Blurring borders in intralingual translation research: the case of journalistic translation

ABSTRACT

Intralingual translation research is on the rise, as evidenced by the numerous recent publications and academic events on this subject. Some scholars have (re)defined and typologized intralingual translation, attempting to shed light on an otherwise seemingly nebulous concept. However, in view of the complexity and diversity of the practices that can be studied under the umbrella term of intralingual translation, a blurred borders approach might be preferable. In the present paper, this position is supported by means of two case studies on (intralingual and intersemiotic) journalistic translations or remediations for social media. The two objects of study are an infographic by Mexican information design company Pictoline and a video by British science magazine New Scientist. A comparative analysis of these multimodal and multimedia texts and their news sources illustrates the fuzzy borders between intralingual and intersemiotic translation, as well as between the different types of the former. If we wish to describe intralingual translation separately from the other Jakobsonian types, this can be done on the basis of its aim or purpose, its target users, its text type or field, or its use of different media or technologies.

KEYWORDS:

• Intralingual translation
• journalistic translation
• news translation
• definitions of translation
• typologies of translation
• remediation

Disclosure statement

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

Notes

1 Other terms for diachronic intralingual translation are ‘cross-temporal’, ‘intertemporal’ (Karas, 2016), and ‘temporal’ (Zethsen & Hill-Madsen, 2016).

2 This has also been described by Zethsen (2009) as ‘intercultural’.

3 Zethsen and Hill-Madsen (2016) identified translation between genres as ‘functional’. It should be noted that Gottlieb (2018) understood diaphasic translation more broadly: to him, it also covers making adult fiction suitable for children.

4 According to Nation and Waring (2020, p. 28), graded readers ‘only use grammatical constructions and vocabulary that also occur in other writing’ and there is ‘no special “graded reader English”’.

5 Giannakopoulou and Armostis (2024, p. 125) refer to further problems that blur the external borders of intralingual translation, namely, the potential existence of multiple STs and the lack of clear-cut boundaries between languages and dialects.

6 As the publication referred to is in Dutch, all quotes are interlingual translations from Dutch into English by the authors of the present article.

7 In Dutch, ‘duiding’.

Additional information

Funding

This article was supported by the University of Tartu: [grant no PHVLC22915].

Notes on contributors

Manuel Moreno Tovar

Manuel Moreno Tovar is a Doctoral Researcher at the University of Tartu (Estonia). In his project, he reexamines the Jakobsonian concept of intralingual translation and its interface with censorship and manipulation. He participated in the 10th EST Congress as a convener for the panel ‘Advancing Intralingual Translation’ and wrote one of the chapters of The Routledge Handbook of Intralingual Translation. He works as a translator for the Directorate-General of Translation of the European Commission.

Luc van Doorslaer

Luc van Doorslaer is Full Professor of Translation Studies at the University of Tartu (Estonia) and a board member of CETRA, the Center for Translation Studies at KU Leuven (Belgium). As a Professor Extraordinary he is affiliated with Stellenbosch University (South Africa). Since 2016 he is Vice President of EST, the European Society for Translation Studies. He is the main editor of the journal Translation in Society (John Benjamins). He has published widely on journalism and translation, ideology and translation, imagology and translation, institutionalization of Translation Studies.