Reconstruction 11.1 (2011)
Return to Contents»
Bielsa, Esperança & Susan Bassnett. Translation in Global News. New York: Routledge, 2009. 162 pp. Paperback. US $41.95.
<1> It has become commonplace for academics, news workers, politicians and pundits to lament the crisis of contemporary journalism. Buffeted by threats to advertiser-supported business models, declining audience numbers and, most damning of all, a yawning credibility gap between the public and the press, so-called legacy journalism faces enormous challenges from within and outside of the newsroom [1]. While such volatility is troubling for professional journalism, this condition has helped reinvigorate the field of journalism studies.
<2> Whether taking up the problematic relationship between the press and the military, the commercial success and popular appeal of “infotainment” (e.g., The Daily Show, The Onion), or the worldwide proliferation of citizens’ journalism, journalism studies is grappling with fundamental questions regarding the press and the public with renewed vigor and a palpable sense of urgency. In recent years, scholars and practitioners alike have produced some outstanding work along just these lines. Diverse titles such as Dahr Jamail’s Beyond the Green Zone, Daya Thussu’s News as Entertainment, and Chris Atton and James Hamilton’s Alternative Journalism—to name but a few—all yield important insights into journalism history, theory and practice. To this list of timely and relevant titles I hasten to add Esperança Bielsa and Susan Bassnett’s Translation in Global News.
<3> Like the aforementioned titles, Translation in Global News features incisive and stimulating analysis of journalistic forms, practices and professional ideologies. Taking a decidedly interdisciplinary approach to the study of international news agencies, Bielsa and Bassnett consider the importance and growing significance of translation in global news flows. What separates Translation in Global News from recent work in journalism studies is not its interdisciplinary character per se. Rather, it is the authors’ ability to identify and synthesize common concerns across disparate fields of study—journalism, media and cultural studies, globalization and translation studies—and to do so in an engaging, innovative and altogether productive fashion.
<4> As such, Translation in Global News will appeal to a broad readership. For students of media and journalism, the book highlights the decisive, but often overlooked role translation plays in the production and distribution of global news. Doing so, Bielsa and Bassnett make visible a process that is largely invisible to news consumers. Equally important, the book bridges two distinct and seemingly unrelated fields of study: globalization and translation studies. As Bielsa and Bassnett observe at the outset, globalization and translation studies share a great many concerns; what’s more, the two fields have followed similar trajectories: “Both have expanded enormously in the twenty-first century, in an age when intercultural communication is becoming increasingly significant, but have developed along parallel tracks, with researchers in each area often quite unaware of how closely their work may be connected” (1). One of the book’s many achievements, then, is the articulation of this correspondence between globalization research and translation studies.
<5> Translation in Global News charts the historical development of global news agencies and examines the ways in which news workers within these organizations “conceive of and employ translation” in the context of international news (1). Using multiple methodologies, including fieldwork at some of the major news agencies and close readings of published reports of global news events (e.g., the 2006 Israel - Lebanon war; the trial of Saddam Hussein), Bielsa and Bassnett argue convincingly for the centrality of translation to the study of global news flows. Introductory chapters that survey the theoretical and conceptual terrain of translation and globalization studies set the stage for subsequent analysis of specific news organizations, translation strategies and practices employed by reporters and editors, and translated news stories.
<6> For readers like myself, new to translation studies, the first chapter provides a concise and cogent overview of the key issues and debates that motivate the field. For instance, Bielsa and Bassnett are quick to highlight the ambiguous role translators have played throughout history. Informed by insights from post-colonial theory, this discussion emphasizes how translation is inextricably bound up in the relationship between language, culture and power. As the authors note: “Though ideally translation can open up a new channel of communication between cultures, it can also reinforce the status quo and effectively restrict the import of new ideas” (6). This insight is further developed in the subsequent chapter on globalization, especially in terms of the unequal flow of news and information between so-called developed and under-developed societies. Here, Bielsa and Bassnett demonstrate a firm grasp of sociological theory that informs current thinking on globalization. Noting a surprising lack of interest in questions surrounding language in globalization research, Bielsa and Bassnett make a persuasive argument that foregrounds the process of translation in our efforts to better understand and appreciate the dynamics of economic, political and cultural globalization. Hence, the authors’ decision to examine the international transmission of news and information: an object of study that has received scant attention in translation studies and one that adds a new dimension to journalism studies in an era marked by the propagation of rolling news channels and the instantaneous relay of global events via satellite television and the internet.
<7> Chapter 3 situates the study of global news organizations in historical context. Although some of this material will be familiar to students of international journalism, this discussion provides important background information on the rise and development of the global news ecology we too often take for granted. For instance, Bielsa and Bassnett remind us that global news agencies, such as Reuters and Agence France-Presse (AFP), were the first international media organizations and represent some of the first instances of transnational media conglomerates. Focusing on the technological, economic and socio-political forces and conditions that produced modern journalism in the first place, as well as the global infrastructure through which international news is produced and distributed, this chapter also relates the pedigree of the major global news agencies. For instance, in addition to Reuters and AFP, Translation in Global News examines the relatively new Inter Press Service (IPS): an “alternative news agency” that emerged out of debates during the 1970s over the stark inequalities of global communication and which culminated in the New World Information and Communication Order (NWICO).
<8> The balance of the book analyzes the translation strategies and textual practices associated with global news production and distribution. Throughout, the authors highlight news workers’ reluctance to think of themselves as translators. As Bielsa and Bassnett note: “The process of bringing information out of one cultural context into another may involve an element of interlingual transfer, but the focus is not on linguistic transferal; rather it is on the transposition of information in a format aimed at meeting the demands of the target readership” (emphasis added 132). Here, then, Translation in Global News engages directly with the distinction between strategies of foreignization vs. domestication that propels a great deal of work in translation studies. Nowhere is this dynamic more apparent than in the comparative analysis of news transcripts of Saddam Hussein’s trial by the Iraqi Interim Government. This exercise vividly reveals the ideological and cultural dimensions of translation at work across British, German and Italian press coverage of the deposed Iraqi leader’s trial. Furthermore, this analysis highlights the critical issue of trust that underwrites the public’s understanding and experience with the news.
<9> An appendix provides excerpts from an international symposium held at the University of Warwick in April 2004. This meeting featured news workers and academics discussing the cultural politics of language, power and translation in the realm of global news. The comments reveal the tensions between journalists and editors on one hand, and students and scholars on the other, when it comes to issues of translation in international news. In this light, the appendix is a particularly apt conclusion for this study; it reveals the significance of the line of inquiry taken up in Translation in Global News and it may well promote further interdisciplinary research in journalism, translation and globalization studies.
Notes
[1] For a comprehensive discussion of public attitudes toward journalism in the United States, see The State of the News Media: An Annual Report on American Journalism produced by the Pew Project for Excellence in Journalism. <http://www.stateofthemedia.org/2009/narrative_overview_publicattitudes.php?media=1>
Works Cited
Atton, Chris and James F. Hamilton. Alternative Journalism. London: Sage, 2008.
Jamail, Dahr. Beyond the Green Zone: Dispatches from an Unembedded Journalist in Occupied Iraq. Chicago: Haymarket, 2008.
Thussu, Daya. News as Entertainment: The Global Rise of Infotainment. London: Sage, 2008.
Return to Top»