Shifting Readership in Journalistic Translation

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SHIFTING READERSHIPS IN JOURNALISTIC TRANSLATION

Eirlys E. Davies a
a
King Fahd School of Translation, Tangier, Morocco
Online Publication Date: 08 December 2006
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83
SHIFTING READERSHIPS IN JOURNALISTIC TRANSLATION
Eirlys E. Davies, King Fahd School of Translation, Tangier, Morocco

eirlysdavies@menara.ma
Abstract
Taking as a basis for discussion an article from the British press and its translation into French,
this paper examines the ways in which the content of such journalistic texts may be judged to
require adaptation to suit the needs of the target audience. It focuses on the strategies of omission
and addition frequently adopted in this translation, and relates the decisions made to the relative
importance or relevance of certain elements in the source text. Key concepts have to be clearly
conveyed even if this sometimes requires lengthy or even clumsy insertions, but other components
of the article, despite contributing much to its appeal to the original readers, may be judged cum-
bersome, obscure, or quite simply superfluous in the translation. The translator’s decisions aim
at preserving a balance between conveying the essential and ensuring that the organisation, tone
and style are acceptable to the target audience.
Key words: English-French translation; journalism; fidelity in translation; omission and

addition in translation; varying readerships.
Introduction
Journalistic translation is often seen as something relatively straightforward, as
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bread and butter compared to the jam and cream of literary translation. Thus
while students of translation may feel that the translation of literature demands
a creativity and ingenuity which is beyond them, they may be confident in their
ability to make an effective translation of a newspaper article simply by pro-
ducing a clear and accurate paraphrase of the content of the source text. This
task may seem all the easier if the readerships of the source and target texts are
relatively similar in cultural background and outlook.
In today’s globalised world, journalistic translation does indeed provide the
bread and butter for many translators. The work of many respected journalists
crosses national and language boundaries; for instance, columns originally pub-
lished in a single British or French newspaper may be translated into several
other languages and be read by people across Europe. Yet despite the common
European background of these various readers, it will be argued below that the
translator’s task is often not as simple as might be thought. For an article to be
successfully transmitted even to readers in an immediately neighbouring coun-
try, such as France in the case of a British source text, various types of adapta-
tions may need to be made to the content and style of the original. This will be
illustrated through a detailed comparison of one article and its translation.
The study takes for its subject a single comment article. The source text, How
the dreaded superstate became a commonwealth, by Timothy Garton Ash, appeared
in English in the British daily The Guardian on October 6 2005, while its transla-
tion into French by Julie Marcot was published in the French daily Le Monde
three days later, on October 9. The article is inspired by the European Union’s
hotly debated decision to open membership negotiations with Turkey. While
many articles published at the same time as Garton Ash’s were concerned large-
ly with the question of whether Turkey’s admission was desirable or not, Gar-
ton Ash adopts a wider perspective and takes as his major topic the implications
0907-676X/06/02/083-15 $20.00 © 2006 Eirlys E. Davies
Perspectives: Studies in Translatology Vol. 14, No. 2, 2006
84 2006. Perspectives: Studies in Translatology. Volume 14: 2
of the decision for the status of the EU itself, claiming that the opening up of
negotiations with Turkey, whether or not they culminate in its admission, will
lead to further enlargement of the European Union, which will in turn ensure
that its status evolves into the looser association of states he refers to as a com-
monwealth, rather than the tightly bound unit he calls a superstate. His views
on whether Turkey should be admitted or not appear in three paragraphs to-
wards the end of the article, but these function almost as a digression from his
main point, to which he returns in the concluding paragraph.
Of course, the comparison of a translated journalistic article with its source is
not a common activity among the intended audience of either the source or the
target text. Those who are accustomed to reading in the language of the source
text will not usually feel the need to seek out another version of it, while those
who read the translated version of a text usually do so because they cannot
read the original, either because they are not fluent in the source language or
because they simply do not have access to it. It seems fair to say, then, that the
translators of such articles would not normally expect their translations to come
under close scrutiny from readers searching for discrepancies between source
and target materials. For the student of translation, however, such comparisons
may be very fruitful.
The comparison made here reveals that the translator has not simply rewrit-
ten Garton Ash’s remarks in French, but has made many adjustments and ad-
aptations, most of them relatively minor when looked at one by one, but which
when viewed as a set can be seen to reflect certain general strategies for dealing
with aspects of the text which may be problematic if presented without change
to the target audience. On the one hand there are many instances of omission or
simplification, where elements contained in the source text are not included in
the translation; on the other, there are a number of instances where the transla-
tor has used addition or elaboration, incorporating into the translation material
not present in the source text.
Discussions of translation procedures frequently seem to imply that strate-
gies like these are incompatible with the goal of fidelity. For instance, the strate-
gy of omitting from the translation elements present in the source text has often
been referred to as some kind of weakness or failing on the translator’s part;
thus Clifford Landers (2001: 95) describes omission as “the equivalent of uncon-
ditional surrender, an admission that a certain word, phrase or construction is
beyond the translator’s ability to render.” Similarly, Antoine Berman (2000: 288)
includes expansion, the process of adding to the translation material not present
in the source text, as one item in his list of twelve “deforming tendencies” found
in translations. The discussion below will attempt to show that, on the contrary,
both omission and expansion may be necessary and effective translation strate-
gies. It will illustrate the important distinction between elements which are es-
sential to a text’s message or effect, and which therefore need to be included in
a translation even at the cost of elaboration or insertion, and those whose pres-
ence in a translation may constitute an obstacle to its communicative success,
and which therefore may justifiably be omitted. With the change of readership
may come a change of perspective which causes certain elements to become less
relevant or crucial in the translation than they might have been for the original
audience, while other elements almost taken for granted in the source text may
Eirlys. Shifting Readerships in Journalistic Translation. 85
need more emphasis and attention in the translation. Most of the omissions and
additions opted for by Marcot in her translation can in fact be seen as ways of
dealing with a few key characteristics of the source text, and these will be exam-
ined in turn below.
The treatment of labels for key concepts

One noticeable set of variations between the content of source text and trans-
lation is found in the treatment of two terms used repeatedly by Garton Ash:
“superstate” and “commonwealth.” As the title indicates, it is the opposition
between these two concepts which is at the heart of Garton Ash’s argument,
and if this contrast is not made clear then the whole article will be a commu-
nicative failure. The opposition is plainly set out in the second sentence of the
source text, and Marcot’s translation is obviously intended to make the distinc-
tion equally clear to Francophone readers:
(1) It chose to become an all-European commonwealth, not the part-European su-

perstate of Tory nightmares.
(2) … elle a choisi de devenir une union d’Etats paneuropéenne, plutôt qu’une
organisation supranationale partiellement européenne.
It will be noted that while the English version uses two single nouns, “common-
wealth” and “superstate,” to encapsulate the two concepts, the French has to
resort to the phrases “union d’Etats” and “organisation supranationale.” While
both the English terms would probably be familiar everyday terms for the av-
erage newspaper reader, the French phrases sound slightly technical. A quick
Google search produced 168,000,000 hits for “commonwealth” (interestingly,
1,840,000 of these were on French web pages) as opposed to only 835 for “union
d’Etats;” “superstate” yielded 230,000 hits and “organisation supranationale”
a mere 673. Even allowing for the discrepancy between the quantities of Eng-
lish and French material on the web, these differences are telling. The opposi-
tion as expressed in English seems fairly straightforward and easily recognised,
whereas the French formulation seems rather more demanding. However, it is
clear that the translator’s priority here must be precision and clarity: the distinc-
tion being drawn is absolutely crucial for the understanding of the article as a
whole, and in such a case no translator would be tempted to sacrifice exactitude
for greater simplicity or stylistic elegance.
The term “superstate” recurs in paragraph 5 of the source text, and this time
the translation uses the phrase “entité supranationale” (404 Google hits), which
suggests that the term “organisation” used earlier is not felt to be the only or
even the best possible translation equivalent. The two terms reappear in para-
graph 8 of the source text, where Garton Ash contrasts both concepts with that
of a free-trade zone, and provides clarification of what he means by common-
wealth, explicitly signalling, through the comment “for want of a better term”,
his awareness that the term itself may not be perfectly transparent, and distanc-
ing his concept somewhat from that exemplified by the present British Com-
monwealth.
(3) The prospect, rather, is of an entity that is as far beyond a free-trade zone as
it is short of a centralised superstate. For want of a better term, I describe this
unprecedented continent-wide political community as a commonwealth – but
I have in mind something more like the early modern Polish-Lithuanian com-
monwealth than today’s British commonwealth.
Interestingly, the translator has here simplified the original statement in such
a way as to avoid having to refer to the concept of superstate at all, possibly
because of a certain dissatisfaction with both the renderings used so far. On the
other hand, she has also innovated here by adopting the term “commonwealth”
and using it three times, the first mention being accompanied by quotation
marks, presumably to acknowledge its borrowed status, and followed by an ex-
planatory appositive phrase. She has also chosen to add some information not
contained in the source text – the precise title and dates of the Polish-Lithuanian
commonwealth.
(4) Ce qui s’annonce, c’est plutôt un ensemble politique continental sans précé-
dent que, faute de mieux, je qualifierais de ‘Commonwealth’, union d’Etats
pour le bien commun, mais un Commonwealth plus proche de l’union po-
lono-lithuanienne du début des temps modernes – dite République des Deux-
nations, 1569-1795 – que de l’actuel Commonwealth britannique.
Again we see the translator going to considerable lengths to clarify the mean-
ing, even at the cost of inserting glosses which slow down the text’s progression
and, in the second case, introduce very precise detail which the readers of the
source text were not offered.
The other two contexts where Garton Ash cites his two key concepts are per-
haps the most significant elements in the article’s structure: its title (5) and its
closing sentence (7). Their prominence here confirms their crucial role to even
the most casual reader. Yet in the translation they are absent from both title and
closure:
(5) How the dreaded superstate became a commonwealth (English title)

(6) Un grand merci à la Turquie (French title)
(7) It has decided that Europe will be a commonwealth and not a superstate.
(8) Elle a décidé ce qu’elle-même serait et ne serait pas.
This might at first sight seem surprising; in discarding Garton Ash’s terms here,
Marcot has lost an effective symmetry which is not merely stylistically attractive
but also serves to highlight the key concepts. However, the avoidance here is
understandable in the light of the difficulties posed by these terms’ translation.
In wrestling with these terms, the translator has tried alternative renderings of
“superstate”, and even, in (4) above, its omission, while she has ultimately felt
the need to use the borrowed item “commonwealth” and to go to considerable
lengths to clarify its meaning. A title incorporating both of these concepts and
making them sufficiently transparent for the French reader might indeed turn
out to be unwieldy and uninviting. Instead, the entirely new title is short and
snappy, focussing on a simple evaluation of Turkey’s influence as something
positive rather than making explicit its consequences, and probably more invit-
ing to the average reader than any straight translation of the English title could
have been. The same considerations seem to lie behind the simplification of
the article’s concluding sentence; one suspects that the translator may have felt
disinclined to end the text with the very terms whose previous renderings may
have seemed less than satisfactory. While she has succeeded in conveying the
meaning of the two concepts earlier in the article, this has perhaps been at the
cost of a certain loss of concision. The priority in the closure is again for some-
thing neat, brief and minimal.
In fact, then, the tracing of the translator’s handling of these two key terms
throughout the article provides us with an interesting illustration of the inter-
play of various factors in determining a translator’s use of omission and in-
sertions. While the translator here was clearly duty-bound to provide a clear
explication of the intended meanings of these two key terms, which led her to
resort to expansion or the inclusion of additional material, aesthetic and organi-
sational considerations seem to have led to the decision to resort to omission at
other points.
The treatment of markers of in-group solidarity

A second interesting feature of the source text is the extent to which the author
draws on assumptions of a background shared with his original readers, and
indeed writes in such a way as to create the impression of a certain complic-
ity between author and readers. Director of the European Studies Centre at St
Anthony’s College, Oxford, Timothy Garton Ash is well known to Guardian

readers as a regular columnist, and doubtless possesses a faithful following of
readers who will not miss any of his contributions. He can therefore make cer-
tain assumptions about the background, tastes, and political opinions of these
regular Guardian readers. These assumptions are in fact detectable in several
places within the article under study.
In fact, even the title of the article will certainly strike a chord with many read-
ers, who will recognise that in using the phrase “dreaded superstate” Garton
Ash is alluding to the discourse of British Eurosceptics who frequently evoke
the possibility of a European superstate as a totally undesirable, alarming pros-
pect, thereby seeking to recruit others to their cause. The adjective “dreaded”
here, with its almost comically dramatic overtones, seems more like an allu-
sion to the discourse of the Eurosceptics than a description Garton Ash himself
would choose to use. This becomes clearer within the text, when in the second
sentence he refers to “the part-European superstate of Tory nightmares.” In
paragraph 5 he incorporates a more direct attack on the Eurosceptics:
(9) Now only someone possessed of the deliberate obtuseness of a Daily Mail
leader writer could suppose that such a broad, diverse European Union will
ever be a Napoleonic, federal (in the Eurosceptic sense of the F-word), central-
ised, bureaucratic superstate.
Here Garton Ash not only explicitly criticises the tone of Daily Mail editorials,
but conveys gentle mockery via this long detailed catalogue of the properties of
the supposed superstate, which could be read as a parody of the Eurosceptics’
discourse. The final touch is of course the joky labelling of “federal” as “the F-
word” in order to poke fun at the horror with which Eurosceptics regard the
prospect of a federal Europe. Throughout, he is evidently confident that his
Guardian readers will share his attitude and appreciate the humour. And it is
indeed the case that Daily Mail readers tend to be Tory voters and Eurosceptics,
while Guardian readers are typically Europhile and anti-Tory; for instance, a
MORI poll conducted in late 2004 found only 5% of Guardian readers intending
to vote Conservative, the lowest percentage of any British daily’s readership,
while 53% of Daily Mail readers declared that they would vote Tory, a figure
second only to that for Daily Telegraph readers (Ipsos MORI 2005).
But what would outsiders make of the tone here? Obviously the sarcasm and
humour may not be immediately recognisable to those unfamiliar with current
British debate over Europe, and with the political leanings of the readership of
particular newspapers. More than this, what is amusing to the typical Guardian
reader may not be appreciated by those of other political colours. The shift of
audience that occurs when this text is translated thus has significant implica-
tions for the effectiveness of these components of the article. Recognising that a
Francophone audience is highly unlikely to share the assumptions of the origi-
nal readership, the translator has quite simply reduced or entirely suppressed
these elements. So, as we have already noted, the “dreaded superstate” does
not feature in the new French title (indeed, the problem of how to capture the
flavour of “dreaded” here might be seen as an additional motivation for the
change of title), and the reference to “Tory nightmares” is likewise dropped in
the French (see (2) and (6)). The specific attack on Daily Mail writers is replaced
with a much broader and more accessible reference to British Eurosceptics in

general, the exaggerated string of adjectives listing the defects of a superstate is
reduced, and naturally enough the language-specific humour of the allusion to
the F-word is also omitted, so that extract (9) is rendered as (10):
(10) Il faut être un eurosceptique britannique des plus obtus pour croire encore
qu’une telle Union, si vaste et si diverse, formera une entité supranationale et
centralisée de type napoléonien.
There are other choices too which give the translation a more distant, less soli-
dary tone than the original. For instance, at several places in the source text Gar-
ton Ash achieves a rather informal, almost conversational tone by incorporating
second person references directly appealing to the readers and thereby giving
the illusion of a certain familiarity between them and the author:

(11) You see, the main effect of the bitterly contested opening…
(12) Meanwhile, I don’t want you to think I’m ducking the question of Turkish
membership.
These are absent from the corresponding parts of the translation:
(13) Mais elle a pour effet de …

(14) Je n’esquive pas ici la question de l’adhésion de la Turquie.
One could also note the absence from the translation of any equivalent of the an-
ecdotal phrase “I recently heard …” which is quoted below as (24). The absence
of these elements makes the tone of the translation somewhat more impersonal
than that of the original.
In addition, besides the humorous use of the term “F-word,” it is worth not-
ing a number of other colloquialisms in the source text which also add to the
informal tone:
(15) What the hell, one or two more small countries won’t make that much differ-
ence anyway.
(16) The answer is what Americans call a ‘no-brainer’.
The translation of these parts, while also relatively informal, does not seem to
match the slangy tone of “what the hell” and “no-brainer”:
(17) Bon, d’accord. Un ou deux petits pays de plus ou de moins …

(18) Inutile de se casser la tête.
There is also the use of the informal term “Brits” in the source text, whereas the
French version uses the standard “Britanniques” throughout.
One final aspect of the source text which could be considered to enhance
the sense of complicity between author and readers is the use of intertextuality,
as seen in the following extracts:
(19) The question to ask is not what Europe will do for Turkey, but what Turkey
has done for Europe.
(20) We have promises to keep.
The Guardian reader will certainly recognise the allusion to Kennedy’s inaugu-
ral speech in the subheading (19), and will recall Robert Frost on reading (20):
(21) Ask not what your country can do for you – ask what you can do for your
country. (J. F. Kennedy’s inaugural address, January 20, 1961)
(22) But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.
(Robert Frost, Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening)
The sense of shared background inspired by recognition of these allusions will

not be available for the French readers; the subheading is simply omitted from
the translation, and the straight translation of (21) is unlikely to be very evoca-
tive:
(23) Nous avons des promesses à tenir.
The cumulative effect of the absence from the translation of all these elements
which signal shared background, familiarity and informality is to yield a less
personal, more distant tone. And in fact I would argue that this is a logical
enough approach here. Translated into French, the text is now being directed
to a new, outsider audience of Francophones with whom the author would cer-
tainly not share as much as he does with the original audience of Anglophone
Guardian readers. To attempt to recreate the solidary tone and in-group refer-
ences of the original in the French version would be inappropriate and probably
unsuccessful. Whether or not the semantic content of the two versions is exactly
equivalent, it must be recognised that a text in which a British intellectual ad-
dresses other British intellectuals of similar political views cannot have exactly
the same pragmatic effect when it is diverted to a French audience. The trans
lator in this case has taken account of this difference.
The treatment of changes in relevance

The shift from a largely British audience to a French one also has implications
for the perceived relevance of certain content elements. We have already noted
the removal from the French version of the sarcastic remarks poking fun at the
Conservatives’ hostility to Europe, which would be at best relatively uninterest-
ing, at worst quite incomprehensible to the French audience. The same consid-
erations would seem to lie behind the omission in the translation of the detailed
references to those who wish the European Union to become a free-trade-zone.
(24) That’s one reason Margaret Thatcher loved enlargement. I recently heard a
leading member of the Conservative shadow cabinet say explicitly that he
likes the prospect of further widening because it will make the EU what it
should be, a large free-trade-area.
While British readers may appreciate these details, for French readers who do
not follow British politics closely they will be less important. The translator in
fact chose to omit the references to these two specific individuals altogether and
to substitute a broader single statement about British Conservatives in general:
(25) C’est effectivement pour cette raison que les conservateurs britanniques
adorent l’élargissement.
It is also easy to understand why the translation does not provide any equiva-
lent of the two sentences before the remarks cited in (24), which are here repro-
duced as (26):
(26) That is what continental Europeans classically charge the British with want-
ing. Indeed, that is what some Brits do want Europe to be.
Here the author is in effect informing the British about the impression the French
have of them; once the text is shifted to a French speaking audience, this hardly
seems necessary or relevant.
Other omissions obviously justifiable on grounds of irrelevance include the
various instances of metalinguistic content. These include the attribution of the
term “no-brainer” to the Americans, seen in (16) above; clearly this has no place
in a translation which does not use the term anyway. Another appears in (27),
which is translated as (28):
(27) I would say that the European Union should have a special partnership (An-
gela Merkel’s term) with Turkey.
(28) Je serais partisan d’un partenariat privilégié avec la Turquie.
The French term “partenariat privilégié” is perhaps not particularly associ-

ated with Angela Merkel, so it would be inappropriate to retain the parenthesis
in the translation.
The examples discussed in this section again illustrate the point that the
pragmatic effect of a remark in its original context may not be preserved if the
remark is then transmitted to a different audience via translation. Relevance is
always a context-dependent property, and a change of context may thus lead to
loss of relevance (see Davies 2002).
The treatment of stylistic devices

The expectations of the source and target audiences may differ not only with
regard to the information that should be included in a text, but also with re-
gard to the way this information is formulated. Stylistic devices do not always
cross well from one language into another, even when the languages concerned
are as close as French and English are often perceived to be. A survey of the
modifications made by Marcot in her French translation reveals several changes
which seem to be motivated by the need to respect a general stylistic norm. In a
number of places, Garton Ash uses the device of repetition of words or phrases,
whether for emphasis or simply as a cohesive device serving to hold the dis-
course together.
(29) You see, the main effect of the bitterly contested opening of membership nego
tiations with Turkey is not to ... The main effect is to ... (paragraph 1)
(30) They will immediately start agitating for their neighbours to join them, just as
Poland is now agitating for a promise to Ukraine. (paragraph 2)
(31) Because at its eastern and south-eastern borders Europe does not end. It mere-
ly fades away. It fades away across the great expanses of Turkey and Russia.
In the French versions of these passages, the translator seems to have been at
pains to avoid repeating the same phrases:
(32) L’ouverture, arraché de haute lutte, des négociations d’adhésion avec la Tur-
quie ne garantit pas … Mais elle a pour effet de …
(33) Il fera des pieds et des mains pour que ses voisins puissent adhérer, comme la
Pologne le fait aujourd’hui en faveur de l’Ukraine.
(34) Parce qu’à ses frontières de l’est et du Sud-Est, l’Europe ne disparaît pas, elle
s’estompe.
Thus “the main effect” (29) is conveyed in French via two different phrasings,
the first using the verb “garantir” and the second the phrase “avoir pour effet;”
the repetition of the verb “agitating” in (30) is avoided by using a pronoun for
the second reference (“la Pologne le fait”); and the quite striking immediate rep-
etition of “it fades away” in (31) is simply avoided by using a single statement in
French where there were two in the original. There would therefore seem to be
a fairly consistent tendency at work here, that of avoiding in the French version
the device of repeated lexis which marks the English. In fact we may well relate
this policy to a broad contrast between English and French stylistic preferences,
which has been pointed out in a number of studies. Geneviève Quillard (1997)
offers many examples attesting to a general tendency for translators from Eng-
lish into French to remove examples of lexical repetition, and the point that such
repetition tends to be negatively perceived and therefore strenuously avoided
in French discourse has been made by several commentators, including Nitsa
Ben-Ari (1998) and Jean Delisle (2000) (see also Eirlys Davies, forthcoming).
Other contrasts which we may perhaps relate to this general trend include
the loss, in the French version, of certain explicit contrasts drawn in the origi-
nal. Thus in (35) Garton Ash again uses repetition, this time of the phrase “take
a large step”, in order to highlight the opposition between the progress rep-
resented by the European Union’s decision to open negotiations with Turkey
and the regression that would be represented by its transformation into a mere
free-trade zone.
(35) To be just a free-trade zone, the EU would have to take a large step backwards
even as it takes a large step forwards, and that it will not do.
Perhaps because of the desire to avoid repetition, the translator has lost this
opposition entirely, so that the paradoxical nature of the hypothetical situation
Garton Ash refers to does not emerge clearly in the French:
(36) Devenir une zone de libre-échange supposerait un grand pas en arrière, que
l’Union ne fera pas.
In his next sentence Garton Ash goes on to exploit further the opposition be-
tween two extremes of possible European Union status, using the opposing
terms “far beyond” and “short of”:

(37) The prospect, rather, is of an entity that is as far beyond a free-trade zone as it
is short of a centralised superstate.
This sentence does not possess any counterpart in the French version, even
though it does make an important and relevant point. In fact, what seems to
have happened here is that a concern for stylistic norms, namely the avoidance
of repetition, has led to what is effectively a loss of significant content.
Finally, a comparison of the following extracts reveals a rather interesting
case where the translator has opted to make what at first sight might seem a
somewhat puzzling addition in the French:
(38) Valéry Giscard d’Estaing, the main author of the EU’s stillborn constitutional
treaty, was in despair, while Britain’s Jack Straw was grinning ear to ear.
(39) Le Français Valéry Giscard d’Estaing, principal auteur du traité constitutionnel
mort-né, était au désespoir, mais le Britannique Jack Straw arborait un sourire
jusqu’aux oreilles.
One may be surprised to note that, while Garton Ash did not feel the need to
make explicit the French identity of Giscard d’Estaing, Marcot has inserted “le
Français” to do just this, even though the readers of Le Monde can hardly be con-
sidered to need this information. In fact, however, a re-reading of the two ver-
sions leads one to recognise that it is the English version rather than the French
one which needs explanation; what is puzzling is rather the fact that Garton
Ash has chosen to indicate to Guardian readers Jack Straw’s identity (‘Britain’s
Jack Straw’) but not that of Giscard d’Estaing. The translation can in fact be
seen as something of an improvement on the original here, since it has achieved
greater consistency by signalling both men’s national identities, and at the same
time has achieved a nice parallelism (“le Français … le Britannique …”) which
serves to reinforce the more general opposition being drawn between French
and British attitudes to the European Union. So, while the translator has at one
point lost a parallelism and opposition present in the original, she has here com-
pensated by conveying an opposition more effectively than the original did.
Conclusion
Most critics would surely agree that on the whole Julie Marcot’s translation of
Garton Ash’s article is a successful and readable one. It conveys Garton Ash’s
general message clearly and in a way likely to appear appropriate and accept-
able to readers of Le Monde. One could comfortably describe it as a faithful ren-
dering of the original. However, our detailed comparison of the source text and
translation has shown that this effective translation has been achieved only via
certain adaptations and modifications of the content of the original article. We
have attempted to identify a number of considerations which seem to lie behind
the additions and omissions, which include the need to take into account prob-
able differences between the background knowledge and interests of the two
audiences, differences in the type of relationship which might be assumed to
hold between the author and each of these two audiences, and differences in
the norms each audience would expect this type of text to observe. We have
suggested, for instance, that the translator was right to conclude that a clarifica-
tion of what Garton Ash means by the term “commonwealth” was crucial to
the success of the translation, whereas a clarification of his attitude to Daily Mail
leader writers was not.
The strategies adopted in this translation thus provide a useful illustration
of the important distinction which must be drawn between elements of a text

which the translator must seek to preserve at all costs, even if this involves long-
er paraphrasing or the inserting of supplementary information, and elements
whose contribution is not important or relevant enough to the target audience
to justify the cost involved in preserving them.
**********
I would like to thank Timothy Garton Ash and Le Monde for their permission to
reproduce the English and French versions of the article below.
How the dreaded superstate became a commonwealth

The question to ask is not what Europe will do for Turkey, but what Turkey
has done for Europe
Timothy Garton Ash (originally published in The Guardian on October 6, 2005)
This week, the European Union did something remarkable. It chose to become
an all-European commonwealth, not the part-European superstate of Tory night-
mares. You see, the main effect of the bitterly contested opening of membership
negotiations with Turkey is not to ensure that Turkey becomes a member of the Eu-
ropean Union, which it may or may not do 10 or 15 years hence. The main effect is
to set the front line of enlargement so far to the south-east that it ensures the rest of
south-eastern Europe will come into the EU – and probably before Turkey. There’s
a nice historical irony here. Turkey, which in its earlier, Ottoman, form occupied
much of the Balkans, and therefore cut them off from what was then the Christian
club of Europe, is now the European door-opener for its former colonies.
Bulgaria and Romania are joining the EU in 2007 anyway. What was Austria’s
price for finally agreeing to the opening of negotiations with Turkey? A similar
promise for Croatia! One thing leads to another. When those Balkan countries are
in, they will immediately start agitating for their neighbours to join them, just as
Poland is now agitating for a promise to Ukraine. No matter that those neighbours
are former enemies, with bitter memories of recent wars and ethnic cleansing. The
mysterious alchemy of enlargement is that it turns former enemies into advocates.
Germany was the great promoter of Polish membership, and Greece remains one
of the strongest supporters of Turkish membership. When Serbia and Macedonia
come knocking at Brussels’ door, they will exclaim: “What, you have said yes to
Turkey, but you say no to us, who are closer to you and obviously more European
than Turkey?” Since these countries are mainly small, and since the EU already
takes responsibility for much of south-east Europe’s security and reconstruction,
as a quasi colonial post-conflict power, the reluctant older members of the EU will
sigh: “Oh, what the hell, one or two more small countries won’t make that much
difference anyway – our big headaches are Turkey and Ukraine.” So they’ll slip
in.
The result is that, whether or not Turkey achieves membership over the next
decade, by 2015 the European Union will cover most of what has historically been
considered to constitute the territory of Europe. And it will have some 32 to 37
member states – for Switzerland, Norway and Iceland may eventually choose to
come in, too. The frontline cases will then be Turkey and Ukraine, while Russia
will have a special relationship with this new European Union.
Now only someone possessed of the deliberate obtuseness of a Daily Mail leader
writer could suppose that such a broad, diverse European Union will ever be a Na-
poleonic, federal (in the Eurosceptic sense of the F-word), centralised, bureaucratic
superstate. That’s why those who do still want something like a United States of
Europe think Monday was a terrible day for Europe.
Valéry Giscard d’Estaing, the main author of the EU’s stillborn constitutional
treaty, was in despair, while Britain’s Jack Straw was grinning ear to ear. Roughly
speaking, the British hated the constitution because they thought it would create a
French Europe, while the French hate enlargement because they think it will cre-
ate a British Europe. Thus Giscard laments that these further enlargements “are
obviously going to transform Europe into a large free-trade zone”. That is what
continental Europeans classically charge the British with wanting.
Indeed, that is what some Brits do want Europe to be. That’s one reason Mar-
garet Thatcher loved enlargement. I recently heard a leading member of the Con-
servative shadow cabinet say explicitly that he likes the prospect of further wid-
ening because it will make the EU what it should be, a large free-trade area. But
they do not represent the thinking of the British government; and anyway they are
wrong.
This larger Europe will be much more than a free-trade area, or it will be noth-
ing. It already is much more. And most of these new members care passionately
that it should be. To be just a free-trade zone, the EU would have to take a large
step backwards even as it takes a large step forwards, and that it will not do. The
prospect, rather, is of an entity that is as far beyond a free-trade zone as it is short
of a centralised superstate. For want of a better term, I describe this unprecedent-
ed continent-wide political community as a commonwealth – but I have in mind
something more like the early modern Polish-Lithuanian commonwealth than to-
day’s British commonwealth.
Meanwhile, I don’t want you to think I’m ducking the question of Turkish mem-
bership. If we were starting from scratch, I would say that the European Union
should have a special partnership (Angela Merkel’s term) with Turkey, as also
with Russia. Why? Because at its eastern and south-eastern borders Europe does
not end, it merely fades away. It fades away across the great expanses of Turkey
and Russia. Somewhere between Moscow and Vladivostok, somewhere between
Istanbul and Hakkari, you find yourself more in Asia than in Europe. This only
partly European character of the two countries’ geography and history suggests
a special partnership, for the sense of belonging to a geographical and historical
unity is important for any political community of Europe.
However, we are not starting from scratch. We have promises to keep. For more
than 40 years we have assured Turkey that it will belong to our European com-
munity. We have repeated, strengthened, made concrete these promises over the
past decade. The example of Turkey, reconciling a mainly Islamic society with a
secular state, is vital for the rest of the Islamic world – and not insignificant for the
15 to 20 million Muslims already living in Europe. When I was recently in Iran, a
dissident mullah, who had been imprisoned for 18 months for criticising his coun-
try’s Islamic regime, told me: “There are two models, Turkey and Iran.” Which
should we support? The answer is what Americans call a “no-brainer”. And so the
European Union, although it has no brain – that is, does not take decisions like a
nation-state – has made the right choice. Turkey is an exception: not a precedent
for Morocco or Algeria. For good reasons, the European Union has just decided to
include a chunk of Asia.
Before that happens, however, we have to ensure two things. First, that Tur-
key really does meet the EU’s famous Copenhagen criteria, having a stable liberal
democracy, the rule of law (with full equality for men and women), a free market
economy, free speech (also for intellectuals who say there was a Turkish geno-
cide against the Armenians), and respect for minority rights (notably those of the
Kurds). Turkey still has a long way to go. Second, and quite as demanding, public
opinion in existing member states, such as France and Austria, must be prepared to
accept Turkish membership. Between those two, you have at least 10 years’ work
ahead.
So, characteristically, the European Union has done something very important
this week, without itself really understanding what it has done. It has not decided
to make Turkey a member. It has decided that Europe will be a commonwealth
and not a superstate.
Un grand merci à la Turquie

Translated by Julie Marcot and published in le Monde, October 9 2005
Lundi 3 octobre, l’Union européenne (UE) a accompli une chose remarquable : elle
a choisi de devenir une union d’Etats paneuropéenne, plutôt qu’une organisation
supranationale partiellement européenne.
L’ouverture, arrachée de haute lutte, des négociations d’adhésion avec la Tur-
quie ne garantit pas que ce pays deviendra membre de l’Union d’ici dix à quinze
ans.
Mais elle a pour effet de placer la ligne de front de l’élargissement si loin vers
le sud-est que cela garantit l’adhésion à l’UE de tous les pays situés en deçà, sans
doute même avant la Turquie.
Douce ironie de l’histoire : la Turquie, qui sous le nom d’Empire ottoman occu-
pait autrefois une grande partie des Balkans, les isolant ainsi de ce qui était alors
le club chrétien européen, ouvre aujourd’hui à ses anciennes colonies la route de
l’Europe.
La Bulgarie et la Roumanie entreront quoi qu’il arrive dans l’Union en 2007. Et
quelle contrepartie a demandée l’Autriche pour finalement donner son accord à
l’ouverture des négociations avec la Turquie ? Que la même promesse soit faite à la
Croatie. Lorsque ce pays sera devenu membre, il fera des pieds et des mains pour
que ses voisins puissent adhérer, comme la Pologne le fait aujourd’hui en faveur
de l’Ukraine.
Peu importe que ces voisins soient d’anciens ennemis et que les souvenirs amers
de guerres et de nettoyage ethnique restent vivaces. Telle est la mystérieuse alchi-
mie de l’élargissement : elle change les pays en ardents défenseurs de leurs anciens
ennemis. L’Allemagne fut ainsi le grand apôtre de l’adhésion de la Pologne ; la
Grèce reste l’un des plus chauds partisans de l’adhésion turque.
Quand Serbes et Macédoniens viendront frapper à la porte de Bruxelles, voilà ce
qu’ils diront : “Comment ? Vous avez dit oui à la Turquie et vous nous dites non,
à nous, qui sommes plus proches de vous et bien plus européens que les Turcs
?” L’Union, puissance quasi-coloniale, assure déjà la sécurité et la reconstruction
d’une grande partie de la région. Alors, les pays membres plus anciens lâcheront
dans un soupir : “Bon, d’accord. Un ou deux petits pays de plus ou de moins...”
Résultat : que la Turquie obtienne ou non son adhésion, l’Union européenne
couvrira d’ici à 2015 l’ensemble de ce qu’on considère historiquement comme le
territoire européen. Elle comptera entre 32 et 37 Etats membres (la Suisse, la Nor-
vège et l’Islande pourraient bien finir par adhérer elles aussi). Resteront, comme
cas limite, la Turquie et l’Ukraine, alors que la Russie jouira de liens privilégiés
avec cette nouvelle Union européenne.
Il faut être un eurosceptique britannique des plus obtus pour croire encore
qu’une telle Union, si vaste et si diverse, formera une entité supranationale et cen-
tralisée de type napoléonien. Voilà pourquoi, aux yeux de ceux qui persistent dans
le rêve des Etats-Unis d’Europe, le lundi 3 octobre a été un jour noir. Le Fran-
çais Valéry Giscard d’Estaing, principal auteur du traité constitutionnel mort-né,
était au désespoir, mais le Britannique Jack Straw arborait un sourire jusqu’aux
oreilles.
Résumons : les Britanniques détestaient la Constitution parce qu’ils pensaient
qu’elle allait créer une Europe française, et les Français détestent l’élargissement
parce qu’ils pensent qu’il donnera naissance à une Europe britannique. Giscard
déplore ainsi les nouveaux élargissements, “qui vont transformer l’Europe en zone
de libre-échange”. C’est effectivement pour cette raison que les conservateurs bri-
tanniques adorent l’élargissement. Mais ils ne reflètent pas l’opinion du gouverne-
ment britannique sans compter qu’ils se trompent.
L’Europe élargie sera bien plus qu’une zone de libre-échange, ou elle ne sera
rien. Elle est déjà beaucoup plus que cela, et cela correspond au souhait de la plu-
part des nouveaux membres. Devenir une zone de libre-échange supposerait un
grand pas en arrière, que l’Union ne fera pas. Ce qui s’annonce, c’est plutôt un en-
semble politique continental sans précédent que, faute de mieux, je qualifierais de
“Commonwealth”, union d’Etats pour le bien commun, mais un Commonwealth
plus proche de l’union polono-lithuanienne du début des temps modernes – dite
République des Deux-Nations, 1569-1795 – que de l’actuel Commonwealth britan-
nique.
Je n’esquive pas ici la question de l’adhésion de la Turquie. Si nous partions de
zéro, je serais partisan d’un partenariat privilégié avec la Turquie ainsi qu’avec
la Russie. Pourquoi ? Parce qu’à ses frontières de l’Est et du Sud-Est, l’Europe ne
disparaît pas, elle s’estompe. A un moment donné, quelque part entre Moscou et
Vladivostok, quelque part entre Istanbul et Hakkâri, vous êtes tout à coup plus en
Asie qu’en Europe. Ces deux pays ont, par leur géographie et leur histoire, une
identité qui n’est que partiellement européenne, d’où l’idée de partenariat privilé-
gié : le sentiment d’appartenance à une unité géographique et historique est essen
tiel pour toute communauté politique en Europe, quelle qu’elle soit.
Reste que nous ne partons pas de zéro. Nous avons des promesses à tenir. De-
puis plus de quarante ans, nous assurons à la Turquie qu’elle entrera dans notre
communauté européenne. Ces dix dernières années, nous avons répété, renforcé,
concrétisé cette promesse. L’exemple turc, celui de la réconciliation entre une socié-
té essentiellement musulmane et un Etat laïque, est fondamental pour le reste du
monde musulman et pas anodin pour les 20 millions de musulmans que compte
déjà l’Europe. En Iran, où je me trouvais il y a peu, un mollah dissident résumait
ainsi : “Il y a deux modèles : la Turquie et l’Iran.” Lequel devons-nous soutenir ?
Inutile de se casser la tête : l’Europe a eu de bonnes raisons pour décider d’intégrer
un morceau d’Asie.
Mais avant d’en arriver là, il nous faut nous assurer de deux choses. Primo,
que la Turquie remplisse vraiment les fameux critères de Copenhague, fixés par
l’Union, en devenant une véritable démocratie libérale, en instaurant l’état de droit
(et l’égalité absolue entre hommes et femmes), l’économie de marché, la liberté
d’expression (y compris pour les intellectuels qui affirment qu’il y a bien eu un
génocide des Arméniens) et en respectant les droits des minorités (Kurdes notam-
ment). Autant dire que la Turquie a encore du chemin à faire. Secundo, l’opinion
publique des actuels Etats membres, tels que la France ou l’Autriche, doit être prête
à accepter l’adhésion de la Turquie. D’ici à ce que ces deux conditions soient rem-
plies, nous avons bien dix ans de travail devant nous.
Comme souvent, l’Union européenne vient d’accomplir un pas important sans
en être vraiment consciente. Non, elle n’a pas décidé d’intégrer la Turquie. Elle a
décidé ce qu’elle-même serait et ne serait pas.
**********
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repetitions: A ‘universal’ of translation? Meta 43:1, 68-79.
Berman, Antoine. 2000. Translation and the trials of the foreign. (Translated by Lawrence
Venuti). In: Venuti, Lawrence (ed.), The Translation Studies Reader. London and New
York: Routledge, 284-297.
Davies, Eirlys E. 2002. Translation, culture and shifts of audience. Interaction entre culture
et traduction: Actes du Symposium international. Tanger: Publications de l’Ecole Supé-
rieure Roi Fahd de Traduction, 61-74.
Davies, Eirlys E. forthcoming. Leaving it out: On some justifications for the use of omis-
sion in translation. To appear in Babel.
Delisle, Jean. 2000. La traduction raisonnée (5th revised edition). Ottawa: Presses Universi
taires d’Ottawa.
Ipsos MORI. 9 March 2005: Voting Intention by Newspaper Readership. www.mori.com/
polls/2004/voting-by-readership.shtml
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Quillard, Geneviève. 1997. Etude de certaines différences dans l’organisation collective
des textes pragmatiques anglais et français. Babel 43:4, 313-330.

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SHIFTING READERSHIPS IN JOURNALISTIC TRANSLATION

Eirlys E. Davies, King Fahd School of Translation, Tangier, Morocco

Key words: English-French translation; journalism; fidelity in translation; omission and

The treatment of labels for key concepts

(1) It chose to become an all-European commonwealth, not the part-European su-

(5) How the dreaded superstate became a commonwealth (English title)

The treatment of markers of in-group solidarity

Anthony’s College, Oxford, Timothy Garton Ash is well known to Guardian

with a much broader and more accessible reference to British Eurosceptics in

These are absent from the corresponding parts of the translation:

(13) Mais elle a pour effet de …

(17) Bon, d’accord. Un ou deux petits pays de plus ou de moins …

The sense of shared background inspired by recognition of these allusions will

(23) Nous avons des promesses à tenir.

The treatment of changes in relevance

The French term “partenariat privilégié” is perhaps not particularly associ-

The treatment of stylistic devices

pains to avoid repeating the same phrases:

of the important distinction which must be drawn between elements of a text

How the dreaded superstate became a commonwealth

Un grand merci à la Turquie

des textes pragmatiques anglais et français. Babel 43:4, 313-330.

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