Abstract:
Although translation is a sine qua non tool for the flow of information around the world, its outstanding role tends to be neglected or underestimated by the mass media worldwide. Translation studies also fails to cover translation’s role in the news media with the exception of few recent studies. This study aims to draw attention to how translation works for the benefit of the news production. While doing this, I have tried to explore a sociological approach to news translation in Turkey anatomizing contemporary journalistic practice carried out by the Turkish news media. I have made use of both qualitative and quantitative methods in my study. The qualitative methods include interviews with journalists covering foreign news and authorities in the media sector as well as my own on-site observations of foreign news making. The quantitative methods are based on a selection of news items on Wikileaks produced by one Turkish newspaper, one Turkish news TV channel and one Turkish news magazine. The reason why I have chosen Wikileaks as my case study is that it is a recent event in which documents provoking worldwide interest are released in one language (i.e. English), making translation a precious and intensive tool in reaching these documents to the public. The selected news items have been analyzed and the analyses have been juxtaposed with the discourse of those who produced them so as to see to what extent the discourse overlaps the practice. The sociological aspect of my study has been supported by Bourdieu’s theory, and the contributions of Bassnett, Bielsa, Koskinen and Buzelin, who merge translation studies with sociology, have been reviewed.
