News gathering and dissemination

News gathering and dissemination 
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primary evidence divergences in meaning 
between original texts and derived texts in the 
target language and treat them as clear evidence 
of transfers of meaning that have occurred 
exclusively in the act of translation (Schäffner 
2005; Baker 2006a: 137–79; Valdeón 2005; Kang 
2007). 
News translation occurs at various points 
in the overall process of news gathering and 
dissemination. Any given item of reported 
information may be translated at any of these 
points, or indeed more than one of them, which 
may lead to divergent translations of the same 
original text circulating simultaneously (see 
Steele 2006 and Norouzi 2007 for discussions of 
a problematic example). Additionally, the overall 
process of news gathering and dissemination is 
divided between organizations with different 
roles in the process. These fall into three main 
categories: (a) media accessed directly by the 
public, such as broadcast channels, newspapers 
and magazines; (b) news agencies, which are 
typically not accessed directly by the public but 
only by client organizations such as publicly 
accessible news media; and (c) monitoring 
organizations, such as government depart-
ments, NGOs and activist/advocacy groups, 
which circulate reports to clients, colleagues 
or supporters and potential supporters. Public 
access media and news agencies are sometimes 
distinguished as ‘retail’ and ‘wholesale’ news 
(Boyd-Barrett 1980). Some broadcasting organ-
izations act as both, for example the BBC, 
CNN and Al Jazeera. News agencies, especially 
outside the Western parliamentary democracies, 
are frequently owned or controlled directly 
by government (Boyd-Barrett and Rantanen 
1998). 
The location and nature of translation in 
the news process depend on two factors: the 
internal structure of the news organization 
and its clientele. The three categories of news 
organizations have different editorial practices, 
which lead to different translation strategies 
(see below). The points at which translation 
may occur are as follows: during the reporting 
(initial news gathering) stage; during the editing 
stage, where reports are transformed into output 
text – which may derive from more than one 
original report; and during the dissemination 
process, where reports are transferred between 
different news organizations. 
At the reporting stage, translation commonly 
occurs where a reporter is unable to commu-
nicate directly with relevant sources of 
information; this is frequent in international 
reporting, where journalists employed by 
media from one nation work temporarily in 
another nation. It is increasingly the case that 
international correspondents spend only short 
periods of time in particular posts abroad (Kalb 
1990: xiv), and foreign reporting is increas-
ingly done from transnational ‘hubs’, where a 
team of reporters covers the affairs of a group 
of nations (Hess 1996: 99–100). There has been 
vigorous recent debate, especially in the USA, 
over the extent to which these arrangements 
may have negative effects upon such reporting 
(Hamilton and Jenner 2004; Arnett 1998). 
The debate focuses primarily on the role of 
reporters employed by ‘retail’ media rather than 
news agencies, whose reporters are commonly 
nationals of the host nation. Translation ‘in 
the field’ is usually done by personnel who are 
not specialized in translation and interpretation 
(usually called ‘fixers’), for whom translation 
is only part of the job description, and may 
not even be its most important part (Palmer 
and Fontan 2007; Tumber and Webster 2006: 
106–15). Translation here consists of advising 
journalists about the content of local media and 
interpreting interviews with relevant sources 
of information; such translation commonly 
consists of summary rather than in extenso trans-
lation (Palmer and Fontan 2007). Translation 
in this context may consist of multiple stages, 
for example from a local language into a more 
commonly spoken national language and on 
into the target language or a transnational 
language. Thus, a journalist who has worked 
in Darfur (Ostian 2004) explains that a local 
language is typically translated into Arabic by 
a local translator, and the Arabic is then trans-
lated into the ultimate target language by a 
second interpreter. No survey currently exists of 
the extent to which such multi-stage or relay 
translations are practised in news gathering. The 
use of a vehicular transnational language such 
as English by all participants is of course also 
common.
Where reporting is done directly by a 
journalist working for ‘retail’ media, it is common 
for contextualizing material to be incorporated 
at the moment of original composition. Agency 
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