How much hybridity can translation tolerate? Hidden translation in intercultural text transfer (in news and advertising agencies)

Abstract

In a world of swift and overwhelming communication exchanges, in which linguistic and cultural specificities tend to be replaced by globalized types of discourse, it is crucial to scrutinize the subtle changes undergone by translation. This is particularly significant in the areas of international news and advertising agencies in which questions of power and manipulation come to the fore and the translator’s role has undergone substantial changes. These cannot be appropriately understood in terms of clear-cut dichotomies such as domestication vs. foreignization or globalization vs. localization. There is rather a confrontation involving blends, mixed forms of hybridization (transediting in international news agencies and transcreation in advertising). In news agencies journalists perform multilayered interventions on texts known as transediting. In advertising agencies, according to the principle of strategic marketing, the goal is the cultural adapting of the ad to different contexts, by keeping the same impact, style and tone.

In both cases, translation forms a considerable part of the textual interventions, although it remains hidden and is often taken for granted and considered as insignificant. This paper aims at clarifying some of the implications entailed by the two kinds of rewriting, which show a considerable degree of hybridity.