Voice-over Translation of News Programs on Television: Evidence from Iran

Abstract

Compared with dubbing and subtitling research, the current literature on voice-over translation is fairly scarce, and research has been mainly reported from Europe. Likewise, there are few reports on the topic from an Asian context including Iran. The main goal of this paper is, therefore, to examine voice-over translation in Iranian news broadcasting. The study uses a corpus of English news materials translated into Persian and have been broadcast on Iranian Television. The study has described Persian translation for voice-over from two perspectives: synchronization techniques, and faithfulness and ideology in translation. The overall findings suggest that voice-over translation is a common modality used for translation of foreign news reports in Iran, which entails considerable appropriation and manipulation due to solutions adopted for synchronization and ideological purposes of the news agency.Resumen: En comparación con la investigación llevada a cabo en doblaje y subtitulación, la literatura disponible hasta la fecha sobre la traducción para voice-over (o voces superpuestas) es bastante escasa y los estudios existentes se centran en Europa. Del mismo modo, este tema se ha investigado poco en Asia, especialmente en el contexto iraní. El objetivo principal del presente artículo es analizar la traducción para voice-over de programas informativos en Irán. El corpus utilizado para este estudio se compone de material en inglés traducido al persa que ha sido emitido en la televisión iraní. La traducción persa para voice-over se describe aquí desde dos perspectivas distintas: técnicas de sincronización e ideología en traducción. Los resultados sugieren que la traducción para voice-over es una modalidad empleada comúnmente en la traducción de informativos Palabras clave: voice-over, programas informativos, estrategias de sincronía, manipulación técnica e ideológica, Irán

Journalistic translation: A gate at which journalism studies and translation studies meet

“…In these countries, the news media, we could say, mainly function as propaganda machines for the governments. This role is in part reflected in the production of journalistic translations, which often involves manipulating the foreign-language information that challenges the prevailing political norms and ideologies (for illustrative examples in Iran, see Ameri and Khoshsaligheh, 2018; Khanjan et al, 2013; for China, see Pan, 2015; Xia, 2019). As Valdeón (2020a: 6) points out, in non-Western countries, news production is funded by governmental agencies, which exert a great influence on how information is translated as news outlets are expected to be supportive of the governments.…”