America in European News Media

"Translating America" 24-26 September 2009 - Turin

I found a bunch of videos on the Internet of bodies falling. They were on a Portuguese site, where there was all sorts of stuff they weren't showing here, even though it happened here. Whenever I want to try to learn about how Dad died, I have to go to a translator program and find out how to say things in different languages, like 'September,' which is 'Wrzesien,' or 'people jumping from burning buildings,' which is ‘Menschen, die aus brennenden Gebäuden springen.' Then I Google those words. It makes me incredibly angry that people all over the world can know things that I can't, because it happened here, and happened to me, so shouldn't it be mine?" Foer, J. Extremely loud & incredibly close, 2005

America in European News Media Translation in global news has been a burgeoning field of research in the last few years, and as news texts are not only “translated” in the interlingual sense, but also reshaped and transformed in many different ways, the very definition of translation is challenged. Events and politics from America have arguably played a pivotal role in the globalizing trend that has characterised news media as we know them today. 9/11, “the war on terror” and the last presidential elections, just to name a few, have been dictating the global news agenda for very extended stretches of time, thus marking the now closing decade. Moreover, the widespread use of the Internet and the technical developments in the realm of media, such as news satellite real-time transmission, also originated in the United States. Consequently, analysing the way in which America is “translated” by news media, whether mainstream or grassroots, can prove a very productive way of understanding trends of global news translation and distribution while, at the same time, providing a closer insight into aspects of American politics and society and their reception in Europe. The key questions we want to explore are: how do American political institutions present their own political aims and practices outside the US and particularly to the European public? How do European media translate information about events and issues from the US? How are these translations (and/or original texts) transformed in recontextualisation processes from their original to publication in the media? How does America react to discourse produced in other countries and languages about the way their own policies are represented by others? Critical contributions to any of these or other related issues from a wide range of disciplinary perspectives are welcomed. Coordinators: Rossella Bernascone rbernascone[@]gmail.com M. Cristina Caimotto m.cristina[@]caimotto.com