: historical intersections 13

2 Language, media and culture in an era of communicative change 28

3 Media translation and politics in multilingual contexts 44

5 Internationalization and localization of media content: the

6 Revisiting certain concepts of translation studies through the study

7 The translating agent in the media: one or many? 108

8 Translation, media and paratexts 122

9 The multimodal dimension of translation 136

10 A historical overview of translation in the global journalistic field 155

11 Journalism and translation: overlapping practices 169

12 Translation in the news agencies 183

13 Translation in literary magazines 199

14 Fixers, journalists and translation 217

15 News translation strategies 232

16 Journalism and translation ethics 250

17 Reading translated news 265

18 A connected history of audiovisual translation: sources

19 Film translation 302

20 Mapping the contemporary landscape of TV translation 319

21 Media interpreting 336

22 Translation and the World Wide Web 352

23 Video game localization: translating interactive entertainment 369

24 Translation, accessibility and minorities 384

25 Audiovisual translation, audiences and reception 400

26 Translation and social media 415

27 Non-​professional translators and the media 432

28 Alternative journalism and translation 446

29 Subtitling practices in Islamic satellite television 459

30 NGOs, media and translation 474

31 A Deaf translation norm? 490

32 Online translation communities and networks 501

33 Wikipedia and translation 518

2.1 The interactions of media, culture and language 30

6.1 The 14 semiotic codes of a film 97

Esperança Bielsa is Associate Professor at the Department of Sociology, Universitat

Michał Borodo is Associate Professor in the Department of English Linguistics at the

Josh Branson is a PhD student in Translation Studies at the University of Roehampton,

Chiara Bucaria is an Associate Professor at the University of Bologna’s Department of

Renée Desjardins is Associate Professor at the Université de Saint-​Boniface (Winnipeg,

Elena Di Giovanni, PhD, is Associate Professor of English Translation at the University

Georgios Floros is Associate Professor in Translation Studies at the Department of

Chantal Gagnon is Associate Professor at Université de Montréal in the Département

María José Hernández Guerrero is Professor of Translation and Interpreting at the

subjects. Her current research focuses on journalistic translation, history of translation

Miguel A. Jiménez-​Crespo is a Professor in the Department of Spanish and Portuguese,

Haina Jin is a professor of translation, film, and communication studies at Communication

Henry Jones is a lecturer in translation studies at the University of Manchester, UK and

Dionysios Kapsaskis is Senior Lecturer at the University of Roehampton, UK, where he

Esmaeil Kalantari holds a PhD in Translation Studies from Université de Montréal,

David Machin is Professor of Linguistics, Zhejiang University, China. He has published

Yasmin Moll is an Assistant Professor of Anthropology at the University of Michigan.

Martin Montgomery has written extensively on topics in sociolinguistics, discourse ana-

Jerry Palmer is the former Professor of Communications at London Metropolitan

Christopher Stone is a Reader in Interpreting and Translation in the Faculty of Arts,

Dingkun Wang is an assistant professor in Translation at the University of Hong Kong,

Xiaochun Zhang is Senior Lecturer in Translation Studies at the University of Bristol,

For a full list of titles in this series, please visit https://www.routledge.com/Routledge-

Introduction: translation and/in/of media 1

27 Non-professional translators and the media 432

Renée Desjardins is Associate Professor at the Université de Saint-Boniface (Winnipeg,

Miguel A. Jiménez-Crespo is a Professor in the Department of Spanish and Portuguese,

multimedia integration of written, oral and audio-visual modalities of human communi-

O’Connor, A. (2017) Translation and Language in Nineteenth-Century Ireland: A European perspec-

Text and discourse: intertextuality and re-semiotization

• Pérez-González, L. (2016) ‘The politics of affect in activist amateur subtitling: a

Katan, D. & Straniero-Sergio, F. (2014) ‘Submerged ideologies in media interpreting’, in Calzada

The rise of the ‘contextual/analytical’ approach and the ‘people’ orientation

significant lapses on the part of scholarship to produce critical, well-informed, reflexive

The international circulation and national mediation of ready-made