This article presents an overview of the publications on journalistic translation research spanning the period 2015-present day. It includes three sections that highlight the main theoretical frame...

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/0907676X.2020.1723273

Journalistic translation research goes global: theoretical and methodological considerations five years on

Positioning, crucial in shaping the interpretation of a text, is usually unobtrusive in news translation. News translation of conflicts might provide an important context for investigating translat...

News translation of reported conflicts: a corpus-based account of positioning


This study investigates empirically the way in which interpreter ideology is manifested in the evaluative language of the World Economic Forum’s Annual Meeting in China in 2016 (English–Chinese language pair). Methodologically, van Dijk’s Ideological Square and Martin and White’s Appraisal framework have been operationalised for the analysis of positive or negative evaluative language in ‘us’ vs ‘them’ discourses. The results reveal an overall positive-‘us’ and negative-‘them’ pattern in the interpreter’s ideological positioning. This is manifested in three ways: (i) negative, pejorative, and sensitive discourses about China are self-censored; (ii) positivity is accentuated and negativity is neutralised in China-related discourses, and (iii) negative tones in the discourses of other countries are amplified. The speaker discourse is ‘edited’ when interpreter ideology is at work during the simultaneous interpreting process. However, the linguistic patterns can provide only partial indications of the possible relationship between interpreter ideology and cognitive operations.

Interpreter ideology

Although it is important to research the images of politicians as recreated in interpreted discourse, to date, minimal attention has been paid to interpreter-reshaped contrastive images of journali...

Contrastive images of journalists and Chinese premiers in interpreter-mediated press conferences: a case study of Chinese ‘xiexie’

\n The investigation of potential stylistic differences between translated and non-translated texts has been proven to be a promising line in corpus-based translation studies, yet similar research on the product of interpreting seems both smaller in scale and slower in development. This study compares the use of hedges in interpreted and spontaneous English speeches collected in similar settings. Specifically, we gathered the two types of speech data from Chinese and American political press briefings respectively and analyzed their differences in the employment of various hedging devices. The results show that interpreted speeches not only contain significantly fewer hedges but they are also dependent on a narrower range of such devices than spontaneous speeches, which is consistent with the tendency towards simplification in translations. Also, our findings suggest that interpreted and spontaneous speeches tend to follow distinct hedging patterns in terms of preferred linguistic choices. Potential factors triggering such differences are discussed.

Hedging in interpreted and spontaneous speeches: a comparative study of Chinese and American political press briefings

Political press conferences, while playing a significant role in international communication by heads of state and government, are still largely underexplored in interpreting studies. More scholarly attention is needed, particularly to examine the interpreter’s mediating role in these uniquely constrained communicative settings. Drawing on narrative theory and Wadensjo’s model of renditions, this paper investigates the interpreter’s mediating role at a 2011 joint press conference with the American and Chinese Presidents, at that time Barack Obama and Hu Jintao respectively. Specifically, the study examines how the interpretation comprises reduced, expanded and summarized renditions of the speakers’ narratives, and how the resulting mediation can affect not only their image, but also the outcome of the diplomatic communication between their respective countries. Here, the interpreter’s performance is subject not only to his language competence, but also to a number of other factors. On the one hand, his mediation can be facilitated rather than restricted by the constraints of the setting where the interpreting occurs, such as technical problems and time limitations. On the other hand, the mediation can also reflect the interpreter’s institutional role and the public narratives within the socio-cultural context.

Interpreter mediation at political press conferences: A narrative account


 Empirical research on the cognitive processing of audiovisual translation (AVT)
 products has been thriving over the past decade. While the use of cutting-edge experimental tools such as eye trackers has drawn
 increasing scholarly attention and accelerated the progress in understanding the complex mental processes involved in the
 reception of multimodal AVT products, relatively less attention has been devoted to the importance of establishing a theoretical
 framework or cognitive model that can explain and predict the behaviours observed in empirical experiments. By reviewing numerous
 theories or cognitive models relevant to AVT research in explaining how different perceptual and cognitive systems operate for
 understanding multimodal products, this paper calls for engagement with these theoretical frameworks and models to work towards a
 robust model that can generate testable hypotheses for the integration and interaction of multiple sources of information involved
 in the processing of AVT or other multimodal products.

Sixin Liao

Papers

Interpreter mediation at political press conferences: A narrative account

Establishing a theoretical framework for AVT research