ABSTRACT

As the boundaries between national and international news continue to blur, news translation has become an important site for examining how issues of language, culture, and risk influence how events are framed as they cross sociocultural and linguistic barriers. The current study contributes to the growing research in this area via showing how attention to sociolinguistic features like registers, indexes, and other markers of social meaning can further our understanding of the minutia – and ultimate outcome – of these translation processes. Data comes from Japanese coverage of two statements made by Joe Biden’s during the first 2020 US presidential debate which garnered international attention for their phrasing: ‘Will you shut up man?’ and ‘It’s hard to get any word in with this clown, excuse me, this person’. Comparing mainstream and independent translations, the study finds Japanese journalists translating each utterance via a diverse range of forms with links to distinct speech registers. However, mainstream and independent coverage shows broad distinctions in the forms they are willing to employ, and whether they neutralize or exaggerate the notable elements of Biden’s statements, with concerns of both risk and register impacting the way these quotes are framed for a new audience.

摘要

随着国内新闻和国际新闻之间的界限不断模糊，新闻翻译已成为研究语言、文化和风险问题如何影响事件在跨越社会文化和语言障碍时如何构建的重要场所。目前的研究通过展示对社会语言学特征（如寄存器、索引和其他社会意义标记）的关注如何能够进一步理解这些翻译过程的细节和最终结果，从而促进了该领域不断增长的研究。数据来自日本对乔·拜登 (Joe Biden) 在 2020 年第一次美国总统辩论期间发表的两项声明的报道，这两项声明因其措辞引起了国际关注：“你会闭嘴吗？” 和“这个小丑很难得到任何消息，对不起，这个人”。该研究比较了主流翻译和独立翻译，发现日本记者通过各种形式翻译每句话，并链接到不同的语音寄存器。然而，主流和独立报道在他们愿意采用的形式上显示出广泛的区别，以及他们是否中和或夸大拜登声明中的显着元素，担心风险和注册会影响这些引述为新受众构建的方式。