Video news framing: the contribution of audiovisual translation

ABSTRACT

In recent years, studies on media accessibility in general, and audiovisual translation in particular, have mostly focused on the reception of various audiovisual translation modes among target viewers. This study embraces wider social and ideological concerns to integrate audiovisual translation into the video news framing process. It aims to examine the role of audiovisual translation methods in mediating the framed representation that news broadcasters set out to achieve. It mainly focuses on the controversial operation of China’s China Global Television Network (CGTN) through the complex lenses of audiovisual translation in comparison with the parallel output of British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) and Cable News Network (CNN). Three recent mini case studies are devised to describe the modes of audiovisual translation involved and explicate how they accentuate or modify the contested narratives of video news framing. The findings reveal that there is barely any value-free, random deployment of audiovisual translation. All the audiovisual translation methods under study are part of the selection process for the framing purposes of each news organisation. Moreover, this study found that CGTN has most effectively employed nuanced audiovisual translation techniques to highlight the societal significance of its framing perspectives despite the prevailing critiques of its executive operation.

KEYWORDS:

• Audiovisual translation
• video news framing
• case studies
• media accessibility
• CGTN

1. Introduction

The relationship between news and its translation is intrinsically linked to the form of textual intervention that brings news to a new audience following the journalistic practice of editing and rewriting. Despite consistent scholarly input in news translation (Bassnett 2005; Davier 2015; Bielsa 2016; Qin and Zhang 2018; Kadhim and Hijjo 2021), which has offered renewed insight into the nature and process of this practice, most studies invariably focus on the written medium, be it printed, or digital news.

Nowadays it is becoming increasingly common for online journalism to incorporate television (TV) news package into news reporting. Online news stories are often pieced together using text, images, and video. In the new mix of news elements, video content appears to stand out favourably among the public as it ‘gives a visual understanding’ and ‘a quick snapshot of a bunch of different things, instead of having to read an article for 10 minutes’ (Galan et al. 2019, 38). Online video news has featured more prominently on the websites of news organisations and social media platforms in recent years. However, despite the importance of this video-integrated approach to news reporting, traditional newspapers have had to build capacity and skills from the beginning and found it challenging to ‘fund new investment and retrain a predominantly text-based workforce’ (Kalogeropoulos, Cherubini, and Newman 2016, 5). Thus, news broadcasters are in a much better position to adapt to this trend with a wealth of video-making skills. This study seeks to fill a part of the academic void by studying the translation of video news data collected from selected international news broadcasters. The focus is on the audiovisual modes of translation involved in video news and how they are integrated into the meaning-making agenda set out by the news broadcasters.

2. International news broadcasters under study: CGTN in comparison to BBC and CNN

A crucial step was to consider which international news broadcasters should be scrutinised for this study. In the past decade, the emergence of ‘counter-flow media’ in developing economies has been gaining momentum in breaking the ‘old colonial patterns’ (Thussu and Nordenstreng 2015, 11) and asserting their own voice in the international media landscape as part of the soft power ambitions to influence global viewers. Among them, some are considered relatively successful owing to a deep understanding of the media systems in the respective regions and effective narrative strategies that resonate with audiences, such as Russia Today (RT) in Russia and Al Jazeera in Qatar (Morales 2019). However, China’s CGTN has been widely cast in doubt by global viewers and critics. This is primarily because of its affiliation with the Chinese government and the associated negative images of its political system and monopoly over the media (Geniets 2013; Maweu 2016; Morales 2019). Other than party-state control, CGTN’s limited success in shaping the global news agenda is also attributed to organisational culture (Hongyi and Lu 2012), the combination of institutional constraints, differences in media traditions and levels of knowledge and expertise (Varrall 2020). In view of these critiques, it would be interesting to investigate another important dimension of global news dissemination-audiovisual translation, and examine how effectively it has contributed to the overall video news framing in comparison with the mainstream Western news broadcasters BBC and CNN.

2.1 CGTN versus BBC and CNN

The China Global Television Network (CGTN) is an international media organisation rebranded from China Central Television (CCTV) News in 2016. It is now part of China’s largest radio and television corporate, China Media Group (CMG), constituting CCTV, China Radio International (CRI) and China National Radio (CNR) since March 2018. As a multi-language and multi-platform media organisation, CGTN operates in English, Spanish, French, Arabic, and Russian, and offers television and streaming services. Based in Beijing, CGTN has established three international hubs in Africa, America, and Europe and recruited an international team of news anchors, presenters, and producers to spread China’s messages to the global audience. With the promised aim of reporting impartial news on global business ‘from a Chinese perspective’ (Wang 2020, 62), CGTN is often suspected of propagating biased information in the interests of its political agenda largely because of its close affiliation to the state media. As Fearon and Rodrigues (2019, 100) indicate, its ‘dichotomous role’ as a credible media striving for global recognition goes hand in hand with the function as a crucial instrument to advance the Party principles.

The British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC), established as a public corporation in 1927, held a monopoly covering all phases of radio and television broadcasting in the United Kingdom (UK). Monitored by the Office of Communications (Ofcom), the BBC is virtually independent in the governance of its activities. Among the world’s largest broadcasters, the BBC maintains 50 foreign news bureaus worldwide and has a sizeable team of international correspondents. The BBC World News television, proclaimed as ‘the world’s most trusted international news broadcaster’ (BBC 2021) for its long-standing fairness and impartiality, is under direct study for this research. The BBC is not free from criticism of political bias in reporting regional conflicts, as with all major international broadcasters.

Established in 1980, CNN is an international commercial news channel headquartered in Atlanta, United States. CNN stood out as the first cable television station to make local cable television global and pioneered in providing 24-hour news coverage worldwide. CNN International is currently available to viewers in 90.1 million television households in 212 countries and territories. Widely reputed for its dramatic live coverage of breaking news, CNN has also incurred criticism of being sensationalistic and having a false balance in reporting.

2.2 A media battle for truth or myth

Faced with a saturated English-speaking market dominated by Western media, much has stood in the way of the CGTN’s mission to influence narratives about China in the West. Its most recent friction with the BBC epitomises its lasting tension with the Western media in winning on the ‘public opinion battlefield’ (Creemers 2013). The British regulator Ofcom revoked CGTN’s licence for violation of fairness and a lack of editorial responsibility relating to the airing of a British citizen’s forced confession in February 2021. In retaliation, China banned the broadcasting of BBC World News on the grounds of BBC’s political manipulation and biased coverage of the pandemic in China and the human rights issues of ethnic minority Uyghurs. It would be better to situate this media clash in context than seek out ‘truth’ from the political myths. As the emerging state broadcasters (CGTN, RT) are gaining momentum in the global media ecosystem, the West is increasingly vigilant in viewing the station as the media vehicle of soft power and propaganda. A broader virtual Cold War is brewing between China and the West over information dissemination and internet control, as opposed to the seizure of land, which used to be the centre of global conflicts once upon a time (Rajan 2021).

Journalism officially aims to present facts in the world; however, when this is done in ‘an analytic mode’, facts give way to a good story. The more intense the story plot, the less imperative it is that factual elements prevail (Carstarphen and Coman 2011, 125). When storytelling is implemented in a symbiotic media environment, news producers inevitably engage in mythmaking. Couched in a classic term specific to media studies, the combination of gate-keeping and agenda-setting invariably involved in news production is known as framing, which is elaborated in the following section.

3. Media framing for international news broadcasts

Defined by Tuchman (1978, 193) as ‘an essential feature of news’, ‘news frame organises everyday reality’ and is ‘part and parcel of everyday reality’. More succinctly, Gamson and Modigliani (1987, 143) conceptualise framing as ‘a central organising idea or story line that provides meaning to an unfolding strip of events weaving a connection among them. The frame suggests what the controversy is about, the essence of the issue’.

Framing is intrinsically related to mass communications. The framing of news media is a dynamic process that includes frame-building in terms of how frames emerge, the presence and development of events in the media, and frame setting, which involves the interplay between frames and receivers (Lecheler and de Vreese 2019, 11). The framing perspective focuses on the ongoing, mutual process of meaning-making and the organisation of social experience (Vollmer 2013). It is perceived as a narrative mediation that enables people to make critical awareness of various social experiences ‘beyond the immediate present interaction and its visible, explicit and literal components alone’ (Lorino, Mourey, and Schmidt 2017, 4). The following subsections are dedicated to expounding the key elements involved in framing theory: frame-building, framing process and framing effect.

3.1 Frame-building

Frame-building refers to the stage of selecting and modifying frames from elites or strategic communicators by the media. This procedure is influenced by both the internal policies of the newsroom and news organisations and external forces such as political elites and interest groups (Lecheler and de Vreese 2019, 12). Previous studies on news framing have mainly focused on the rivalry of power between political elites and journalists. Regarding international news reporting, news agencies tend to align more broadly with the polarised ideological orientation represented by the host country rather than entwine themselves in partisan politics. In dealing with a certain international issue, frame-building concerns different stories and perspectives selected to frame the issue among different media outlets. These issues are open to multiple interpretations and framing strategies. Generally, there are two types of international news framing strategies: sacerdotal and pragmatic approaches (Blumler and Gurevitch 2001). The sacerdotal approach is manifested as a respectful approach to politics, where the agenda of framing is largely determined by the dominant political regime. The pragmatic approach is indicative of a selective strategy, where media and journalism indicate agency in their coverage, which is packaged in accordance with the mechanisms of news selection.

In this study, the three news media outlets involved fell neatly within the above two categories. Affiliated with the state media group CMG, CGTN conformed to the former approach. It aligns closely with the mechanisms approved by the Publicity Department and is firmly bound by the code of ethics in journalism updated in December 2019 in adhering to the ‘correct guidance of public opinion’ and ‘doing a good job of telling China’s story’ (Safeguard Defenders 2021). As largely independent media agencies, the BBC and CNN are endowed with sufficient autonomy and discretion to define coverage by bringing in the own perspectives into frame-building. When all media agencies are selective and use information that is consistent with their own frames as part of their strategic framing, the unequivocal liberal standing of the BBC and CNN would undoubtedly come into conflict with CGTN’s ‘non-liberal’ stances in news framing of the international issues. Under the overarching approaches to news framing, there is a subset of framing techniques virtually in operation for all the media outlets.

Among the most common types of news framing, conflict frame emphasises ‘conflict between individuals, groups or institutions as a means of capturing audience interest’ (Semetko and Valkenburg 2000, 95). Presidential election campaigns are typically framed in terms of conflict (Patterson 1993), although news media has been criticised for inducing public mistrust among political leaders (Cappella and Jamieson 1997). In the international arena, conflict frames are actively used by news media to influence public opinions and gain interest in accordance with their own agenda.

Apart from conflict frame, human interest frame is another common frame. By name, it brings in a human face or an emotional angle to ‘personalise the news, dramatize or emotionalize the news, in order to capture and retain audience interest’ (Semetko and Valkenburg 2000, 95).

Morality frame relates to the issues in the context of religious or moral beliefs. Journalists tend to reference moral frames indirectly by inference in view of journalistic objectivity, and this frame is thought to have an inward effect in the minds of audiences (Neuman, Just, and Crigler 1992, 75).

Consequence frame presents an issue in terms of the social, economic and environmental consequences it will have on individuals and groups in an attempt to touch on shared human feelings and mobilise empathy for distant others.

Responsibility frame presents an issue or problem in a manner that attributes responsibility to certain groups or individuals. Apart from its prevalence in domestic politics, international news media such as the United States (US) media are also credited with shaping the public understanding of who is responsible for causing or solving certain issues (Iyengar and Kinder 1987).

3.2 Framing process

The next stage is to examine the framing process by conducting detailed descriptions and interpretations of the selection of stories and angles from a multimodal perspective encompassing the verbal and audiovisual elements involved in the process of narrative mediation. Bartholomé, Lecheler, and de Vreese 2018, 4) confirm that the study of news frames often relies on an inductive approach to produce rich knowledge about the framing of issues without analysing news stories based on ‘a priori defined’ news frame. Several scholars have acknowledged the importance of verbal elements in shaping the framing effects. Entman (1993, 52) suggests that frames in the news can be examined by the presence or absence of ‘certain keywords, stock phrases, stereotyped images, sources of information, and sentences that provide thematically reinforcing clusters of facts or judgments’. William A. Gamson and Modigliani (1987) identify the role of linguistic elements as framing devices to reorganise information and offer a ‘media package’ of an issue, such as metaphors, exemplars, catch-phrases, and depictions. Cappella and Jamieson (1997) suggest that identifiable conceptual and linguistic characteristics are inseparable from commonly observed journalistic practices. This argument reinforces the role of linguistic elements in constructing framing strategies. There is no doubt that in studying video news content we must consider a full spectrum of semiotic resources including on-screen words, journalist voices, and images, and the audiovisual means of accessibility, such as subtitles and voice-over translation. This is because the interplay of the integrated ‘audiovisual eventualities’ (Díaz Cintas and Remael 2021: 3) will become increasingly necessary to construct framing strategies and configure audiovisual production in today’s media landscape.

3.3 Framing effect

The final attempt is to account for the consequences of news framing on the socio-cognitive front by drawing on the notion of frame-setting. As frames in the news affect learning, interpretation and evaluation of news events in varying degrees, frame-setting deals with the interaction between news frames and the consequences of framing that can be perceived at the individual and societal levels. As Kinder and Sanders (1996, 164) hold, frames are interpretative and rhetorical mechanisms embedded in political representations. Alternatively, frames also live inside the mind; they are cognitive mechanisms that help individuals make sense of issues. When a frame in mass communication affects an individual’s frame in mind, it is called the framing effect (Lecheler and de Vreese 2019, 13). The typology of episodic and thematic frames serves a fundamental dichotomy underlining the dual effects produced by media frames in the indivisidual and societal dimensions. According to Gross (2008, 171), ‘episodic frame covers an issue by offering a specific example, case study, or event oriented report’. For example, a story on the plight of a particular unemployed person may be framed in covering an unemployment situation. The thematic frame, however, places issues in a broader context by offering figures and commentary from experts or government officials. These frames are widely employed in the coverage of international issues as they are considered fundamental ways of telling a story that makes it accessible to individuals and conducive to large social impacts. In the emotional and cognitive dimensions, episodic frames project an individual perspective and are believed to be more compelling and emotionally engaging in drawing the public into the story. In contrast, the thematic frame produces societal attributions for social problems, propelling the public to offer greater support to social entities to take action.

4. News framing from the perspective of audiovisual translation

This study examines how various forms of audiovisual translation interact with the components involved in the framing process and how this interaction contributes to the narrative mediations actualised in the news media context. Global news providers are inclined to optimise their structures to smooth the flow of information and minimise the need for translation for reasons of cost and efficiency. This means that, more often than not, international news agencies produce news reports in the dominant language of the agency, which is English in the current study, so that news could appear untranslated in the main newswire (Bielsa and Bassnett 2008, 58). This reiterates the fact that translation is part of journalistic production, where any interlingual transfer is integrated into the journalist’s tasks of writing up, editing, and proofreading suitable for the genre and style (ibid: 57).

In view of the minimised scope and integrated nature entailed in international news translation, the modes of audiovisual translation adopted in video news also extend to intralingual feed provided on screen to enable the access of the video news to a wider audience. This touches upon the broader concept of audiovisual representations and media accessibility, where audiovisual accessibility can be part of it. Media accessibility refers to the accessibility to media services and programmes through the use of various interlingual and intralingual modes of intersemiotic transfer, including subtitling for the deaf and hard of hearing, audio description for the blind and visually impaired, live subtitling, and sign language interpretation (Remael, Reviers, and Vandekerckhove 2016; Díaz Cintas, Jorge, and Neves 2010; Okyayuz and Kaya 2020). Media accessibility is becoming an important issue as global information flow grows more digitalised and multimodal with increasing amounts of audiovisual content circulating online. It is designed to meet the needs of audiences with visual, hearing, and other impairments and fulfil the significant social and educational functions required by ordinary citizens. Owing to the work of lobbying groups and the introduction of legislation in the UN and most European countries, media accessibility has recently gained significant visibility in society (Díaz Cintas, Jorge, and Neves 2010; Okyayuz and Kaya 2020). As extant studies have addressed the accessibility issues on television programmes and films, it is of significance for this study to explore the modes of media accessibility specifically on global video news networks.

To understand how modes of media accessibility contribute to global news representations, we placed this subject within the news media context and examined its role in the entire meaning-making process from the perspective of framing. The literature on news framing focuses mainly on content analysis of press news to examine the framing effects of various forms of journalistic intervention (Semetko and Valkenburg 2000; Eilders 2006; de Vreese, Hajo, and Holli 2011; Xiaoping 2018; Herfroy-Mischler and Friedman 2020; Kuang and Wang 2020). While a small proportion of research is dedicated to studying the mediating roles of translation in news production (Bassnett 2005; Davier 2014; Bielsa 2016; Qin and Zhang 2018; Kadhim and Hijjo 2021), audiovisual forms of mediation in video news framing remain largely underexplored. It is therefore important to refresh awareness of the undertones of the audiovisual modes of news representation by virtue of framing theory. The next section examines whether the modes of audiovisual translation employed in video news are deployed to accentuate or modify the contested aspects of the narratives that news broadcasters set out to frame, and how they contribute to mediating the framed reality. To reiterate, owing to the limited scope, this article focuses on the less-studied relationship between the modes of audiovisual translation and their meaning-making implications, rather than the textual analysis of news translation. Therefore, it studies video news output in English, whether it be originally produced in English or translated into English, hence the term ‘audiovisual translation’ used hereinafter refers to both the intralingual and interlingual processes of news production. This consideration is also necessitated by the implicit nature of interlingual transfer in global news production as a collective operation of ‘transediting’ (Stetting 1989; Chen 2009; Valdeón 2015), whereby the boundaries of source and target texts are largely blurred.

5. Parallel analysis of three case studies

This section deals with the parallel analysis of three news events covered by CGTN, BBC and CNN to unpack the methods of audiovisual translation involved in the video news clips. The series of news events under study include the COVID-19 pandemic, Xinjiang Conflicts, and the Centenary Celebration of the Communist Party of China (CPC). The rationale for the data selection is threefold. First, all three cases are among the most recent incidents that have gained high profile traction among global viewers. The COVID-19 pandemic, as an unprecedented health crisis in human history, carries all the ‘classic elements of the ultimate news story’ (Frost 2021) in terms of its unparalleled impacts on public health, economy, and social habits. Xinjiang, a far-west region of China, is where the majority of Uyghurs live. China has been accused of committing grave human rights abuses against this predominantly Muslim minority since early 2021. These accusations have stirred up unanimous resistance from the West and supposedly prompted a series of international sanctions and calls to boycott the 2022 Winter Olympics in Beijing. 1 July 2021 marked the 100^th anniversary of the founding of the CPC, one of the longest ruling political organisations in the world. There has been huge media coverage of the run-up of and after this event, both within and outside China. Second, all selected cases represent a high degree of newsworthiness in media coverage. Christiane Eilders (2006) identifies seven factors that determine journalistic judgements of newsworthiness: negativity, continuity, proximity, eliteness, influence and relevance, personification, and conflict. Although not all newsworthy items must meet all the criteria, the three cases have satisfactorily met most of them. News involving damage or other negative aspects of an event is more prone to grab the public’s attention and has an enduring influence on viewers. Apart from the first two cases, the CPC centenary celebration appears as a positive event at face value; however, the inherent ideological conflicts between China and the West set the critical undertone for covering this event. As all three items are deeply entrenched in the complexities of social and economic elements, the factors of continuity and influence/relevance would also score high in the grid of newsworthiness. Third, China is inextricably involved in the three events as the key agent, whose reactions may serve to redirect the development of each case. Of these, less obvious maybe the COVID-19 crisis. The origins of the COVID-19 pandemic, while remaining a mystery, have been the target of scientific investigations and political hypotheses. As the birthplace of the outbreak, China is subject to ongoing attacks of lab-leak theories. In these discursive contexts, it would be of interest to examine whether there are any discrepancies between the way video news content is deployed in CGTN compared with BBC and CNN. Thereafter, we interpreted the discrepancies and evaluated the effectiveness of the multimodal meaning-making methods within related social contexts.

This study made an exhaustive search for video-focused coverage of the three cases on the websites of CGTN, BBC, and CNN. The time range was set for 1 month from 10 June to 9 July 2021. This is owing to the instantaneity of online news media, which affords a relatively high rollover rate. This makes the data more easily retrievable within a one-month window. The topics of the news items are presented in the tables below, accompanied by a thematic analysis to identify the patterns of meaning in the coverage of each case. The news titles listed in the tables may have been moderately shortened for space reasons.

5.1 COVID-19 pandemic

The video news coverage of the COVID-19 pandemic is framed into three themes, as illustrated in Table 1: domestic concerns, international coverage, and origin theories. It was found that BBC coverage within the timeframe mainly focused on domestic affairs revolving around policy speculations after the COVID-19 restrictions were lifted after 19 July. Conflict frames were adopted in presenting critical voices from the Labour Party and concerns about vaccine hesitancy in the United States. Similarly, the majority of CNN coverage concentrated on domestic news, involving concerns of vaccine hesitancy, surging cases caused by the Delta variant and messages of pro-vaccine propaganda. One video, however, adopted the responsibility frame reporting US intelligence investigations on COVID-19 origins that reinforced the lab-leak theory pointed at China’s Wuhan. In contrast, the CGTN covered a wide spectrum of COVID-19 updates spanning the three themes underlined by a combination of conflict, consequence, and responsibility frames. It focused on creating framing effects by highlighting China’s efforts in vaccine testing and donation and presenting positive responses from outside China. Interestingly, it redoubled its efforts in responding to the lab-leak theory by devoting two videos speaking out against the Wuhan lab theory.

Table 1. Video news coverage of COVID-19 pandemic by CGTN, BBC and CNN.

COVID-19 Pandemic
Domestic concerns CGTN: Live: Guangzhou officials brief on latest COVID-19 control measures (12 June) Live: Guangzhou officials brief media on latest COVID-19 control measures (11 June) BBC: Johnson, Whitty and Vallance still wear face masks (5 July) Plan for living with Covid (5 July) ‘Lifting all protections at once is reckless’ – Keir Starmer (5 July) ‘If we can’t reopen in next few weeks, when will we?’ (5 July) NHS Covid thanksgiving service (5 July) Questions about vaccines and periods answered (28 June) Mosh pits and no masks at Download Festival pilot (19 June) CNN: Data identifies 5 undervaccinated clusters in the US. Rapper speaks to CNN about new hit with pro-vaccine message (8 July) Couple who hesitated on vaccination share story (8 July) Delta variant accounts for 1 in 4 cases nationwide (29 June) Officials blame Delta variant for COVID surge in Missouri (25 June) Widower warns of COVID ‘long haulers’ plight (23 June) Vaccine booster needed later? (23 June) Dr. Fauci fire back at critics (21 June) Future of outdoor dining post-pandemic (18 June) Vaccine-hesitant patient (17 June)
International Coverage CGTN: Global death toll surpasses 4 million (9 July) Modi fired 12 senior ministers following criticism (8 July) Japan announces COVID-19 emergency throughout Tokyo Olympics (8 July) Africa receives donation of Chinese vaccines (8 July) Chinese vaccine put to test in New Zealand (8 July) Volunteers help vaccine-hesitant migrants in Texas (8 July) Albania capitalizes on herbal medicine boom (8 July) President of the Communist Party of Chile praises China’s fight against COVID-19 (7 July) BBC: Vaccine hesitancy (1 July)
Covid-19 origins CGTN: Global scientists speak out against Wuhan lab theory (8 July) The story of how China was scapegoated on COVID-19 (8 July) CNN: US intelligence working on report about the COVID-19 origins (10 June)

With respect to the framing process mediated by audiovisual translation, each media outlet has distinct styles of subtitling, or other audiovisual means of accessibility. CNN offers closed-caption (CC) options for viewers along with customised settings to adjust a variety of subtitling features, such as font size, colours, background colours, and opacity. Live subtitling is provided to display the spoken language in real time. Similarly, in BBC, live subtitling is also used, although not as consistently as CNN, because a small number of video clips enable no access to subtitles. The main difference between live subtitle displays is that CNN opts for a cumulative style, which means that the subtitles are rolled out cumulatively in a word-by-word fashion. BBC employs a blocked style to enable an entire block of subtitles to remain on the screen before the next screenshot comes in. It is generally believed that blocked subtitles are more viewer-friendly on the grounds that they are more stable on the screen for eyes to glance over the content more comfortably, while the cumulative subtitling in CNN may cause fatigue and difficulties for viewers (Romero-Fresco 2010). Besides, the CNN’s default font style is Courier New, which virtually swells the space of each character and would also cause potential readability issues, while BBC’s Arial style fits within the neutral font options.

CNN is homogeneous in its video content display, featuring news anchor-led reportage and interview styles inherited from traditional television news broadcasts. BBC exhibits a wider array of choices in this respect. Distinguished from the official coverage such as Downing Street press conference clips or interviews of the Opposition Party Leader, it aptly employs social media video format to replace the narrator’s voice with on-screen titles, as indicated in the items of ‘Thanksgiving service’, ‘vaccine hesitancy’ and ‘Mosh pits’. The dual visual mode (image/titles) enables viewers to quietly read what is displayed on the screen. As echoed in Maestri (2021, 130), it is becoming increasingly popular for audiovisual content on social media to be played in silent mode in order not to disturb others around. These videos were also juxtaposed with spoken dialogues when participants expressed their views, where subtitles were provided at the bottom of the central screen. It is noteworthy that these subtitles that represent spoken language are colour-coded in yellow, green, and blue against the background to differentiate different speakers, while the narrator-equivalent titles are in much larger white font and are left aligned to stand out effectively from the spoken subtitles. In this regard, it is evident that BBC has made multiple endeavours to enhance the accessibility of its video content.

Compared with BBC and CNN in terms of live subtitle display, CGTN does not provide live subtitles or customised settings for its pre-recorded subtitles. Therefore, the video clips featuring anchor-led news broadcast are left with no subtitles, as in ‘Global death toll’ clip and other updates of global COVID-19 cases. Subtitles are provided when translation is required to convert foreign languages (including Chinese) into English. It is noteworthy that multiple methods were used to deploy subtitles. For instance, English subtitles are presented in the central bottom position of the screen when several Latinos express their concerns about the vaccine campaign in Texas in the ‘undocumented migrants’ clip, whereas the CGTN journalists’ English remarks are unsubtitled. In addition, on-screen titles were inserted to link individual informants, instead of using audiovisual comments from the journalist. Journalists’ remarks occur only at the beginning and end of the clip. The integration of interlingual subtitles and on-screen commentary titles alongside the audiovisual presence of the journalist enriches the means of multimodal expression in the video content and would potentially make greater appeal to the viewers.

CGTN echoes BBC in its employment of silent on-screen titles, which are typical of social media video formats. The clip involved also fits with the less ‘substantive’ content on lighter topics or unofficial themes, such as the ‘Albania herbal medicine boom’ clip, where the journalist-absent style on-screen titles are integrated with high-impact visual images and instrumental background music.

It is noteworthy that the CGTN’s two clips in the frame of COVID-19 origins have been deliberated with more multimodal investment. The ‘Wuhan lab’ clip was provided with pre-recorded English subtitles throughout despite the fact that no foreign languages are involved. Multiple sources of evidence were deployed covering the Lancet Journal article highlights and interviews with the British Zoologist Perter Daszak, the key scientist appointed by the World Health Organisation for this mission. The means of multimodal interaction are reinforced by the zoomed-in images of the journal article and the close-up filming of the scientist and commentator.

The second clip ‘China scapegoated on COVID-19’ differs from others by its unique design tailored to the online media. The video was framed in a game setting resembling the ‘Whack a wacko’ game. The video shows various wacko conspiracy theories are popping out from the holes and whacked down by a large hammer to play out the conflicts and potentially indicate China’s determination to crack down on the theories. In this process, bilingual (English/Chinese) subtitles are provided to accompany the animated tone of the commentator behind the scene alongside instrumental music in tune with the game. It is evident that the bilingual subtitles are embedded well in the animated narrative setting to create an engaging meaning-making product in a softened and nuanced fashion.

5.2 Xinjiang human rights

Table 2 presents the total coverage of video content across the three media outlets. Owing to the key factors of newsworthiness, such as proximity and relevance, the topic does not achieve the same level of prominence as COVID-19 news based on the number of entries illustrated in the table. The frames explored in BBC and CNN are morality frames in that the alleged victims of human rights abuse are filmed or interviewed to provide individual accounts of the agonising experience in Xinjiang. However, the audiovisual means of accessibility differ significantly. The BBC continues with the commentator-absent approach and employs silent titles to maintain content flow. The translated subtitles were also colour-coded to separate different speakers. One exception is John Sudworth’s video. Although the topic somewhat overlaps thematically with that of the missing children, this 10-minute clip features the prominent presence of a journalist that runs through the entire video. The shift to the interventionist approach indicates a redoubled investment in investigating the matters of detention camps and family separation in greater depth.

Table 2. Video news coverage of Xinjiang human rights issues by CGTN, BBC and CNN.

Xinjiang Human Rights
BBC: H&M: Fashion giant sees China sales slump after Xinjiang boycott (2 July) China fails to meet promises on missing Xinjiang children (21 June) The BBC’s John Sudworth meets Uyghur parents in Turkey who say their children are missing in China (14 June) China has created a dystopian hellscape in Xinjiang, Amnesty report says (10 June)
CNN: Uyghurs in Xinjiang are being given long prison sentences. (24 June) Beijing faces new abuse claims from Xinjiang. (24 June)
CGTN: Xinjiang Issue: Uygur residents refute accusations of genocide (8 July) African diplomats praise poverty alleviation efforts in Xinjiang (8 July) U.S. attempts to sow trouble in Xinjiang will not prevail, says MOFA (7 July) Uygur lawyer on terrorism-related cases in Xinjiang shares experience (5 July) Story of woman who lost her leg in bombing in Xinjiang (5 July)

In response to the widespread claims of human rights issues in Xinjiang, the CGTN has intensified its efforts to launch a counter-narrative campaign to rebuff Western accusations. Compared with BBC and CNN, who tend to focus on episodic framing that solely features alleged Uyghur victims’ accounts, CGTN prefers thematic framing based on varied sources, including international meetings, press conferences, and overseas journalists’ reporting. Three of the videos posted on CGTN are in the official style of news coverage where news anchors dominate the reporting of the stories, as depicted in the clips of ‘Refute genocide’, ‘African diplomats praise’ and ‘US attempts to sow trouble’. Following the subtitling conventions of the CGTN, no subtitles are available; therefore, voice-over translation in English is provided when the Uyghur language is involved. This convention continues into the interview clip ‘Uyghur lawyer sharing experience’, where the Uyghur lawyer’s audio is minimised to foreground the interpreter’s English output. However, the final video adopts episodic framing, featuring an alleged young female victim who lost her leg in a terrorist bombing attack. Personalised storytelling is underlined by muted narrations facilitated by on-screen titles along with translated subtitles from Uyghur into English and Chinese. It is interesting to note that the shift to episodic framing is accompanied by a multimodal shift to subtitles from the default mode of voice-over. As episodic framing is considered more emotionally engaging and emotions can play a crucial role in how the public processes and arrives at a judgment (Gross 2008, 169), it would be beneficial to sustain the emotional bond between the viewers and the woman featured in the video. Therefore, CGTN opts for subtitling as a non-interventionist method of audiovisual translation rather than initiating a new voice through voice-over translation. The commentator’s voice reinstates the concluding remarks of storytelling only at the end of the video.

5.3 CPC centenary

In the case of CPC centenary coverage illustrated in Table 3, BBC and CNN converge in their framing perspectives. Both employ conflict frames and comment upon the defiant rhetoric of Xi’s speech, which warns against foreign bullying. However, they employ drastically different audiovisual presentation methods. BBC adopts a descriptive approach employing the muted on-screen titles which mostly comprise the selected extracts from Xi’s speech to interpret the visuals from the highly choreographed ceremony. In stark contrast, CNN foregrounds a journalist’s comments throughout the reporting that doubles the length of the BBC’s. The narratives are highly sarcastic and critical, bringing together historical CPC clampdowns, social media monopolies, and other issues caused by non-liberal democracy. The journalist is outspoken to the extent of hinting at the ongoing clash of interests with the United States. To reinforce this high-key style, it is noteworthy that the subtitles provided are pre-recorded and presented in shaded blocks at the prominent central bottom of the screen, which is different from the default live subtitles shown on the top left of the screen.

Table 3. Video news coverage of the CPC centenary event in CGTN, BBC and CNN.

CPC Centenary
BBC: CCP 100: Xi warns China will not be ‘oppressed’ in anniversary speech (1 July)
CNN: Foreign countries that ‘bully’ China will meet a ‘great wall of steel’, says Xi during Communist Party centenary (1 July)
CGTN: PLA aircraft formations join CPC centenary celebration (1 July) Chinese national flag raised for CPC centenary celebration (1 July) Watch: Art performance celebrating the centenary of CPC (30 June) Live: Special coverage of grand gathering celebrating CPC centenary (29 June) Live: Light shows illuminate the night sky of Harbin and Wuhan to celebrate CPC centenary (22 June) Live: What is CPC’s role in establishment of China’s international relations (20 June) Live: Heroic stories from then and now of Communist Party of China (19 June) Live: Special coverage of 100th anniversary of the establishment of the CPC begins (14 June)

In contrast to the substantive news reporting of BBC and CNN, which focuses on focal issues and ideas (Bartholomé, Lecheler, and de Vreese 2018), CGTN adopts a non-substantive frame that embeds the main event into the political process that culminates in the event. It is obvious that the latter requires more investment in time and framing efforts to achieve preset goals. As the most high-profile event in 2021, China has been ramping up its media investment into a series of coverages related to the CPC centenary celebrations. As illustrated in Table 3, special coverage series had been pre-recorded in the run-up to 1 July to document the historic changes the CPC has undergone in the past 100 years. The documentary series of ‘Centenary and Beyond’ depicts some of the most renowned places in CPC history in the eyes of the CGTN reporters. As part of the documentary, ‘Heroic Stories’ highlights the history of Jingyu County, where General Yang Jingyu died as a national hero during the Chinese People’s War of Resistance against Japanese Aggression, alongside the heroic stories of Wuhan city, where COVID-19 originated in China. Furthermore, as a departure from the orthodox style of CPC documentaries, these special programmes are aptly divided into episodic units, most of which undertake a conversational style featuring Chinese and foreign dual anchors interacting with each other or other participants. Overall, the special coverage series is projected with interactive and personalised perspectives intended for international audiences.

In response to the grand endeavours of narrative innovation, audiovisual accessibility measures adopt a more sophisticated form in some coverage, although most programmes continue with the non-subtitle norm combined with voice-over translation. The exception is the ‘Art performance’ video of the grand art show titled ‘Epic Journey’ held in Beijing’s famous Bird’s Nest Stadium on the eve of the CPC anniversary. The show is permeated with meticulously crafted design-heavy on-screen titles to introduce four chapters depicting the founding of the CPC, its revolution, construction, and reform over the past century. The names and key information for each performance are provided with English titles. In addition, horizontal scrolling subtitles in English are presented at the bottom of the screen to interpret the lyrics of the songs choreographed in the show. The visual impact reaches a high degree of saturation in view of the undertone of red and yellow, which symbolises the flags of the nation and the CPC. Along with the on-screen titles and graphs, a full spectrum of colours was presented across the screen.

It is also found that a high visual impact may compensate for the shortage of audiovisual translation supply. It is noted that in the ‘PLA aircraft formations’ video, no voice-over translation or translated subtitles are provided to accompany the Chinese journalist’s audio. The video depicts the varied aircraft formations featuring Z-8 L, which carries a Party flag under its fuselage flying over Tiananmen Square in Beijing. The number of likes (505) garnered by this video is among the highest in the dataset under study, which largely speaks of its popularity among the viewers despite the lack of translation input.

6. Discussions: the three case studies

Despite the clearly different framing strategies between CGTN versus BBC and CNN, one universal norm indicated in our analysis is that the emphasis of a certain framing effect is always accompanied by accentuated investment in audiovisual translation. In the media tension revolving around COVID-19 origin theories, CGTN ramped up its efforts in audiovisual translation by providing pre-recorded English subtitles alongside the high-impact filming effects shown in the video images. Furthermore, game frame is designed in the second video to play out ‘blame game’ between China and the West regarding the conspiracy theories. Meanwhile, bilingual subtitles are blended well with animated narratives to widen viewership in a bid to enhance the overall persuasive effect.

In the case of Xinjiang human rights, the BBC’s departure from its usual style of muted on-screen titles in John Sudworth’s video foregrounds the visibility of the journalist’s voice accompanied by subtitles. This indicates an investigative style, as marked from a neutral observational perspective demonstrated in majority of its online videos, in an attempt to unravel the issues of detention camps and family separation in greater depth. In CGTN’s shift to episodic framing of an alleged female victim of Xinjiang terrorism, there is also a marked shift of audiovisual translation mode to visual subtitles from its default style of voice-over translation. This could be comprehended as a non-interventionist motive to cement the tacit bond between viewers and the alleged victim, free from the aural interference of the voice-over to optimise the framing effect.

In the event of the CPC Centenary, CNN carried forward its interventionist tradition into video coverage, as depicted in the highly critical narrative and close-up presence of the journalist on the screen. To underline this high-key style, the subtitles provided are pre-recorded with more deliberation and accentuated in shaded blocks at the prominent central bottom of the screen. This is a clear departure from the default live subtitles provided at the top left of the screen. Furthermore, CGTN has invested in a series of non-substantive coverage featuring interactive narratives and visually engaging subtitling styles, such as the integrated employment of horizontal scrolling subtitles and design-heavy on-screen titles and graphs. From the perspective of social semiotics, modality as the denominator of the truth value or credibility of the world is related to how the world is represented through the deployment of colours (Kress and van Leeuwen 2006, 154). When the colour representations of an entity reach a high degree of saturation and differentiation, the modality of this event is endowed with a high truth value to capture viewers’ attention and align them with the truth value of the event.

7. Conclusions

This study closely examines the audiovisual translation practice displayed in video news clips produced by CGTN in comparison with its global counterparts, BBC and CNN. Three case studies were designed to investigate similarities and disparities in the deployment of audiovisual translation techniques.

It was found that methods of audiovisual translation are never randomly deployed in news organisations. BBC is well adapted to online media features in its significant use of the muted on-screen title narrative (Maayan 2019; Maestri 2021). This inclination may translate into the formation of a non-interventionist approach in its video news coverage. This echoes the studies of online journalism with written media in that online journalists value a disseminator role rather than a watchdog or interpretative role in comparison with traditional journalism as a result of the speed of publication and circulation entailed in online media (Cassidy 2005; Singer 2005). Alternatively, this procedure may also hint at the agenda-setting motive to retain a higher degree of neutrality when covering sensitive events, as examined in this study.

By contrast, CNN conforms to the traditional role of television coverage, as none of the video clips involve any elements of the on-screen title narrative. The high visibility of journalists is demonstrated in the active framing of conflicts by juxtaposing stakeholders and analysing disagreements. In this scenario, live subtitling only plays an auxiliary role in the framing process, which may result in a potential lack of investment in the less satisfactory display of cumulative live subtitles. It can be inferred that the interventionist style of coverage has much to answer for CNN’s escalating conflicts with China, which has largely placed the CGTN in a defensive position to frame the conflicts from its own perspectives.

CGTN follows the long-standing tradition of its parent organisation, CCTV, which offers no provision for live subtitles. This appears to defy the global trend where subtitles are the key means of accessibility to media products for the deaf and hard-of-hearing viewers; nevertheless, the stringent control of political correctness may well be the predominant factor considering that real-time subtitles are subject to miscellaneous errors and inaccuracies (BBC 2015; Lambourne 2017; Moores 2020). In view of the outburst of online criticisms of erroneous subtitles towards BBC and CNN, CGTN is not yet open to embracing the downside of live subtitles that would potentially impair the message and image of the organisation. Most news videos are provided with voice-overs as the default mode of live translation. By reducing the original soundtrack to the background audio, a new voice in the target language (English) is laid over the original. Voice-over translation enjoys the benefit of casting viewers’ complete attention to video content without the distraction of reading the visual input imposed by subtitles. Additionally, the voice-over technique often irons out the hesitancy and natural hedges that occur in the original dialogue and assumes a much higher level of fluency and assertion. This method of audiovisual translation undoubtedly reinforces authority and credibility as part of the institutional agenda set by the CGTN. As evidenced in the above case studies, CGTN has demonstrated a greater degree of deliberation in the design of media accessibility techniques attuned to the specific framing strategies, such as the bilingual subtitles set for the ‘Whack a wacko’ blame game retaliation, muted on-screen titles for the episodic framing of the alleged Uighur victim, high-modality on-screen subtitles.

Despite the prevalent unfavourable critiques of CGTN operations, this study has revealed that in terms of the framing strategies mediated by audiovisual translation, CGTN has effectively employed varied perspectives combining episodic and thematic framing to achieve both individual and societal attributions to the issues reported. To reinforce the persuasive effects of the framing techniques, it exhibits a higher level of subtlety and technicality than BBC and CNN in creating effective audiovisual means of translation to engage viewers, although wider media accessibility enabled by real-time subtitles is currently out of the question considering its inherent institutional constraints. The findings echo Varrall’s (2020) executive summary in that it is CGTN’s organisational structure and culture that primarily limit its effectiveness, and, certainly, as a newcomer in the competitive global media arena, CGTN has a long way to go in its market share catch-up.

From a broader perspective, this study focuses on the meaning-making functionality of the forms of audiovisual translation and raises the critical awareness of their roles in institutional news framing as a methodological departure from the textual comparison of the source and target transcripts in much of the previous literature on news translation. This essentially corresponds to the multimodal nature and formal variations of audiovisual translation.

The parallel analysis of the three case studies is a useful beginning for a more integrated approach in the study of audiovisual communication by the three news agencies and beyond. These empirical observations elucidate ways to enhance the quality and effectiveness of the provision of media accessibility services in general. Moreover, it is conducive to establish a dialogue between the news media industry and the academic community, which could potentially improve working practices in an institutional context.

Disclosure statement

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

Additional information

Funding

This research is funded by ‘The Construction and Application of the Bilingual Terminology Knowledge Database of Chinese Political Discourse’ granted by the National Social Science Foundation of China [17BYY189] The National Social Science Foundation of China.

Notes on contributors

Jingjing Li

Jingjing Li is a lecturer in Translation and Interpreting Studies at the University of Leicester. She lectures a variety of translation-related modules including Audiovisual Translation and Interpreting. Her main research interests are political discourse translation and multimodal translation studies. She is a principal investigator of ‘The Construction and Application of the Bilingual Terminology Knowledge Database of Chinese Political Discourse’ granted by the National Social Science Foundation of China [17BYY189]