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Article published In:
Journal of Language and Politics
Vol. 17:4 (2018) ► pp.511–532

Shaping public view

Critical media literacy through English-Greek translated press headlines

ORCID logo | National and Kapodistrian University of Athens

Media research problematizes processes of mediation and the media-audience relationship. The study explores a second-order but equally important type of mediation process, that of press translation. It examines a set of pairs of English original and Greek translated headlines culled from various Greek newspapers (2005–2015). It highlights translation shifts which have the potential to drive the interest and values of some locations and political action or players, with a view to modifying perception of political landscapes and the demographics of inclusion and exclusion. The study shows that this is achieved by translation strategies managing proximity/ distance implications, agency representation, de/aestheticizing suffering or shifting perceptions of audience identity. Remediation-as-translation practice needs rigorous theorizing as it assumes an important yet rather neglected area of media tactics, which can de/mobilize moralizing ethics and affect ethical sensibility in public sphere.

Keywords: translation, mediation, identities, audience, political landscapes, agency, proximity/distance, suffering
Article outline
  • 1.Politics, media and translation: research questions and theoretical perspectives
  • 2.Translation in the media and methodological considerations
  • 3.News headline translation as biased mediation
    • 3.1Conflictual landscapes
    • 3.2Agency
    • 3.3Reshaping power relations and agenda hierarchies
    • 3.4Shaping the ontological status of audience
    • 3.5Psychological proximity vs. distance
  • 4.On filtering suffering
    • 4.1Valorizing human life
    • 4.2On discursively aestheticizing suffering
  • 5.Critical literacy through translation and assumed nation/audience profiles
  • 6.On translation and its contribution to the study of interaction between language and politics
  • Acknowledgements
  • References
Published online: 9 January 2018
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/jlp.17018.sid
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