Gatekeeping, ideological affinity and journalistic translation

Abstract

This article studies the role of translation as a first-level gatekeeping mechanism in news production. Contrary to previous views that translation was secondary for the selection and dissemination of news events, it is posited that the translational activity reflects the decisions made by news media, particularly, in the case of services in languages aimed at non-native audiences. The article is structured as follows. First, it surveys the concepts of gatekeeping and ideological affinity with regard to news translation. Then a research question concerning the reporting of the Catalan secessionist crisis in Spain is presented. This will serve to examine how translation functions as a gatekeeping mechanism. The corpus selected for the analysis comprises the Spanish articles and English versions posted by El País in the 3 months prior and the 3 months posterior to the simultaneous appointments of Spain’s new Prime Minister and of the new editor of El País. This coincidence constitutes a unique opportunity to delve into the relationship between translation and gatekeeping. The findings show that the ideological affinity between the political leader and the editor may have prompted a significant change in the way the Catalan crisis was reported, particularly in the translated versions.

Language perceptions and use among (TV) journalists in multilingual Belgium: how pragmatic realities affect the idealized benchmark of bilingualism

“…Translation thus impacts comprehensibility, style and completeness of information, as well as topic selection. Valdeón dubs the role of translation in news production a ‘first-level gatekeeping mechanism’ (2020), involving several agents, who make decisions concerning what material can be published and in what form. Indeed, Valdeón shows that translations may result from ideological decisions, which do not generate the expected response on the part of the intended audience (2021).…”

Towards alternatives to mechanistic models of translation in contemporary journalism

“…Domestic viewpoints and values have been observed to have an influence from the moment a decision is made concerning which information is to be disseminated. Content selection and, with it, the exclusion of other potentially eligible content, has been described as an operation of translation itself (Valdeón, 2015(Valdeón, , 2020b.…”

Translation: from mediation to gatekeeping and agenda-setting

“…In a previous piece of research (Valdeón, 2020), I studied the ways in which gatekeeping acted as a first-level mechanism to disseminate information on the Catalan secessionist drive in Spain's daily El País. For that purpose, I applied a translation and a communication studies approach to the analysis of the gatekeeping mechanisms that influenced the English versions of the articles published by the Spanish newspaper.…”