Abstracts
Abstract
Topical structure in news translation has received relatively little attention despite its stated significance in discourse content and in producing functionally adequate translations. Journalists write news stories with a given structure, order, viewpoint and values, which are “transferred” in translation and affect the way topics are organized. This study explores how shifts in topical development in translation influence rhetorical structure and ultimately news content. Using Lautamatti’s Topical Structure Analysis and Bell’s Event Structure Model, the paper describes the translation strategies applied in (re)producing the source text’s topical and event structures in the target language in a corpus of Hungarian–English news texts (the summary sections of analytical news articles). Results show that while translators generally preserve the sources’ structure in translation, in some cases (e.g. sequential topic progression) significant changes occur, altering the status of some information as well as the event structure, thus producing modified news contents. The paper also examines whether the claim that news translation is influenced by norms similar to those regulating news production more generally applies to this news genre, too. Findings suggest that due to the stereotypical features of this genre, the data only partially support this claim.
Keywords:
- news discourse,
- topical structure,
- event structure,
- text genre,
- shifts of translation
Résumé
La structure topique a été relativement peu abordée dans le cadre de la traduction des nouvelles, malgré l’importance qu’on lui connaît en termes de contenu du discours et d’adéquation de la traduction sur le plan fonctionnel. Les journalistes rédigent selon une structure, un ordre, un point de vue et un système de valeurs déterminés, autant d’éléments qui sont transférés dans la traduction et qui ont une influence sur l’organisation des topiques. Le présent article porte sur la façon dont le développement des topiques dans la traduction influence la structure rhétorique et, finalement, le contenu des nouvelles. Se fondant sur l’analyse de la structure topique modélisée par Lautamatti ainsi que sur le modèle de la structure événementielle de Bell, le présent article décrit les stratégies de traduction utilisées pour (re)produire la structure informationnelle et événementielle du texte source dans la langue cible. L’étude fait appel à un corpus bilingue hongrois-anglais constitué par des résumés d’articles analytiques. Les résultats montrent que, malgré le fait que les traducteurs conservent généralement la structure du texte source dans leur traduction, il arrive parfois que des changements majeurs surviennent (par exemple, dans la progression des informations). Ces modifications transforment le statut de certaines informations et la structure événementielle et donc, par conséquent, le contenu des nouvelles. Nous soulevons également la question de savoir si l’assertion selon laquelle la traduction des nouvelles est influencée par des normes semblables à celles qui régulent leur production s’applique à ce genre textuel. Selon nos données, cette assertion est partiellement appuyée, probablement en raison de ses caractéristiques particulières.
Mots-clés :
- discours des nouvelles (actualités),
- structure topique,
- structure évenementielle,
- genre textuel,
- déplacement traductionnel
Appendices
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10.7202/016072ar