The past two decades have witnessed a growing academic interest in frame and framing in news translation, raising questions about the nature of translation itself (Bassnett 2005; Baker 2006 , 2007; Valdeón 2008, 2014; Pan 2014; Tsai 2015; Qin and Zhang 2018). Given that translation forms “an integral part” of actual journalistic practice (van Doorslaer 2010: 181), research into news translation would require the integration of theories and concepts from journalism and media studies. Nancy Xiuzhi Liu’s latest monograph, News Framing Through English-Chinese Translation, pursues such an endeavour, and synthesises concepts from framing studies and translation studies to formulate the theoretical model of Transframing (TF) for the study of news translation. This research work, which benefits from the author’s educational background in both International Communications and Translation Studies and reveals the intimate relations between news translation and media studies, argues that news translation is a transframing process mediated through translation. Encompassing nine chapters, this volume uses both qualitative and quantitative analysis and abundant examples for presenting the TF model as an effective analytical tool for approaching translated news, and discusses the ideological, sociocultural, and linguistic factors behind the transframing practices analysed.
The introductory chapter states that “[w]hat we read is not just what has happened but what the media has chosen to cover” (1), and suggests that selected perspectives in news reporting can be represented through translation across languages. In order to explore how the original news stories are selectively represented in another language, the author proposes applying the transframing model to news translation research based on the findings of the examination of a corpus of English-Chinese translations published by the Financial Times Chinese (FTC) from Britain and by Cankao Xiaoxi (the Reference News, RN) from China. Given the insufficient academic attention that previous studies have paid to “the role that news translation plays in achieving differentiated framing effects in general” (7), the author proposes to blend concepts from framing studies and from journalistic translation research to examine the translation practices of these two media in order to test a new model for the interpretation and explanation of “translation-mediated framing effects in news translation” (8).
Chapter 2 (entitled “Transframing: A bridge concept in news translation”) elaborates on the description of the proposed transframing model. Taking media framing as a mechanism involved in the manipulation of the readers’ viewpoints in relation to the reported events, the author conceptualises transframing “as translation-mediated framing”, a process which integrates translating and framing and which mediates between the selected source texts and the translated news. Transframing is viewed as serving “as a bridge that joins frames manifested in the ST and manipulated frames in the translated TT” (25). It is argued that the intended transframing effects are realised by adapting the news content to the frames or framing of certain media outlets across languages at the discourse level. Based on such a conceptualisation, Liu extends Entman’s two-way framing model (2004) to a four-way framing network and puts forward the TF model as a macro framework of analysis, aiming to facilitate the examination of linguistic shifts in ST-TT pairs identified in the practice of news translation. A horizontal dimension is added to encompass potential effects on both local and global media in order to interpret how the translated news affects both the local and global contexts. According to the author, the proposed model, with a comparative analysis of the ST context and the corresponding TT context as its base, is designed to answer why certain news articles are chosen for translation, how they are transframed into the target news, and what reasons are behind the results of transframing.
The closely related Chapter 3 (“Operationalization of the transframing model”) and Chapter 4 (“Application of the transframing model”) present the research design and the application of the model respectively. In Chapter 3, two sets of parameters are introduced as useful tools to identify deviations in the TT. The first one consists of “influencers of transframing”. Comprising “story tone”, “story type”, and “story sensitivity”, these factors motivating transframing are concerned with the varied features of news stories that determine the selection of ST news for translation and dissemination. The second set of parameters, “indicators of transframing”, points to the changes in TT frames brought about by translation and signals how news reports are transframed according to the intended effects on the target audience. Five indicators are specified in Liu’s model as tools for predicting potential changes in transframing: “framing tone”, which can both vary from neutral to positive or negative in the original news story and experience changes in the translated news reports; “framing meaning”, which refers to the meaning embodied in a particular frame, which might remain the same, be amplified or reduced in the translated news pieces; “framing degree”, which points at the degree of manipulation exerted by highlighting or deemphasising certain aspects of the reported events, which may in turn be maintained, strengthened, or weakened in the TT; “framing devices”, which encompass the rhetorical strategies used to present the frame, which can remain intact or be either partly or totally changed in the translated news; and “transframing strategies”, which are linked to translation strategies such as addition or omission that are employed in transframing news. With a view to investigating the representation of these parameters in actual examples, Entman’s (1993) definition of frames and Tankard’s (2001) approach of framing mechanisms are drawn on for the identification of frames in news texts. As revealed in an analysis of news excerpts, news frames can be located mainly in the headlines and leads of the STs and TTs. For the application of the new model to news translation studies, Chapter 4 hypothesises the correlations between the influencers and the indicators of transframing in news translation before explaining the methods of comparative analysis that have been applied to a corpus of original news reports and translated texts. The author suggests that the “influencers of transframing” in the ST act as independent variables that affect the “indicators of transframing” in the TT, which emerge as dependent variables. The hypothesised correlation between the two groups of parameters is tested with the analysis of data collected from two media outlets, the findings of which are reported in the next three chapters.
Chapters 5 to 7 are devoted to the quantitative and qualitative analysis of the interaction of the original English news stories, which are approached as products of framing, and the translated news reports, which are addressed as products of transframing. The analysis relates the two groups of transframing parameters introduced in Chapter 3 to one another. Each of these three chapters focuses on one of the three ST influencers identified, and starts with a quantitative analysis of data relating the five transframing indicators to the influencer in question. Then the correlation between each pair of variables is examined qualitatively, offering a comparative analysis of certain headlines or extracts from the corpus of collected news texts to verify the correlation. Specifically, Chapter 5 (“Story tone being key determiner of transframing”) demonstrates that the “story tone of the ST largely determines all the indicators of transframing” (74), Chapter 6 (“Story type correlated strongly with transframing”) indicates that story type affects the orientations of transframing, and Chapter 7 (“Story sensitivity closely associated with transframing”) argues that sensitive news stories are more likely to be transframed in journalistic translation. Through the analysis of data related to the transframing indicators, the author finds that, in contrast to what is usually the case when the ST is characterised by non-sensitivity (that is, when it adopts a neutral tone or belongs to a type of soft news), (partially) sensitive stories, stories with a positive or negative tone, and hard news stories are more prone to experience deviations in translation. The findings suggest that the type of discourse features used in the original reports for the purpose of framing affects the way they are dealt with and the shifts they are likely to experience during the transframing process.
Chapter 8 (“Contexts of transframing”) goes beyond the textual level and explores the type of intentions and reasons which might be found behind the transframing process. It reflects on the political, ideological, economic, and journalistic interests that the news serves, stressing that transframed news stories are “the outcomes of the aggregated forces of ideology, culture, media tradition and institutions within the society” (107). A number of factors in these four contexts (political, ideological, economic,` and journalistic contexts) are considered in order to establish their possible relation with news frames that are frequently adopted, including those identified as “attribution of responsibility, conflict, human interest, economic consequences and morality” (108). Whereas the significance of these news frames has been examined by the author through qualitative analysis in previous research on framing in financial news translation (Liu 2017), the book that is under review here examines the interactions that certain news frames produce in different contexts, suggesting that the interactive frames shape the mediation or transformations that the news stories might go through in the translation process. Telling examples in this line include Chinese translations of news articles on China’s leadership or economy, which present considerable deviation in terms of story tone when compared with their source texts. In the last chapter, the author concludes that the theoretical model of transframing is useful to describe, explain, and predict transframing practices in news translation.
The volume, as a monograph coining a term for designating translation-mediated framing processes and designing a theoretical model for analysing such processes, has theoretical and conceptual implications for both translation and journalism studies. The operationalisation of the transframing model achieves an impressive synthesis of frameworks from the fields of media studies and news translation, presenting a viable way of explaining the selection processes of news materials to be distributed in another language and the changes in discourse features that news production and translation might introduce. Based on the collected data totalling 308 daily news reports, the careful examination of this corpus of English-Chinese news translations offers both intriguing and enlightening findings. Given the fact that English-Chinese translation of news has been part and parcel of the strategic move made by many leading media agencies around the world in their effort to tap into the huge Chinese news market, Liu’s research model can shed light on the investigation of all such translation practices that are currently generating Chinese reports for Chinese news readers. At the same time, while the detailed depiction of the theoretical framework of transframing in this book promises to offer a useful analytical tool for studying news translation in a wide range of language combinations, it would be crucial to test the TF model in different language pairs and in both language directions to determine whether it may need modifications and benefit from improvements.
In fact, as a first-ever attempt to build a new theoretical framework for the study of transframing in news translation, the book understandably raises some minor caveats. First and foremost, the five “transframing indicators” overlap one another to some extent. Clear criteria for demarcating “indicators of transframing” would increase their identifiability and the comprehensibility of their correlations with the “transframing influencers”. For instance, the model presents all five indicators of transframing as alterations that generate deviations in framing in news translation. However, whereas “framing tone”, “framing meaning”, and “framing degree” describe deviations in themselves, “framing devices” and “transframing strategies” refer to the methods or techniques through which those changes are effected. More specifically, the overlaps in certain categories linked to particular indicators of transframing is evident. For instance, addition, omission and other similar actions, despite being described in the model as “transframing strategies”, could also play a part in effecting changes in the other “transframing indicators”, such as tone, meaning and degree of framing. Furthermore, although the correlations between influencers and indicators of transframing are verified in this study through both quantitative and qualitative analysis, the ambiguous distinction between “framing meaning” and “framing degree” may complicate the future identification of possible shifts in the translated news discourse that might overlap each other and thus have a negative impact on both the qualitative and quantitative analysis of these indicators. Moreover, even though framing in news translation has been seen to be closely related to larger narratives encoded in fragments of the translated text and their co-text (Baker 2007: 156), co-text is not explored at all in the analysis of examples, probably due to space limitations. Furthermore, the validation of the TF model could be complemented with additional empirical research, including analysis of the work environment of these two media in question and surveys conducted among their translators. Indeed, the author also notes in the concluding chapter that the research would be more thorough and reliable if additionally accompanied by an investigation into the translators and the audience of the transframed news analysed (132).
Even so, News Framing Through English-Chinese Translation is a fascinating read and a significant contribution to Translation Studies. The transframing model proposed fills the gap between media studies and news translation studies. More significantly, this contribution which consolidates the common ground shared between journalism studies and news translation studies is a useful and refreshing resource for students and researchers in journalistic translation and media studies. It offers theoretical and methodological guidance for exploring and understanding the translation-mediated framing effects in news translation. The complete description of possible shifts in transframed news items has significant practical value and can be fed into translator training. Overall, the monograph is an insightful continuation of recent theoretical developments in news translation studies, and an inspiring contribution to this field.
Acknowledgement
This study was supported by the Philosophy and Social Science Research Project of Guangdong Province (GD19CYY08), the Guangdong Provincial Innovation Research Team Project (2018WCXTD002), the Philosophy and Social Science Research Project of Guangzhou (2019GZGJ67), the Postgraduate Research & Innovation Project of Guangdong University of Foreign Studies (GDUFS) (20GWCXXM-18), and the Centre for Translation Studies and the Centre for Translation and Communication of GDUFS.
References
Li Pan
Guangdong University of Foreign Studies
E-mail: jacy2000@163.com
Chuxin Huang
Guangdong University of Foreign Studies
E-mail: hchuxin@foxmail.com