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Article published In: FORUM
Vol. 15:1 (2017) ► pp.1–27

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Identifying political and ideological bias in translated newspaper articles

The Political Bias Screener

 | Budapest Business School University of Applied Sciences
Published online: 4 September 2017
DOI logo with link
https://doi.org/10.1075/forum.15.1.01ban
Abstract
Translation can serve the purposes of gaining, maintaining and even abusing political power in the interests of certain political groups. In order to identify political manipulation in translated texts, a text linguistics based tool called Political Bias Screener has been developed, which includes superstructure and macrostructure analysis, critical discourse analysis and political mass communication related theories. This article describes the most relevant theoretical foundations and the component models of the Screener, investigates its validity and reliability and introduces the most important research findings obtained with its help. The findings show possible tendencies of translator behaviour and are transferable to other research fields in Translation Studies.
Résumé
La traduction peut servir à gagner, maintenir et même abuser du pouvoir politique dans l'intérêt de certains groupes politiques. Afin d'identifier la manipulation politique dans les textes traduits, un outil basé sur la linguistique textuelle a été développé qui s'appelle Screener, et qui comprend l'analyse de la superstructure et de la macrostructure, l'analyse critique du discours et les théories politiques liées à la communication de masse. Cet article décrit les fondements théoriques et les modèles de composantes du Screener, étudie sa validité et sa fiabilité et présente les résultats de recherche les plus importants. Les résultats montrent des tendances possibles de comportement de traducteur et sont transférables à d'autres domaines de recherche dans les études de traduction.
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Theoretical foundations of the Political Bias Screener
  • 3.Testing the Political Bias Screener
    • 3.1The validity of the constituent models of the Political Bias Screener
    • 3.2The reliability of the constituent models of the Political Bias Screener
      • 3.2.1Reliability of the superstructure analysis
      • 3.2.2Reliability of the macrostructure analysis
      • 3.2.3Reliability of the CDA analysis
      • 3.2.4Reliability of the political mass communication analysis
  • 4.Results generated by the Political Bias Screener
    • 4.1Superstructure analysis
    • 4.2Macrostructure analysis
    • 4.3CDA analysis
    • 4.4Political mass communication analysis
  • 5.Summary and conclusions
  • References
References (42)
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