Перевод институциональных новостей: «Входящие» и «исходящие» (Часть I) — Параметр «входящие/исходящие» как аналитическая основа
Перевод институциональных новостей: «Входящие» и «исходящие» (Часть I) — Параметр «входящие/исходящие» как аналитическая основа
Аннотация
Данная статья вводит понятие «входящего» и «исходящего» перевода в исследование перевода институциональных новостей. Утверждается, что то, инициируется ли перевод целевой или исходной организацией, влияет на институциональные цели, редакционную политику и коммуникативные результаты. Опираясь на теорию институционального перевода и исследования в области фреймирования новостей и транседирования, в работе разрабатывается теоретическое обоснование для рассмотрения инициированного источником («исходящего») и инициированного целевой организацией («входящего») институционального перевода новостей как отдельных объектов анализа, каждый из которых определяется различными отношениями между переводческой организацией, переводчиком, редакторами и целевой аудиторией. С этой точки зрения эти четыре стороны не всегда находятся по одну сторону идеологического, личностного или культурного разрыва, и посредничество перевода лучше понимать как активный институциональный выбор, обусловленный бизнес-целями, меценатством и маркетинговыми соображениями, а не объяснять его исключительно внешним политическим давлением или цензурой. В дополнительной статье (Часть II) данная концептуальная основа применяется к сравнительному исследованию трех китайских переводов одной и той же статьи из журнала "The Economist".
1. Introduction
News translation is an area of translation studies closely associated with influential concepts such as "transediting", "filtering", "gatekeeping", "censorship", "ideology" and "recontextualization". Such concepts and much existing observation of news translation are based on studies of "news" and "news institution" in the traditional sense. Although the role a translating institution plays in the way translation is done has been studied early on, conclusions are generally based on the assumption that the translation is target-initiated and conducted by target-culture-immersed translators.
The current study introduces the "in-bound/out-bound" parameter into the discussion of institutional news translation and describes how the translating institution's goal, strategy, process and end-product might vary based on this parameter. The framework distinguishes between translation that imports external news for domestic audiences and translation that exports institutional discourse to external audiences. A companion paper (Part II) reports a small-scale qualitative case study of journalistic output from news media in a broader sense, and explores how the changing nature of the medium could impact on the practice of journalistic translation; the present paper sets out the framework on which that case study is built.
2. Theoretical Framework
2.1. Institutional News Translation
Describing the status quo of news translation research, Valdeón states that, "If Translation Studies is a young discipline, news translation research is in its infancy". How is such a state of "infancy" manifested? "Rare" seems to be the key word: "…scholarly publications on the position and impact of language use, let alone translation, in the media were very rare" . Existing research has also been characterized by insufficient contextualization, inconsistent terminology, and a lack of substantial empirical investigation. But, in recent decades scholars have gradually carved out a larger landscape by delineating the boundary of news translation studies with different combinations of tools and angles. The term "news translation" has been reincarnated into "press translation", "media translation", "journalistic translation" and more, with various journalistic genres taken into account ,
.This broader conceptualization of news translation has also drawn attention to the institutional environments in which translation takes place. Rather than viewing translation as an isolated activity performed by individual translators, scholars of institutional translation emphasize the organisational structures, professional routines, and social relations that shape translation processes and products. "Translating institutions" is a term coined by Mossop to refer to the organisations or institutions that undertake translation or for which translation is done. Koskinen further extrapolates the decisive role a translating institution has on the way translation is done, saying "in institutional translation, the voice that is to be heard is that of the translating institution" . This observation is particularly relevant to news translation, where translation is embedded within media organisations with specific editorial policies, professional norms, and communicative objectives.
Research on institutional translation
, , has demonstrated that institutional translation is typically a collective, anonymous, and standardized process involving the collaboration of multiple agents, including translators, revisers, editors, and subject specialists. Examining translation practices in political institutions, Schäffner and fellow researchers further show that these characteristics apply to different institutions to varying degrees. Their findings suggest that while institutions exert significant influence on translation practices and outcomes, institutional translation cannot be reduced to institutional control alone. Instead, translation emerges from the interaction between institutional functions, organisational structures, funding conditions, and the agency of individual translators.These insights provide an important foundation for understanding institutional news translation, where translation decisions are shaped through the interaction of institutional objectives, editorial practices, translator choices, and anticipated audiences. Dubbati and Abudayeh
, for example, demonstrate that translators may actively participate in reframing conflict narratives, highlighting the role of translators as agents within institutional contexts. At the same time, institutional translation contributes to the construction and projection of institutional identities. Research on language choice and institutional identity suggests that linguistic practices can communicate organisational values and collective identities , while studies of collaborative translation environments reveal ongoing negotiations among participants regarding their roles and identities . Taken together, these studies suggest that institutional news translation should be examined not simply as a linguistic operation or a product of institutional constraint, but as a socially situated process in which institutional goals, professional practices, individual agency, and identity construction intersect.2.2. News Framing and Transediting
If institutional translation theory explains why an organisation intervenes in a text, framing theory explains what such interventions do to its meaning. To frame, in Entman's classic definition, is to select and make salient certain aspects of reality so as to promote a particular problem definition, causal interpretation, moral evaluation or treatment recommendation
; selection and salience map onto the textual operations most visible in transedited news — omission, generalisation, addition and reordering. In institutional news translation, framing is therefore not only a textual outcome but also a reflection of organisational priorities, because institutions determine which aspects of events are selected, emphasized, or downplayed through translation. A recent strand of research folds framing directly into translation theory: Liu's "transframing" model, reviewed by Zhang and Song , treats news translation as "translation-mediated framing through translated news" and finds, in a comparison of the Financial Times and China's Reference News, that the two outlets diverge systematically — Reference News tends to reinforce framing effects that praise China or disparage its rivals, while the Financial Times more often softens negative framing to suit its target market — an asymmetry that anticipates the source-/target-initiated contrast explored below.Studies have been conducted to prove that news translation at a media company could be subjected to conditions and processes similar to those in other forms of institutional translation
, , , . However, institutional translation against the backdrop of globalized journalistic practice is an area relatively unexplored, with scholars lamenting the lack of "empirical research in this regard" as well as the disregard of institutional translation being "organisational, structural, relational, ideological" and "socially situated" in research of news translation .As a major contributor of research insights in the area, Kang
, , notes the fact that news translation is a practice of "entextualization", involving "extracting discourse out of its original setting and rendering it into a text, a stretch of language that is made manageable and controllable for the purposes of recontextualization" .Based on an empirical survey at the Reference News Newspaper (RNN), a Chinese news organisation engaging in the translation and dissemination of international news in China, Pan found that even though RNN is "more of a news translating institution than a news organisation", operating under the Chinese state-run Xinhua News Agency, it still needs to perform the gatekeeping function like a news organisation in the selection, translation and dissemination of news reports from foreign sources. The fact that foreign news reports are translated by a domestic institution with obvious mediation much like imported foreign goods going through state-imposed quarantine procedures begs the question: What would it be like when news reports are translated by the source agency as "exports"?
Bielsa and Bassnett in Translation in Global News try to "bring diverse research strands together" in the field of the international transmission of news. Some of the distinct features of news translation as they identify include: The main objective of news translators is to transmit information; news translators are subject to important limitations of time and space . Though focused on agencies like AP and Reuters, they note the internet is "blurring the boundaries and markets of the news agencies and other media" , opening new ground for studying institutional news translation in relation to medium and initiator. Studies of translation as localisation efforts following the footsteps of globalization are also conducted, drawing conclusions that information made global means it "has been adapted to infinite numbers of different cultural and social contexts" . Pushing the globalised backdrop further, he argues that because news texts are commercially distributed on a global scale, a theory of "localisation" (under which a global product is simultaneously reproduced in multiple versions tailored to linguistically and politically distinct "sub-locales") captures institutional news translation more adequately than conventional, single-source-to-single-target translation theory.
Digital platforms have expanded the forms through which translated news is circulated. Zeng and Li
demonstrate that translated comments and paratextual materials on WeChat contribute to the construction of institutional image. Research on institutional identity also shows that language practices communicate organisational values . Yu further demonstrates that collaborative translation involves negotiation of participant roles and identities. Such findings are prominent results of marrying translation studies with communications theories and social politics studies, though they still speak of the nature of news translation with a very narrow sense of "news" and "news organisation" in mind. Many influential discussions have been framed primarily around target-oriented processes, leaving source-institution-initiated translation relatively underexplored. And if news communication and translation is viewed across broader journalistic genres against more diversified news media beyond those of "news agencies" like Reuters, how would conclusions differ?3. The "In-bound/Out-bound" Parameter
The distinction between "out-bound translation" and "in-bound translation" was made by Nam Fung Chang and the concept of "source-initiated translation" highlighted in his research on literary translation initiated by the source culture. Within the construct of polysystem theories, his study finds that "the norms governing translation initiated by the source culture are determined mainly by factors internal to that culture", "suggesting a link between translation norms and the auto-image of the initiating culture" .
In his review of Itamar Even-Zohar's hypothesis that there is a link between the position of translated literature in the literary polysystem and translation norm, Chang
points out three underlying assumptions: the translator is translating into his/her first language and culture; the translator is immersed in the target culture; the translated text is intended to function in the target culture. And he discusses the scenarios when at least one of the assumptions is invalid. Although the discussion is set in the context of literary translation, the concepts and assumptions highlighted could be employed as pointers to possible new angles for our exploration of institutional news translation. As Kaisa Koskinen notes, in spite of the obvious shaping force of translating institutions, "analyses of their role in the translation process are few and far between". What is transferable from Chang’s discussion is not the literary polysystem model itself, but the analytical attention given to the initiating side of translation. His argument highlights the possibility that translation norms may originate from the needs and self-perception of the initiating culture rather than solely from expectations within the receiving environment.Existing studies of news translation have been heavily focused on examining in-bound translation, where imported news materials are adapted to meet the cultural, political, and journalistic expectations of target audiences. Holland’s discussion of the manipulative power of translating media, for example, demonstrates how "our" discourse may be imposed onto "their" discourse, although his analysis focuses primarily on target-initiated translation. Research on translated news concerning international conflicts further shows that translation may reconstruct representations of actors and events through processes of reframing and stance adjustment. Qin and Huang’s study of Xinhuanet’s English translation of reports on the Sino-Philippine South China Sea dispute demonstrates that news translation involves the re-instantiation of institutional stance through reframing strategies. Their findings show that translated versions may strengthen, soften, or otherwise modify evaluative meanings according to target readership considerations, institutional protocols, and sociocultural beliefs.
Such findings complicate a simple opposition between source-oriented preservation and target-oriented adaptation. Even in source-initiated translation, the translated text is not merely a reproduction of the source discourse; rather, it represents a strategic negotiation between institutional identity and international communication. The question, therefore, is not whether out-bound translation is free from mediation, but where the primary mediating force originates. Whereas in-bound translation tends to foreground the target institution’s role in selecting, modifying, and reframing external narratives, out-bound translation may foreground the source institution’s efforts to construct and project a particular self-image internationally. Source-initiated institutional translation thus provides an important site for investigating how organisations use translation not only to communicate information but also to negotiate legitimacy, identity, and ideological positioning across linguistic and cultural boundaries.
Given these highly relevant questions, the current study introduces the "in-bound/out-bound" parameter into our discussion of institutional news translation to see how the translation practice might be viewed from a new angle. The empirical grounding for the framework proposed here — a comparative analysis of three Chinese translations of the same English news article from "The Economist" — is reported in the companion paper (Part II).
4. Theoretical Implications
4.1. Who initiates the translation and how does it affect the translation?
The in-bound/out-bound parameter provides a framework for examining institutional news translation beyond conventional source-target assumptions. The in-bound/out-bound distinction proposed here does not refer simply to the linguistic direction of translation or the location of translators. Rather, it concerns the institutional origin of communicative purpose: whether translation is primarily initiated to incorporate external information into a domestic discourse environment or to project an institution’s own discourse into an external communicative space. By considering who initiates translation and for what purposes, researchers can better explain differences in framing, localisation, and institutional representation. Existing scholarship supports the view that translated news is socially situated discourse shaped by organisational, political, and communicative contexts
, , , . Both Barnard's analysis of Newsweek Japan and Kang's analysis of Newsweek Hankuk Pan reveal that the target-culture-immersed translators engage in self-censorship and would make adjustments in terms of meaning, form and function in their translation to respond to the target context. On the surface, an out-bound institutional translation staffed by target-culture-immersed translators might be expected to behave the same way, as just another example of the localisation of western journalistic products. But in fact the two cases can be quite different where the translating body is run directly by the source institution rather than resulting from a partnership with a local news agency: the closer the translating body is to full source-institution control, the more the end-product tends to deviate from target-oriented localisation.When the voice of the target culture is weak in the process of news localisation, the source institution's goal becomes central to all translation decisions. It may choose to adapt and avoid misunderstanding or confrontation, or prioritize the projection of its own discourse while assuming that target readers will accommodate the source perspective. Just as international institutions tend to impose their ideological stances upon translators writing for the Other
, , a source-controlled out-bound translating body can be expected to bring viewpoints and "facts" as understood by the source institution to the "other" without the least mediation, where the group's "independent reporting and sharp perspective" as well as stylistic nuances are what it takes pride in and where its auto image resides. It is in this sense that such a translation should be regarded as an out-bound one even though the actual translation work may be done by translators immersed in the target culture.As Koskinen
states, "in institutional translation, the voice that is to be heard is that of the translating institution". The selection, removal, masking and substitution of certain wording are motivated by and aligned with the translating institution's own goals and assumptions of what the target culture needs. For source-initiated out-bound news translations, such assumptions might go wrong since oftentimes the decision makers are detached from the target culture, bearing the risk of overestimation of the source institution's auto-image and its acceptance by the target culture. By contrast, target-initiated in-bound news translations might have better gauge of the target context, though their recontextualization efforts might go to the extreme of reinterpreting source-information from an altered perspective, producing what cultural studies scholars Conway & Vaskivska called "gaps or distortion".4.2. How is institutional news translation evolving?
In the ever-changing world of mass communication around the globe, the boundaries of "news" and "news media" have been expanded to include a richer variety of journalistic contents by more and more "diversified" media organisations. Many news outlets claim to be painting an objective picture of events they cover; but the reality is that media companies have pre-established political stances, market positioning and business philosophies, which could easily translate into their journalistic output. When such journalistic contents undergo the process of translation, the myth of objectivity is particularly salient. One man's "objective report" is another's "subjective opinion". The more diversified business operation of "news media" means "news" is now presented against a multiplicity of contexts for different target audiences to peruse. Similar to Mossop's finding
, translation adjustments are prompted by the need to present information congruent with the institution's internal business goals, patronage and marketing concerns instead of the usually blamed "political censorship". The nature and background of a media organisation is arguably the determining factor in the way information and opinions are presented or represented in its journalistic output.The gradual transition to the medium of digital platforms can also transform the practice of news translation as we have known it. First, the limitation of space has been dissolved in the cyberspace where it can be expanded by the scroll of the screen or clicks of hyperlinks. Limitation of space is no longer a strong case for compressing information in news transedition, though readability in terms of text length might still factor much. Second, presenting journalistic content in the bilingual or multilingual format is making translation decisions more transparent, since the source text is also there for reference. It is particularly true with source-initiated news translation, which is intended to be a mirror image of the original. Third, the subscription business model and app-only operation of some media companies might provide more leeway in their translation practice. They can reach their target audience more accurately with more custom-made information, echoing the trend of information tribalization in the cyberspace. The same logic is visible on newer social-media platforms: Zeng and Li
show that Reference News accompanies its translated comments with screenshots of the original English-language posts, a paratextual device that both advertises the translation and lends it credibility for a young, well-educated WeChat readership capable of checking the source for themselves.5. Conclusion
By bringing the in-bound/out-bound parameter into the discussion of institutional news translation, attention is drawn to the translating institution and its decisive role in the process. The parameter highlights possible misalignments among the translating institution, translators, editors, and target audiences in terms of ideological positioning, institutional identity, and cultural assumptions. Tension within such a non-alignment and its resolution would be issues worthy of investigation. As proposed here, the parameter suggests that, reframing effects cannot be assumed to originate only from target-side adaptation or be the result of external censorship alone; source-initiated translation may also involve strategic mediation motivated by institutional objectives. News media diversity also means greater capacity for translating institutions to present information according to their own institutional agendas.
This theoretical framework is deliberately kept general in this paper so that it can be tested against empirical material; the companion paper (Part II) applies it to a small-scale qualitative case study of three institutional translations of the same Economist article, and further studies of the actual procedures of translation and editing across a wider range of institutions are needed for a more complete picture of institutional news translation.