Investigating institutional practice in news translation: An empirical study of a Chinese agency translating discourse on China

摘要

News translation, as an act or process of reproducing news stories, is carried out as part of an institutional routine. However, previous studies on news translation, mostly focusing on text analysis, usually ignored the institutional practice involved. Based on an empirical survey, this study explores the impact of institutional practice and guidelines on actual translation in the Reference News Newspaper (RNN), a Chinese news organisation engaging in translation and famed for upholding 'faithful translation' when translating foreign reports for Reference News, a prestigious Chinese newspaper with the largest daily circulation in China. With transediting well established as the common translation practice in news organisations and faithful translation rarely accepted as the criterion of news translation, it is interesting to investigate how the filtering and gatekeeping nature of a news organisation accommodates the practice of producing 'faithful translation', especially when translating reports on sensitive domestic realities in China for the Chinese reader. Incorporating the responses from interviews and a self-completed questionnaire, the paper also explores the roles of translation and the translator in the Chinese news organisation.