(Re)framing online news through paratexts: a multisemiotic analysis of The New York Times in Chinese

ABSTRACT

This study employs a multisemiotic approach to analyse various paratextual framing devices in online news texts, including news headlines, photographs and captions, as well as section names. Translated news articles about the 2014 Hong Kong protests were collected from the Chinese-language website of The New York Times (NYT) published between 28 September and 16 December 2014 and their original versions from its English website. The study finds that the Chinese edition mainly frames the events covered in the articles through paratextual rather than textual elements and, through those paratextual elements, a slightly different social reality to their English version for the events was (re)framed. This study underscores the influential role of paratextual devices in news translation, demonstrating how they can subtly shift the framing of events and potentially influence public perception.

KEYWORDS:

• Framing analysis
• The New York Times
• news translation
• Paratextual devices
• Hong Kong protests

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank Professor Binhua Wang, Professor Jeremy Munday, Professor Gwen Bouvier, and both reviewers for their insightful comments and helpful suggestions.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 The NYT Chinese. N.d. “关于我们” (About Us). Accessed 18 February 2024. https://cn.nytimes.com/help/about-us/.

2 Ellis, Justin. 2012. “Krugman, Translated: The Promise and Risk of the New York Times’ Chinese-Language Site.” Nieman Lab, 3 July 2012. https://www.niemanlab.org/2012/07/krugman-translated-the-promise-and-risk-of-the-new-york-times-chinese-language-site/

3 The NYT Chinese. n.d. “纽约时报中文网招聘启事” (The NYT Chinese Job Recruitment). Accessed 18 February 2024. https://cn.nytimes.com/education/20170828/cn-recruitment/.

4 Translator. 2019. Questionnaire with the author, 2 October.

5 Wong, Vincent Wing. 2019. “HK Turmoil Opens New Business Opportunities for Western Media.” EJ Insight, 18 July 2019. http://www.ejinsight.com/20190718-hk-turmoil-opens-new-business-opportunities-for-western-media/?fbclid = IwAR0OnuePBLf5EOrjVdgnEt8tKDiJc21MeDW0XgJ2az7rxPlxraF8YXWo27M.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Ministry of Education of the People’s Republic of China under the Humanities and Social Sciences Research Youth Fund [22YJC740059]; and the Fundamental Research Funds for the Provincial Universities of Zhejiang [GK219909299001-224].