PANEL 5      
DISCOURSE APPROACHES TO TRANSLATION STUDIES

Chair: Fei Gao, University of Leeds

Translating Political Discourse in Singapore

Tay Meng How (Nanyang Technological University, Singapore)

In Singapore, misinterpretations leading to mistranslations happen often even in the media for the public. In recent years, there is a gradual transformation of political discourse, which is reflected by changes of discourse through translation. Hence, the National Translation Committee (NTC) was formed in 2014 to oversee short-term and long-term plans to enhance whole-of-government translation capabilities and raise translation standards in Singapore. This paper seeks to examine how political discourse is translated in Singapore by using a corpus data formed by seven sets of Chinese National Day Rally (NDR) speeches and their corresponding English translations. They are analysed using the Skopos Theory and approaches such as Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) and political equivalence. The implications of translation strategies used, discourse patterns of source texts (STs) and corresponding target texts (TTs) as well as equivalence levels between STs and TTs are identified. The results from such a comparative study will be beneficial for future studies in political discourse translation as well as translation in general.

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Translation of Journalistic Texts in an Interdisciplinary Perspective: Stereotyping

Shifa Askari (University of Leeds, UK)

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Translation of news texts involves linguistic, cultural, political and sociological aspects, as the translator is attempting to render news texts not only into another language, but also quasi-geographical transfer into another political, sociological and even ideological context, with its associated stereotypes, evaluative references and prejudices. In this paper, I am concerned specifically with the trans-editing of media texts between Arabic and English in relation to stereotyping and ideology, where ‘stereotyping’ refers to the layman’s perception of groups of people, while an ‘ideology’ is the cascading of the views of the ruling class down to ordinary people.Three journalistic texts are chosen from two news agencies, BBC and Reuters, covering two areas in which stereotypes abound: the Israel/Palestine conflict, and Islam. Key features of the corresponding English and Arabic texts will be comparatively analysed using discourse analysis. The specific model chosen is the Discourse Historical Approach put forward by Wodak et al (2001), which involves relating texts in detail to their historical, political and sociological background. This approach is particularly appropriate to the analysis of stereotypes. The study draws on a number of disciplines in order to illuminate the ways in which different audiences/cultures are addressed and what means are used to convey certain images. The results show various ways in which translation can be used as a tool to address various audiences, influence them and even shape their opinions.

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Testimony in Translation: Representations of Christine Blasey Ford in French-language Media

Laura How (York University, UK)

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Though questions of fidelity, visibility, and ideology are ever-present in translation studies, these concerns are heightened when trauma is involved. Translators of testimony are often responsible for representing the voice and experiences of victims and sharing their stories with a wider audience (Davies). With the fall of Harvey Weinstein and the rise of the #MeToo movement, the testimonies of victims of sexual harassment and assault have become a fixture in the media. While victims have benefited from unprecedented visibility on social media and in feminist spheres, their representation in mainstream media is complicated by tensions between journalistic objectivity and feminist ethics. Similarly, while the global distribution of these stories helps call attention to the issue of sexual violence, their translation adds yet another layer of ethical negotiation to the task of representation. This project explores the issues of fidelity, visibility, and ideology in the translation of court reporting on sexual assault cases. Building upon a framework of Critical Discourse Analysis, Keith Harvey’s theory of bindings, and a feminist approach to journalism (Waterhouse-Watson), I take as a case study the representations of Christine Blasey Ford in five French-language articles published following her appearance during the Senate nomination hearing for Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh. The study reveals that court reporting and translation can take a variety of ideologically driven approaches, only some of which allow the victim a face, name, and voice, while others illustrate mainstream medias reluctance to challenge rape culture conventions lest they appear biased.  While these stories provide an opportunity to aid in redressing and combating sexual violence worldwide, the journalists and translators who write them must first develop and adopt a feminist ethics.