Article body

In her new book, Scammell explores the potential of a “foreignized” approach to the translation of global news. The term foreignised is a deliberate variation on foreignisation, the opposing strategy to domestication in literary translation, proposed by Venuti (1995: 24; 2008: 19). This play on terms is meant to convey that, in the news translation context, a so-called foreignised approach is only foreignising to a degree, which is to say only in certain defined respects, namely quotation and culture-specific concepts (p. 3). Scammell argues that a foreignized approach in the translation of global news constitutes a “practical alternative” (p. 3) to the current practice of domestication, just as she claims that a “[…] new relevance for ‘foreignization’ and ‘domestication’ in the news translation context is found by drawing on Venuti’s terms as two ends of a scale rather than as binary opposites” (p. 43). What is the nature of translation strategies in global news? What are the translation norms for global news translation? What is a foreignized approach in the news translation context? Translation Strategies in Global News provides a detailed answer to these questions.

Global news, or rather, the international communication of news, crosses national boundaries and are intercultural in nature. The translation of global news plays a vital role in the communication of news in the age of globalisation. The role of journalists is, as Roberto A. Valdeón states, one in which “[j]ournalists perform a ‘two-fold mediating role,’ and primarily their role is to communicate news events to their audience, but this often involves translation” (Valdeón 2007: 100). The first stage of mediation, common to all newswriting, is the stage during which the journalist decides what information to include and what information to leave out through adding, deletion, replacing, omission, and the like. The second stage of mediation occurs when interlingual translation, which crosses language and culture, is involved. However, the role of translation in news communication is, as Valdeón (2012: 851; 2015: 634) argues, “inadequately addressed.”

Before exploring this book, it is necessary to revisit Bielsa and Bassnett’ s Translation in Global News, published in 2009. The dominant strategy in news translation, as they maintain, is absolute domestication: “As material is shaped in order to be consumed by the target audience, it has to be tailored to suit their need and expectations” (Bielsa and Bassnett 2009: 10). In response to their call for research into translation strategies for news, which is relatively underdeveloped (Bielsa and Bassnett 2009: 10), Scammell’s book provides a comprehensive account of translation strategies in global news. The eight-chapter book comprises an important introduction, a conclusion, and six numbered chapters dealing with six different aspects of the issue.

The introduction begins by briefly describing the case study of a news event, “What Mr. Sarkozy Said in the Suburbs in 2005,” and how the former French President’s comments were reported in the British press, with a view to presenting the domesticating norm for news translation and to introducing a certain degree of “foreignised” approach. The introductory section specifies a case study from the British news agency Reuters and presents a corpus of five English-language Reuters news reports related to “What Mr. Sarkozy Said in the Suburbs.”

Chapter 2, entitled “The Global News Agency,” covers the role of the “Big Three” global agencies—Reuters, Agence France Presse (AFP), and Associated Press (AP). Section One highlights the role of “news wholesalers” played by the “Big Three” (p. 8). The dominance of the “Big Three” is attributable to two factors: the demise of original foreign news reporting in the British press and the development of online news (p. 9). Section Two observes that the reports in the case study corpus have been reproduced widely in edited form. Even though these reports were substantially edited in the Daily Mail, the Daily Telegraph, and the Telegraph Online, they are easily noticeable from their headlines, which vary little from the original version Reuters produced. Section Three stresses the predominance of “quotation” in written news, which equates to a high proportion of translation whenever the speech event occurs in a foreign language.

Chapter 3, entitled “Translation in Global News,” describes the nature of the translation involved in global news production, and the norm for domesticating news translation strategies. Section One claims that investigating translation in news reports is complicated by the fact that translation in newswriting is limited and localised to parts of a news report where the journalist needs to translate a foreign language (p. 22). Therefore, it is necessary to distinguish between an “intra-lingual newswriting process” and an “inter-lingual translation.” Building on the research results in news translation, Scammell maintains that translation is an indispensable part of journalistic writing, including the complex process of information collection, translation, selection, re-interpretation, re-contextualization and editing. Section Two revisits the translation studies debate on Venuti’s “domestication” and “foreignisation.” Specifically speaking, some of the controversy has to do with the language Venuti uses. For example, the terms that Venuti proposes are too emotional, provocative, violent, and polarizing. Nevertheless, Scammell points out that this criticism of Venuti’s language may be reasonable, but it should not distract people from the value of Venuti’s argument itself. Section Three proposes some degree of “foreignisation” as an alternative to “absolute domestication” (p. 29), the translation norm in news translation, which is necessary to convey information to the target audience in a clear, concise and understandable way.

Chapter 4, entitled “A Case for Foreignised News Translation,” explores how the translation process fundamentally undermines the accuracy and objectivity of the “quotation” in the news report. Section One examines the role journalists play as “cultural mediators” and emphasizes the importance of the translation process, especially when journalists need to understand the cultural reality of their domestic audience. Section Two shows the drawbacks of domesticating as a news translation strategy. On the one hand, it greatly increases the risk that the translation will significantly depart from the original source-language information (p. 33). On the other hand, it hides the translation process itself, blurs the cultural reality of news events, and greatly hinders the reader’s cognition and understanding of differences, be they cultural or linguistic, of “culture-specific concepts.” Section Three provides examples that facilitate the understanding of translating “quotations” and “culture-specific concepts,” such as the direct quotation of what Mr. Sarkozy said and three French words (banlieue, quartier, and cité) that have a cultural connotation. Scammell argues that retaining the word banlieue in the translation will expose the target audience to its real exotic cultural reality. The “foreignised” approach in the news translation context aims to improve the visibility of the foreign culture, the linguistic context, and the translation process, but this does not mean that the translation will be difficult to understand. This approach is defined as retaining “foreign elements” (p. 44), thus allowing the target audience to have access to the foreign culture and language.

Chapter 5, entitled “Investigating Translation Strategy in the News,” summarizes the analyses of the methods used by news translation. Section One sets out the book’s focus on the “local” translation strategies used in global news reporting. Scammell’s view that the definition of news translation as applying a “local” strategy to solve local problems is consistent with the journalists’ understanding of translation in daily news writing tasks while the description of “global” translation strategy may not be effective for journalists to solve local problems. Section Two reviews the points advanced by Bielsa and Bassnett (2009) and by Hursti (2001). “Rewriting,” put forward by Bielsa and Bassnett (2009), emphasizes intra-lingual translation. Hursti (2001) distinguishes the “editing” process from the “translation” process. However, Scammell believes that their opinions are not applicable for the “local” translation strategies involved in news reports, but are suitable for the intra-lingual translation of news reporting. Pedersen’s (2005: 2) taxonomy for subtitle translation, despite having nothing to do with news translation, provides the most relevant method for looking at the local translation strategies used in how Reuters reports the news. There are three reasons why this taxonomy is the most relevant and convincing. First, Pedersen includes strategies that present cultural specificity; second, Pedersen also places the strategies on the Venutian scale, indicating the degree of “foreignisation” or “domestication”; third, subtitlers and journalists are bound by a lot of similar constraints in translation practice, mainly the constraints of time, space, and norms. Section Three presents Pedersen’s taxonomy. It is worth noting that Pedersen replaces foreignising with “Source Language (SL) oriented” and domesticating with “Target Language (TL) oriented.”

Chapter 6, entitled “The Domestication Norm in Reuters Journalism,” introduces Reuters’ current translation method. Section One applies Pedersen’s Venutian scale to a corpus of news articles from Reuters, the case analysis corpus, to determine to what extent and in what way Reuters’ journalists implement the “domestication” or “foreignisation” strategy when translating “culture-specific concepts.” Scammell observes that the inter-lingual translation process involved in news reporting occurs when Reuters’ journalists need to get their target audience to understand “quotations” and “culture-specific concepts” in news reports. Scammel reveals in her analysis a much higher incidence of domesticating strategies. Section Two investigates the role of the Reuters Handbook of Journalism.[1] The core translation guidelines set out in the Reuters Handbook of Journalism also reflect the domesticating nature of Reuters’ current translation method. The analysis shows that Reuters’ journalists often strictly follow its translation instructions.

Chapter 7, entitled “A Foreignised Approach to Translation in the News,” presents five proposed updates to the Handbook that collectively foreignise the agency’s current guidelines on translation. Section One investigates the translation of banlieue in Reuters, AFP and AP news articles. The results show that banlieue appears in the headlines of four AFP reports and the lead of one other, which suggests the feasibility for the news agency of retaining culture-specific concepts. Thus, five updates are presented and discussed in turn in Section Two, along with examples from the corpus. These updates include update 1: retention of foreign language (culture-specific concepts), update 2: retention of foreign language (quotations), update 3: paraphrase for accuracy in translated quotations, update 4: showing deletions in translated direct quotations, update 5: the foreign context of quotations.

Chapter 8, the conclusion, sums up the findings of the current global news translation and identifies an approach to future research. The domesticating nature of the current translation method Reuters endorses is mainly attributable to the Handbook’s instructions on avoiding foreign languages and translating quotations in an “idiomatic” way (p. 94). Scammell holds that a degree of “foreignisation,” as an alternative method to “domestication,” has practical applicability. On the one hand, the “foreignisation” method will not delete these core guiding principles, but instead will add additional information on these bases to deal with the exceptions the Handbook specifies. On the other hand, it will offer an ethical and practical basis for journalists to shift away from the norms for domesticating news translation strategies and bring the target audience closer to these foreign cultural realities. This chapter closes with Scammell’s approach to future research: collaborating with the news agency, which can assess the effect of the “foreignisation” method.

Scammell’s book, a ground-breaking work, provides a novel approach to news translation, as manifested in the following perspectives. To begin, the book, with its focus on transdisciplinary studies, successfully integrates translation within journalism, communication and intercultural communication. Second, with enlightening news translation examples from Reuters, the book explores how culture-specific meaning is lost when foreign cultural concepts are domesticated and it provides a very convincing argument for a degree of “foreignisation” as a means to maximising the potential for translation in the news to facilitate cross-cultural engagement and understanding. Furthermore, it is also worth mentioning that the book highlights the responsibility of global news agencies, as authors of widely reproduced translations. This shows, to some extent, that the news, once mediated and remediated, has far-reaching effects on the target audience’s recognition of cultural reality.

Overall, Scammell’s Translation Strategies in Global News is an extraordinary book. All her efforts will move news translation studies to the prospective foreground. This book serves as a field guide for scholars and practitioners alike in the sphere of news translation, journalism, international communication, and intercultural communication studies.