The translation assignment

The translation assignment was specifically designed to test the applicability of the analytical tool developed in the current undertaking. The assignment contains references to the description the source texts and the clients. It will also be described below in this section exactly what textual information was made known to the participants of the research with reference to the translation assignment: what professional job the client expects the translators to do, in what communicative situations and for what purpose the target texts are going to be used.

As the current research seeks to explore the effects of all factors potentially resulting in bias and the (re)production of ideology in translated argumentative newspaper articles, besides the two politically opposing source texts and the two translators with opposing political orientations, the two clients of the translation assignment representing diverse ideologies as well as their expectations and the respective readerships associated with the publication of the target texts must also be explored. In order to explore how client expectations affect translated texts, or more precisely, how translators perceive client

expectations, the translation assignment has been developed to include the two major Hungarian opposing political parties, MSZP and Fidesz, as clients. This has been devised with a view to ensuring that different political expectations on the part of the clients are perceived by the translators.

As part of the translation assignment, the translators were commissioned to translate two argumentative Hungarian newspaper articles into English. The translators were informed that these translations would be published on the English language websites of MSZP and Fidesz. The translated articles would appear in web-based columns featuring the main political events of the year 2008 and their media coverage. A cornerstone event in 2008 was the Social Referendum with its large media coverage, including newspaper articles.

It must be noted here that the websites of the political parties primarily publish and reflect the parties’ standpoints on political issues and, to a lesser extent, feature argumentative and opinion articles attacking the positions of the other party. MSZP has a website only in Hungarian, while Fidesz has a Hungarian and an English language website, the latter with a considerably lower number of articles. The websites are mostly read by the supporters of the given parties and, to a lesser extent, by media personnel and the supporters of other parties.

It is expected that when translators do their assignments, they will keep the characteristics of the websites, the clients’, i.e. the parties’, expectations and the websites’

respective readerships in mind, and that this will guide them when envisaging the skopos of the translated texts. In sum, the translation assignment contains the following scenario: two articles reflecting two different and opposing political standpoints are translated by two translators, whose political commitments oppose each other, for two clients, i.e. two opposing political parties. This will give altogether 8 target texts: two translators (Translators 1 and 2) receive two source newspaper articles (Kompenzáció published in Népszabadság and Másnap published in Magyar Nemzet) to be translated for two different clients, MSZP (Client 1) and Fidesz (Client 2). The components of the translation assignment are visualised in Figure 7-1 below.

Such a scenario allows for the examination of all factors potentially affecting the translation of political texts: the translators’ own personal political convictions, the political nature of the source texts and the expectations of the clients as well as the permutation of all such factors. This translation assignment therefore is hoped to provide extensive research data as the production of the eight target texts in the scope of the present assignment is

affected by all possible constellations of political bias originating from either the translator, the source texts or client expectations.

Figure 7-1: The eight target texts resulting from the translation assignment

Clarifying the translator’s task is a crucial factor in the translation assignment as it provides translators with information on the assignment. For the sake of clarity and easier referencing, the e-mails to the participants of the research containing the source language texts for translation were accompanied by a description of the translation assignment in Hungarian. The English translation of the detailed description of the translation assignment is given below: Translate the attached two argumentative newspaper articles into English.

The articles come from two Hungarian dailies Népszabadság and Magyar Nemzet. The translated articles will be published on the English language websites of MSZP and Fidesz.

The clients will use the translated articles to support their image building activities among foreign media personnel. The translations will be published in the Overview of 2008 through the Media column on the websites of the two above-mentioned Hungarian political parties.

The articles are about the Social Referendum, held on 9^th March 2008 (translation by the author). The Hungarian description of the translation assignment is given in Section C of Appendix 1.

The instructions of the translation assignment have been designed in a way that the description of the translation task helps translators identify the skopos behind the translation

assignment. Therefore, it contains references to the texts for translation, the nature of the translation assignment and the intended use of the texts. In terms of the source texts, the translation assignment describes the text type of the articles noting that these texts are argumentative. The topic of the articles (the Social Referendum) is also defined, and there are references to the fact that the articles come from two newspapers, which already signals to Hungarian translators that they will deal with articles reflecting the views of two opposing political sides. In connection with the nature of the translation assignment and the intended use of the texts, the task clarifies that the translations will be published on the websites of the political parties, which entails a selected but wide range of readership. The task also specifies that the target texts will be used for image building, which already suggests that both parties intend to use the articles for their political campaigns possibly involving positive campaign elements about themselves and negative campaign elements about the other party.

In order to ensure that translators have understood the translation assignment, in a follow-up e-mail I asked for translators’ confirmation if they realised that they were to translate each article in two versions as suited to the different expectations of the two clients.

Both translators claimed they had the intention to translate the articles in two versions prior to our e-mail anyway and explained that as the communicative purpose of the target texts was to facilitate the image building campaign of the clients, i.e. the political parties concerned, each political party needed to have their own version of the text.

One crucial question regarding the translation assignment was whether the translators would be doing a good job even if they knew that the translation assignment was an imaginary one and they would not get paid for their work. In order to address this problem, politically active and committed volunteers were sought, who showed interest in the research and who agreed to do their best. In addition, the researcher specifically asked the participants to take the translation assignment seriously, as if it was a real life, professional commission and to do a very good job.

As the participants are experienced translators, I asked them for feedback concerning how realistic they believed the translation assignment was. This was necessary for the following reason: if translators do not perceive the translation assignment as a realistic one, they are less likely to do a good job since they cannot associate a real communicative situation with the assignment, which could eventually jeopardise the reliability of the current research. Both translators agreed that the assignment was a realistic one and that it was important to produce two versions of both source language texts in order to meet the expectations of the two clients and the different readerships the translated texts would be

exposed to. This communicates that both translators appropriately identified the communicative situation connected with the translation assignment and found the assignment realistic.

In Figure 7-2, the translation assignment is visualised and a visual representation of the two translators’ political commitment, the political affiliation and bias of the source newspaper articles, the clients and the resulting target texts is provided.

Figure 7-2: Political affiliations with reference to the eight target texts of the translation assignment

As the colour coding shows, Translator 1 is an MSZP supporter, whereas Translator 2 supports Fidesz. Source newspaper article 1 from Népszabadság exhibits political bias towards the left-wing MSZP, while source newspaper article 2 from Magyar Nemzet exhibits political bias towards the right-wing Fidesz. Client 1 is MSZP and Client 2 is Fidesz, which fact already determines client expectations with reference to the political positioning of the target texts. The resulting eight target texts have the potential to exhibit features of both right and left wing political bias and ideology apart from Target Text 1 and Target Text 8, where the translator, the source newspaper article and the client belong to the same political side.

Political bias surfacing in the target texts will be examined as part of the CDA analysis in Chapter 8.