Shaping Political Ideologies in the UK BBC and the Russian BBC News Service

By Pigi Chaidouli (National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, Greece)

Abstract

Transediting (Shäffner 2012) news reporting assumes two layers of mediation, one into (the source) language, as a representation of actual events into discourse, and a second one into a target language (Chouliaraki 2012). Political news disseminated by different institutions may change the ideological orientation of the news because of shifts in either layer of mediation. The study aims at highlighting the role of political ideology in shaping Liz Truss and Rishi Sunak’s identities by the UK and Russian BBC News service through texts which are mostly comparable and partly parallel. The study uses im/politeness theory to analyze three pairs of English-Russian articles, one on Liz Truss’ becoming the new Prime Minister, another one on her resignation and a third one on Rishi Sunak becoming the new Prime Minister, in 2022. A multimodal analysis shows that the Russian BBC threatens Truss’ positive face, even at the time when she was given the mandate by the Conservative Party to become the new PM, which is not the case with the UK text. By contrast, Rishi Sunak is not openly attacked by the Russian news. Α questionnaire addressing bilingual or trilingual respondents, on the transediting strategies of the news, mostly confir­med analysis results. The findings provide valuable insights on the role of news institutions in disseminating intended ideological attitudes; news is manipulated at both levels of mediation, which affects perception of the news by target audiences.

Keywords: News reporting, political ideology, BBC, Liz Truss, Rishi Sunak

©inTRAlinea & Pigi Chaidouli (2024).
"Shaping Political Ideologies in the UK BBC and the Russian BBC News Service"
inTRAlinea Special Issue: Translating Threat
Edited by: Maria Sidiropoulou
This article can be freely reproduced under Creative Commons License.
Stable URL: https://www.intralinea.org/specials/article/2665

1. Introduction: The English and Russian BBC news service

The BBC has broadcasted in Russian since 1946 and in the late 1990s, it began broadcasting on the Internet, drawing on the London edition; by 2000, it had its own team of journalists to prepare and update news stories. The question is whether and how news updates may affect the ideology of the news cross-culturally.

Democracy might function poorly without the news media, but the special role of the media in providing information relevant to voting and other political decisions also endows it with significant power to shape how events may be perceived (Gentzkow and Shapiro 2015). Press translation research has focused on linguistic/socio-cultural, journalistic and ideological aspects of message construction (Valdeón 2005, Baker 2006, Bielsa and Bassnett 2009, van Leeuwen 2011, Kontos and Sidiropoulou 2012), which journalist-translators adhere to. They intend to produce a target version that would conform to generic and ideological constraints, intended narrative priorities, etc. These aspects of meaning reveal the intention (and strategies) of the media to exercise power and construct identities or reflect aspects of identity of a readership.

Institutional practices and translational conventions interact to adjust news products in order to sustain an intended power balance. In introducing the critical paradigm, Fairclough (2001 and 1995/2010: 9) explains that interpretation of events carries ideologies which are “necessary to establish and keep in place particular relations of power” and also that ideologies, deftly disseminated through discourse, affect society in various ways.

The critical alternative claims that naturalised implicit propositions of an ideological character are pervasive in discourse, contributing to the positioning of people as social subjects. These include not only aspects of ideational meaning (e.g., implicit propositions needed to infer coherent links between sentences) but also for instance assumptions about social relations underlying interactional practices (e.g., turn-taking systems, or pragmatic politeness conventions). Such assumptions are quite generally naturalised, and people are generally unaware of them and of how they are subjected by/to them (1995/2010: 26).

In the translation arena, Valdeón (2005) examined texts produced by the Spanish Service of the BBC; he claimed that “BBC Mundo texts offer numerous instances where the combination of editorial routines and translational processes produce ambiguity, opacity, misunderstandings or misinformation” (2005: 217). News text producers occupy a central position as mediators. If translators should operate in the interest of the culture into which they are translating (Toury 1995:12, in Valdeón 2005: 217), BBC Mundo’s translated texts function in the political and economic interest of the source culture. As a product of an English-speaking medium, the presentation of news events tends to reflect the perspective of the source as representative of a specific cultural, political and economic order of discourse.

The study aims at highlight­ing the role of ideology in shaping Liz Truss and Rishi Sunak’s identities by the UK and Russian BBC News service through English-Russian article pairs which are mostly comparable and partly parallel. The study will first focus on the second layer of mediation (the cross-cultural one) providing a glimpse into the first layer of mediation (namely the interpretation of reality by the Russian version).

2. Literature review

2.1 Ideology and (im)politeness

As suggested above, Fairclough (1995/2010) refers to discursive features like ‘politeness conventions’ which may affect the ideology of discourses monolingually, let alone cross-culturally, in transedited versions of news. In researching the complexity of translation in mass media, Schäffner (2012) comments on the appropriateness of ‘transediting’ as a term “for describing the practices in mass media” (Schäffner 2012: 867) in information transfer. In early accounts that defined politeness (Lakoff 1973, Brown and Levinson 1978, Leech 1983, Watts 2003), politeness was conceptualized as a particularized implicature, providing a face-related explanation of why the speakers chose to phrase their utterance the way that they did in the context at hand.

As the title of the study suggests, ‘ideology’ is meant as political thinking, not in the broad sense of the term which encompasses ideological engagement with gender, sexual orientation, religion etc. A ‘political thinking’ reading of ideology appears in Schäffner (2003) when she examined a joint manifesto by the British Labour Party and the German Social Democratic Party in 1999 and highlighted the potential of political texts to suggest new ways for understanding politics and for studying culture:

Both the German and the English text can thus serve as windows onto ideologies and political power relations in the contemporary world. Critical Discourse Analysis brings together the discursive with the textual, through a conjunction of analysis of both the text and its intertextual context (cf. Chouliaraki 2000:297). A translation perspective to ideologically relevant discourse can add new ways of understanding politics and can thus make a substantial contribution to the study of cultures in contact. (2003:41)

Just like (im)politeness, with its differentiation in first- and second-order politeness (Watts and Locher 2005), ideology can be conceived in two ways: as an everyday conception, or as a scientific conceptualisation; and similar to (im)politeness, the dividing line between these two types of ideology is not always clearly drawn. The common notion of ideology has a ‘pejorative ring’ (Eagleton 1994:1) insinuating a distorted perspective caused by faulty, yet obdurate preconceptions often associated with manipulation, propaganda and power. In everyday conversation, ideology is, thus, normally used as a stigma that is by default attributed to others who are unable, or unwilling, to realize how things really are.

In this study, (im)politeness in both its conceptions is used as a tool describing the mediation (or transediting) practices in the bilingual data set. The next section deals with how the multimodal message in the news may contribute to shaping ideologies.

2.2 Ideology and multimodality

Multimodality is another means of generating intended ideological messages through news discourses (Culpeper, Haugh and Kádár 2017, van Leeuwen 2021) and a potent one. They highlight the significance of multimodality in disseminating messages of (im)politeness and aggression:

the area of multimodality is, quite rightly, gaining in importance, and (im)politeness researchers are likely to increasingly shift their attention to multimodal aspects of (im)politeness. Finally, while language aggression and conflict has recently received significant attention, including the launching of a new journal, there is still much to be done to better understand the intersection between work in (im)politeness and language aggression and conflict more generally (Culpeper, Haugh and Kádár 2017: 7).

Kress and van Leeuwen (1996/2006) read pictures to decode ideational, interpersonal and textual messages disseminated through visuals. Sidiropoulou (2020) commented on the visual material accompanying English-Greek pairs of news articles on the migration crisis in Europe, which broke out in 2015. She found that in political news articles (rather than humanitarian ones), the Greek version avoided images of artistic and voyeuristic quality found in source texts, which were beautifying the migration experience, and used images which allowed an intended narrative about migrants to be calculated by viewing the picture.

The UK and Russian BBC Services make use of the multimodal potential of discourse to disseminate intended ideologies about the two PMs.

3. Methodology

The data set was collected from the UK BBC platform and the Russian BBC platform. After contrasting the two versions of the data set and analyzing the differences, the study took an emic perspective, i.e., it distributed a qualitative survey of 5 questions on multimodal material (verbal and visual) asking respondents to trace implications shaping the image of the two British PMs. The first two pairs focus on Ms. Liz Truss, at two points in time (when she became prime minister and at her resignation). The third English-Russian pair is about Rishi Sunak becoming a prime minister.

Analysis results were juxtaposed to the results of a questionnaire addressing eighteen respondents and inquiring about the positive/negative stance the reporter took. From the eighteen respondents a) eleven were native speakers of Greek speaking English as a foreign language, b) five were native speakers of Russian speaking English as a foreign language c) two were native speakers of Greek speaking English and Russian as a foreign language.

The questionnaire examined institutional ideological attitudes registered in the English and Russian versions of the articles.

4. Data analysis

Analysis starts with the second (the intercultural) level of mediation, at points where the English version had some corresponding item in the Russian version.

The study also presents a glimpse into the Russian version, at points which do not seem to have any corresponding item in the English version. These additions to the Russian version seem to fall into the first layer of mediation, where un/favorable comments appear in the text which derive from institutional ideological orientation and the institutions’ interpretation of reality.

4.1 On Μs. Liz Truss becoming a PM

News headlines play a significant role in recontextualizing the news story to serve a particular agenda. In example 1, the UK version of the headline is optimistic about Liz Truss’s new role as a prime minister who promises to deal with the economic crisis in the UK.  The Russian version presents her in an almost ironic way, by identifying her as ‘Гибкая’ (flexible) ‘Железная Леди’ (Iron Lady), Margaret Thatcher’s nickname which rings a bell in the mind of readers, alluding to her uncompromising politics and leadership style.

Example 1

EN

Setting out her initial aims, she said she would grow the economy through tax cuts and reform; take action to deal with energy bills and put the health service on "a firm footing". (‘UK can ride out economic storm, says new PM Liz Truss’, 6 September 2022)

RU

Подчиненные в МИДе говорят, что Трасс сама ведет свой "Инстаграм", самостоятельно и собственноручно выстраивает образ. (‘Гибкая железная леди. Лиз Трасс становится новым премьер-министром Британии’)

 

BT. Subordinates in the Foreign Ministry say that Truss maintains her own Instagram, by herself, and builds up her self-image. (‘The flexible Iron Lady. Liz Truss is becoming Britain’s prime minister’)

In example 1, the English article deals with Liz Truss’ initial plans for growing the economy, while the Russian article exposes her extreme individualism, manifested in that she builds up her own image through Instagram. In a context which values collectivism, a prime minister who maintains her own Instagram account independently to build her self-image may take a negative gloss and attack Ms. Truss’ face.

4.2. On Ms. Liz Truss resigning

In example 2, the English version spatially contextualizes the event by referring to Downing Street and reports what the resigning PM said about her government’s plan (energy bills, national insurance, company tax). By mentioning that the Conservative Party elected her and gave her the mandate to cut taxes and boost economic growth, she perhaps implies that the Party should share some of the failure. The Russian text is not worried about Tory leaders’ resignation, as the English headline does, by referring to another Tory leadership race’.

Example 2

EN

In a brief speech outside Downing Street, Ms. Truss said the Conservative Party had elected her on a mandate to cut taxes and boost economic growth. The prime minister said her government delivered on providing support for energy bills and reversing a rise in National Insurance, a tax on workers and companies. But Ms. Truss's resignation comes after a period of political and economic turbulence, which forced her government to ditch tax cuts that sent financial markets into a tailspin. (‘Liz Truss resigns: PM's exit kicks off another Tory leadership race’, 20 October 2022)

 

RU

"Я вступила в должность в период большой экономической и международной нестабильности. Семьи и компании беспокоились о том, как оплачивать свои счета", - рассказала Лиз Трасс, объявляя об отставке. (‘Лиз Трасс уходит в отставку с должности премьер-министра Великобритании’, 20 октября 2022).

 

BT. "I took office during a period of great economic and international instability.

 Families and companies were worried about how to pay their bills," said Liz Truss, announcing her resignation. (‘Liz Truss resigns as British Prime Minister’, 20 October 2022)

 

Unlike the English article, the Russian one presents PM Liz Truss enumerating the challenges she faced, in direct speech (with quotation marks), evidently because this makes the argument more convincing.

Example 3

EN

Ms. Truss will become the shortest-serving PM in British history when she stands down.

(‘Liz Truss resigns: PM's exit kicks off another Tory leadership race’, 20 October 2022)

 

RU

Лиз Трасс находится у власти всего 45 дней, это самый короткий в новейшей истории срок пребывания на посту британского премьер-министра Великобритании до его заявления о своей отставке. До нее премьер-министром с самым коротким сроком службы был Джордж Каннинг, который прослужил на этом посту 119 дней до своей смерти в 1827 году. (‘Лиз Трасс уходит в отставку с должности премьер-министра Великобритании’, 20 октября 2022)

 

BT. Liz Truss has been in power for just 45 days, the shortest time in recent history for a British Prime Minister before he announces his resignation. Before her, the shortest-serving prime minister was George Canning, who served 119 days in office until his death in 1827.

(‘Liz Truss resigns as British Prime Minister’, 20 October 2022)

Unlike the English reporter who makes a short remark about Lizz Truss’ shortest term ever, in the PM office, the Russian version elaborates on George Canning’s latest record of 119 days, which Lizz Truss was the first of all to beat. Highlighting her negative record is rather intended to threaten her positive face.

Overall, the Russian articles accentuate Liz Truss’ negative face in every possible way, whereas the English ones mainly present the news in a more distant way without highlighting controversial information about the British PM.

The next English-Russian article pair is on Rishi Sunak and shows more trust in the new PM, in the Russian version.

4.3 On Mr. Rishi Sunak becoming a PM

In example 4, the English headline highlights Rishi Sunak’s passion for the Star Wars movies and fantasy literature, showing an aspect of his personality. In a rather lower-power distance culture like English (Hofstede, Hofstede and Minkov 2010), this may be appreciated. The Russian headline mitigates the value of his victory by referring to his former defeat in the Conservative Party’s elections, although it generally takes a mild position towards him.

Example 4

EN        

Mr. Sunak won the approval of 202 Tory MPs to replace Liz Truss as prime minister. Newsnight's political editor Nick Watt says his colleagues find him "very personable", but also someone who is "very clear and certain in what he thinks".

(‘Rishi Sunak: The Star Wars fan turned political force’, 4 October 2022)

 

RU       

Во время летней кампании Сунак сосредоточился главным образом на экономике Великобритании, предлагая планы по ее выводу из кризиса. Сунак тогда сказал в интервью Би-би-си, что лучше проиграет гонку за лидерство, чем "выиграет с помощью ложных обещаний" - явный намек “на снижение налогов, обещанное его соперницей Лиз Трасс” (‘Риши Сунак: к победе через поражение. Что нужно знать о будущем премьере Британии’, 24 октября 2022)

 

BT. During the summer campaign, Sunak focused mainly on the UK economy,

 proposing plans to bring it out of the crisis. Sunak told the BBC at the time that he would rather lose the race for the lead than "win with false promises" - a clear nod to tax cuts promised by rival Liz Truss. (‘Rishi Sunak: to victory through defeat. What you need to know about the future British Prime Minister’, 24 October 2022)

Example 5

EN

He has attracted criticism from Labour for donating more than £100,000 to his former school, to fund bursaries for children who could not afford to attend it. (‘Rishi Sunak: The Star Wars fan turned political force’, 4 October 2022)

 

RU

Ведущая телекомпании Sky News Кей Берли спросила его,

как он воспринимает заявления о том, что он слишком богат, чтобы быть премьер-министром. В ответ Сунак напомнил, что инфляция бьет по всем гражданам,

 и что в отличие от Лиз Трасс его программа на прошлых выборах лидера тори

 предусматривала в первую очередь помощь малоимущим. (‘Риши Сунак: к победе через поражение. Что нужно знать о будущем премьере Британии’, 24 октября 2022)

 

BT. Sky News presenter Kay Burley asked him how he perceives claims that he is too rich to be prime minister. In response, Sunak recalled that inflation hits all citizens, and that, unlike Liz Truss, his program in the last Tory election was to help the poor first. (‘Rishi Sunak: to victory through defeat. What you need to know about the future British Prime Minister’, 24 October 2022)

The Russian article, in examples 4 and 5, praises Mr. Sunak (e.g., for not falling back on promises [ex. 4], helping the poor [ex. 5]) by contrasting action to that of Ms. Truss, when no reference is made to Ms. Truss in the English version. As the next section will show, even when reporting that Mr. Sunak expressed support for Kyiv, the Russian version highlights Mr. Sunak’s reservation that it may be too expensive for the British budget, and doubts about how long support will last.

4.4 Additional multimodal material to the Russian versions

There are more pieces of information which the Russian versions bring up, which are not present in the English articles, accentuating Ms. Truss’ negative face and boosting Mr. Sunak’s positive face. As suggested, this signals a first layer of mediation (Chouliaraki 2012), where reporters interpret reality and register their point of view in discourse.

Examples 6-11 show sample extracts added to the Russian versions of the article pairs. For instance, in examples 6 and 7, reporters choose to remind Russian readers of Ms. Truss’ shift from Liberal Democracy during her university years to a Conservative positioning, in order to highlight her potential political instability. In example 8, the item ‘to put it mildly’ (мягко говоря) signals an understatement and suggests that the thing referred to is actually larger, more important, more serious. In example 9, the Russian version presents Liz Truss’ embarrassing moment during her meeting with the Russian Minister of Foreign Affairs, Sergey Lavrov: Ms. Truss mistakenly referred to the Voronezh and Rostov regions as parts of Ukraine, which are, in fact, regions belonging to Russia’s sovereignty, a few months before her election.

RU

BT

Example 6

 

В год окончания университета, в 1996-м, Трасс ушла от либдемов к тори

 

In her graduation year, in 1996, Truss moved from Liberal Democrats to Tories.

 

Example 7

 

Сейчас Трасс - убежденный консерватор и правый либерал. Вопрос - не поменяет ли

она убеждения, когда это понадобится.

 

Truss is now a staunch conservative and right-wing liberal. The question is whether she will change her beliefs when necessary.

Example 8

 

В Оксфорде Трасс, девочка из семьи левых убеждений, примкнула к центристской Либерал-демократической партии. Выступала, как вспоминают соратники, за легализацию марихуаны и отмену монархии - идеи, которые британским консерваторам, мягко говоря, не близки.

 

In Oxford, Truss, a girl from a left-wing family, joined the centrist Liberal Democratic Party. She advocated, as her comrades-in-arms recall, for the legalisation of marijuana and the abolition of the monarchy - ideas that, to put it mildly, are not close to British conservatives.

Example 9

 

Публике запомнился ее промах на встрече в этом феврале с главой российского МИДа Сергеем Лавровым

 

The public will remember her blunder at a meeting this February with the Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov.

Example 10

 

С самого начала военных действий Сунак,

бывший в то время министром финансов,

 публично выражал поддержку Киеву, признавая при этом, что она недешево обходится британскому бюджету.

Некоторые аналитики, однако, отмечают, что с приближением зимы,

ростом цен на энергоносители

и общим нездоровьем британской экономики сложно предсказать, как долго продлится эта поддержка и в каких объемах.

 

 From the very beginning of hostilities, Sunak, then minister of finance, publicly expressed support for Kyiv, while recognizing that it is not cheap for the British budget.

Some analysts, however, note that as winter approaches, rising energy prices and the general ill health of the British economy, it is difficult to predict how long this support will last and in what volumes

Example 11

 

Риши Сунак призывал британцев "есть в ресторанах, чтобы помочь им" - так называлась правительственная кампания по оказанию помощи ресторанно-гостиничному бизнесу во время пандемии, которую позже связали со всплеском инфекций

 

Rishi Sunak urged Britons to "eat in restaurants to help them" was the name of a government campaign to help the restaurant and hotel industry during the pandemic, which was later linked to a surge in infections.

Visual material is highly eloquent in generating meaning in translated news (Sidiropoulou 2020) and the present data set offers instances of this. The analysis shows that meaning is multimodally disseminated in the news, to generate intended meaning. Pictures of the two politicians are carefully selected by the institutions, to fit the intended ideological messages of the two versions. For instance, in example 11, the Russian article reports that Rishi Sunak is taking the lead in managing the economy, by urging people to eat out, in order to help the economy. The extract is accompanied by a picture showing the PM eating at a restaurant in the company of two ladies, serving them dishes, as if he were a waiter. An implication following from the picture is that he is humble enough to serve friends and help them meet their needs.

Another picture of Ms. Truss depicts her looking at the camera, as if directly addressing an audience pointing with her finger and with a humorous intension on her face. In a culture which favours high-power distance in public communication (Alafuzova 2022, Melikidou and Malamatidou 2022, Volchenko 2022), depicting a prime minister to be pointing to the audience directly, in a light-hearted manner, rather degrades her image and threatens her positive face.

The next section adds an emic perspective to interpreting the multimodal material through a questionnaire. It requires respondents about the meaning potential of some examples presented in the etic analysis (the analyst’s view) in section 4.

5. Questionnaire results

The questionnaire intended to elicit lay people’s assessment of (im)politeness1[1] and contrast it to the one deriving from the etic analysis. The first question gave respondents the following pair of headlines and asked whether the UK BBC News headline or the Russian BBC News one is more offensive towards Liz Truss' face and why, and asked them to identify the cue which made them think so.

EN. ‘UK can ride out economic storm, says new PM Liz Truss’

RU. ‘Гибкая железная леди. Лиз Трасс становится новым премьер-министром Британии’

(BT. The flexible Iron Lady.  Liz Truss is becoming Britain’s prime minister)

Fourteen out of eighteen respondents replied that the Russian headline is more offensive and pointed to the ‘Iron Lady’ item. Four replied that the English is more offensive, because of the ‘flexible’ item.

The second question gave respondents the following fragment from the body of the article and asked which version painted a more favourable image of Ms. Liz Truss:

EN. Setting out her initial aims, she said she would grow the economy through tax cuts and reform; take action to deal with energy bills and put the health service on "a firm footing".

RU. Подчиненные в МИДе говорят, что Трасс сама ведет свой "Инстаграм", самостоятельно и собственноручно выстраивает образ.

(BT. Subordinates in the Foreign Ministry say that Truss maintains her own Instagram, independently and builds up her self-image).

Fourteen out of eighteen respondents replied that the Russian article seems to be more offensive towards Liz Truss, mainly because it brings into light information about her personal life (her decision to register in social media platforms like Instagram), or because maintaining an Instagram account by herself is meant negatively in a culture which favours collectiveness. Four respondents replied that the British article is actually more offensive although the ‘flexible’ item appears in Russian.

The third question gave respondents Liz Truss’ picture taken from the Russian article, which  showed Liz Truss light-heartedly addressing an audience and pointing to them directly with her finger. Seventeen out of eighteen respondents replied that the Russian article actually threatens Liz Truss’ positive face. The majority of respondents thought so, because she looks like laughing at the British people, while making grimaces, and pointing out to them with her finger.

The fourth question presented the headlines on Rishi Sunak:

EN. ‘Rishi Sunak: The Star Wars fan turned political force’.

RU. Риши Сунак: к победе через поражение. Что нужно знать о будущем премьере Британии

(Rishi Sunak: to victory through defeat. What you need to know about the future British Prime Minister).

Seventeen out of eighteen respondents replied that the English headline questions the reliability of the new PM, Rishi Sunak. This is probably because respondents were native speakers of Greek or Russian, who would appreciate a high-power distance profile of the PM. An English native speaker may have been more tolerant to the low-power distance profile the ‘Star Wars’ reference creates.

The fifth question gave respondents Rishi Sunak’s picture, which appeared in the Russian article and asked what implications it creates about his face. The picture showed the PM eating at a restaurant in the company of two ladies, serving them dishes, as if he were a waiter. The caption informed respondents that Rishi Sunak urged Britons to eat in restaurants to help the restaurant and hotel industry during the pandemic, which was later linked to a surge in infections. All eighteen respondents agreed that the picture showing Sunak as a waiter is in fact quite controversial. The majority, fourteen out of eighteen, claimed that even if, at first glance, it looks like the new PM is closer to the people, by serving them as a waiter, his positive face is actually threatened by the surge of infections during the coronavirus pandemic. A respondent suggested that ‘the road to hell is paved with good intentions’, meaning that the intention to engage in good acts often fails. Another respondent suggested that good intentions are not valuable unless they are acted on. They suggested that it assumed carelessness, exposing the British nation to danger with serious implications. The remaining four respondents claimed that Rishi Sunak is positively presented as an active member involved in the community, while stepping out of his role as the UK PM.

Analysis of the questionnaire data showed that participants had strong views about the ideological orientation of the articles. This was also evident from other pictures accompanying the articles, which were evaluated, as to the impact they have had on native Greek and Russian readers. Results showed that both the pictures and the verbal material were highly eloquent in generating intended implications.

6. Discussion:  News institutions as mediators

House (2018) highlighted the recontextualization which messages undergo in translation/transediting and the cultural filter through which communication takes place cross-culturally.

The research highlighted the significance of discourse make-up in shaping political ideologies by media institutions and how news may affect public opinion about political leaders. It analyzed identity representation of former UK PM Liz Truss and the newly elected UK PM Rishi Sunak through articles collected from the digital version of BBC News and the Russian BBC News Service. Table 1 summarizes the positive (+) and negative (-) evaluation of the mediators, with respect to the two Prime Ministers.

PMs

British BBC News

Russian BBC News

Liz Truss

+

-

Rishi Sunak

+

+

Table 1. positive (+)/negative (-) evaluation of the mediators, with respect to the two PMs

The significance of the research lies in that ‘transediting’ (Schäffner 2012) is highly influenced by the ideological perspective of the institution which undertakes it. Results show a face threatening intention, of the Russian BBC News Service, against Liz Truss’ positive face, even at the time when she was given the mandate by the Conservative Party to become the new PM.

This was partly motivated by an incident at the meeting with her Russian counterpart, a few months before her election, where she mentioned two cities as Ukrainian, while they were Russian. Cues of the negative evaluation of her were the Russian headline ‘Flexible Iron Lady’ which appears to undermine Liz Truss’ political stability and her decision-making capability.

By contrast, Rishi Sunak is not openly in the centre of negative comments by the Russian news. They seem to have given him the benefit of doubt, since he was not formerly involved in any major international political disputes as Liz Truss was. The British article seems to stick to his ‘secret’ passion for ‘Star Wars’, which may not necessarily trigger a negative evaluation as the Greek and Russian respondents suggested. British respondents would possibly appreciate his sci-fi movie fan aspect, as a sign of ‘him being one of them’. A reason why it was not reproduced in the transedited Russian version, could have been the high-power distance of the target cultural context but also for other connotations it may have conveyed or conventions it adhered to[2]. The ‘Star Wars’ headline may connote a potential wish, as in the context of the film: ‘May the force be with you’, well-wishing a promising young politician to efficiently deal with national issues.

Transediting allowed different ideological perspectives emanating from the parallel data, which were created by the institutions manipulating threat and attacking the PMs’ positive face, in agreement with intended ideological perspectives. This is a pragmatic level of meaning which is worth examining for deciphering aspects of ideological meaning-making.

References

Alafuzova, Elena (2022) “Interpreted vs. Translated Political Talk: President Putin on the Coronavirus Outbreak” in Maria Sidiropoulou and Tatiana Borisova (eds), Multilingual Routes in Translation, Singapore, Springer: 29-41.

Baker, Mona (2006) Translation and Conflict. A narrative account, London, Routledge.

Bielsa, Esperanca and Susan Bassnett (2009) Translation in Global News, London, Routledge.

Brown, Penelope and Stephen C. Levinson (1978/1987) Politeness: Some Universals in Language Usage, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press.

Chouliaraki, Lillie (2012) “Re-mediation, inter-mediation, trans-mediation. Journalism Studies, 14 no.2: 267-283.

Culpeper, Jonathan, Michael Haugh and Daniel Z. Kádár (2017) The Palgrave Handbook of Linguistic (Im)Politeness, London: Macmillan.

Eagleton, Terry (1994) Ideology, New York, Longman.

Fairclough, Norman (2001) Language and Power, New York, Longman.

Fairclough, Norman (1995/2010) Critical Discourse Analysis, The Critical Study of Language, London, Routledge.

House, Juliane (2018) “Translation Studies and Pragmatics” in Pragmatics and its Interfaces,  Cornelia Ilie and Neal R. Norrick (eds), Amsterdam, John Benjamins: 143-162.

Gentzkow, Matthew, and Jesse M.  Shapiro (2015) “Media Bias and Reputation”, Journal of Political Economy 114, no.2: 37.

Kress, Gunther and Teun Van Leeuwen (1996/2006) Reading Images: The Grammar of Visual Design, New York, Routledge.

Kontos, Petros and Maria Sidiropoulou (2012) “Political Routines in Press Translation” in Roberto Valdeón (ed) ‘Journalism and Translation’ special issue, Meta 57, no.4, 1013–1028.

Lakoff, Robin (1973) “The Logic of Politeness: or, Minding your p’s and q’s”, Chicago Linguistic Society 8: 292-305

Leech, Geoffrey (1983). Principles of Pragmatics, London: Longman.

Melikidou, Elina and Sofia Malamatidou (2022) “Approaching the Consumer in Russian-English Tourism Promotion” in Maria Sidiropoulou and Tatiana Borisova (eds), Multilingual Routes in Translation, Singapore, Springer: 13-27.

Schäffner, Christina (2003) “Third Ways and New Centres – Ideological Unity or Difference?” in María Galzada Pérez (ed), Apropos of Ideology, Manchester, St. Jerome: 23-41.

Schäffner, Christina (2012) “Rethinking Transediting” in ‘Journalism and Translation’, special issue of Meta 57, no.4, 866-883.

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van Leeuwen, Theo (2021) Multimodality and Identity, London, Routledge.

Volchenko, Svitlana (2022) “Constructing Relational Dynamics in Translating Fiction” in Maria Sidiropoulou and Tatiana Borisova (eds), Multilingual Routes in Translation, Singapore, Springer: 57-72.

Watts, Richard (2003) Politeness, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press.

Watts, Richard and Miriam A. Locher (2005) “Politeness theory and relational work”, Journal of Politeness Research 1, 9-33.

Electronic sources

- BBC News Timeline  https://www.bbc.com/historyofthebbc/timelines/1920s/  (accessed 2 Jan. 2023)

- History of the Russian BBC Service https://www.bbc.com/russian/institutional/2011/02/000000_g_rs_history (accessed 02 Jan. 2023)

Texts

- UK can ride out economic storm, says new PM Liz Truss, 6/09/2022 https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-politics-62810124 (accessed 02 Jan 2023)

- ‘Iron Lady. Liz Truss is becoming Britain’s prime minister (Гибкая железная леди. Лиз Трасс становится новым премьер-министром Британии), 05/09/2022  https://www.bbc.com/russian/features-62585435 (accessed 02 Jan 2023)

- ‘Liz Truss resigns: PM's exit kicks off another Tory leadership race’, 20/10/2022 https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-politics-63332037 (accessed 02 Jan 2023)

-  ‘Лиз Трасс уходит в отставку с должности премьер-министра Великобритании’ (Liz Truss resigns as British Prime Minister), 20/10/2022  https://www.bbc.com/russian/news-63332132 (accessed 02 Jan 2023)      

- Rishi Sunak: The Star Wars fan turned political force,  25/10/2022 https://www.bbc.com/news/business-51490893 (accessed 02 Jan 2023)

- Риши Сунак: к победе через поражение. Что нужно знать о будущем премьере Британии (Rishi Sunak: to victory through defeat. What you need to know about the future British Prime Minister), 24/10/2022 https://www.bbc.com/russian/news-63364788 (accessed 02 Jan 2023).

Notes

[1] ‘Impoliteness1’ was used to name the emic perspective (lay people’s view of whether an item is polite or not. ‘Impoliteness2’ was the etic perspective, namely, the analyst’s view and politeness assessment.

[2] The findings agree with previous research on English-Greek transediting, which examined what is to be included or left out of transedited versions of articles on Tony Blair’s premiership, from the ‘Guardian’ and the ‘New York Times’ (2007) transedited into ‘Η Καθημερινή’ (I Kathimerini) broadsheet Greek newspaper: background knowledge seemed to have affected information transfer through translation, namely,  inter alia – ‘political routines and practices, such as features of presidentialism’ (Kontos and Sidiropoulou 2012:1026).

Appendix

The Questionnaire

The questionnaire examines institutional ideological attitude registered in English and Russian political press articles on Liz Truss and Rishi Sunak, in 2022. Please, explain whether the UK BBC News headline or the Russian BBC News one is more offensive towards Liz Truss or Rishi Sunak’s face and why, by identifying the cue which justifies your answer.

Part 1. Liz Truss

1. (headline)

EN. ‘UK can ride out economic storm, says new PM Liz Truss’

RU. ‘Гибкая железная леди. Лиз Трасс становится новым премьер-министром Британии’

        (Back Translation) The flexible Iron Lady.  Liz Truss is becoming Britain’s prime minister

……………………………………………………………………

 2. (article body fragment)

EN. Setting out her initial aims, she said she would grow the economy through tax cuts and reform; take action to deal with energy bills and put the health service on "a firm footing".

RU. Подчиненные в МИДе говорят, что Трасс сама ведет свой "Инстаграм", самостоятельно и собственноручно выстраивает образ.

(Back Translation) Subordinates in the Foreign Ministry say that Truss maintains her own Instagram, independently and builds up her self-image.

……………………………………………………………………

3. (photo)

The photo below was taken from the Russian BBC News article. Please, explain what implications it creates about Liz Truss’ face and why.

Photo taken from https://www.bbc.com/russian/features-62585435. (accessed 02 Jan 2023)

(It shows Liz Truss light-heartedly addressing an audience and pointing to them directly with her finger)

……………………………………………………………………

 

Part 2. Rishi Sunak

4. (headline)

Please, explain whether the UK BBC News headline or the Russian BBC News one is more offensive towards Rishi Sunak’s face and why, by identifying the cue which justifies your answer.

EN. ‘Rishi Sunak: The Star Wars fan turned political force’.

RU. Риши Сунак: к победе через поражение. Что нужно знать о будущем премьере Британии

(Back Translation) Rishi Sunak: to victory through defeat. What you need to know about the future British Prime Minister.

……………………………………………………………………

5. (photo)

Rishi Sunak urged Britons to "eat in restaurants to help them" was the name of a government campaign to help the restaurant and hotel industry during the pandemic, which was later linked to a surge in infections. The photo below was taken from the Russian BBC News article. Please, explain what implications it creates about Sunak’s face and why.

Photo taken from https://www.bbc.com/russian/news-63364788. (accessed 02 Jan 2023)

(It shows the PM eating at a restaurant in the company of two ladies, serving them dishes, as if he were a waiter).                

About the author(s)

Pigi N. Chaidouli received her BA from the ‘Russian Language, Philology and Slavic Studies’ Department of the National Kapodistrian University of Athens. She won a scholarship for studying in Saint-Petersburg, Russia, where she received her first MA in ‘Applied Linguistics’ in the field of international business communication, from the ‘Russian Language as a Foreign Language’ Faculty of the Herzen State Pedagogical University. She received her second MA in ‘Translation: Greek, English, Russian’ from the Department of English Language and Literature, National and Kapodistrian University of Athens. Her interests lie in international relations, foreign policy, Slavic studies, journalism, Russian and European avant-garde art.

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©inTRAlinea & Pigi Chaidouli (2024).
"Shaping Political Ideologies in the UK BBC and the Russian BBC News Service"
inTRAlinea Special Issue: Translating Threat
Edited by: Maria Sidiropoulou
This article can be freely reproduced under Creative Commons License.
Stable URL: https://www.intralinea.org/specials/article/2665

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