“Prince Mangosuthu Buthelezi Wept”: Exploring Translations of Language, Practices and Story Forms in IsiZulu Journalism

ABSTRACT

In multicultural and multilingual societies like South Africa, newswork, or the practices that underpin the news-making process, is made possible by linguistic and cultural translation. In other words, both linguistic and cultural translation play a significant role in contemporary journalism practices in South Africa. While the linguistic level is concerned about language, the cultural level focuses on para language, especially the practices around news gathering and reporting. This paper seeks to illustrate how translation works in terms of language, practices and forms of journalism in multicultural contexts like South Africa. The country is a multicultural and multilingual country meaning that the English media content in mainstream journalism almost always appears as a translation. When sourcing in a variety of languages and cultural contexts, journalists and other media producers have to translate at both linguistic and practice levels. The practice level is influenced mostly by the cultural contexts. Operating in an environment where journalism is conducted within a specific news culture whose borders are inscribed by the hegemonic English and western journalistic cultures, journalists working for indigenous languages newspapers like Ilanga newspaper, an isiZulu newspaper, undertake numerous “translation” processes in the conduct of their work. Central to the arguments in this paper is the idea that both journalism practice and translation are routine aspects of news-work in multicultural countries.

Disclosure statement

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

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Canon Collins Educational and Legal Assistance Trust; Harry Frank Guggenheim Foundation; Rosa Luxemburg Stiftung.