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Text linguistics, Discourse analysis. Typological linguistics (UDC 814)
DOI: 10.18454/RULB.7.17 Хуссеини Ф.
Университет Министерства внутренних дел Исламской Республики Иран BBC И EURO NEWS: ДИСКУРС И ИДЕОЛОГИЯ ПРИ ПЕРЕВОДЕ НОВОСТЕЙ
Аннотация
Цель данного исследования сравнение дискурсивных стратегий используемых двумя международными новостными агентствами Euro News и BBC. Для исследования была использована CDA модель Ван Дайка (7). Было проанализировано 30 примеров международных новостей об Иране и с их переводом на Фарси, полученным с соответствующих сайтов. Для точности исследования была принята во внимание частота лексических единиц (единицы не должны были различаться). На основании дискурсивных стратегий гиперболы, поляризации, неопределенности и эвфемизма было проведено сравнение двух наборов переводов с их источниками. Для сравнения частоты стратегий, применяемых новостными агентствами, также для теста были взяты независимые образцы. Результаты не выявили значительных различий в применяемых дискурсивных стратегиях, за исключением стратегии неопределенности.
Ключевые слова: дискурсивные стратегии, дискурс, идеология.
Hosseini F.
Amin Police University
BBC VERSUS EURO NEWS: DISCOURSE AND IDEOLOGY IN NEWS TRANSLATION
Abstract
The present study aimed to compare discursive strategies employed by two international news agencies including Euro News and BBC. Van Dijk's (2004) model of CDA was adopted. Thirty pieces of news about internal affairs of Iran together with their Persian translations were downloaded from the corresponding website, i.e. 30 pieces of English news and their corresponding Persian translations from the Euro News website and 30 pieces of English news with their corresponding translations from the BBC website. The frequency of lexical items was observed to not differ significantly. Two sets of translations were compared to their source texts based on four discursive strategies of hyperbole, polarization, vagueness and euphemism. An independent-samples t-test was conducted to compare the frequency of strategies applied by the two news agencies. Results revealed no significant difference between the two agencies except for the discursive strategy of vagueness.
Keywords: discursive Strategies, Discourse, Ideology.
Почта авторов / Author Email: h.bakhshi53@gmail.com
1. Introduction
Translation, as stated by Lefevere (1992), has developed ubiquitously in the world and is perceptibly keeping its development. Translation studies are attached to a wide-ranging domain of fields including literary studies, linguistics, psychology, history and economics. Translation, as rewriting an original text, echoes a specific ideology. Rewriting is focused on manipulation conducted in the service of power serving the fruition of a literature and a society.
Even in the surface, it is clear that translation is much more than finding an equivalent text for the target one. Translation could present new styles, new ideas and new maneuvers. Translation has many goals and varied audiences - and accordingly, a single text could have several different translation versions.In the contemporary world of media, translation is not a scanty linguistic implement in the area of political media but, rather, serves as an instrument of ideological manipulation. People rely on a variety of sources to obtain news about the world, predominantly about their own surroundings. In this regard, they may benefit from internal or foreign news. In the latter case, translation emerges as a means of communication and transfer of ideology.
Iranians could be divided into two groups in terms of how they receive news about Iran. The first group embraces those who have selected the domestic news networks which are typically government-ruled or government-dependent, while the second group includes those who use foreign news sources. In our society, as the observation of the researcher show, it appears that many of those who obtain news from foreign networks have usually a more negative viewpoint to the administration or the government, its policies, and internal affairs. However, those who only benefit from the
domestic networks have higher optimistic viewpoint to the same affairs. Alternatively, some may consider that certain foreign media try to newscast negative propaganda against Iran and exhibit a negative carbon copy of this country to the world.
Accordingly, this study sought to understand whether or not foreign news broadcasting sources, especially news websites, exploit translation as an instrument of ideological manipulation so as to enforce their own story about Iran to different groups of audience; and if yes, in what way and by what means they apply such translation strategies to deliver the news to Persian speaking addressees. Comparing English and Persian versions of news, the study examined a variety of strategies adopted by Euro News and BBC agencies and their paid-translators to manipulate the meaning of a text or set a text with the intention of showing their own intended image of their opposed party to different addressees. Research has shown that BBC has always been pessimistically viewed regarding the manipulation of translated news [2], [6]. This is in line with the renowned term of BBC's falsification used in the Iranian political circles as well as media. The major objective of the present study is to understand whether or not the Euro News website, compared to BBC, applies such manipulations. The researcher could not find any seminal research work that can endorse the manipulation of Persian translation in the Euro News website. Also, within the Iranian research circles, no specific internal research was found to have comparatively studied two foreign news agencies in terms of specific news about internal issues of Iran rather than the nuclear issue. Up to the present time, all studies related to the intercession of translation concerning accounts of Iran have been narrowed down to the Iran's government news agencies like ISNA, IRNA, and Jaam-e-Jam; mostly focusing on the Iran's nuclear issue. Nonetheless, the focus of
this study was on events unrelated to nuclear issues with an aim at Euro News network and BBC's account of these events. It was an attempt to understand whether or not these agencies exploit particular translation and framing strategies to lay out their own account of Iran and its administration among different addressees; and how managers of these websites apply different translation and framing strategies when the news is to be offered to Persian speaking addressees.
2. Research Question and Hypothesis
The present study was an attempt to answer the following research question:
RQ: Is there any statistically significant difference between Euro News and BBC regarding the frequency of ideological strategies employed to transfer a message to audience in translation of political news?
Based on the above question, the following null hypothesis was raised:
H0: There is not any statistically significant difference between Euro News and BBC regarding the frequency of ideological strategies employed to transfer a message to audience in translation of political news.
3. Background
Translation as a communicative practice can on no occasion be explored without being attentive to its socio-cultural and situational context. With the development of cultural studies in the academic context, the issue of ideology turned out to be an important part of study and statements about ideology increased in many fields [11]. The field of translation studies shows no exception to this universal trend and, by this means, ideology initiates its strongest articulation in language (ibid). Behind every single action of the translator, a voluntary act reveals his culture and ideology [1]. In other words, the translator creates political, aesthetic and ideological meaning rather than semantic meaning. Additionally, sporadically it becomes extremely challenging for a translator to validate whether ideological metamorphoses observed between the source text and the target text are fallouts of the translator's subconscious ideological interpretation or his/her intentional ideological intervention [11]. The notion of ideology has been spreading and its introduction to translation studies has elevated the attention from subjectivity, the concept of originality and out-and-out equivalence and enabled researchers to explore some translational phenomena, which might have been misinterpreted (ibid). Hence, it could be argued that translation is the practice of rewriting and the decision process, which is a function of certain linguistic and ideological factors. For example, a translator who communistically thinks may translate a germane text positively and express positive concepts and notions, but a translator with a capitalistic viewpoint may render it otherwise. Because of the intricacy of the practice of translation, translators must be cautious, since it is stated that translators are the victims of their ideology as inescapably as the literary critics are (ibid). They follow or sporadically challenge the translation norms of the time, by which they are in any event measured (Newmark, 1996). Therefore, it is concluded that, translation, as a bridge between two languages, can never be deliberated on without ideological involvement and it has always been and will be a dwelling for ideological challenges.
In line with foreign research studies, there are many Iranian counterparts. For instance, according to Shojaei and Laheghi [12], translation, therefore, could be defined or assumed as a rewriting practice that is conducted within the context of a target language, culture and ideology in support
of a control factor exercised by the patron. Based on the CDA approach, these researchers compared some news texts from the Wall Street journal and their translations into Farsi done by Jaam-e-Jam newspaper to scrutinize factors used to impose ideology on the process of translation. They applied lexicalization instruments for their analysis. Their results indicated that ideological and political issues are imperative stimuli, which could control the translation materials presented to news readers.
In another attempt, Keshavarz and Alimadadi Zonoozi [10] explored the manipulation of ideology in translation of three English political texts translated by Iranian translators. Their study revealed that all the lexical and grammatical nonconformities used by the Persian translators had been intentionally selected to transfer their ideology. In addition, their macro-analysis showed that the translators demonstrated negative attitudes towards the original texts authors by identifying their blunders and false information about Iran and its affairs.
Shojaei [13] in his research tried to examine and categorize some difficulties in the process of translating interlingual idiomatic pairs, and then to offer some theoretic strategies to cope with those problems. Applying the Baker's (1992) classification of difficulties and strategies, the researcher applied investigated some English and the equivalent Turkish (Azeri) along with Persian pairs. The findings indicated that there is no clear-cut and predefined technique to cope with idiomatic expressions, but it is the situation, which determines which strategy to be taken.
Another study carried by Haghshenas (2012) explored the strategies employed by Persian translators to render the symbolic meaning of animals in children's literature. Data of this study in Western and Persian culture were collected from twelve western children books and their Persian translations. Data were ordered in two main domestication and foreignization translation groups, based on the Venuti's [5] categorization of translation strategies, to understand which strategy is more favored among Persian translators of children's literature. The results revealed that most of the Persian translators are inclined to make use of foreignization strategy for translating cultural terms (Haghshenas, 2012).
4. Methodology
In the present study, a descriptive-analytic method was employed to fulfill the analytic purposes of the research through adopting Van Dijk's [7] CDA approach. Sixty English texts related to Iran's internal affairs along with their corresponding Persian translations were extracted from Euro News and BBC News websites (thirty pieces of news with the same themes was downloaded from each website). The sampling method was based upon purposeful selection of related texts and documents that characterized the effects of ideology in translation. The rationale behind focusing on political texts was rooted in the context that in political texts ideology could be manifested in its wholesome or purest form. These texts were selected because the theme of the texts was politically controversial; thus, they could likely bear some ideological manipulations in translation. In addition, the texts were neither too long nor out of the scope of the analysis of the research. In the following, some of the news headlines are mentioned:
• Shell caught in money trap with Iran
• Iran's oil production 'slashed' by sanctions
• Iran: New broadcast boss Sarafraz is on European human rights blacklist
• Iran executes woman after 'deeply flawed' investigation
In the present research study, the model provided by Van Dijk [7] was implemented. Van Dijk [7] proposed a list of discursive strategies, among which 'hyperbole' (enhancing and exaggerating senses and meanings), 'euphemism' (a rhetorical device for polite expressions as an alternative to taboo language), 'polarization' (classifying people as belonging to us with good qualities and them with bad qualities), and 'vagueness' (a device for creating doubts) were studied in the present study. The political Persian translation texts from the both sites encompassing an equal number of words (corpus) were downloaded from the websites (more than a total 1000-word corpus which is a common approach used by other researchers was considered). The translated texts were analyzed on the basis of Van Dijk's [7] model to determine whether or not the discursive structures are ideologically-loaded. To analyze the translations regarding the Van Dijk's (2004) model, the texts were primarily examined to mark lexical aspects.
To analyze the collected data, first the source texts and their translations were analyzed via a careful comparative/contrastive design based on a sentence-by-sentence reading in line with the elements of Van Dijk's [7] model and simultaneously the strategies employed to manipulate the source texts were explored. Here, the source texts were critically evaluated in order to discover the structures and the vocabularies on which the BBC as well as the Euro News translators have loaded their ideology. Then all sets of the Euro News translations were compared with their corresponding BBC translations regarding the frequency of framing and discursive strategies. To escalate the reliability of the findings and to make objective and impartial interpretations as much as possible, frequencies and percentages of the discursive structures and framing strategies were calculated and employed in order to systematically realize what proportions of the information extracted from translated texts are obviously manipulated against the corresponding texts related to BBC. The data were analyzed with SPSS using Independent Sample T-Test. In order to obtain the degree of the 'effect size' (strength of association) the following formula was used to indicate the relative magnitude of the differences between means, which is known as eta, squared:
• Eta squared = t2/t2 + (N1 + N2 - 2)
5. Results
Based on the focus of the present study on only four discursive strategies proposed by Van Dijk [7], H01 was divided into 4 sub-hypotheses as follows:
1. There is not any statistically significant difference between Euro News and BBC regarding the frequency of the strategy of polarization employed to transfer a message to audience in translation of political news.
2. There is not any statistically significant difference between Euro News and BBC regarding the frequency of the strategy of vagueness employed to transfer a message to audience in translation of political news.
3. There is not any statistically significant difference between Euro News and BBC regarding the frequency of the strategy of euphemism employed to transfer a message to audience in translation of political news.
4. There is not any statistically significant difference between Euro News and BBC regarding the frequency of the strategy of hyperbole employed to transfer a message to audience in translation of political news.
Before interpreting the data found in the present study, the vocabulary of the original texts together with their corresponding translations were scrutinized. First, the lexical analyses were performed based on Van Dijk's [7] model of CDA. Accordingly, some ideologically-laden lexical patterns embedded in the intended translations were investigated through a detailed comparison of each source text to its corresponding translation.
In order to go through the analysis of the corpus in a more convenient manner, the translated news were examined by virtue of mentioned categories adopted from the above model in order to uncover the tacit assumptions, beliefs, and value systems constituting ideologies of the target texts producers. These semantic discursive strategies included: hyperbole, polarization, euphemism and vagueness. Therefore, the translated texts were critically analyzed at the level of vocabulary to examine the role of the translators' lexical choices in the production of the basic discursive strategies, i.e., ideological trends called positive self-presentation and negative other-presentation throughout the corpus. Table 1 represents the frequency and percentage of each discursive strategy in the translated texts.
Table 1 - Frequency and percentage of the discursive strategies at the level of vocabulary in the corpus
Discursive strategies Euro News BBC
Freq. Per. Freq. Per.
Hyperbole 21 19.81% 18 16.07%
Vagueness 19 17.92% 26 23.21%
Polarization 17 16.03% 18 16.07%
Euphemism 17 16.03% 16 14.28%
Sum of strategies 74 69.81% 78 69.64%
Other 32 30.18% 34 30.35%
Total 106 100% 112 100%
As Table 1 demonstrates, among the discursive strategies extracted from the corpus, for the Euro News Website, hyperbole with the percentage of about 19.81% has the highest frequency (N= 21), and Polarization as well as Euphemism have the lowest percentage (16.03%). Vagueness comprises 17.92% of the strategies. However, for BBC
translations, vagueness has the highest frequency and percentage (26, 23.21%) and euphemism has the lowest frequency and percentage (16, 14.28%). The other two strategies including hyperbole and polarization have 16.07%. The following examples together with those provided in Appendix A represent the nature of such strategies.
Strategy
Table 2 - Examples of the discursive strategies
Source Text
Target Text
Vagueness death tolls remain unclear Hyperbole is struggling Euphemism go nuts
Polarization Friends of Syria meeting ... Iran's isolation
jjj j jl^jj^^ j CilÜi jjjj^jj LJJJJ j ^jjl^jlj jljj| b Jjtaj" j Ajjj^i jlj^j^
The above (lexical) semantic discursive strategies are employed for the ideological maneuver that is the basic discursive strategy of positive self-presentation and negative other-presentation, and these ideological positions have been
changed in the translated texts. To understand whether or not there is a statistically significant difference between these two news corporations, an independent-samples t-test was conducted. The results are provided in Tables 3 and 4.
Table 3 - Descriptive statistics of the discursive strategies in the corpus Discursive strategies
Polarization Vagueness Euphemism Hyperbole
News website N Mean Std. Deviation
BBC 30 .6000 .49827
Euro News 30 .5667 .50401
BBC 30 .8667 .34575
Euro News 30 .6333 .49013
BBC 30 .5333 .50742
Euro News 30 .5667 .50401
BBC 30 .6000 .49827
Euro News 30 .7000 .46609
Table 4 - Results of independent-samples t-test between BBC and Euro News discursive strategies
_t-test for Equality of Means_
Discursive strategies t df Sig. (2-tailed) Mean Difference
Polarization .258 58 .798 .03333
Vagueness 2.131 52.133 .038 .23333
Euphemism -.255 58 .799 -.03333
Hyperbole -.803 58 .425 -.10000
Results for Polarization: An independent-samples t-test was conducted to compare the frequency of the polarization strategy for Euro News and BBC. There was no significant difference in the frequency of the strategy for Euro News (M = 0.56,SD = 0.50) and BBC (M = 0.60, SD = 0.49; t (58) = 0.25, p = 0.79, two-tailed). According to the results, the null sub-hypothesis is confirmed and "there is not any statistically significant difference between Euro News and BBC regarding the frequency of the strategy of polarization employed to transfer a message to audience in translation of political news".
Results for Vagueness: An independent-samples t-test was conducted to compare the frequency of the vagueness strategy for Euro News and BBC. There was a significant difference in the frequency of the strategy for Euro News (M = 0.63, SD = 0.49) and BBC (M = 0.86, SD = 0.34; t (52.13) = 2.13, p = 0.03, two-tailed). According to the results, the second null sub-hypothesis is rejected and "there is a statistically significant difference between Euro News and BBC regarding the frequency of the strategy of vagueness employed to transfer a message to audience in translation of political news".
Results for Euphemism: An independent-samples t-test was conducted to compare the frequency of the euphemism strategy for Euro News and BBC. There was no significant difference in the frequency of the strategy for Euro News (M = 0.56, SD = 0.50) and BBC (M = 0.53, SD = 0.50; t (58) = -0.25, p = 0.79, two-tailed). According to the results, the third null sub-hypothesis is confirmed and "there is not any statistically significant difference between Euro News and BBC regarding the frequency of the strategy of euphemism employed to transfer a message to audience in translation of political news".
Results for Hyperbole: An independent-samples t-test was conducted to compare the frequency of the hyperbole strategy for Euro News and BBC. There was no significant difference in the frequency of the strategy for Euro News (M = 0.70, SD = 0.46) and BBC (M = 0.60, SD = 0.49; t (58) = -0.80, p = 0.42, two-tailed). According to the results, the fourth null sub-hypothesis is confirmed and "there is not any statistically significant difference between Euro News and BBC regarding the frequency of the strategy of hyperbole employed to transfer a message to audience in translation of political news".
6. Discussion and conclusion
As the above results indicate, the difference between the two news corporations is significant only in the translation strategy of vagueness. Regarding the internal news of Iran, the Euro News website translators and authorities mostly focus on these two strategies in order to convey their message to their audience. Focusing on the definition of this strategy, it is revealed that the use of this technique in this news corporation is not accidental and a complex multi-faceted approach is practiced behind the scene.
Regarding the concept of vagueness which is most frequently seen as the dominant strategy in the Euro News website, it could be argued that such news websites play a strong role in diverting their audience's attention from what they believe is not a matter of focus. They are mastered in creating doubts and uncertainties, which can pave the ground for further maneuvers to feed what they have been established for. In this regard, the finding is consistent with majority of research studies in this area. Using frequent words such as 'Uu^ ' Vj etc. confirms this
assertion. Studies such as Rahimi and Riasati [11], Shojaei and Laheghi [12], Keshavarz and Alimadadi Zonoozi [10]
and Shojaei [13] stressed the use of special strategies in different genres in order to convey a special concept.
The present study addressed a topic in translation that has recently preoccupied translators and translation researchers all over the world. As media play a major role in shaping individuals' stances and point of views, readers of news items find it a painstaking if such news contains items and terms that may undermine their culture, beliefs, and viewpoints. For this reason, news items may be characterized by managing the source text via using various strategies, which are embedded in translation to make the ideology of the source text as opposed to the ideology of the target readers. The issue of objectivity and subjectivity is subject to the political and ideological dimensions of the authorities who work in the field of translating journalistic texts.
The study investigated the impact of ideology on political texts through identifying the strategies proposed by Van Dijk [7] from English into Persian that encompass
sensitive items. Furthermore, this study endeavored to display how translators could influence news translation. The study pinpointed that there are some manipulative strategies used by translators when they come across news items, which are controversial.
Moreover, it was found that the use of these strategies varies between news corporations since they are sometimes bound by their patrons' policies. The study indicated that since the Euro News and BBC Corporations are highly affected by some special political goals and purposes, the translation produced by their translators are highly affected by those factors as the translators in news agencies are guided by the requirements and guidelines of their institutions. Finally, the study revealed that ideology of the translators was strongly and deliberately intertwined with the target text so that it is rather hard for an ordinary reader to identify the main political purpose behind each single lexical item let alone the whole text.
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