Translation in Serbian media discourse: the discursive strategy of argumentation as an adaptation technique

ABSTRACT

Global news agencies provide local news organizations with ready-made news that is often adapted for the target audience rather than translated. The aim of the present study is to explore whether news adaptation by the Serbian media is motivated by the need to abide by the political affiliation of the government in order to ensure survival. The study compares headlines and leads from 357 news articles published by Reuters and their respective translations in online newspapers in Serbian, focusing on the discursive strategy of argumentation and the identification of the topoi of authority, burden, reality, threat and urgency. Besides confirming that news translation in the Serbian media relies on adaptation to disseminate international news content, the analysis shows that many Serbian news outlets tend to adapt news in order to confirm their political affiliation to the government, even when the news does not relate directly to the Serbian context. The research also demonstrates that the study of discursive strategies may be applied not only to the analysis of news texts in a given language, but also to the processes involved in translating and adapting news for a different readership.

KEYWORDS:

• News translation
• discursive strategy of argumentation
• topoi
• Serbian news
• political affiliation

Acknowledgement

The research was completed as part of the DAAD project DIgesting Crises in Europe (DICE): Deconstructing and Constructing Media Texts in Dialogue (2017–2018).

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes on contributor

Jasmina Đorđević (Assistant Professor at the Foreign Language Centre, Faculty of Philosophy, University of Niš, Serbia) teaches English for Specific Purposes. Her academic and scientific interests include the Study of Translation, Discourse Analysis and Computer-Assisted Language Learning. She has published and presented extensively, she is active as a mentor and she is a member of several editorial boards and associations.

ORCID

Jasmina P. Đorđević http://orcid.org/0000-0001-6545-5581