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News Localization and Its Ambivalent Aspect

김기영 1

1부산대학교

Accredited

ABSTRACT

Since activities of translation started, issues around contentions between word-for-word and sense-for-sense translation have dominated translation practices and the field of translation studies. Noticeably, however, news translation seems to have diverged from the dichotomy as it has shifted its norms from equivalence toward text rewriting. Events and accidents occurring around the world are processed by media companies to be transformed into news products. And those global news products crossing borders in real time are usually going through a series of adaptation according to ideologies and public narratives of target society before reaching readers or end users. This study assumes that news translation is going beyond the classically defined translating activities and norms, expanding its boundary to ‘localization’, the software optimization process. Localization means a range of process carried out to make software products and online games broadly acceptable and consumable in its target locale. One of the most noticeable aspects of news localization is its ambivalence: it softens resistance to foreign context in which foreign news was produced; and protects national media discourse from huge wave of western centered globalization, especially when the news is concerned with political and economic interests of target society. This study examines a range of theories around practice of news translation and software localization, trying to investigate overlap area between them.

Citation status

* References for papers published after 2023 are currently being built.