Author:

Keywords:

imagology, translation, journalism, America

Abstract:

This paper takes the interesting use of the concept ‘translation’ in the conference as a starting point. The call mentions that “the very definition of translation is challenged" by using translation not only in the interlingual sense (e.g. media translation). This view on translation is all but new in translation studies, since Jakobson already in the 1950s distinguished between interlingual, intralingual and intersemiotic translation. Nevertheless the translation of international news indeed is a fascinating interdisciplinary field of research. This paper will analyze some of the complex interconnections between language knowledge, translation, transediting, translation awareness and the use of sources as they exist in newsrooms. On the basis of well known concepts from communication and journalism studies (e.g. framing, gatekeeping, agenda setting) it particularly focuses on the relative (un)translatibility and the inherent ideological side effects of framing and reframing processes. Both from a quantitative and qualitative point of view, it will deal with two case studies. The first one will go into the (re)production of international news in Belgian newsrooms (Dutch as well as French speaking). Particularly in a (bi)national context where linguistic viewpoints and performances are almost necessarily politically loaded, the results of this research project show unexpected correlations between source languages, press agencies and countries dealt with in the international news. These findings will be confronted with the famous MacBride report (1980) on imbalanced news circulation and the role of geographical and psychological proximity. The main part of the paper will present the results of a second case study that deals with the journalistic choices made in several European newsrooms to report on the 2008 presidential elections in the USA (focusing on the framing of McCain, Barack and Michelle Obama). The methodological framework used is that of imagology or image studies. It offers concepts that could clarify some of the relationships between image building, political influencing and language use as they nowadays exist in modern media processes. The clear use of both auto- and hetero-images in the media is inextricably linked to aspects of nationalism and identity. Moreover, both the essentialist and constructivist views on nationalism and images are clearly identifiable in the corpus of contemporary journalism production.