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

[27][27][2][27]

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

[17][15, P. 22]

Research on institutional translation

[10][15][17][24]

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

[7][1][28]

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

[8, P. 52][16][30]

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

[14][17][18][19][21][12, P. 141]

As a major contributor of research insights in the area, Kang

[11][12][13][11]

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

[21]

Bielsa and Bassnett in Translation in Global News

[4, P. 1][4, P. 63][4, P. 55][20, P. 169]

Digital platforms have expanded the forms through which translated news is circulated. Zeng and Li

[29][1][28]

3. The "In-bound/Out-bound" Parameter

The distinction between "out-bound translation" and "in-bound translation" was made by Nam Fung Chang

[5][5]

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

[5][14]

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

[9][22]

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

[20][23][29][30][3][11]

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

[25][26]

As Koskinen

[15, P. 22][6, P. 251]

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

[19]

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

[29]

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.

The additional file for this article can be found as follows: