Greek University Thesis on Translating English News Narratives

National
and Kapodistrian University of Athens

ENGLISHGREEK NEWS CREATING NARRATIVES:

A TRANSLATION PERSPECTIVE

Themistokleia Kaniklidou

Thesis submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy

Faculty of English Language and Literature

Athens, May 2012

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Table of Contents

LIST OF FIGURES ............................................................................................................7
LIST OF TABLES..............................................................................................................8
DEDICATION....................................................................................................................9
DECLARATION ............................................................................................................. 10
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS............................................................................................. 11

ABSTRACT..................................................................................................................... 13

CHAPTER 1: Introduction ........................................................................................ 15

1.1. Setting the frame ............................................................................................................15
1.2. Research questions and hypothesis .......................................................................23
1.3. Contribution of the thesis ...........................................................................................26
1.4. Overview of chapters....................................................................................................28

CHAPTER 2: Review of literature......................................................................... 31

2.1. Introduction......................................................................................................................31
2.2. Media and discourse .....................................................................................................32
2.3. Translation and news discourse..............................................................................36
2.4. On Critical Discourse Analysis..................................................................................40
2.4.1. On Critical Discourse Analysis and Translation ........................................45
2.5. On narratives....................................................................................................................49
2.5.1. History to Narrative Analysis............................................................................49
2.5.1.1. Summary ............................................................................................................54
2.5.2. A typology of narratives ......................................................................................55
2.5.2.1. On features of narratives.............................................................................59
2.5.2.2. On framing strategies ...................................................................................61
2.5.3. Using narratives in this dissertation: Why and How ..............................63

CHAPTER 3: Experimental design and methodological considerations . 69

3.1. Introduction......................................................................................................................69
3.2. Corpus design ..................................................................................................................70
3.2.1. The political subcorpus......................................................................................76
3.2.2. The biomedical subcorpus................................................................................79
3.2.3. Data selection and presentation ......................................................................81
3.3. Gatekeeping: a key process in news translation...............................................84
3.4. Closing in on a model of analysis.............................................................................91
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3.4.1. Models in Translation Studies ................................................................. 91
3.4.2. A model of analysis .................................................................................... 95

CHAPTER 4: Renarrating Obama in the US elections context.................... 98

4.1. Introduction......................................................................................................................98
4.2. US 2008 Presidential Elections and aim of this chapter................................98
4.3. A narrative approach to the Obama/Election data...........................101
4.3.1. On B. Obamas ontological/personal narratives ....................................101
4.3.1.1. The exotic and multicultural...................................................................102
4.3.1.2. Afterthought on ontological narratives .............................................106
4.4. On public/collective narratives.......................................................................108
4.4.1. Narrating stability...............................................................................................108
4.4.2. Body and pain as narrative .............................................................................113
4.4.3. Authoritative group actions............................................................................115
4.4.4. Passive electoral body.......................................................................................117
4.4.5. Afterthought on public narratives ...............................................................120
4.5. On conceptual/disciplinary narratives ................................................121
4.5.1. Narrating leadership..........................................................................................121
4.5.1.1. Boldness and sensitivity...........................................................................122
4.5.1.2. Power and insight........................................................................................124
4.5.1.3. The Messiah and the Almighty...............................................................125
4.5.2. Narrating Politics: Game frame .....................................................................127
4.5.2.1. Politics: Narrating a game........................................................................127
4.5.2.2. Transparency as a conceptual narrative ...........................................130
4.5.3. Afterthought on conceptual narratives......................................................131
4.6. On meta/master narratives ......................................................................133
4.6.1. Race and terrorism .............................................................................................134
4.6.2. The binary thinking narrative........................................................................137
4.6.2.1. Obama vs Bush and McCain: Opposing tactics ................................138
4.6.2.2. Binary oppositions in headlines............................................................141
4.6.3. Afterthought on master narratives..............................................................143
4.7. Afterthought on the Obama/election narratives in news translation..149
4.7.1. Narratives: common ground and narrative interaction .....................152
4.7.2. Narratives in newspapers................................................................................154

CHAPTER 5: Renarrating health and science in the Greek press ...........157

5.1. Introduction...................................................................................................................157
5.2. Introduction to the study of biomedical texts in the press .......................158
5.3. Aims and motivations to this chapter.................................................................160
5.4. A narrative approach to health stories ..............................................................161
5.4.1. Public Narratives on Deification of science..................................164
5.4.1.1. The potential of science and the role of researchers ...................165
5.4.1.2. Research is serious matter ......................................................................170
5.4.1.3. Treatment and illness as ongoing process......................................171
5.4.1.4. Selective appropriation of public entities.........................................174
5.4.1.5. Afterthought on public narratives........................................................177
5.4.2. Conceptual narratives on health and science..............................178
5.4.2.1. Body as carrier..............................................................................................178
5.4.2.2. A ST Frankensteinian vs a TT heroic narrative of science ..........181
5.4.2.3. Scientists as postmodern Prometheus ...............................................185
5.4.2.4. A conceptual narrative on cancer.........................................................186
5.4.2.5. Afterthought on conceptual narratives..............................................188
5.4.3. Master narratives about health and science................................189
5.4.3.1. Binary constructions on health and science ....................................189
5.4.3.2. Science as a battle against illness .........................................................190
5.4.3.3. Threat and optimism: two opposing master narratives.............193
5.4.3.4. Afterthought on master narratives......................................................196
5.4.4. Variation across newspapers .........................................................................197
5.4.4.1. Popularizing science ..................................................................................198
5.4.4.2. Fear and hope................................................................................................202
5.4.5. Afterthought on biomedical narratives in news translation ............209
5.4.5.1. Narratives across newspapers...............................................................214

CHAPTER 6: Interpretation of data ....................................................................217

6.1. Introduction...................................................................................................................217
6.2. Narratives in news: the institutional connection of narratives...............218
6.2.1. On Ideology ............................................................................................................219
6.3. Profiling the Greek Press .........................................................................................225
6.3.1. Profiling Greek newspapers ...........................................................................226
6.3.2. Narrative patterns in newspapers ...............................................................229
6.3.3. Crossnewspaper analysis ...............................................................................237

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CHAPTER 7 : Concluding remarks and further research ............................242

7.1. Revisiting the research questions ........................................................................242
7.1.1. Contribution of research ..................................................................................254
7.1.2. Limitations .............................................................................................................256
7.2. Areas for further research.......................................................................................257

References ..................................................................................................................260
Appendix 1..................................................................................................................................278
Appendix 2..................................................................................................................................330
Appendix 3..................................................................................................................................381

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LIST OF FIGURES

Figure 1: Trends in TS during the past decades: p. 38
Figure 2: A typology of narratives according to Baker (2005;2006b) and Harding
(2009): p.58
Figure 3: Deployment of narrative analysis in news translation: p. 68
Figure 4: Graphic illustration of the corpus design: p.74
Figure 5: Model of information flow, information transfer and gatekeeping: p.89
Figure 6: Comparative model: p.92
Figure 7: Process model: p. 93
Figure 8: Causal model: p.94
Figure 9: Models and levels of news translation data analysis: p. 95
Figure 10: The Model of Analysis: p.97
Figure11: Interaction of ontological, conceptual and master narratives in the
construction of B. Obamas identity: p.154
Figure 12: Narrative output in I Kathimerini: p.232
Figure 13: Narrative output in To Vima: p. 234
Figure 14: Narrative output in Ta Nea: p. 236
Figure 15: Crossnewspaper patterns of framing and narratives: p. 241

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LIST OF TABLES

Table 1: corpus formation: p. 74
Table 2: sample view of theme selection : p. 75
Table 3: Distribution and wordcount of TT articles per period and target newspaper
(Obama subcorpus): p. 76
Table 4: Detailed display of source and target newspaper information (Obama sub
corpus): p. 78
Table 5: Distribution and wordcount of TT articles per year and target newspaper
(Biomedical subcorpus): p. 79
Table 6: Detailed display of source and target newspaper information (Biomedical sub
corpus) : p. 80
Table 7 Sources of data collection: advantages (+) and limitations () : p.83
Table 8: Binary thinking in headlines per target newspaper in the political subcorpus: p.
142
Table 9: Summary of the linguistic shifts analyzed per newspaper and narrative type,
with the highlighted target concept/narrative : p. 145
Table 10: Distribution of narrative shifts in the sample corpus (B. Obama) : p. 155
Table 11: Newspaper circulation figures: p.198
Table 12: Biomedical news popularization patterns :p. 199
Table 13: Biomedical news popularization patterns across newspapers : p. 201
Table 14: Summary of the linguistic shifts analyzed per newspaper and narrative type,
with the highlighted target concept/narrative : p. 202
Table 15: Distribution of narrative shifts in the sample corpus (Biomedical) : p. 204
Table 16: Distribution of narrative shifts in entire sample corpus (Biomedical) : p. 214
Table 17: Distribution of narrative shifts across newspapers : p. 215
Table 18: Socioeconomic profile and circulation of Greek newspapers: p. 228
Table 19: STTT wordcount in the political subcorpus: p. 329
Table 20: STTT wordcount in the biomedical subcorpus: p. 380

DEDICATION

We dream in narrative, daydream in narrative, remember, anticipate,
hope, despair, believe, doubt, plan, revise, criticise, construct, gossip,
learn, hate and love by narrative (Hardy, 1987:1).

To Kythrea, Cyprus
DECLARATION

No portion of the work referred to in this thesis has been submitted in support of an application for
another degree or qualification of this or any other university or other institute of learning. All sources
that I have used or quoted have been acknowledged by means of complete references.
10

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

This thesis would not have been made possible without the support of many people. My most
sincere and wholehearted gratitude goes out to my supervisor, Professor Maria Sidiropoulou
who enthusiastically embraced this project from day one and never lost faith in me. It was her
expertise, willingness and endless patience in providing meticulous comments to the drafts that
made this thesis possible.

I am also very grateful to Professor Sophia PapaefthymiouLytra who grew a keen interest in this
project, for her unflinching commenting of the drafts, for never losing touch with the big picture;
your input and support has been of outmost importance. I also wish to wholeheartedly thank
Associate Professor Efterpi Mitsi for her ongoing encouragement, good spirit and key
contribution on issues of literature review, support and time awarded to this project.

I cannot forget to also thank my professors during my Bachelors Studies at the Ionian University of
Corfu, Department of Foreign Languages Translation and Interpreting, particularly Associate
Professors Ioannis Lazaratos, Ioannis E. Saridakis, and Panagiotis I. Kelandrias who, without their
knowledge, planted in me the first seeds for posing translation questions.

I have benefited from the Special Account Research Fund of the National and Kapodistrian
University of Athens and from the Sasakawa Foundation. Thank you for silently standing by me.

I feel the need to thank Professor Mona Baker whose work inspired me even before meeting her
and for guiding me through this project during the Translation Research Summer School (TRSS)
held in Manchester UK in 2008. Also, it was the guidance provided during the TRSS by Senior
Lecturer in Translation Studies and Head of CTIS Maeve Olohan, Professor at University College
London Theo Hermans and Assistant Professor at Concordia University Paul Bandia that propelled
this research forward. I am particularly grateful to Research Associate at the University of
Manchester SueAnn Harding for her support.

Many thanks to Professor Emeritus Ian Mason who keenly responded to my email requests for
research material, to Professor Juliane House who supported my efforts, to late Willis Edmondson
who knew and taught me that there is always a different way to things and to Senior Tutor at
University of Surrey, Vassilis Korkas for providing me with a good example of being selfmade. Also,
I cannot forget to thank the Instructor in Modern Greek at Oxford University, Kostas Skordyles who
11

has been my friend since my studies in University of Surrey and has always been there at the other
side of the PC. Finally, I owe a big thank you to my colleague Petros Romaios who helped me out
with editing and proofreading.

I wish to thank Mrs. Fafouti, editorinchief in the newspaper I Kathimerini, who provided me with
useful hardcopy material and Mrs. Bastea from Lambrakis Foundation who assisted me in
retrieving material for the newspapers Ta Nea and To Vima.

I am forever indebted to my family for supporting me throughout these years. Many thanks to my
mother who raised me and to my father who has been my ongoing support. Dad, forever thank you.

Finally, this project is dedicated to Thodoris for believing in me, for giving up time but not humour
and patience, for the good music, excellent technical support, open mind and heart; for never letting
go.
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ABSTRACT

This research observes and explores how the Greek press translates news; it takes as a starting point
that newspapers pool in translation to indulge their readers in global stories packaged in a localized
context, before focusing on the target text (TT) itself, analyzed as a text bracketed in the institutional
space of the newspaper that accommodates it. In doing so, it mobilizes tools that enable analysis of
translated language and reflection of its output(s). Although this research ranges over a variety of
subjects associated to news discourse and translation, yet it chooses to privilege a narrative
perspective, as it believes that it is narrative as a unit of analysis that has the power to expound the full
meaningmaking potential of translated language.

Two are the thematic threads that underpin this research and have offered the material for the analysis.
One is political and the other biomedical, while both meet in the narratives claimed by the TT
newspapers which articulate them. One explores translations that have made it in the Greek press and
renarrate the American President B. Obama, while the other generates conclusions by looking at
translated news texts on health and science. The data derived from a parallel corpus of source (English)
and target (Greek) texts culled from three Greek newspapers of mass circulation i.e. I Kathimerini, To
Vima and Ta Nea (Greek version of the corpus 48,567 words).

Results from the political subcorpus establish translation as a process that is not ignorant of target
culture expectations and specificities. In particular, findings expose the active role of newspapers in
drawing on B. Obamas ontological narratives and in manipulating his biographical story lines. Also, the
corpus yields results of a set of public narratives that move and operate above the level of single
individuals and reflect collective TT cultural preferences, such as uncertainty avoidance. The political
subcorpus is also telling of how translation encapsulates representations of the voting mass and how it
reconceptualises, reframes and rewrites meaning(s) in relation the Leader and Politics.

On its part, the biomedical subcorpus clearly shows how newspapers participate in the treatment of
texts on health and science either by obturating and suppressing source narratives visvis which the
target text readers are deemed to exhibit resistance or by playing up those narratives that are expected
to reinforce target culture preferences. Interestingly, translation choices in this corpus oscillate
between frames of risk and fear about health that is translated as being in danger by lifethreatening
diseases and those of hope and optimism about science that is narrated as protecting man from the fear
of disease.

13

Apart from crossnewspaper differences in the articulation and deployment of narratives, all three
newspapers share two common features. On the one hand, findings consent that all of them adopt a
mediating behaviour when undertaking translation and employ, in varying degrees, framing strategies
to advance their institutional agendas. On the other, results indicate that translation often exhibits both
remoteness from the narratives that circulate in the source text environment and a degree of intimacy
with corresponding ones that are present, and often persistent, in the target text environment.

Findings establish themselves as significant to the extent that they highlight crosscultural variation
which is landscaped through translation, identified and isolated in narrative and played out in the
institutional setting of newspapers.

14
EnglishGreek News CHAPTER 1: Introduction
Creating Narratives

CHAPTER 1
Introduction

1.1. Setting the frame

This thesis claims and builds a case for the capacity of translated press language to renegotiate
and rewrite meaning(s). This claim is put forward by analyzing translated press items and is
persistently anchored on the assumption that translated language pulls off various performances
that impact how meaning is renegotiated when a text is uprooted from the source text (point of
departure) and implanted to the target text (point of arrival). Researching and writing about
news translation equals acknowledgement of a couple of things, namely: a) the openingup of the
discipline of translation to a variety of communicative genres, b) the complexity of the translation
process when having to look at the communication loop between various stakeholders, and c) the
resulting embeddedness of translated language in a highstakes institutional setting, that of a
newspaper. In more concrete terms, this research maps out the intricate relationships between
translated language and narrative encapsulated in translated news discourse. Narrative, in turn,
emerges here both as a key tool (chapter 3) and output of research (chapters 4 and 5). The
abovementioned mapping out is attempted by looking at and juxtaposing translated press articles
since I argue that, attending to and piercing through how language performs in translation can
help unmask the discursive and narrative effect(s) brought upon news texts. In extension, textual
investigation of translated press items brings forward the communicative interaction between
the producers of messages (writers of source texts) and readers who are presented with
worldviews with which they are called upon to conform or challenge.

Contributions from media discourse, translation studies (TS) and narrative analysis have informed
this research, hardened its interdisciplinary orientation, and have been useful in setting the frame
for the analysis. Perspectives from all these research streams have contributed, in one way or the
other, in allowing me to formulate a clear understanding of how research in news translation has
developed in the past decades, identify any missing or unfinished chains of research and then pick
up new and unexplored research threads. I begin below then by discussing these three streams or
vectors of research that have impelled this thesis, while at the same time I report back on the
research contributions that have been made so far in the fields of narrative research and TS. The
15
Creating Narratives

existing contributions have, as I will discuss further in this chapter, acted as slow burning stimuli
for the undertaking of this thesis.

First, in terms of media discourse, contributions so far have valued that news, as a product, and
newsmaking, as a process, in todays society is allpervasive. This means that news is not merely
there to inform; instead it is seen as a social and ideological product since most of our social and
political knowledge and beliefs about the world derive from the dozens of news reports we read
or see every day (van Dijk, 1991b: 109). This view is further attested by Bell (1995) who is
detailing the reasons behind the increased interest in the study of news and media by stating that
media usage influences and represents peoples use of and attitudes towards language in a
speech community (ibid:3). One of the results then of the established, and much warranted,
interconnection between media output and its influence on the public is the proliferation of news
practices undertaken by media stakeholders on a global level. Ultimately, we come to understand
the world also through the force of the twentyfour hour breaking news, which has evolved into a
new global expectation (Bassnett, 2006:6). Interest in news and news language also stems from
the realization that the various uses of news and news production always occurs within the
framework of massmediated communication. The growing importance awarded by scholars to
media discourse has, in particular, moved towards the direction of analyzing news reception as
scholars have sought to interpret the news conceptualization process (Bell 1991; Fairclough
1995b). Nevertheless, while the interpretative momentum of newspaper stories may indeed be a
variable that changes according to what readers bring forward in terms of selfbeliefs,
representations and knowledge, yet scholars so far have agreed (Bell 1991; Simpson 1993;
Richardson 2007) that what persists and seems to be nonnegotiable is the key role that language
and its use play for the construction of news texts (Kress 1985; Hodge and Kress 1988; van Dijk
1988; Fowler 1991). Studies in media discourse have then gradually left the territory of
descriptive analysis and adopted a critical view which argues for a more symbiotic relationship
between language and its output. This shift of focus acknowledges that language is always value
laden and fervently supports that linguistic choice cannot be stripped of its output. Consequently,
it claims that resources should be allocated and attention should equally be placed on scrutinizing
the discourse of newspapers (Fowler 1991; van Dijk 1991b; Fairclough 1995b; Ferguson 1998;
Richardson 2007). In this research I align myself with and adhere to the critical dimension as
analysis of data orients towards the socalled discursive output of news translation, identified
and explained here through the perceptive lens of, narrative.

16
Creating Narratives

The second stream of research that has infiltrated this research originates from scholarly
contributions within TS and spearheads in two disciplinary trails that have been accounted here
as relevant. The first trail feeds from the socalled "Sociological Turn" (or "social turn" as
mentioned by Wolf 2006:9) that left its mark in the discipline during the 90s. This approach
opens the disciplinary boundaries allowing more vague i.e. blurred notions such as context,
power, identity, to find their way into TS and contribute in the understanding and overall reading
of the role of translation as a discursive practice. This approach actually awarded translation a
second nature, that of an ideologicallybased, sociocultural/political/narrative practice (Simeoni
1998; Hermans 2007). Within the context of this ideologically and socially driven trail, research in
TS has started to orient towards carving out the relationship between ideology and translation,
(Hatim and Mason 1990; Tymoczko 2003; Calzada Prez 2003; Schffner 2004; Orengo 2005;
Munday 2007, Bielsa and Hughes 2009). Ideology has been researched in literary contexts
(Lefevere 1992), while others, lvarez and Vidal (1996b) looked into the ideological interface
between texts and translation choices. Furthermore, within this framework, translation has been
also associated to the idea of distortion and manipulation (Hermans 1985) and mediation (Mason
1994). More recently, Kelandrias (2007) highlighted the role of translation in sustaining
ideologies and Munday (2007) took on the challenge of looking for textual manifestations of
ideology. Others (lvarez & Vidal 1996a, Gentzler and Tymoczko 2003, Calzada Prez 2003) took
a step further and looked at the concept of power and power differential in translations. In
section 2.3. I track down in detail the path that TS has traced, one that has allowed the discipline
to assume integrative attitudes towards concepts to which TS had traditionally remained
oblivious. In this research I embrace the critical approach to translated press data, that has been
set off by the studies above; I build then on this enlarged scope of the discipline and capitalize on
the opportunities it gives for followingup any links between internal properties of language and
language use (linguistic shifts, variations and preferences) and external factors (imposition of
ideology, point of view, narratives).

The second disciplinary trail or footprint that TS has left during the past years, and is accounted
as relevant in this thesis, probes in news flow within the context of a globalized economy (Cronin
2003). Scholars have started to grow a keen interest in a longstanding process, that of news
translation, and have been posing questions on the process of global news flow (Cronin 2003;
Pym 2004; Bassnett 2006). International news dissemination in turn has been linked to what
Hornby (2000) and Schffner (2000) mention as the emergence of the global village, a concept
which foreshadows a new momentum in globalization and is considered as yet another virtual
terrain with powerful and predominant features over the rest of them. In this global village,
17
Creating Narratives

English is the dominant lingua franca and translation is a key process and product when it comes
to interpreting linguistic and cultural elements.

So far, attempts to pin down the general framework within which translation of news takes place
have gone as far as the redefinition of the source and target text (Vuorinen 1995, Orengo 2005),
the influence of the language of news translation on local language (Hursti 2001). In addition,
research ventured towards particularizing the entire news translation process, commencing from
gathering the information, deciding on the sources to be used and considering the reaction of the
readership upon coming to contact with the translated text. This entire process has been found to
be governed by a number of gatekeepers that influence the information flow (Vuorinen 1995,
1996). Gatekeeping2, which will be further analysed in detail and graphically visualised in section
3.3., focuses however on the process of news translation, not the product. It also investigates the
diverse settings under which news translation can take place (different institutions, under
different political regimes etc.). Evidence so far points to a process that is intricately related with
issues of voice, power differential, representations, identities, institutional authority and ideology.
Within this research context, news texts have been found to be global products which are
distributed through localization process involving not only reception by locales of a given text,
but also simultaneous production of more versions of a same news report (Orengo, 2005: 169).
This affirmation underlines the critical role of translation in the global flow of news while, at the
same time, highlights the dependency of many countries on foreign news agencies for receiving
the initial raw material. Consequently, in quantitative terms, as Kivikuru (1990) has prefigured,
media in nonEnglish speaking peripheral nations daily publish a considerable amount of news
material which has been originally produced in other cultures and languages and therefore must
be translated for the recipient audience. On their part, newspapers, news agencies and other
stakeholders, being on the frontline of the information flow in a globalized world, are often
obliged to work under tremendous time pressure. And what is more, new technologies coupled
with numerous texts that make it to a shortlist for translation create a new professional identity
for translators who now face the challenge of developing their multitasking capabilities and
perform translation, editing, web designing or other related tasks. This dizziness created by the
2
Gatekeeping is according to Shoemaker the process by which the billions of messages that are available in
the world get cut down and transformed into the hundreds of messages that reach a given person on a
given day (1991: 1). Gatekeeping relates then to the selection or rejection of news by entities and
institutions before these reach their publics. Translation in this research is treated then as a gated process
in the sense that it is subjected to gatekeeping (BarzilaiNahon 2004). More on the use of the term in TS and
in this research is provided in section 3.3. and footnote 19.
18
Creating Narratives

ventiginous momentum of the abovementioned tasks has been even found to put at stake the
conventional concept that we hold for a text (SnellHornby 2000).

The dynamics of international news transfer is largely shaped by the imperatives and force of
globalization itself since texts and words are now measured quantitatively and gauged against
their usefulness for other products usability and marketability (Orengo, 2005: 170).
Researchers have also shown that newspapers, when selecting which stories they will
appropriate and use in the confines of the textual space available, tend to measure up the level of
adaptability of the story to the local readership. This thrusts our reflection on the mobility of texts
across news agencies and yields questions in regards to those texts for which the target
environment leaves the doors open and those for which 'doors are closed'. Yet a paradox
surfaces here, inherent in globalization, which boils down to the dependency of globalization on
localization of the product/service that travels from one part of the globe to another. Because, in
order for globalization to survive, it needs specific, localized versions for the products it
distributes. This reality is even more affirmed by O Hagan (2002) who, in relation to the
manifestation of globalization, states that we can simply understand globalization as the process
of facilitating localization to allow a product to be used in countries other than the country of its
origin (ibid: xviii). Chapter 7 will revisit the interface between news translation and
globalization, and after having looked and analyzed the data (chapters 4 and 5) will interrogate
on whether the former is working for or against globalization.

Focusing on translation per se, the latter has been seen as one of the practices embedded in the
routines of localizing international news. Translation is called in to perform, for the benefit of the
newspaper/institution, the localization of the informational content of a text and in doing so it
operates within the prerequisites set forth by journalistic discourse which is stereotyped as being
objective. Still, when examining concepts such as objectivity and accuracy of the message
underway through news translation, it has been acknowledged, that these occupational ideology
values (Golding and Elliott, 1996: 406) take place within a general context of global economic
integration (Hamelink 2004) under enormously pressuring time constraints where the
translators role lies in his or her ability to act as a transmitter rather than a communicator
(Cronin, 2003: 65). Crucial in the entire, sometimes chaotic, process of international news
translation is the factor of time, the tempo, in which various stakeholders in the process engage in
order to translate a text.

19
Creating Narratives

Lastly, narrative analysis formulates the third stream of research that has been embraced, has
imbued and penetrated this research. Narrative, as I will discuss in detail in section 2.5., has been
appropriated as a unit of analysis by various researchers, others looking at it as an individual
practice and others focusing on it as a social phenomenon (Moscovici 1984; Moscovici and
Merkova 1998; Murrey 2002). Research that has been alert to narrative as an individual
phenomenon has been primarily placing importance on the internal structure of stories and on
their form and content (Bal 1985), on their clock/chronological structuring (Ricoeur 1991) or on
the contextualising aspects of narrative (de Fina and Georgakopoulou 2008); these approaches
have been stubbornly respectful visvis narrativity as practice and interaction, as narrativein
action, and have been looking at how narrative is creating temporal relationships between
utterances and constructing identities of those who do the talking and narrating. In this research I
follow up on the potential of narratives within the sociologicallyoriented approach. fine line of
distinction has been therefore drawn to distinguish narrative as a form of story deriving out of
storytelling and analyzed as finite texts (Bal 1985; Bell 1999) with "a structure, direction, point,
viewpoint (Bell, 1999: 236), and narratives as universal forms of representation that are not the
property of one or the other text but rather cut across time and texts and across all genres and
modes (Baker, 2006b:13). In this research news texts, in the first sense of narrative, are glossed
as stories or news stories while the object of inquiry are narratives; these are, as I will show,
moving along the theoretical lines of Bruner (1991), Somers and Gibson (1994); Somers (1997),
Baker (2006b) and Harding (2009), larger forms of representation and step out of news stories.

Narrative analysis within the second strand of social representation has been set off by Bruner
who argues that psychologists became alive to the possibility of narrative as a form of not only
representing but constituting reality (1991:5). Narrative viewed through the lens of psychology
pulled research focus out of individual representation and identity shaping and pushed it into
collective representation, speaking for the power of narrative to both construct and reflect
worldviews, and from there to contribute to the reading and understanding of societies and
cultures. Following Bruner, Somers and Gibson (1994) bring forward, that narrative does not
limit itself to representing knowledge but goes on to construct it thus marking the "shift from a
focus on representational to ontological narrativity" (ibid:38). More specifically, Somers and
Gibson underline the work of other scholars which shows that

something more substantive is there about narrative: namely that social life is itself
storied and that narrative is an ontological condition of social life. Their research is
showing us that stories guide action; that people construct identities (however multiple
20
Creating Narratives

and changing) by locating themselves or being located within a repertoire of emplotted
storiesthat people make sense of what has happened and is happening to them by
attempting to assemble or in some ways integrate these happenings within one or
more narratives; and that people are guided to act in certain ways and not others, on
the basis of projections, expectations and memories derived from a multiplicity but
ultimately limited repertoire of available social, public and cultural narratives (ibid,
emphasis added).

Within TS, interest in narratives was first motivated by Bakers work Translation and Conflict: A
Narrative Account which appeared in 2006. Narrative at this point is an analytical tool which,
during the past decades, has started to see itself venturing away from genres such as fiction and
literature. In addition, as it will be further discussed in chapter 2, narratives are viewed as
stories' in which all individuals, (and hence translators) are embedded. The abovementioned
shift in narrative theory is important in this research because it awards translated news items a
potential which is not simply descriptive, but rather puts it in a position to influence readers by
reflecting or constructing a different narrative, a storied version of an event (a news event). For,
we draw and feed our identities on frames of reality and representations. This twoway
relationship between narratives and the Self hinges on and cannot be stripped of language
inasmuch narratives and language are interlocked in a symbiotic inout relationship in which
language both reflects and impacts narrative and narrative feeds language by impregnating the
cognitive and emotive fabric of individuals and society. The critical importance of narratives and
narrative theory for this research lies on a couple of things:

First, it rests on the acknowledgement that narrative has become a powerful tool and a method
of analysis of rather divergent disciplines" (Bamberg, 2007: 1, emphasis added). Before Bakers
work, which kickstarted thought of narrative in relation to TS, narrative was applied to
disciplines such as communication, anthropology, linguistics and sociology. Secondly, narratives
are seminal inasmuch these too, are amongst products on the move, products that travel,
across spatial boundaries within the globalized modern setting. Characteristically, Fairclough in
his 2006 Language and Globalization mentions that

the networks, connectivities and interactions which cut across spatial boundaries and
borders crucially include, and we might say depend upon, particular forms of
communication which are specialized for transnational and interregional interaction.
21
Creating Narratives

And the flows include flows of representations, narratives and discourses. In that
sense, it is partly language that is globalizing and globalized (2006:3, emphasis added).

This research fleshes out patterns of narrative movement when these are delocated from the
source environment and relocated in the target. Chapters 4 and 5 look at the instantiations of
narratives while chapter 6 interprets narrative movement and interaction in all three newspapers
under scrutiny.

Thirdly, acknowledging that narratives both underpin and construct our social being, awards
narrative a place across all genres and modes of communication, amongst these, news
production/translation. This accessibility of narrative in various genres gives it a different
potential, and as Baker notes

[w]hile narratology and linguistics tend to focus on one text at a time, the first mostly
on literary text (and most recently cinema) and the second mostly on oral narratives,
narrative theory treats narratives across all genres and modes as diffuse, amorphous
configurations rather than necessarily discrete, fully articulated local stories
(2006b:4, emphasis added).

Particularly in TS, narrative, as it besets the confines of social representation, has been taken up
by researchers who have attempted to use the concept for the research projects. Harding (2009,
2011) takes a casestudy approach to narrative and puts the 2004 Beslan school hostage crisis
under the lens of narrative theory showing the construction and appropriation of narratives by
news media. She develops a socionarrative model to analyse news that reported back on the
atrocities in Beslan, showing awareness of the ubiquity of both narrative and conflict. She
analyses then news as narratives and seeks to uncover the role of translation in the narrations
that emerged. Bori (2008) adopts a narrative perspective, to observe the conceptualization of
conference interpreting training and practice and uses the typology of narrative (see section 2.5.)
that has been developed by Baker. AlHerthani (2009), looks at how Edward Said was
(re)narrated in the Arab World by various types of institutions and mediators. Outside the
context of TS, Tzanne and Archakis (2005) take on a sociodiscursive approach to narrative and
follow up on the construction of identities by analyzing narratives as these come up through
interaction. While much work has thus been carried out in analysing narrativesinaction, either
emphasizing conversational aspects or social contexts that affect interaction (schools, streets etc.)
22
Creating Narratives

yet, much less work can be reported within the second strand of narrative research, the one that
does not look at narrative as storytelling but strives to connect narrative to social representation.

It is against this background then that the research questions have been formulated and
presented below with an aim to delineate the scope of this thesis.

1.2. Research questions and hypothesis

The overarching research question that is taken up in this thesis is:

How can narrative theory, operating within the social

representation paradigm, elucidate the effects of unforced
translation shifts in translated news items?

The overarching research question is also subdivided into several, ensuing questions that will be
addressed, in some way, in this thesis. Namely:

1. What happens exactly when meaning encoded in the ST is delocated and disjoined
from its original environment and forcefully adjusted in and relocated to a new
cultural and institutional milieu, that of the TT?

2. How do Greek newspapers handle texts in translation, meaning how do they decide
to rewrite and reframe political and biomedical meaning(s)?

3. What exactly is the output of the framing strategies enacted and appropriated by
newspapers to renegotiate meaning?

4. What do narratives tell us in relation to the newspapers that host them and give
rise to them in the first place?

5. What is the role and position of news translation visvis globalization?

23
Creating Narratives

The overarching and subordinate research questions have been raised with awareness to the
following:

a) The predominance of narratological and storytelling research approaches in relation to
narrative, and narrative analysis. This predominance has left room for new research
undertakings within territory of social representation (Murrey 2002, Baker 2006b;
Harding 2009);

b) the limited attention awarded to news translation as a product versus a more extended
research thread covering the process of news translation; zooming in on news has been
motivated by a number of reasons; a strong inspiration and incentive behind researching
news translation has been the fact that although, translation in international news flow
seems to be very important within the institutions that handle it in the first place, as
Vuorinen affirms (1995), it has not been dealt adequately by translation or media
scholars. This makes news translation a relatively uncharted territory, open for further
exploration;

c) the interdisciplinary nature of news translation, that allows research to account for the
institutional aspects of language production in general and, translated language
production in particular.

Addressing both the overarching and the subsuming questions requires a) mobilization of various
tools (section 3.4.), b) reflection on the range of translation processes identified (chapters 4 and
5), c) critical gazing of the institutions that undertake news translation (chapter 6) and d)
identification of the unit of analysis and, post hoc a distancing from it coupled with a reflection on
the effects it produces. To respond then to question (1) that scopes out the effects brought about
on meaning I look at the unforced translation shifts that emerge here as useful and meaningful
discursive traces of that transition of meaning or separation from the ST, as evidence of the far
from seamless process of news translation. By looking at unforced translation shifts, I argue, we
can follow up on the meaning buildup in translated texts. Questions (2) and (3) are directly
elicited from the corpus analysis; they are extensively addressed and answered in the bulk of this
research (chapters 4 and 5), where I pay close attention to the strategies that the three
newspapers under study apply to produce the TT. In terms of the output that is raised in question
(3), this is understood and apprehended as narrative(s), as the result of the manipulation of
meaning in translation, as the consequence of framing undertaken by newspapers. Narrative, on
24
Creating Narratives

its part, may either rest on longstanding and stagnant cultural reflections and mirrorings of the
TT culture or may introduce new representations and identities in the TT environment (political
and biomedical). The fourth, subquestion challenges me to rethink the institutional role of
newspapers and draw conclusions on the personality or profile of newspapers as this is
contoured and delineated by the outputs i.e. narratives that are produced. As chapter 4 and 5 will
indicate and chapter 6 will interpret, newspapers are not always pure in their narrative positions
they assume through translated language but rather seem to also share common features. Finally,
question (5) reports back on the relationship between news translation and globalization; while
this question is not a core one and is not directly addressed in chapters 4 and 5, yet it looms large
after observing from a distance the news translation process and product. Answers to this
question and speculations are provided in chapter 7 where I talk about whether news translation
assists or inhibits globalization and globalization practices.

This thesis also rests and is posited on the working hypothesis that sustained crosstextual
analysis of unforced translation shifts in news texts can raise our awareness of how the
discursive accommodation of various themes glossed as news, in the target environment,
can either reflect or give rise to new narratives. This hypothesis has several key theoretical
ingredients; first, it brings forward the issue of translation as a process of recontextualization of
meaning that travels from one environment to a different one (and therefore involves agency and
negotiation of meaning between the triad authortranslatorreceivers). Recontextualization, in
turn, makes translation a highly engaging practice where translators assume a dual discursive
role. On one hand, they need to tap into the social and cultural framework where the ST was
originally generated, and on the other, they recreate the message but in a different environment.
Secondly, it integrates the concept of narrative that threads across this dissertation and
underpins analysis of examples pulled out of the corpus.

As I will discuss in detail in chapter 3, data for the analysis derived from a parallel corpus of
source (English) and target (Greek) texts culled from three Greek newspapers of mass circulation
i.e. I Kathimerini, Ta Nea and To Vima (48,567 words). Texts have been retrieved, classified and
organized in terms of their thematic thread. To this end, two thematically distinct subcorpora
have been designed and analysed; one orbits around the translated articles on President Barack
Obama (political focus), and the other on translated articles on issues of health and science
(biomedical focus). Analysis thinks of and speculates on the motivation behind unforced
translation shifts but also reports back on the impact of these shifts in terms of their discursive
output. More specifically, translation seems to enforce different TT conceptualizations in terms of
25
Creating Narratives

Leadership and Leader identity and functions both as a mirror of cultural representations in terms
of various concepts around politics and as a building block for new political representations and
identities. Moreover, translated biomedical discourse activates, accommodates and promotes
other narrative worlds in relation to two key issues of the human condition and activity i.e. health
and science.

1.3. Contribution of the thesis

This thesis is an original attempt to address the press translation process and product, in the
Greek context, by firmly gripping on narrative as a unit of analysis. The contributions of this
research can be briefly summarized as follows:
(a) in terms of translation studies (TS), this research contributes insights to research
following Bakers introduction of narrative theory in TS. The contribution of this research
in the field of TS bifurcates towards two directions; one towards the discipline itself, as it
brings to the spotlight its interdisciplinary nature in its attempt to map out the various
links and interfaces it establishes with news and newspapers. Secondly, data analysis of
translated shifts unfolds in such a way that calls for a critical rethinking of the
internal/external replay between language and society i.e. interrelationship between
language and the external world (society) showing that the former is both constitutive
and reflective of the latter. In that sense it offers a 'roadmap' to both translators3
operating within the newsmaking industry and journalists who are often challenged with
a news translation task. It also besets the interdisciplinary boundaries of TS and shows
the potential of discipline to effectively assimilate and adopt views and approaches from
other disciplinary programs. Finally, it contributes towards a different, widened
understanding of translation agency moving beyond the concept of intercultural
mediation (Hatim and Mason 1990; Venuti 1992; Connor 1996; Katan 1999) and towards
mediation between narratives, or internarrative mediation (Maan 1999).

(b) In terms of discourse studies this research pushes the boundaries of critical approaches
to language investigation as it develops a model to analyse data (section 3.4.2.) that
integrates critical tools (narratives, framing), outwith those supported and were
3 The translator here is treated as a discursive identity (Hermans 2007) more, rather than a physical entity.
It reflects and relates to the institution i.e. newspaper that claims the translation of the text at issue and not
to the individual behind the working choices in the TT. This issue will be further discussed in chapter 3.
26
Creating Narratives

informed by Critical Discourse Analysis (Fairclough 1993, 1995a; Widdowson 2004;
Blommaert 2005) and crosscultural rhetoric (Sifianou 1992; Connor 1996; House 2002,
2006a). Let me mention here, however that Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) has not
been ignored, nor underplayed in this research as it has been assumed to be elucidating of
the constant interaction between language and ideology pertaining to each of the
newspapers under study (chapter 6).

(c) In terms of media studies, this research stays informed on theories that take account
language use by the media in their quest to advance their socioeconomic and political
agendas (Trew 1979; Fowler 1991; Richardson 2007), gleaning ways to attract reader
attention. It also agrees with Bourdieu (2000) who insightfully talks about a linguistic
exchange established within a particular symbolic relation of power between a producer,
endowed with a certain linguistic capital, and a consumer, and which is capable of
procuring a certain material or symbolic profit (ibid:502). Results from chapters 4 and 5
contribute to an enhanced reading of the socalled mediascape dimension (Cronin,
2003:21) that includes views on how information and information flow shapes and is
shaped by the media and journalism in the modern, globalized sphere. Although press
discourse in the Greek context has been researched (Halkias 2004; Dimitrakopoulou and
Siapera 2005; Politis 2008) yet, with few exceptions (Sidiropoulou 1995,1998a, 2004,
2008a, Kontos and Sidiropoulou 2012), much less work has been done in the field of
translated EnglishGreek news discourse. This research begins to make up for this
deficiency.

(d) In terms of narrative analysis, in this research, I aim to analyse narratives in translated
news and not news as narrative as has been done by other researchers (Harding 2009,
2011). I adopt a narrative approach within the social representation stream of narrative
research, which links language performance with social identity formation and
representation. Analysis here then enjoins news and representation by introducing and
adopting narrative as a unit of analysis. Evidence from the analysis (chapters 4 and 5)
produce results that suggest how translated language is reflecting and constructing
narratives that either bounce back, reverberate and reflect the cultural and social
representations that dominate the TT environment or step out' of the text and construct
target representations and identities anew. Accounting for narrative theory in TS also
supports arguments put forward by scholars (Hermans 2002) who argue for the need in
TS to employ concepts from other fields and develop a selfcritical distance (ibid:20). By
27
Creating Narratives

selfcritical distance is meant that researchers need to continue to pay attention to the
internal language structuring in translated texts without however explaining away that
translated discourse is the output of cognitive and ideological reworkings and produces
specific narrative and discursive effects. To achieve this, researchers need to be able to
both look closely at language and distance themselves from it as the object of inquiry.
Narratives as a tool offer this potential; this thesis commits to diagnose the narrativerich
world of news, to testify that translation, too, is not asymptomatic of narratives and
representations. In this sense, this thesis contributes to the lifting of the burgeoning
concern to look at translation output as a result of translational variation (unforced
translation shifts).

These considerations highlight the contributions of this thesis to the four (4) disciplinary streams
mentioned above, with which it is interconnected and stays in play throughout. Yet, the common
ground, and motivational/methodological positioning of this research, one that threads across all
four disciplinary fields it affects, has been the proferred interconnectedness of translated
language with what lies outside the text, i.e. narratives which in turn are not selfproduced
entities, emerging from nowhere and at will, but rather rest on cultural or social perspectives and
practices. Chapter 7 revisits this section to offer an even more allembracing view of the
contribution of the thesis and significance of findings.

1.4. Overview of chapters

This dissertation consists of seven chapters. Chapter 1 sets the frame for this research and
introduces its main thematic units, perspectives, and aims. It sketches out the general coordinates
within which this research was conducted and briefly outlines the theoretical contours of
thinking behind it. This chapter also poses and presents the overarching research question that is
addressed in this research; this working research question has been effectively supplemented and
supported by other five subordinate yet coequal research questions, all of which have been
answered and occupied a place in this dissertation. Moreover, this chapter discusses the
contributions of this research and acknowledges the common threads that underpin
contributions as well as the separate focus points that infiltrate each of the relevant fields of
analysis.

Chapter 2 is the literature review chapter; it presents the main disciplinary fields which formulate
the theoretical arenas relative to the topic and subtopics analyzed. Analysis spans across key
28
Creating Narratives

issues of media discourse and translation of media discourse. Also, it discusses the role that
Critical Discourse Analysis occupies in this dissertation, acknowledges its centrality in research
that associates language with discourse and ideology, and justifies why it has not been considered
the main analytical tool for the data. At the core of this chapter is the presentation of the Theory
of Narratives, integrating and outlining the typology of narratives and features of narratives. Also
it is there that I present framing, and framing strategies that have been effectively fused into the
model of analysis that I develop and present in chapter 3.

Chapter 3 presents the methodology and corpus design of this research. It details the data
recovery, collection, compilation and design of the subcorpora and the wider corpus from which
the bottomup i.e. (datathesis) architecture of this dissertation came about. It then starts to
close in on the model of analysis (section 3.4.2.) developed to be applied to the data in chapters 4
and 5. The pathway towards the elicitation of the model of analysis begins by explaining how
news information flows from one environment (ST) to the other (TT), i.e. gatekeeping. Then, the
remaining sections present the dominant models of analysis that have emerged and designed for
TS, before zooming in on the model of analysis that has been developed, one that integrates
framing, as a gearbox for microlevel analysis and narrative, as a holistic tool for macrolevel
analysis.

Chapter 4 is a data elaboration and presentation chapter and focuses on translated political news
discourse. It adopts a casestudy approach and chooses to tap into the renarration of President B.
Obama during the 2008 election period. In this chapter the first 13,319word subcorpus is put to
the test to both identify and follow up on the reflection and construction of narratives in the
Greek press regarding Presidentelect Barack Obama. This chapter is mindful in relation to how
translational variation reflects, alters or constructs divergent, and often incongruous, views in
relation to the Leader and the voting mass. The narratives that seem to emerge out of the
unforced translation shifts identified point towards divergent narratives of the TT environment
and ultimately show that renarrations of B. Obama through the Greek press have been based on
either established target narratives or led to the construction of new ones.

Chapter 5 is a data elaboration and presentation chapter and focuses on translated biomedical
news articles. It also chooses to focus on a specific thematic thread, that of biomedical narratives.
It draws on an 11,493word subcorpus and critically investigates the reflection and construction
of health and science narratives i.e. 'stories as these step out of translation shifts in press items.
This chapter problematizes on how translated language rewrites health and science in the Greek
29
Creating Narratives

press and shows that language is being metabolized by specific translational choices which in
turn reflect and construct narratives about health and science that rest on the emotive themes of
fear for the human condition and hope about medical endeavors respectively. Ultimately, the
investigation of this corpus furnished results that show how translated news stories integrate co
articulations of health and science as narrations and counter narrations.

Chapter 6 is a data interpretation chapter; it assumes a critical self distance from the findings
furnished by chapters 4 and 5 and seeks to interpret results by focusing on their meaning in
relation to the newspapers that host them in the first place. The aim of this chapter is to enable an
enlarged reading of narratives, as discursive outputs of unforced translation shifts, through an
alternative lens of newspaper ideology. This chapter profiles the three newspapers that have
been put to the test, pulling insights from the narratives that have been accommodated there. In
this chapter, I reconcile approaches from CDA, and particularly theoretical insights on (de)
legitimization and draw conclusions on newspaper stance seeking correlations with the
narratives produced by each newspaper.

Chapter 7 revisits the research questions and summarizes the findings from previous chapters 4
and 5. Moreover, this chapter disengages from the view of translation as a product that dominates
to the most part chapters 4 and 5, and rethinks news translation as a process in response to
globalization. It recognizes the multiple ways in which news translation can participate in
globalization and argues for the inescapable partiality of the target text. Finally, chapter 7
discusses the limitations of narrative analysis and presents open research problems while also
making reference to other potential new topoi of inquiry.

30
EnglishGreek News CHAPTER 2: Review of Literature
Creating Narratives

CHAPTER 2

Review of literature

2.1. Introduction

This chapter introduces the main theoretical contributions which have informed this dissertation.
It critically presents the theories which have been used, either as a backcloth to the analysis of the
data or, as core theories that do more than just inform this project but rather underpin the entire
analysis. In more concrete terms, this chapter begins by presenting the main theoretical streams
which have influenced this research before closing in on the Theory of Narratives which has been
appropriated, adopted and used to work out a model of analysis to the data (chapters 46). While
the main focus of this chapter is narrative, as a unit of analysis, yet it decides to first describe and
discuss those theoretical principles from the disciplines of Discourse Studies (DS) and Translation
Studies (TS) which have crossfertilized this study and address those aspects of Critical Discourse
Analysis (CDA) that have been pooled in for the interpretation of the data (chapter 6). Ultimately,
this chapter constitutes a theoretically principled account of all theories which have impregnated
this dissertation and integrates all those ingredients which are key to the formulation of a model
of analysis (presented in chapter 3). It avoids conjectural, horizontal and generalized theorizing
on the issue of translation or news discourse and attempts a vertical, indepth zooming in on the
issue of news translation in the Greek press. Here, I speak for the interdisciplinary nature of the
project while attempting to touch upon the theoretical contours of press translation and address
narratives as an explanatory device for what translational output can reflect or construct a new
one.

In terms of organization and structural makeup of this chapter, first section 2.2 is concerned with
the role and instantiation of media discourse; it identifies three dimensions of media discourse
which emerge in this dissertation and have played a role in the interpretation of data. Then
section 2.3. goes on to describe the role of translation in this project showing how the discipline
has grown over the past decades patterning out the course that TS has traced towards allowing
the adoption of the Theory of Narratives. These two streams of analysis explained above, serve as
a valuable context within which press translation can be analyzed. Theories pertaining to these
Creating Narratives

two sections are not considered as core ones in the analysis, but have been rather treated as a
permanent constant and background to the study. Then section 2.4. takes a critical gaze in Critical
Discourse Analysis (CDA), reviews the CDA contributions which impinge on this research and
then handpicks those contributions from the paradigm which have informed the dissertation
before justifying the use of the Theory of Narratives instead of CDA for working out a model of
analysis for translated media texts. Finally, Section 2.5. forms the core section of this chapter; it
presents the Theory of Narratives which has been used to formulate a model of analysis (chapter
3). Apart from explaining the typology of narratives that has been adopted, adjusted and applied
in chapters 4 and 5, it discusses in more detail why this theory has been selected as a core tool for
analysis. Also, it presents the socalled framing strategies (Baker, 2006:106) which have been
used for a microintensive analysis to the data which in turn reveal how translated news language
is not unattached, neutral and random but rather is admittedly laden with impact (s).

2.2. Media discourse

In this section I attempt to circumscribe the general framework within which narratives and
narrative analysis are played out in this dissertation. I argue that, embarking on the analysis of
the narratives that are built in translated news discourse, necessitates above all a reflective
revisiting of themes taking part in news discourse and translated news discourse which hopefully
will assign relevance to the narrative analysis that follows.

Media discourse is a vast area of study that has attracted a lot of scholarly attention. There seem
to be at least seven4 theoretical approaches to the study of media discourse (Bell 1995; Cotter
2001). This dissertation integrates views from the critical approach (Trew 1979; Fowler 1991;
van Dijk 1993; Fairclough 1995a, 1995b;) that looks to uncover the ideological leanings in news
discourse and the cognitive one (van Dijk 1988) that analyzes linguistic features in news
discourse e.g. metaphors in relation to their social or discursive motivation and impact. To a large
extent, media discourse and mass media communication have been researched as a process and
graphically visualized as a sendermessagereceiver communicative loop. However, this rather
selfcontained circle of communication foregrounds the technical side of communicating
4 Namely, a) the critical approach, that looks at ideology and power in texts, b) the stylistic, that highlights
news discourse structure issues, c) the corpuslinguistic, that analyzes news discourse through a corpus, d)
practical one, that emphasises on the production of news, e) the diachronic approach that studies discourse
in newspaper throughout history, f) the sociolinguistic one, that analyzes the relationship between style and
financial factors of newspapers, g) the cognitive one that analyzes cognitive processes such as metaphors.
32
Creating Narratives

messages which is described as decodingencoding (Hall 1980) and leaves out other dimensions
of media language. These will be further elaborated below and revisited in chapters 46.

In terms of the role of language and discourse in newspapers, this dissertation assumes several
starting points that gradually lead to the analysis of translated discourse through the lens of
narratives as forms of representation (section 2.4.). It identifies and describes three (3)
dimensions of media discourse which are then followedup in the data analysis chapters (46).
First, it believes that news language and discourse produced in newspapers is social (Richardson
2007). In the words of Blommaert

[t]here is no such thing as 'nonsocial' language. Any utterance produced by people
will be, for instance, an instance of oral speech, spoken with a particular accented,
gendered, and reflective of age and social position, tied to a particular situation or
domain, and produced in a certain stylistically or generically identifiable format
(2005:1011).

The social dimension awarded to news discourse is putatively intertwined with the ability of
language "first to represent social realities and second to contribute to the production and re
production of social reality and social life" (Richardson, 2007:10). This premise governs the
entire analysis in this dissertation as it assigns to discourse the role of a) 'remembering' and
reflecting social worldviews and b) enacting and constructing new ones. As it will be illustrated
in chapters 4 and 5 these two abilities of news discourse are not impactfree but introduce new
social realities through language. The social dimension of news discourse can be summed up to
what Bell argues that media discourse is important both for what it reveals about a society and
for what it contributes to the character of society (1995:23). As we shall see, this dimension
enacts a social practice which constructs and reflects social meaning understood here both as a
process and not simply a product (Lemke 1995; Hodge and Kress 1996). This social precept of
news discourse gains significance through narrative analysis as it is narrative, this dissertation
argues, that can effectively offer a highlighted understanding of the interdependence and co
construction between news language and reality (Moscovici and Markova 1998).

The two data presentation chapters as well as the accompanying data interpretation chapter call
attention to the social dimension of news language as both in the political sample corpus and in
the biomedical one unforced translation shifts bring about and package social representations
that link up the delivery of language with the target societal representations. These are mainly
33
Creating Narratives

associated with representations that emerge in conjunction with Leadership and the Leader or
with the role of scientists and scientific research in the target environment.

Secondly, it believes that news language is institutional; this second dimension betokens an
embeddedness of language in a specific format, textual space and socioeconomic habitat that
accommodates it, gears it and gives it valence. The inferences then that are deducted from textual
evidence and are associated to this dimension link up (chapter 6) with translational choices of the
newspapers that claim them. Whereas the social dimension of news discourse challenges our
understanding of the social positions that newspapers assume, the institutional one argues that
news discourse cannot eschew the institutional confines and trajectories that sustain it in the first
place; this institutional dimension is evidenced in the language that newspapers appropriate and
advance to describe events or participants. News language then is not an object in absentia but is
rather correlated with and dependent on its context, the newspaper itself, as a medium of hosting
events and opinions. As Trew explains

the newspaper is not a selfcontained institution, but a site at which the view of various
combinations of social forces and practices are articulated, an organ which different
degrees of access to and different degrees of influence or control in the determination of
the terms in which information is formulated and social reality represented (1979:140).

The institutional dimension of news discourse also offers an interpretative framework for the
elusive notion of context5, the importance of which has not been ignored by translation scholars.
As Baker underlines, "the notion of context has been extensively invoked but rarely critiqued and
elaborated in the study of translation and interpreting (2006a:321). Furthermore, House
(2006b) discusses in detail the notion of context and text in translation, distinguishes between
context in oral situations and written ones and evaluates the different approaches to context
before exploring its role in translation as static in nature rather than dynamic, as is the case with
ongoing verbal communication where meaning is constantly renegotiated. She concludes then
that

translation is an act of performance, of language use, and it may well be
conceptualized as a process of recontextualization, because in translating, stretches of
5
Context has been the point of analysis in various disciplines spanning from philosophy with main contributors the
German philosophers Gadamer and Wittgenstein to psychology (Sperber & Wilson 1986) and infiltrating fields such as
pragmatics (Levinson 1983), conversation analysis (Goffman 1981) and frame analysis (1986).
34
Creating Narratives

language are not only given a new shape in a new language, but are also taken out of
their earlier, original context and placed in a new context, with different values
assigned to communicative conventions, genres, readers expectation norms, etc.
(ibid: 343).

In this dissertation, context is accounted for as a set of situations that influence the target text
production and product. It has two possible ways of interpretation; first context is treated as the
textual information that surrounds the immediate source text chunk that is about to undergo
translation, i.e. the cotext (Melby and Foster, 2010: 2). Then, context is treated in terms of its
institutional setting; this means that translated news discourse is always constructed and enacted
from and for a newspaper which in turn is built in a specific social, economic and cultural
environment. Context therefore is also institutional.

Thirdly, news language is cultural; the cultural embeddedness of news language dominates the
analysis of both the political sample corpus (chapter 4) and the biomedical one (chapter 5). In
parallel to the social and institutional dimension of news discourse, the cultural dimension
unfolds as it offers possible pathways for interpreting how narratives work in relation to culture
i.e. reflecting and gazing back on cultural preferences as these have been established in the TT.
As I content in chapters 4 and 5, translated press items are culturallysensitive and culturally
thick products since data analysis foregrounds that the cultural component of news language
discloses cultural and collective representations and identities that are claimed by the
newspapers and authored by that target text culture. On this view, the target cultural
environment is always present in translation as without it the TT would only be partial or
unfinished. The cultural dimension then offers a sound explanatory framework within which the
unforced translation shifts have identified, evaluated and interpreted in the two subcorpora.
Cultural preferences that dominate the target text environment and are discernible through
crosstextual analysis are for example, uncertainty avoidance (Hofstede and Bond 1984; Hofstede
and Hofstede 2005) and collectiveness (Hofstede 1980; PapaefthymiouLytra 1996) that also
links up to authoritative group action; these have been particularly identified in the political sub
corpus. Within the framework of mediated production of discourse, culturespecificity emerges in
the analysis of data as an important aspect. Obviously, the cultural dimension suggests that there
is an implicit assumption that the recipients for whom the interactants design their discourse are
counterfactually conceived of as a culturally homogeneous audience (Fetzer and Lauerbach,
2007:3).

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Creating Narratives

The cultural dimension also addresses the issue of what repertoire of cultural representations is
enacted by each newspaper and how each newspaper participates in building up discourse within
a culture which in turn is interwoven with narratives assigning these a sense of centrality in our
lives (Shenhav, 2005: 76). This dissertation draws on the concept of the translator as mediator,
as this has emerged in TS literature (Hatim and Mason 1990) after the socalled cultural turn in
the discipline in the early 90s initiated by Bassnett and Lefevere (1990); this turn put under the
spotlight traditional views of translators as mere linguistic brokers and gradually awarded them
the identity of cultural mediators (Hatim and Mason, 1990: 223224) and of intercultural
experts (Baker, 1998:9). The prominent position awarded to culture in TS, during the 90s, was
also present in other 'neighbouring disciplines such as intercultural rhetoric (Connor 1996)
which contributed to the interaction and exchange between cultural systems moving away from
the binary and manichaeistic views of culture that the term crosscultural' implied.

These social, institutional, and cultural dimensions of news discourse penetrate and inform a
fourth one that believes that language use is always active; it is always directed in doing
something (Richardson, 2007:12, emphasis in original). This assumption means that language is
never flat and it can never have zeroeffects; it rather has the power to mobilize or neutralize
people, to reinforce or weaken beliefs and legitimize or delegitimize opinions. Chapters 4, 5 reveal
the strong connection of media language to the social and cultural dimensions while chapter 6
addresses the institutional dimension. These overarching assumptions about news language in
general can be addressed in translated discourse, while translation shifts foreground the
instantiations of these assumptions in Greek newspapers.

2.3. Translation and news discourse

Apart from news discourse, the role of translation in news and media has also attracted scholarly
attention and here, too, research has spearheaded to different theoretical threads. For example,
some scholars (Cronin 2003; Pym 2004; Bassnett 2005; Bielsa and Bassnett 2009) have looked
into the general dynamics that govern the international news distribution while others (Vuorinen
1995, 1996; Hursti 2001) have paid more close attention to gatekeeping functions in the
translation of global news acrossinstitutions which will be further elaborated in chapter 3. While
Vuorinen (1995) and Orengo (2004) have attempted to show that news translation challenges the
classical definitions of ST and TT, Valden (2005; 2007a; 2007b) proceeds to an analysis of
English and Spanish news headlines and examines the translation strategies used across
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Creating Narratives

languages and newspapers. Work by Valden (2007b) has been particularly insightful in this
research as he too makes use of Bakers framing (2006b) strategies to explain the
entextualization6 (Bauman and Briggs 1990) of news in translation from English into Spanish
without though assigning any narrative meaning to the results, as this research attempts to do. On
her part, Bassnett (2005) has investigated strategies of acculturation and foreignization in news
translation and has underlined the importance of examining the power relations that emerge
through the translation of diverse contexts.

Nonetheless, merely describing the abovementioned streams in translation research would be a
wrongheaded path here as what is also of importance is the role of these streams in reshaping
and reformulating the scope of the discipline itself. I argue then that by explaining in brief the
course that the discipline has traced in the past decades it will become clear that TS has gradually
abandoned the strict confines of linguistics and text linguistics and has become more versatile,
which in turn allowed scholars to internalize and use streams of research from other disciplines
that at first glance would seem uncorrelatable. Ultimately, this description emerges as a valuable
framework to better grasp the inclusionary nature of the discipline itself that (as I understand it)
has been valuable in making room for narrative research within TS.

In large measure, while, during the 80s, TS has been greatly under the influence of classic
linguistics and remained focused on notions of equivalence, during the 90s there was a shift away
from the meticulous comparison of grammatical and syntactical structures. This led to a widening
of scope in the field, which although it did not jettison previous theoretical streams. yet it factored
in concepts such as culture (Bassnett and Lefevere 1990), functions in translation (Nord 1997)
and discourse (Hatim and Mason 1990) and ideology (Mason 1992; Munday 2007) and later, even
more fluid notions of context (House 2006; Baker 2006a) and power (Gentzler and Tymoczko
2002) have been filtered in by the discipline. This widening of scope has also led to a shift from
sourcetext oriented approaches towards targettext oriented ones (Toury 1995; Gentzler 2001),
which in turn implies a direct shift of emphasis from the motivations behind a translation decision
and a translation shift towards the effects of that shift to the newly created target text.
Furthermore, Baker in her recent work Translation and Conflict (2006b) rigorously examines the
relation between power, translation and conflict while showing that translators are indeed placed
within sensitive political and textual contexts. She has also pinpointed, amongst others, the
6 The working idea behind entextualization (Bauman & Briggs 1990; Silverstein & Urban 1996; Urban 1996) is that it
concerns the process of lifting a text out of one discursive environment and repositioning it, and in this sense
recontextualizing it, in a different one. In this research entextualization is primarily applicable as a concept in the
biomedical sample corpus.
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Creating Narratives

interrelation between translation and the creation of conflicting narratives. Furthering on the role
of translation in this project, the latter is treated as multisemiotic in nature; this multisemiosis
entails awareness that meaning is not solely encoded in language. As Kress (2003) underlines, we
live in a multimodal society which makes meaning through the codeployment of a combination of
semiotic resources. These resources can be visual or not, they can accompany the message itself
or they can relate to it (and thus invoke meaning in the minds of readers); they can be gestures,
sounds or a combination of both. Examples pulled out of the corpora and illustrated indicate that
translated meaning is also reflected and constructed through the appropriation of variant images.
Hence, the pattern that the discipline has followed over the years has the following features:

a) gradual appropriation and integration of concepts which are not necessary obviously
available in a finite text but come to play a great deal in shaping the target one,
b) gradual moving away from the strict confines of lexical, grammatical and syntactical
differences and towards more fluid notions that do not strictly pertain to one or the other
disciplinary field7.

This theoretical patterning of TS approaches can be graphically illustrated as follows in figure 1
below. As depicted, the discipline has gradually internalized more fluid concepts and notions
something that permits us to deduct valuable conclusions for the crossdisciplinary capacity of
the discipline as it matures without misperceiving or ignoring the individual approaches that
have informed it and enriched it in the first place.

Figure 1: Trends in TS during the past decades

7 The theoretical pathway that TS has traced is one that moves away from the specific approaches and towards more
general or fluid ones; thus it is attracted by postmodernism which attacks binary dichotomies and draws more on the
importance of the social construction of reality on the basis of language and power. The view adopted in this
dissertation is that, within the framework of TS, analysis of the macro i.e. fluid notions of such as context and ideology
needs to be based on and draw on microlevel textual configurations and lexical choices retrieved after sustained cross
textual analysis.
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Creating Narratives

In extension, the position I assume in this dissertation towards TS is an integrative one as I
neither dethrone nor overprioritize one or the other approach; rather, I attempt to synthesize the
contributing elements from the diverse streams depicted above in my attempt to show the
relationships that translated language develops and harbors with reality and with the different
social and cultural dimensions of that. The organizing unit of analysis behind this attempt is
narrative which I analyze and expand on in section 2.5. below.

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Creating Narratives

2.4. On Critical Discourse Analysis

While the previous sections have focused on presenting issues that relate to the role of discourse
and translation in the media, this one reflects on the role of Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) in
the translation of news items. CDA can be considered as the theoretical tool that links ideology,
language and the media and basically claims that language is not simply a transparent medium of
communication about the objective world, but a constantly operative part of the social process
(Malkmkjaer, 1991:89). This section starts out with a brief recording of the principles of the CDA
along with criticisms voiced and then zooms in on its role in translation and in this project in
particular. The aim of this section is to explain the position that this research assumes towards
CDA, comment on the thrust of it within TS and argue for its role in this project which ultimately
chooses to draw on Narrative Theory.
One of the main constituent ingredients that make up CDA in the first place is 'discourse and
discourse analysis' (DA). The wide spectrum of methodological applications in the field of DA has
been attested (Wodak 2001; Wodak and Meyer 2001; Blommaert 2005) while definitions
awarded to the term discourse have been so many that Widdowson suggests that 'discourse' has
been used so widely across the social sciences that it no longer has any definable meaning" (1995:
169). Still, as the scope of this section limits only to a brief account of the origins and evolution of
CDA, it adopts a general working definition of the term discourse, in the sense that Foucault
(1971) uses the term to refer to systematically organized and ordered sets of statements that give
expression to the meanings and values of an institution. The fact that discourse has been
operative as a term in various working fields such as literary analysis, philosophy, sociology,
linguistics etc. leads to what Blommaert calls a rediscovery of a radically different parallel
stream of conceptions of language and analytical tools for analysing them that led to more mature
approaches to discourse (2005:3). Conclusivelly, this openness of the term to various theoretical
arenas has opened the floor for a more legitimized approach to the objects under investigation.

Concentrating on Discourse Analysis, Schiffrin (1994) attempted to showcase that there are two
major trends in DA; one that sees discourse as a "a unit of language 'above' (larger or more
extended than) the sentence (Richardson, 2007:22). This approach looks at "the form which
language takes and specifically how discourse attains the quality of being unified and meaningful
(ibid), it has therefore been called formalist or structuralist approach (Richardson 2007). The
second approach to DA is the socalled functionalist approach (Schiffrin, 1994:23) which
integrates the social aspects of linguistic production and the social ideas that affect the
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Creating Narratives

interpretation of messages. Functionalists view hence language as doing something (Brown and
Yule 1983). In turn, CDA "represents a growing body of work that adopts the functionalist
definition of discourse" (Richardson, 2007:26).

The approaches that CDA has encompassed are diverse and topics elaborated through the lens of
CDA, numerous. As Blommaert (2005) notes, the domains on which CDApractitioners have
focused vary from a) political discourse that analyzes discourse of politicians (Wodak 1989;
Chilton and Schffner 1997; Chilton 2004), b) ideology that supports discourse as harboring
ideologies (van Dijk 1998a), c) racism as an distinct ideological area (van Dijk 1991a, Wodak
2008), d) promotional culture and advertisements (Fairclough, 1995a), e) media discourse
(Fairclough 1995b; Bell and Garrett 1998) and, f) education that looked at as an area where social
relations are reproduced (Chouliaraki 1998). Although the approaches to CDA are
methodologically diverse and interdisciplinary, yet they all share the conclusion of what
Blommaert notes, i.e. that little by little, old wellestablished concepts and viewpoints from
linguistics were traded for more dynamic, flexible and activitycentered concepts and viewpoints
(2005: 3).

Drawing briefly on the CDA methodologies again there seems to be a vast array of different
methods applied. In general, CDA scholars agree on handpicking' methodologies as Fairclough
and Wodak (1997: 27180) argue, there are many types of critical discourse analysis and what
applies for conversational discourse may not apply for the discourse of news reports or other
discursive acts. In their inspiring book Methods of Critical Discourse Analysis, (2001) Wodak and
Meyer further orient the applicability of Critical Discourse Analysis and provide a sketch of the
toolbox of critical discourse analysis. This offers a practical perspective to critical discourse
analysis, in the sense that it can be used as a guideline for drafting a critical discourse analysis
method. Wodak and Meyer (ibid) go on to support that discourseanalytical methods should
"entail selection of the 'object' to be investigated, justification of the method and research
pragmatic suggestions to avoid short cuts and simplifications" (2001: 52). This means that one of
the first steps of the critical discourse analysis research needs to identify the object of
investigation.

More specifically, Wodak (2001) develops a discoursehistorical method and traces the history of
arguments and phrases. The corpus linguistic method (Mautner 2005) offers quantitative insights
to CDA; also there is the sociocognitive method with van Dijk (1993, 1995, 1998b) being the
prolific contributor thereof. This method approaches discourse as being constructed by society
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Creating Narratives

and cognition and draws on a sociopsychological dimension where the concept of representation
plays a key role. In his analysis, the triangle of cognition, society, and discourse holds a key
position. Moreover, there is the social actors method (Van Leeuwen 1996, 2007) where discursive
relationships are analyzed from the lens of the positioning of discursive participants. Finally, a
key methodology in CDA is Fairclough's (1992) threedimensional approach where he views
discourse analysis as analysis of the textual dimension, the discursive and the societal one. In
sketching out this method, Fairclough defines every discursive event as being simultaneously a
piece of text, an instance of discursive practice and an instance of social practice (1992:4). The
framing of discourseastext relates to the overall organization of discourse by means of linguistic
resources; to this instance Fairclough (1992) makes reference to the need to take into
consideration the specifics of discourse i.e. vocabulary, structure, cohesion and grammar. The
second dimension discourseasdiscursivepractice means that texts are produced and consumed
within a discursive practice. This dimension then looks at those discursive features that link
language to a wider context i.e. cohesion, coherence, intertextuality. The third dimension
discourseassocialpractice looks at the ideological effects that discourse imposes on texts. This
three dimensional approach brings about a methodological consideration that impregnates the
entire CDA approach i.e. the progression from description, to interpretation, to explanation
(ibid:26). As a concluding remark on CDA methodologies, it seems that to a large extent Critical
Discourse Analysis draws on criticaldialectical approaches. In their work, CDA practitioners
apply methodological interdisciplinarity in intratextual, intertextual and extratextual contexts
(Wodak, 2001: 6768). Still, perhaps the key element at this point is that CDA is not a theory on its
own but rather uses and pulls in theories according to the type of investigation the researcher
undertakes.

The main principles that govern the CDA paradigm as these emerge out of researchers (van Dijk
1993, CaldasCoulthard and Coulthard 1996; Fairclough 1995a) are:

a) language establishes a dialogue between micromacro relations in the analysis of discourse. This
means that CDA is a theoretical tool that critically relates discourse, cognition, and society and can
be used as a bridge between micro and macro perspectives to language, society, texts and power.
This micromacro distinction is supported by van Dijk who mentions that [l]anguage use,
discourse, verbal interaction, and communication belong to the micro level of the social order.
Power, dominance, and inequality between social groups are typically terms that belong to a
macrolevel of analysis (1993: 251),

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Creating Narratives

b) CDAdriven analysis emphasizes how language performs; with CDA the problematization lies
then both with how language, why it is expressed in such a way and what effects it has. Issues
under investigation concern, amongst others, political positioning through language, power issues
and inequality issues expressed through language, gender manifestation in language, identity,
hegemony etc.,

c) CDAdriven analysis unabashedly calls for a deep understanding and analysis of the intricate
relationships among discourse, ideology, and media, defining ideology as the basis of the social
representations shared by members of a group (van Dijk, 1998a: 8),

d) CDAdriven analysis posits that there are no linguistic features that are not purposeful
regardless of whether or not the choices are conscious or unconscious,

e) CDA serves a demystifying function . . . by demonstrating the silent and often nondeliberate
ways in which rhetoric conceals as much as it reveals through its relationship
with power/knowledge (McKerrow 1989:92, emphasis added).

In terms of media and news language this is a field where CDA has been rigorously applied in the
past years. Bell and Garrett note that CDA has produced the majority of research into media
discourse during the 1980s and 1990s, and has arguably become the standard framework for
studying media texts within European linguistics and discourse studies" (1998:6). Moreover, Van
Dijks (1988) analysis has been key to shed light to the linguistic performance in the media. The
incontestable effect and power exercised by the media render research on the domain one of the
most prominent ones. Press discourse investigated through the paradigm of CDA can be as Van
Dijk points out biased (1993: 249) since it encourages us to pay more attention to 'topdown'
relations of dominance than to bottomup' relations of resistance, compliance and acceptance
(ibid).

While the previous sections attempted to present CDA analysis and its role in translation this
section critically talks about the application of CDA in this project, draws attention to certain
methodological problems that emerge out of the CDA paradigm and discusses both those aspects
of CDA which offer support in this project and those which pushed research towards the
appropriation of the Theory of Narratives for the formulation of a model of analysis to the data
(section 3.4.2.).

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Creating Narratives

The CDA endeavour however has not been without doubts. Cogent criticism has been raised by
scholars (Widdowson 1995, 2004; Stubbs 1997) who take a methodological distance from CDA
and put forward questions in regards to the nucleus of the theory. The first strand of criticism
that has been built around CDA relates to quantitative and qualitative aspects of research.
Specifically, doubts have been voiced in regards to whether CDA does actually provide a full,
quantitative analysis of the data investigated. This criticism is propelled by the fact that CDA is an
"essentially qualitative paradigm (Mautner, 2005:815) and not a quantitative one and therefore
findings are not measured against frequency (although quantitative work may prove particularly
useful for revealing patterns in language) but against quality. Stubbs (1997) also claims that CDA,
in most cases, avoids thorough coverage of data, and selects evidence that best suits the argument
put forward. On his part Widdowson (1995, 2004) builds a case against CDA as being biased since
it examines texts/structures that are expected' to yield the anticipated ideologicallyloaded
results. Moreover, McKenna (2004) critically reviews the CDA paradigm and builds a case for
interdisciplinary research to push the theoretical contours of the theory forward. Yet, a critical
question looms large in relation to the application of CDA practices in TS projects; as Mason says
projects that fall under the TS territory "might be accused of this failing since there are, of course,
some counterexamples in the texts which go against the general trend (1994:32), and continues
[s]o are we just cherrypicking evidence to suit our case? (ibid). How can a TS project then that
depends on STTT juxtaposition and feeds on translation shifts can come up with solid, reliable
results? One way as suggested by Mason would be to "provide a full, quantitative analysis of shifts
(and nonshifts) in the translation. The results that would emerge from such a study, however,
would tell us very little about what is going on and might even prove misleading (ibid). The
inherent problem in this case would be that the frequency of occurrence alone would not
necessarily paint a reliable picture in terms of significance, as a shift with less rate of frequency
may 'speak louder' than shifts that persistently reoccur. In that sense, along with patterns of
differences, research would need to measure up patterns of sameness. This has been attested by
van LeuvenZwart who believes that the macrostructural impact of shifts depends not upon
their quantity but upon their quality or significance (1990:88).

The second strand of CDAspurred criticism relates to the key claim of CDA that discourses are
both socially shaped and socially constitutive (Fairclough, 1995a:131, emphasis added) which as
Mason expounds is often asserted but has not as yet been empirically substantiated (1994:33).
Much of the CDA contributions have been based on the interrelationship between language and
society between discursive practice and social effects. This leads to a rather problematic view in
which the "pendulum has swung too far" (1994:126). If we accept to the full the premise of CDA
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Creating Narratives

on the social shaping of discourses then we also find a sociallymotivated justification for
linguistic choices and hence (translation shifts). However, in the case of translation, as noted
before, this is not easily identifiable nor is it easily testable. The difficulty being that translated
discourse largely subsumes a transformative act that inevitably and rightly so integrates various
elements such as "language, culture, and the relationships between different peoples, different
identities, and even different points in times and space" (Arrojo, 1998:44). It is exactly this
multileveled dialogue that is established and played upon the target news text that demands
particular attention as to the extent that a TSoriented project can adopt a purely CDA
perspective. The key tenet of demystification (see section 2.4. above) that holds a key position
within CDA takes a rather mindboggling turn when applied to TS. This happens because issues
of mediation and conscious or unconscious decisionmaking are always present in translation and
can cause 'interferences' in the attempt to decipher what lies below translated discourse.

Finally, the third point around which CDA criticism has evolved relates to the assigning of
meaning(s) to texts. As pointed out by Widdowson the linguist, as a thirdperson observer, may
examine the cotextual features of a text and adduce various contextual correlates as relevant to
the projection of pragmatic meaning. But what is relevant to such analysis is not necessarily
relevant to the user (2004: 7576). This critique against CDA targets directly the principle of CDA
for unmasking the ideological positions in discourse, as what a discourse analyst may deduce and
understand by analyzing a text will most probably be much different from what the reader
interprets out of it. Mason (2008) who draws attention to the insights that TS could gain by
focusing or aspects of reader response8 as far as the reception of a translationallyconstructed
message, points to issues of authority on behalf of the critical discourse analysts by means of
which they attribute meanings to texts and hypothesize on the received meanings to readers.

2.4.1. On critical discourse analysis and translation

As discussed above, discourse and discourse analysis has been taken up by a number of
disciplines, translation being one of them. The critical approach on translation has been
showcased by researchers such as Olk who mentions that translation has come to be
investigated increasingly from critical perspectives with various studies highlighting the
translators mediating involvement in the construction of particular discourses (2002:101). On
8
One way to perform such an investigation is to look at reader letters to the newspaper commenting on articles. Also,
potentially interesting would be to take the translator as a sample of 'the first reader of the source text' and look at
his/her interpretations of the meanings embedded in the news texts. Still, in this case, in my opinion, attention should
be paid as translators are not typical readers of the texts they are about to translate.
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Creating Narratives

her part, in relation to translation, Brownlie argues that in comparison to the socalled
"committed approaches"9 (2003:61) the critical descriptive approach has a greater potential for
questioning presuppositions than have other approaches since they tend to import their agendas
from other disciplines (ibid). Apart from translation scholars, CDAadvocates themselves fuse
linguistic and critical theory definitions of the term and focus on "not just describing discursive
practices, but also showing how discourse is shaped by relations of power and ideologies, and the
constructive effects discourse has upon social identities, neither of which is normally apparent to
discourse participants" (Fairclough, 1992:12). They also argue that all language use, including
translation, is ideological and this means that translation is always a site for ideological
encounters. It was however the need to successfully cover ideological aspects of media discourse
that geared theory towards the development of Critical Discourse Analysis whose primary aim is
to expose the ideological forces that underlie communicative exchanges [like translating]
(CalzadaPrez, 2003: 2).

What is of interest here then is the role that CDA can assume in TS and in a crosstextual
translation project as this one. Translation is a practice that persistently demands an active and
ongoing established relationship both with the source text and the target one; this relationship
can never be ignored, overlooked and lost during the translation process as it would affect the
translation product itself. As Valden (2007b) maintains, analysis of the discourse of translation
resides in both the primary and secondary discourses understood as source texts (ST)s and
target texts (TT)s (2007b:100). Target texts are then for Valden secondary texts in the sense
that they are not created from scratch but are rather deeply grounded in the meaning intended by
the ST, from which they cannot escape, and in that sense constantly interact with the latter. The
idea of translation as a form of secondary discourse or communication has seeped into the
discipline by other scholars who have described the translated text as a metatext (Hermans,
2007:68) as it reports on other texts rather than speaking directly about the world (ibid). Along
the same interpretative lines Chesterman talks about translation as a performance of relevant
resemblance (1996:160) and explains how the translated text cannot disengage from its parent
text. If translation then is bounded by the source text, and if it is doomed to come to life only after
its preceding source equivalent then how can pure CDAoriented analysis can take place? What I
argue here is that the interaction between the source and target text, and the attachment of the
target text to its parent source one is what calls for a more careful application of CDA in the sense
that certain linguistic choices made by the translator may be fully justifiable by that
9 i.e. feminist approach or postcolonial one.
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Creating Narratives

aforementioned interaction and attachment. The demystifying hence principle and tenet
mentioned above takes a different turn when applied in translated i.e. secondary (ibid) texts as
it has to factor in the parameter of mediation by the translator/newspaper.

How does this project in specific then reconcile approaches and criticisms mentioned above and
what stance does it assume visvis CDA? The answer lies in the nature of the project itself and in
the fact that research in institutional discourse (translation news discourse in this case) cannot
explain away CDA that has consistently evolved around interpreting discourse in institutional
settings. This project agrees with Baker and Gabrielatos (2008) who propose an integrative
combination of methodologies traditionally associated with corpus linguistics (ibid:273) and
who understand CDA as a way of doing discourse analysis from a critical perspective (ibid). CDA
is ultimately viewed here not as a solid theoretical tool of analysis but rather works as a
theoretical umbrella under which narrativeinduced findings can be interepreted, associated and
crossreferenced to their institutional habitat. The appropriation, moreover, of the Theory of
Narratives to analyze the data does not intend to make up for any infelicities of CDA but rather to
attempt to provide a more holististic view of the so called identityterrain (Somers and Gibson,
1994:38). Acknowledging, at the same time, that narratives live and emerge in an institutional
setting such as that of a newspaper, overwhelmingly attracts, rather than marginalizes, CDA
motivated interpretation of the data. Above all, CDA prods and postulates the links between
institutions and language production, relationship that will be further crystallized in chapter 6
where narratives are given relevance as institutional choices. Therefore, it is precisely to that
extent that narratives are used here to locate and interpret the representations and identities
(individual or collective) either in the political domain (chapter 4) or in the domain of science and
health chapter (5). The institutional then dimension discussed above in section 2.2. endows
narratives with intention and makes them meaningful in relation to the socioeconomic agendas of
the same newspapers that host them. It is exactly here that, as I argue, CDA analysis can find its
position in this project and help us understand the motivation behind unforced translation shifts
and attribute ideological valence to narratives at issue. While analysis of translated news items
proceeds along the steps of narrative analysis, and in this sense the model formulated for
analyzing the data gleans elements from the Theory of Narratives, the resulting interpretation of
the results that follows in chapter 6 uses the CDAfavoured concepts of (de)legitimization
(Martin Rojo and Van Dijk 1997; Chilton 2004; Cap 2006, 2008) to attribute an institutional value
to the narratives that have emerged from the analysis. As I claim in section 6.3.2. a narrative
connection is established in newspapers that translate press items, one that uses narratives to
(de)legitimize (Chilton 2004; Cap 2006, 2008) agendas, concepts and persons that are about to
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Creating Narratives

enter and check in the target environment. In Caps view (2006) legitimization is definable as a
type of linguistic enactment of the speakers right to be obeyed. Legimitizing then means giving
credit to an event/speaker etc. Legitimization has been also employed for aligning readers with
the acceptable moral system (Chilton 2004) thus highlighting what is generally acceptable.
Through (de)legitimization, institutions via discourse may either steer news readers closer to the
narrated event (legitimization) or distance them from it (delegitimization). In section 6.3.2., I
argue for the link between narratives, particularly public one, that emerge in the target
newspapers and the attempt put forward by newspapers to legitimize i.e. render acceptable, in
the minds of target text readers the stories (political and biomedical) they promote.

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Creating Narratives

2.5. On narratives

This section constitutes the theoretical core of this chapter as it sets out the theoretical backcloth
for the analysis of the data. In particular, it presents the Theory of Narratives which has been used
to formulate a model of analysis to the data (section 3.4.2.) and discusses how framing
strategies (Baker 2006b; Valden 2007b) have been integrated in the model to shed light to the
instantiation of microlevel unforced translation shifts which have been identified in the two sub
corpora. As I argue, narrative analysis needs to be grasped and understood together with the
analytical tools that make it possible in the first place. This means that narrative, as it will be
shown, is largely a tool for interpreting meaning and lacks as Baker notes (2006b) the tools for
conducting textual analysis; framing comes in to fill that gap. As analysis will clearly illustrate
then in chapters 4 and 5, in translating news stories, newspapers, make use of patterns for
framing such as selective appropriation, labelling, and repositioning of participants (ibid) to re
narrate the events and/or participants referenced in the source texts. Yet, as this section is key to
the understanding of narrative as a concept, unit of analysis and new intellectual approach for
analyzing translations, it unfolds in such a way as to offer a broad and extended view of narrative
along with the analytical vocabulary that makes it up. It starts by briefly sketching out the
historical grounding of narrative (2.5.1.) before discussing and crystallizing the Theory of
Narratives within the analytical territory of social representation, (Bruner 1991; Somers and
Gibson 1994; Murrey, 2002; Baker 2005, 2006b; Lszl 2008; Harding 2009). It then continues by
illustrating the typology (2.5.2.) the key features of the theory (2.5.2.1.) that give it a vocabulary
and presents framing and framing strategies (2.5.2.2.) as a primary analytical tool developed
along the lines of this project. In this section I also explain why and how this dissertation has
adopted a narrative perspective to the data in chapters 4 and 5 before I develop and present the
model of analysis (chapter 3).

2.5.1. History to Narrative Analysis

Attempting to briefly track down the historical roots and development of narrative analysis the
latter along with narrative research has seen a great rise during the past two decades in fields
like psychology, linguistics, health studies, law, media, journalism etc. This growing interest in
narrative research has developed in parallel with the realization that it can be applied to modes of
communication other than literature and poetry. First, within the confines of literary theory the
Russian narratologist Propp publishes in 1928 a narrative analysis of folk tales with a purpose to
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Creating Narratives

find a common underlying structure or pattern in the tales. The work of the Prague School and the
French structuralists such as Barthes and LviStrauss continued in this tradition. It was Roland
Barthes (1977) acknowledgement that narratives feature a universality that transcends the
confines of history and culture that gave different turn to narrative inquiry. Chatman (1969) also
shows that narratives form semiotic structures that have meaning in and of themselves. Chatman
(ibid) goes on and makes a separation of narrative discourse into narrative form. An interesting
perspective to the narratives is sketched out by the French literary theorist Genette who, in his
book Narrative Discourse, attempts to define narrative and concludes that (1) the story is the
signified or narrative content described, (2) the narrative is the signifier or form of the narrative
discourse itself, and (3) the narrating is the "producing act." (1980:3). The narrative is seen as
storytelling where the parameters of voice, mode, and tense are critical in distinguishing, as
Genette (ibid) notes, who sees and who speaks10. This distinction ultimately raises the
question of the authority, i.e. the voice, behind the narrative while in many cases narratives are
hybrid compounds incorporating more than one voices of narration.

Before the early 80s, approaches to narrative(s) have largely focused on the way that stories are
plotted in and by language. This clock or chronological approach to narrative analysis that
focuses on the temporal and other relations that are deployed in storytelling started though,
during the eighties, to attract and spur discontent by those who have been occupied with the
burden of linking language with social representations (Moscovici 1984; Moscovici and Merkova
1998; Murrey 2002). In essence, the storytellingdriven approaches were accused for being
largely asocial and acultural (Murrey 2002). It is then during the 80s and 90s that narrative is
looked through the lens of social representations and narrative psychology11 (Murrey 1997;
Sabrin 1986) and it is through these approaches that narrative ceases to be a phenomenon owned
by the individual teller (person or institution) and gains collective currency. Consequently,
narrative research crossfertilizes disciplines and gains new thrust. The turn towards narrativity
that rests within the confines of social theory has been particularly motivated by the special issue
of Critical Inquiry in 1980, which was the outcome of a symposium held at the University of
Chicago in 1979 which came to explore narrative in social and psychological formations,
10 In linguistic terms this distinction can become evident via reported speech" i.e. direct speech and
transposed speech (indirect speech) where the narrator adheres as closely as possible to the words of the
character under narration. Fairclough (2003) has also made reference to the implications and ideological
intricacies of direct and indirect speech.
11 Narrative psychology refers to the approach of cognitive psychology that is interested in the "storied
nature of human conduct" (Sarbin 1986). Although narrative psychology begins by drawing results from
human narrative as storytelling, gradually researchers begin to show interest in the social representations,
attitudes and identities that are constructed out of storytelling.
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Creating Narratives

particularly in structures of value and cognition (Mitchell, 1981:vii). This is a turning point in the
field since it guides research outside the confines of aesthetics and stylistics of literature and
fiction. This turn represents a paradigm shift (Harding, 2009:20) as narrative started to be
understood as not only representing reality but also constructing it. A vital link is slowly
established between language and its output, and narratives looked through the social
representation theory (Somers 1994; Somers and Gibson 1994; Murray 2002) comes to
reinforced it.

Even though narratologists continue to find theoretical foundations in the traditions which have
informed the discipline for years, during the past two decades there has been an interpretative
turn in narrative analysis which looks now at how protagonists interpret things (Bruner,
1991:51). Anything that tells or presents a story, be it by text, picture, performance, or a
combination of these, is a narrative or as the cultural theorist Bal mentions a cultural artefact
that tells a story (1985:2). Therefore, while traditionally narrative had a long association with
the humanities and the storytelling' methods of historians (Somers, 1994: 695), the paradigm
shift came to bring narrative to the spotlight as a dynamic, selffulfilling mode or representing and
constructing reality. This, in essence, sums up the omnipresence of narratives that are not only
within texts but all around us. Later on, the social communication theorists Somers and Gibson in
their 1994 work Reclaiming the Epistemological Other: Narrative and the Social Constitution of
Identity, take on the abovementioned paradigm shift a step further and view narratives as a
primary source of communication, not as an alternative i.e. optional mode of communication. For
them, everything we know is a collection of storylines and we are depicted as social actors located
within these narratives. Narratives are public and personal. In that way narratives are a product
of our individual and collective imagination. The basic idea is that it is through narrativity that
we come to know, understand, and make sense of the social world, and it is through narratives
and narrativity that we constitute our social identities (Somers and Gibson, 1994: 5859). It is by
locating ourselves (usually unconsciously) in social narratives, which are usually not of our own
making, that we make sense of ourselves and thus have a certain agency. It is through narratives
that the self is being constituted and reflected. This idea will be further explored in section 3.4.2.
and is of cardinal importance in this research.

Baker (2006b) kickstarts the application of the Theory of Narrative in TS and draws on the
psychology scholar Bruner (1991), on Somers and Gibson (1994) and Somers (1997), to develop
a socionarrative theory (Harding, 2009:22) to be applied in TS while covering a broad
spectrum of applications of narratives in TS. She also details a toolbox for narratives that
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Creating Narratives

encompasses various elements that could be used for the analysis of translated and original texts
(i.e. framing, to be further discussed in section 2.5.2.2. and integrated in the model of analysis in
section 3.4.2.). Baker takes a narrative approach in explaining how meaning is reflected, and more
importantly constructed, in translated texts. On her part, Bori, (2008) adopts a narrative view to
investigate the identities and roles shaped by and for conference interpreters (thus takes an
institutional view to the issue). As mentioned earlier (section 1.1.), Harding (2009, 2011) takes a
casestudy approach in the application of the Theory of Narratives and looks at the narratives that
'stepped out' of the media that covered the tragic incidents of the 2004 Beslan hostage crisis. In
the lines of the socalled socionarrative approach of the theory, narratives are public and
personal stories that we subscribe to and that guide our behaviour (Baker, 2005:4). Narratives
are stories that leak out of our daily individual and public practices which not only describe
human behaviour but also guide it. In the work of Somers (1997), Somers and Gibson (1994), and
Baker (2006b), which this dissertations draws on, narrative is regarded as the principal and
inescapable mode by which we experience the world (Baker, 2005:5). Therefore, [e]verything
we know is the result of numerous crosscutting storylines in which social actors locate
themselves (Somers and Gibson, 1994:41). Also, along the same lines, Bamberg views narratives
as preexisting meaningful templates that carry social, cultural and communal currency for the
process of identity formation (2007:3). Narratives are then omnipresent; they are everywhere
and circulate via various means, formats and languages. This universality of narratives has been
underlined since 1966 when the French literary theorist, Roland Barthes, framed the notion of
universality in and of narrative by stating that narrative is present in every age, in every place, in
every societyinternational, transhistorical, transcultural: it is simply there, like life itself (see
Sontag, 1982:251).

The role and use of narratives in translation today is dual: they relate a) to the way we tend to
think about translation, which is manifested in the metaphors we tend to use about it e.g.
translation as immigration of a text to foreign environments, translation as a gatekeeping activity
etc., and b) to the narratives we tend to circulate through translation and discourse. This
dissertation focuses on point b and touches on narratives that are channeled through translation
of news items and either reflect or construct cultural or societal worldviews (Murrey 1997, 2002;
Sabrin 1986; Baker 2005, 2006b).

On the one hand, then, narrative is related to translation/translators themselves and on the other,
it is based on the recognition that narratives both underpin and construct our social being.
Narrative gains a place across all genres and modes of communication, amongst these news
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production/translation. The latter means that by closely investigating the news that circulate and
get translated we can identify all sorts of narratives based on the Somers and Gibson typology
mentioned below in section 2.5.2. Ultimately translators as mediators translate news texts, with
embedded narratives while this process is taking place within the framework of commitment
they have towards the narratives that a) surround their profession and b) the narratives in which
they are embedded.

Zooming out of the strict confines of one text and zooming in at a larger unit, that of the narrative
lurking in a text, gives us the opportunity to place press translation as a form of institutional
discourse in the larger context of storytelling travelling from one place to the other. News is
undoubtedly a primary form of storytelling, or better an institutionalized form of narrating.
Translation therefore offers opportunities of renarration(s); translated news texts are then
accommodators of narratives which in turn reflect or construct cultural or social identities. It is
argued also that the relation between narratives and translation is one of interdependence since
for once narratives need translation in order to be reinforced, developed to go global and avoid
staying local; this makes translation both a channel through which stories travel and a filter
which processes them before unleashing them to the target audience. An appropriate, for this
study, visualization of this pattern is provided in chapter 3 where I discuss and outline the
gatekeeping function in news translation.

This paradigm shift that has developed since the early eighties is important for two reasons;
firstly, it is critical from a methodological point of view since it drives researchers more towards
interpretative analysis of narrative(s) and is less interested in the mere description of the
representations of reality, and secondly, because it brings forward a longstanding philosophical,
cognitive and linguistic issue that of the relationship between narrative, language and reality.
Questions such as to what extent do narratives reflect reality, or to what extent is truth verifiable
via language and cognition can now be addressed through a wellfounded resort to subjectivity
and to the fact that different positioning in relation to narratives and to their constructedness
(Baker, 2006b:17) through language can ultimately lead to the assertion that there is not a reality
but episodes of it. Ultimately, what is being put forward here is that narratives are also a means
for assigning meaning to reality rather that representing it.
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Creating Narratives

2.5.1.1. Summary
So far in this section, I have been speaking and arguing of the wellsprings of narrative within the
social confines; by looking at the historical development of the theory of narratives, it seems that
currently, as Bamberg (2007) argues, the turn to narrative was spearheaded by two different
orientations (ibid:3); one in which the narratives are elicited as stories that belong to the story
tellers. Focus there is placed on the "internal structure (phases, episodes, plot) of orally delivered
narratives, and to stress the advantages of using narrative, rather than other modes of
communication, to secure the audiences commitment and involvement (Baker, 2005:413). The
emerging second orientation of narratives, one that participates in the sociocommunicative turn,
supports these as social and individual representations which in turn generate or replay general
conceptions about individual, cultural or societal functioning. Unlike the first strand, in this one
narratives are not owned by the individual teller (Bamberg, 2007: 3); rather they are part of
larger, communally shared, practices of sensemaking and interpretation" (ibid). Emphasis is not
placed in the narrative account but on the narrative impact and outcome. This dissertation moves
along in the lines of the second orientation of claiming for the power of narratives visvis social
representation. guiding distinction that governs this dissertation separates between news stories
as narratives and narratives in news stories. This means that narrative may be interpreted as a
from of story deriving out of storytelling and analyzed as finite texts (Bal 1985; Bell 1999) with "a
structure, direction, point, viewpoint (Bell, 1999: 236), and narratives as universal forms of
representation that are not the property of one or the other text but rather cut across time and
texts and across all genres and modes (Baker, 2006b:13). In this dissertation news texts in the
first sense of narrative are glossed as stories or news stories while the object of inquiry are
narratives, and are larger forms of representation, moving along the theoretical lines of Bruner
(1991), Somers and Gibson (1994); Somers (1997), Baker (2006b) and Harding (2009), and
emerge out of or are reflected in news stories. These will be further elaborated in section 2.5.
below and applied in chapters 46 that follow.

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2.5.2. A typology of narratives

Narrative12 holds the main position as a unit of analysis in this research project. The working
definition for narrative employed in this research comes from Baker (2006b) who defines
narratives as

Public and personal stories that we subscribe to and that guide our behaviour. They
are stories we tell ourselves, not just those we explicitly tell other people, about the
world(s) in which we live (ibid: 19).

In regards to the organization of narratives, as Baker notes given the academic passion for
classification, the extensive literature on narrative in various disciplines abounds with
discussions of typologies, dimensions and axes (2006b: 28). This is indicative of the penetration
degree featured by the theory which has attracted interest in a wide range of disciplines and
academic circles.

Attempting to design a classification for the types of narratives that circulate, Baker (2006b)
establishes a four topdown typology of narratives; topdown does not imply prioritization of
one narrative type over another, nor does it form a sort of hierarchical mechanism of
representation; rather, the rationale behind this modeling of narratives, she argues, is organized
around and oscillates between the specificgeneral or local global dichotomy which means that, at
the top end, lie narratives that can be backtracked to the individual and claimed by the latter
while, as the model moves towards the bottom end stories lose their individual and 'local'
character and gain global currency. The specificgeneral poles that characterize the typological
framework for narrative analysis has been particularly stressed by Harding (2009). This
maneuvering between narratives that read as and can be attributed to the individual and those
which transcend local or personal boundaries and fall under the general or global category can
often prove a rather a difficult task. The fluid and often fuzzy boundaries between the types of
narrative have been spotted by researchers who have recognized the interrelationship and their
overlapping nature. They acknowledge a) that personal narratives are not constructed apart from
the collective narratives in which individuals are embedded (Whitebrook 2001; Baker 2006b),
and b) that public narratives find basis and draw on compatible personal narratives with an
12
There is a plethora of definitions available for narrative Barthes (1966), Chatman (1969), Bal (1985), Fisher (1987),
White (1987), Polkinghorne (1988), Bruner (1991), Whitebrook (2001), Baker (2006b).
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Creating Narratives

aim to gain currency and acceptance (Baker, 2006b:30). Narratives are not fixed categories as
they are likely to reflect more than one category, they often vacillate between the local global
dichotomy and may be interpreted through the lens of more than one type of narratives. The
ubiquity and fluidity of narrative is expressed by Baker who states that

[n]arratives are dynamic, they cannot be streamlined into a set of stable stories that
people simply choose from. Narrative Theory recognizes that at any moment in
time we can be located within a variety of divergent, crisscrossing, often vacillating
narratives, thus acknowledging the complexity and fluidity of our positioning in
relation to other participants in interaction (Baker, 2006b:3, emphasis added).

Drawing then on Bakers work (Translation and Conflict, 2006b) which in turn finds theoretical
backing on the works of Gibson and Somers (1994) the the following definitions apply to the
typology of narratives, according to the theory of narratives operating within the framework of
social reprsesentation. Namely:

a) Ontological narratives: these are stories, narratives that equate to the way we perceive our
personal history and place in the world. Personal stories are therefore the building blocks of the
collective narratives whereas the formation of our identity is renegotiated each time we
subscribe to one collective narrative or each time an individual or a group of people pivots from
one narrative framework to another thus renegotiating their identity. Calhoun, in his work Social
Theory and Politics of Identity (1994), talks about ontological narratives as the stories that social
actors use to make sense of indeed, in order to act intheir lives" (1994:61). In that sense,
ontological stories define who we are; they are one of the rudimentary forms of our cognitive
base and affect our activities, beliefs and consciousness thus affect our being.

b) Public narratives: these are stories that are elaborated by and circulated among formations
larger than the individual (Baker, 2006b:33); also "individuals agree with or dissent from such
narratives according to whether they resonate with their life, identity and experience as
individuals or as members of a group (Whitebrook, 2001:145). Public narratives then move above
the level of the individual and are interrelated to cultural and institutional formations which are
not limited to the single individual. Also Public narratives are shared or collective narratives that
include stories which are told and retold by numerous members of a society over a long period of
time (Baker, 2006b:29). Thus, these narratives are constructed collectively through processes of
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Creating Narratives

collaboration and consensus. Also, it has been shown that collective narratives rely on
compatible personal narratives in order to gain currency and acceptance (ibid:30). In turn
public narratives transform to metanarratives when they achieve a certain temporal and physical
breadth, a sense of inevitability and inescapability, of applicability to various events (Baker
2006b) and also when they appeal to values such as evil, danger or goodness, which allow for a
strong psychological identification with the narrative (Alexander, 2002: 27).

c) Conceptual or Disciplinary narratives: these are narratives that are ultimately taken up by
society at large, such as "class struggle" or Huntingtons term clashes of civilisations, or Bourdieus
habitus. It is assumed that the role of the translator as a mediator, in this type of narratives, is a
crucial one since they are frequently called to translate projects of scholarly research and to
translate the researcher's view and representation; certain conceptual narratives come to have
considerable impact on society as a whole, such as Darwinism and the theory of evolution. The
terminology and phraseology that nest in these narratives and via translation travel across
cultures ultimately penetrate the private and public sphere and either cause ideological conflicts,
raise discussions and in general influence the formation of our mental thinking and cultural
awareness.

An example that showcases how translation can have an impact on a conceptual narrative is
described by Bettelheim (1983) who describes the ways that the official English translators of
Freud changed the lexical rendering of key terminology of the ST and thus made the target text
more clinical, more scientific than Freuds original. In specific, Bettelheim shows that where
Freud decided to have nominalization of key terms in his theory i.e. German personal pronouns
(das Ich, das Es, das berIch) translators opted for Latin forms (Ego, Id, SuperEgo). As Bettelheim
(ibid) explains, translators were probably motivated by the need to be contextsensitive and
decided to domesticate terminology in order to render Freud more appealing and understandable
by the TT readers. However the conceptual narratives that were based on Freuds terminological
coinages and hence language, were ultimately compromised. As Crick mentions (in Mason 1994)
the translations of Freud, which helped in rendering his science more popular and gained him
reputation and recognition made him an anatomist of the mind rather than a doctor of the souls
(in Mason, 1994:23).

d) Meta narratives or master narratives (a concept developed in 1979 by JeanFranois Lyotard, in
his work La Condition Postmoderne, also using the term Grand Narrative): these are broad
categories of interrelated concepts that include our personal or academic routines such as ideas
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Creating Narratives

on progress, the human spirit, enlightenment, industrialisation, and then go on to include the
more modern concept of war on terror, rather than terrorism, which is as Baker (2006b) states a
description of more localized events with less global impact. Somers and Gibson (1994:61) define
meta (or master) narratives as narratives in which we are embedded as contemporary actors
in history. An interesting aspect of meta narratives is the currency they enjoy not only on local
scale (within the boundaries of one culture or nation) but also on a global scale. Institutions
(including media institutions) as well as factors of religious and political dominance have had a
lot to contribute in this instance (and still do). The spreading of master narratives and their
universalization releases an enormous narrative to society, moreover a cognitive and even moral
thrust which individuals and societies subscribe to by default.

Figure 2 below offers a graphic illustration of the topdown approach of the typology of
narratives.

Figure 2: A typology of narratives according to Baker (2005;2006b) and Harding (2009)

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Creating Narratives

2.5.2.1. On features of narratives

After having detailed the taxonomy of narratives according to the theory of narratives (section
2.5.2.), I proceed here and in the section that follows (2.5.2.2.) with sketching out the tools that
the theory has in place in to make use of narratives. Features of narratives outlined in this section
and framing, presented in section 2.5.2.2., form then a sort of grammar and roadmap to the use
of narratives. Starting out with the features of narrativity, as explored by Somers and Gibson
(1994) and Baker (2006b), are temporality, relationality, causal emplotment and selective
appropriation. These features are worth considering in news translation studies because they
may account for crosscultural variation in the treatment of topics and issues in translation
practice.

According to Somers and Gibson (1994), temporality is understood as the reflection of the
unfolding of the storyline. The sequence in which events (news in our case) are presented
(translated in our case) has its impact on the way the narrative comes to be understood. As Baker
(2006b) notes, the notion of temporality is intertwined with the notion of embeddedness in time
both for the narrative itself and for the agents that are linked to it (i.e. narrator, translator,
addressees). The close relation between time and narration is exemplified by Ricur who says
that time becomes human to the degree to which it is narrated (1984, 1985, 1991). As far as the
manifestations of time framing in narrative are concerned, it seems that temporal organization is
seldom strictly chronological (McCormick in Baker, 2006b:51). It therefore seems that
temporality does not only relate to how events are put together in chronological/clock order but
rather means that elements in a narrative are always placed in some sequence and that the order
in which they are placed carries meaning (Baker, 2006b: 51). Unforced translation shifts that are
identified and analyzed in the two subcorpora in chapters 4 and 5 show differences in the
construction of temporality.

The second feature of narrativity, that of relationality, entails that it is impossible to make sense
of an isolated event, and that for an event to be interpreted it has to be conceived as an episode,
one part of a larger configuration of events (Baker, 2006b: 54). The relationality of narratives
cannot allow straightforward importation of parts from other narratives. In relation to news
translation, this would mean that it would be impossible for newspaper readers to make sense of
a story (one large narrative e.g. the War on Terror) without relating it to other relative events e.g.
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Creating Narratives

the 9/11 attacks. Translators therefore (and newspapers in general), need to ensure continuity of
the story line, coherence of the narrative and association of the narrative under investigation to
other narratives and in this way weave together new temporal and spatial settings via bringing
together new translational acts.

EnglishGreek translation practice for instance, may display shifts in relationality. In order for
Greek translators to ensure relationality of the storyline with narratives circulating in the target
context the Greek headline below is made to bring up the issue of racism in the following pair of
ST/TT headlines. Greece has been learning to live with immigrants for quite some time (Kontos
and Sidiropoulou (2012), and so the narrative of racism is brought up to ensure relationality: The
headline Nooses hanging in School tree raise spectre of old South, The Times, September, 5,
2007 has turned into , , 6
, 2007 (ibid).

The third feature explored is causal emplotment; while relationality means that every event has
to be interpreted within a larger configuration of events, causal emplotment gives significance to
independent instances and overrides their chronological or categorical order (Somers, 1997:82).
Emplotment is the feature which enables addressees of the narrative to explain the events rather
than simply describe and list them. An example that fully sketches out the significance of causal
emplotment is the narrative of the Cyprus issue. Supporters of the two competing narratives
(Turks and Cypriots) may agree on details such as time and who did what and where, but
disagree on the motives behind the events. This is evidenced in the linguistic choices of
participants: in this narrative amongst these choices are items like occupation, invasion, entrance,
coup etc. In translation, patterns of causal emplotment can be modified by attempting subtle and
minor shifts. In practical translation terms, the causal emplotment feature may account for
variation across EnglishGreek, manifested in terms of shifts like the following: 25 years after
war, wealth transforms Falklands, The New York Times, March 3, 2007 >
, , 4 , 2007 (Kontos and Sidiropoulou 2012). Events
which are vaguely presented as rather independent instances in English (namely, war and
wealth), in the Greek version are explicitly related causally bearing consequences for the
dissemination of relevant ideological positions.

Finally, for selective appropriation, Somers and Gibson (1994) state that narratives are
constructed according to evaluative criteria that enable and guide selective appropriation of a set
of events or elements from the vast array of openended and overlapping events that constitute
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experience. This means that parts of a story may be included while some others may be left out.
At this point, and in regards to news translation, we are brought face to face with the notion of
intention of the party responsible for the articulation of the story (newspaper in our case) to
include some parts of a story while leaving others out; the assumption in this instance is that
regardless of the intention (the conscious or subconscious application of selective appropriation),
the latter ultimately has a direct and immediate impact on readership. As Baker notes [t]o
elaborate a coherent narrative, it is inevitable that some elements of experience are excluded and
others privileged (2006b:71). Selective appropriation is, according to Baker (2006b) both a
feature of narratives and a framing strategy. Data analyzed (chapters 4, 5 and 6) yield results that
provide instantiations some of the abovementioned features of narrativity in the subcorpora
under investigation.

2.5.2.2. On framing strategies

As Baker (2006b) asserts Narrative Theory lacks a tool for microlevel analysis for looking that is
at texts and carrying out textual analysis. This is why she draws on the broader concept of
framing (Goffman 1986; Entman 1993) to develop a toolbox of framing strategies capable of
making up for that lacuna. The purpose of these framing strategies, which have been largely
identified in both subcorpora analysed, is to reason and award a particular importance to the
active, always present and key role of translators in the process of renegotiating meaning from
the source text environment to the target one. Largely, framing has been acknowledged also in
media studies as it seems that newspapers do not simply provide information and facts about the
world, but that the news media also constructs interpretive frameworks or frames through
which certain issues or events are to be understood (Prosser, 2010:54). This aspect has been
identified in section 2.2. above as one of the main intentions of this dissertation. As I have argued
before in section 2.5., narrative research is not to be desegregated from the analytical tools that
enable it; framing strategies are the tools then used by translators to renegotiate narratives,
transform them, silence them, or enhance them. These namely are: labelling, repositioning of
participants and selective appropriation (Baker 2006b). All three framing strategies have been
identified in one or the other way in the analysis and all have contributed in the rewriting of
narratives by newspapers. In describing these framing strategies Baker (ibid) argues that all
three of them have different potential to impact meaning yet as it seems no translation can
remain immune from these. It is my view that all three framing strategies described and used
here are discursive methodologies/tools used by newspapers to market and in this sense
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domesticate the target texts in such a way so that these can fit the cultural, institutional, cognitive
and ideological needs of the domestic i.e. target environment. In section 3.2.4. I illustrate how I
use these framing strategies in the analysis of the data and I present how these have been pooled
in, tasked to assist the microlevel comparative analysis.

Labelling is any discursive process that involves using a lexical item, term, or phrase to identify a
person, place, group, event or any other key element in narrative (ibid:122). Any unforced then
translation shift that occurs at lexical level that enacts a new conceptualization in the target text
and variegates meaning is a means of labelling, in the sense that it frames i.e. presents and
releases in the target environment a new construction or reflection (often as I will show in
chapter 4 a new identity, ontological or public). Lexical choice emerges in this research as a key
and purposeful manipulation and meditation method to emphasize or dethrone meanings in and
out of translations. As it will be shown, press translation is clotted with labelling instances which
as I argue cannot imply a zerosum impact. What is more, labelling, as all three framing strategies,
is directly linked to the perceived or assumed by newspapers reactions and responses of the
readers as it guides and constraints our response to the narrative in question (ibid).

Turning to the second framing strategy that I have used, that of repositioning of participants, this
relates to any change in the configuration of the positions of participants in a narrative, in such a
way that it alters the dynamics of the immediate as well as the wider narratives in which they are
woven (ibid:132). By repositioning participants then, translators lift agents from the discursive
and sentential position they hold and replace them in a different one, in the TT sentence. In
translation in general and press translation in specific, the textual position of participants is never
fixed nor stable. This intrasentential shifting of participants negotiates the weight of narratives
and enacts as it will be showcased in chapter 5, narratives that legitimize and highlight a
particular aspect of a narrative. Like labelling, repositioning of participants carves out meaning;
in cases where participants gain then a more prominent position in the TT sentence, in relation to
the one they occupied in the ST, or as they are compressed and hidden within a sentence, their
presence and significance in a narrative changes. Analysis in chapters 4 and 5 will show how
thematization and creation of endweight sentences emerges as a means of repositioning of
participants. This is then nothing short of a reconfiguration of the sentence balance that takes
place in translation and proves the importance of the seating arrangement of participants in a
sentence.

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Creating Narratives

Key to the promotion of narratives by the media is framing by means of selective appropriation.
While selective appropriation has been identified as a feature of narrativity (section 2.5.2.1.) by
Somers and Gibson, Baker (2006b) uses it as a framing strategy arguing that this is realized in
patterns of omission and addition designed to suppress, accentuate or elaborate particular
aspects of a narrative encoded in the source text or utterance, or aspects of the larger narrative(s)
in which it is embedded (ibid: 114). The two sample corpora abound with instances of selective
appropriation, enacted by translation; the deletion of material in the target text breaks up the
consistency of the narrative with the source text as it leads to a deselection of certain items that
challenge the interpretation of the narrative13. On the other part, the addition of items instead of
suppressing meaning, changes or emphasizes the narrative shadings in the target text. With
selective appropriation then what is not said is equally important with what it is said. In both
cases translators are the selectors (additions) or deselectors (omissions) of meaning which
speaks loud of the persistent intervention of them in the texts. Section 6.3.3. that focuses on a
crossnewspaper analysis will analyze the selective appropriation of material by TT newspapers
in numbers.

Framing strategies combined with the typologies of narratives have proven very useful to expose
the deployment of unforced translation shifts across newspapers and to show how target
newspapers reframe source texts in such a way that activate or deactivate source prominent
narratives. In section 3.4.2., I adopt and adjust the taxonomy of narratives as this has been
developed and used by Baker (2005, 2006b), Harding (2009, 2011) and Bori (2008) presented
above and ultimately formulate a holistic model of analysis to be applied in the political (chapter
4) and biomedical (chapter 5) sample corpus. In this research, narrative types do intent to overlay
and substitute the notion of representation but rather to provide a more holistic experience of it.
In section 2.5.3. below I detail how I have adopted and used the Theory of Narratives in this
research.

2.5.3. Using narratives in this dissertation: Why and How

A fundamental question that arises after the presentation of the Theory of Narratives relates to
the usefulness and appropriateness of the theory, rather than CDA, for the analysis of the data.
13 This is reflective of the Marxist literary theorist Terry Eagleton who claims that it is in the significant
silences of a text, in its gaps and absences that the presence of ideology can be most positively felt (1976:
345).
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Creating Narratives

The core argumentation buildup behind the appropriation of the Theory of Narratives for this
dissertation is summed up in the following points:

a) the allencompassing nature of narrative; in his 2000 article entitled Recent Concepts of
Narrative and Narratives of Narrative Theory, Richardson notes that not only narrative is
everywhere, but it moreover that it seems to be a kind of vortex around which other
discourses orbit in ever closer proximity (2000:169). The fact that narrative has gained a
place in the agendas of various modern fields indicates the turn towards a rudimentary,
basic form and unit of analysis based on the premise of storytelling as a key human
activity. This omnipresence of narrative (as a social ontology/mode of representation)
enables its application in translated news,

b) the flexible architecture of the theory; the versatility of the Theory of Narratives has been
attested by scholars who move within its methodological and theoretical confines (Baker
2006b; Harding 2009, 2011). The flexibility of the theory lies in the interpretation of the
typology and particularly between the public and meta narratives, as once a public
narrative gains more currency, it is shortlisted for entering the meta narrative pool.
Ultimately, the adaptability of the framework makes it easily applicable to press texts
where language both mirrors and constructs new social worldview(s),

c) the defocusing of this dissertation from issues of power and control which have
persistently worried scholars who work within the CDAprogram territory; although this
dissertation acknowledges and stays informed on how CDA driventheories conjoin
language with the intention of, institutionally and socially powerful groups, to exercise
control yet it does not intend to uncover the manipulative nature of language use in the
media. What it aims then to do is to follow up on the deployment of cultural and societal
attitudes through translated stories, and narrative provide a solid framework for
addressing such issues,

d) the power of narratives to reflect and construct reality; Bennett and Edelman (1985) who
move with political communication theories, discuss stories in the news and support that
a key question about stories, as with other situationdefining symbolic forms like
metaphors, theories and ideologies, is whether they introduce new and constructive
insights into social life (ibid:156, emphasis added). They also suggest that the linguistic
crafting of news stories in the media can elicit powerful responses of belief or disbelief in
64
Creating Narratives

distant audiences without bringing those audiences any closer to practical solutions for
the problems that occasioned the stories in the first place (ibid). Narratives in this
dissertation are in a sense these responses of belief or disbelief that are deemed either to
reflect the audience or are constructed in texts and injected into the social sphere through
newspapers.

e) the distancing potential of narratives; although the theoretical architecture of CDA has
been based on the premise of linking what is in a text (lexis, grammar, syntax) with what
lies outside of it (power, ideology), yet it has also received attention (Widdowson 2004) in
relation to the data analytical methods it integrates and it has been accused of over
focusing on the immediate text and cuttingoff the surrounding context from the
interpretation. Narrative research on the contrary, promotes a 'stepping back from the
text to such a degree that it renders possible the identification and classification of
narratives embedded in discourse.

f) the inescapable nature of translation as a secondary discourse (Valden 2007b);
although this parameter does not emanate directly from narrative as the previous ones,
yet the fact that this research is a purportedly translationoriented project necessitates
the use of tools that allow the generation of results from a crosstextual analysis.
Narratives and particularly framing offer this potential. It is the fact then that the target
text harbors a relationship of constant anchoring, dependence and interstitial intimacy
(Bhabha, 1994:13) with the source text, its parent and primordial equivalent, that
necessitates a slightly differentiated textual analysis than if one were to look only as
source texts.

Points (a)(f) form the main argumentation points that motivate narrative research within TS and
have geared the adoption and use of the Theory of Narratives along with the tools that make it up
(framing) for the formulation of an adequate model of analysis (chapter 3). These points then
provide an answer to the why I have decided to use narratives in this project. Below I outline how
I have adopted and adjusted the theory in this dissertation.

As far as the integration and application of the typology of narratives in this dissertation this
evolves along with the thematic threads of the two parallel subcorpora analysed. In revisiting the
typology of narratives introduced in section 2.5.2., I continue to explain below the form that the
four types of narratives take in this dissertation, namely:
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Creating Narratives

a) ontological narratives are evidenced in the political subcorpus; the form that ontological
narratives take in the political sample corpus is slightly different that that put forward in
the original model. Although, as I mention in section 2.5., Baker (2006b) defines
ontological narratives as personal stories that draw on ones biographical lines, in this
dissertation I use ontological narratives to show how the Greek newspapers have pooled
in, used and capitalized on B. Obamas own biography and personal story. hey are
biographical (Pratt 2003, in Baker, 2006:28) and appropriated by newspapers and
manipulated through translation as B. Obama's own episodes of life. As I will show in
section 4.3.1. ontological narrativity in the Obama subcorpus relates to personal stories
about B. Obama that have been appropriated by the newspapers. Also, I will show how
translation alters views of these narratives, emphasizing certain aspects of them in the TT
and downgrading others. Ontological stories have not been identified in the biomedical
sample corpus;

b) in both corpora public narratives are analyzed as stories that move above the level of one
single individual and relate to features which characterize collective, cultural or societal
identities (reflected or constructed); in the political subcorpus (section 4.4.) public
narratives take the form of collective identities about the electoral body that are
promoted by newspapers and either construct new identities for them or reflect well
established cultural preferences. In the biomedical one (section 5.4.1.) public narratives
are understood and elaborated as stories about science and health that move over and
above the level of the individual and reflect or construct collective representations. Both
sample corpora give evidence of the wellgrounded target cultural preference of
uncertainty avoidance as it emerges as a public narrative;

c) conceptual narratives in this dissertation are defined and identified as those concepts that
shape the way in which societal processes are understood and explained(Bori, 2008:
63). Here, conceptual narratives then take the form of reflections or constructions that
translation yields in relation to the rewriting of i) Leadership and Politics (for the B.
Obama sample corpus, section 4.5.) and the Leader per se ii) health and science (for the
biomedical sample corpus, section 5.4.2.);

d) master narratives here are stories that persist, grow to become rigid and lithified
representations that occur and reoccur in varying degrees and different genres. Somers
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Creating Narratives

and Gibson (1994) define master narratives as narratives in which we are embedded as
contemporary actors in history (ibid:61). This dissertation identifies master narratives in
both subcorpora. In both subcorpora binary thinking emerges as a culturallydriven,
wellestablished master narrative. In the biomedical subcorpus fear and hope are treated
as two emotive scripts that are manipulated discursively through translation and mirror
the master narratives of health and science. The master narrative quality awarded to
these two concepts stems from the awareness that all individuals participate in and are
affected by stories about health and science.

Analysis in both newspapers shows that the narrative distribution pattern across the two
thematically distinct corpora, i.e. articles of B. Obama narrative in chapter 4 and articles on
biomedical issues in chapter 5, is not even. Further conclusions on that are provided in chapter 6.

Apart from discussing the way that I adjust the narrative typologies in this dissertation, it would
be useful to briefly discuss, here, before moving on to the model of analysis, the way that I use
narrative as a unit of analysis in this dissertation. In section 2.5. I supported that this study argues
for the interaction between translation and a) the construction of narratives in the TT
environment or b) the reflection of narratives circulating in the TT in translation. Theoretical
underpinnings that govern this research lie within the Narrative Theory (Somers and Gibson
1994; Murrey 2002; Baker 2006b, 2010; Harding 2009, 2011) which combines linguistic
approaches with social ones. This research then picksup on the meaningmaking practice to look
at the narratives that are deployed in the translated Greek press and either mirror a collective
narrative background of the TT environment or construct one anew. As I illustrate in figure 3
below, that I designed and present here to support understanding of the narrative deployment
and use in newspapers, narratives that enter the TT environment are repackaged through
translation in order to meet institutional purposes of the newspapers that accommodate them.
These institutional purposes are information transfer and profit making (by means of sustaining
the reader base). Translational choices are, nevertheless, linked as much to the representations
and identities they enact as they are to the profit making and information transfer intentions of
the newspapers.

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Creating Narratives

Figure 3: Deployment of narrative analysis in news translation

To analyze the effects of the translation process, as displayed in figure 3, I pay close attention to,
and identify the unforced translation shifts that are naturally occurring in translated press,
analyze them using Bakers (2006b) framing strategies before I associate these then with the
ontological, public, conceptual and master narratives they reflect or construct. In section 3.4.2. I
develop the model of analysis that takes into account both framing and the four typologies of
narratives and I applied it in chapters 4 and 5. Following that, chapter 6 goes on to interpret
findings in relation to what these mean for each of the newspapers at issue.
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EnglishGreek News CHAPTER 3: Experimental Design and Methodological considerations
Creating Narratives

CHAPTER 3
Experimental design and methodological
considerations

3.1. Introduction

While chapter 2 provided insights to the theories which have informed this project and described
the theoretical ingredients that participate in this research, this one critically synthesizes these to
work out a model of analysis to the data. In this chapter I start (section 3.2.) by presenting the
corpus, its design and showcase the bottomup architecture of this research. Also outlined is the
compilation of the two sample subcorpora (political and biomedical), out of the larger corpus,
which have been put to narrative analysis test. This chapter also presents the possible sources for
data retrieval in a news translation project and describes the methodology used for selecting data.
As mentioned before, research in the field of press translation is, by default, interdisciplinary since
it needs to take into account variables from language, translation studies and media studies, these
fields are not competing nor does the one define itself by cutting the other one out; rather in this
project they come together and assist in the analysis of the data. Apart from detailing the corpus
and corpus design, this chapter responds to methodological questions and challenges as it is here
where I formulate the research model (section 3.4.2.) using both the typology of narratives
presented in section 2.5.2. and the framing strategies in section 2.5.2.2. I attempt to arrive at the
synthesis of the model of analysis to the data following a linear pathway that does not blinker the
entire news flow process but rather paints a clear picture of how news escapes its source
boundaries and makes it through the target ones. How news travels yet is not controlfree but
rather is determined by a series of gatekeeping functions (Chu 1985; Wilke and Rosenberger 1994;
Vuorinen 1995; Hursti 2001). This news flow process, builds on arguments put forward in the
introductory chapter 1 and is holistically presented and visualized in this chapter (section 3.3.). The
concomitant aim of the model of analysis developed here is to show how narrative as a unit of
analysis can amenably intersect with framing and framing strategies used here at microlevel to
identify the unforced translation shifts. Chapters 4 and 5 integrate both micro and macro analysis in
the sense that extraction of narrativefocused results becomes possible and accessible to the reader
through identification of unforced translation shifts and their analysis through the lens of framing.
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Creating Narratives

3.2. Corpus design

This is a corpusbased, corpusdriven research project that aims to shed light to the linguistic
transformations that are evidenced in translated press items and have appeared in three Greek
newspapers (I Kathimerini, To Vima and Ta Nea). The drive for doing data research based on a
corpus has been motivated by the need to look at language through naturally occurring texts.
Analysis evolves and progresses by looking at the unforced translation shifts that occur in the
target text without however lapsing into detailed micro level analysis that blurs the overall
context. Research builds its argumentation while retaining a close affinity with the expanded role
of texts and language in society (Olohan 2004), on narratives that both make up society and are
made up by it (Baker 2006b).

During the past few years the use of corpora in TS has gained momentum as it is deemed to,
amongst others, assist an orientation towards a combining of quantitative and qualitative
corpusbased description in the analysis, which can focus on (a combination of) lexis, syntax and
discoursal features (Olohan, 2004:16). The significance of approaching translation through
corpora has been also captured in Greek by Saridakis (2010) who argues for methodological
considerations that aim to design corpora for research in translation studies. This need for
accounting for corpora in TS has been motivated both by the need for systematizing research and
accounting for languageinaction, for studying translation as something apart because it is
shaped by its own goals, pressures and context of production (Baker, 1996: 175). As defined by
Bowker and Pearson "a corpus can be described as a large collection of authentic texts that have
been gathered in electronic form according to set of specific criteria" (2002:9). This project meets
the needs for authentic texts in the sense that the texts gathered fall under the category of "real
'live' language that consists of genuine communication between people" (ibid).

Bakers (1995) typology of corpora, to be used in translation research and pedagogy, includes
three main types, of data: (a) comparable corpora, (b) parallel corpora and (c) multilingual
corpora. This typology along with the "need for greater standardization" in TS (Zanettin,
2000:105) assist in better categorizing material and types of articles retrieved. In Baker's terms
(1995)

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Creating Narratives

comparable are those corpora which consist of two separate collections of texts in the same
language: one corpus consists of original texts in the language in question and the other consists
of translations in that language from a given source language or languages (ibid: 234),
parallel corpora consist of original, source language texts in language A and their translated
versions in language B" (ibid: 230),
multilingual corpora consist of "sets of two or more monolingual corpora in different
languages" (ibid: 232).

This research draws on parallel corpora14 defined as a a set of texts in one language and their
translations in another language" (Olohan, 2004: 24). Texts making up the parallel corpus have
been retrieved for their communicative function, topic and transparency of translation, which
means that all target texts retrieved had actually acknowledged the source (i.e. ST newspaper
and/or author). In relation to their size, texts retrieved are fulltexts and not fragments as
according to Baker (ibid) full texts are more useful than those which consist of text fragments.
The research uses a unidirectional researcherconstructed parallel corpus (Munday, 2001: 181),
which takes into account the institutional and cultural context in which translations are produced
and deciphered by readers as it is within that framework that textual and linguistic features of
translation can be evaluated (Bernardini and Zanettin 2004: 60).

In terms of representativeness of the corpus, data collection was performed horizontally i.e.
across Greek newspapers first and then by retrieving the equivalent source texts. The analysis of
the entire corpus has been influenced by notions of sameness between source and target texts
which are important. As researchers have pointed out (Orengo 2005) news translation challenges
the traditional and conventional notions of equation between the ST and the TT, since the news
translated text is often a product of extreme time pressure and consolidation of the ST material in
the new version, where many things are left out or added in order to meet the textual space
requirements of a newspaper. In analyzing the nature of a bilingual corpus Olohan (2004)
observes that a bilingual parallel corpus is a corpus where source texts and translation are the
same text that is, unless there are discrepancies between them (ibid: 13). Also, Orengo (2004)
who studies news translation in the Italian newspaper context, acknowledges that the need for a
redefinition between the ST and the TT in news translation is fuelled also by the so called
lifetime" (Orengo, 2004:3) of the news target text; in specific the latter follows the same fate as
14
Johansson (1998) prefers the use of translation corpus in relevance to parallel corpus as he argues for
text comparability. Here I use the term parallel corpus as I agree with the term appropriation by Kenny
(2001) and Olohan (2004).
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Creating Narratives

the news story which incorporates it, that is it is doomed to dissolve in a day, it does not last
(ibid: 4). However, as Simard notes (in Olohan 2004) [i]n real life, discrepancies between a
source text and its translation, such as differences in layout, omissions, inversions etc., are quite
common (ibid). This point is particularly relevant to news translation, as texts put to the test
often manifest such discrepancies. Particularly, in the case of parallel corpora, it is critical for the
researcher to associate source texts with their translation, as in many cases there is "a multitude
of candidates for a source text" (Toury, 1995:74). In collecting the data (texts) for this research it
often proved difficult to pin down the source text that corresponds to an equivalent target text.
This difficulty stems mainly from the development of new, advanced technologies which speed up
the communication paths, make them more complex and ultimately change the bearings of text
circulation from a more traditional pointtopoint direction to a more modernized multipointto
multipoint one. Also, it seems that the fast pace of news production and news flow filtered
through news agencies and ending up in various media (such as broadcasting channels and online
and print versions of newspapers) impacts the integrity of both the source text and the target
text. In this sense, it seems that by the time a target text appears in a newspaper its source
counterpart has lost its communicative momentum since it has been replaced/updated by
another one building on the same episode of a narrative or storyline. For the purposes of this
research the source text is seen as a static text which has circulated in a British or American
newspaper and has been appropriated by a Greek newspaper for translation. This was a
limitation encountered in this research, since for those texts which did not acknowledge the
source of the original text, the researcher had to resort to advanced webbased research
techniques to retrieve the source texts. Also, as Hansen notes

[s]uch a corpus is not immediately userfriendly for the corpus to be useful, it is
necessary to identify which units in the minicorpora are translations of each other.
Such a parallel corpus is known as an aligned corpus, since it establishes an explicit
link between the SL sentence and the corresponding passage in the translation
(2003:16).

Recognizing this need has led to integration in this work of two appendices (Appendix 1, the
political sample corpus/Appendix 2, the biomedical sample corpus) where source and target texts
are aligned to provide clear indication of the segments which have been translated and have been
accounted for in this research.

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Creating Narratives

The data in this dissertation consist of two parallel subcorpora (discussed in detail in chapters 4
and 5), addressing two distinct thematic/narrative units; these are made of news articles from I
Kathimerini, Ta Nea, To Vima, and their source counterparts from The Guardian, The New York
Times, The Economist, The Washington Post 15. These two parallel subcorpora were generated and
designed out of a wider corpus made of 81 target texts from the same newspapers and their
source counterparts. As far as the wider corpus16 design is concerned according to Kennedy
"issues in corpus design and compilation are fundamentally concerned with the validity and
reliability of research based on a particular corpus, including whether that corpus can serve the
purposes for which it was intended" (1998:60). The two datafocused chapters of this
dissertation form the bulk of this project and are then the product of sustained crosstextual
investigation of the two subcorpora stemming out of the wider corpus. The wider corpus in turn
is made up of 162 articlepairs (81 source and 81 target texts) equally contributed by the three
Greek newspapers i.e. 27 news articles from I Kathimerini newspaper, 27 from To Vima and
another 27 news articles from Ta Nea. All articles have been retrieved from a period ranging from
January 2007 to December 2009. These 81 articles form the wider corpus of this study. The
overall wordcount of the corpus comes up to 48,567 words (target text count). The wider corpus
was my first contact with the data that was to be put under the test. It has been then a guiding
lens to see what type of media content and news themes do newspapers privilege over others.
Yet, it soon became clear that the wider corpus suffered from a thematic diversity of the items
gathered a diversity that rendered difficult the construction of a representative corpus. The need
then for having qualitative results produced out of a representing corpus, necessitated a more
patterned and organized grouping of the texts. This need has been addressed by the creation of
two thematically distinct subcorpora, one political and one biomedical. The importance of a
corpus that will be able to shed light to qualitative results has also been stressed by researchers.
Looking at issues of corpus design and data analysis, Richards (2005), for example, discusses the
quantity and quality of data that is considered appropriate for a research project and raises then
issues of how much data is required, and what sort of data is needed to address a topic. In terms of
the size of corpus, Richards then argues that the size of data records is not, alone, a relevant
criterion for a good outcome (ibid:19) and supports that a completion of a project happens
when the question is answered (ibid). Thus, two subcorpora have been designed and analyzed,
each one informing a chapter. Chapter 4 draws on the first sample subcorpus (13, 319 TT words)
15
The Audit Bureau of Circulation provides data that distinguishes these newspapers as leading in
circulation figures, from http://www.accessabc.com/ (last accessed 7/5/2012).
16 Appendix 3 presents a detailed view of the 81 articlepairs selected for this study. It includes the data
(article pairs) which have formed the two subcorpora to be further analyzed below and which have
informed chapters 4 and 5 respectively.
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Creating Narratives

and research there has been dedicated to identifying, analyzing and categorizing narratives which
step out of unforced translation shifts in texts that have as a thematic unit Barack Obama before
and after he was elected in Office in November 2008. Findings reveal results from all four types of
narratives although not equally distributed. Chapter 5 is interested in analyzing how narratives
are instantiated through unforced translation shifts identified in a biomedical subcorpus (11,493
TT words). Narratives in this corpus respond only to the typology of public, conceptual and
master narratives. Research in these two chapters has both a qualitative and quantitative
motivation, thus analysis in these two corpora has been exhaustive. The assumption behind
designing two thematically subcorpora and presenting results in different chapters is that
different themes may activate different narrative worlds; it may be the case that a narrative of
threat and imminent danger may be more highlighted in texts on natural disasters while themes
of lifethreatening diseases may trigger narratives associated to an inherent fear of death. Hence,
thematic consistency in the scorpora was motivated by an intention for narrative consistency.
Table 1 shows the formation of the larger corpus in this study which has formed the pool for the
design of the two sample subcorpora.

Newspaper Nr of Articles Wordcount (TT)
I Kathimerini 27 17,593
To Vima 27 18,106
Ta Nea 27 12,868
Total 81 48,567

Table 1: corpus formation no of TT articles and TT wordcount

This project then aims to test the hypothesis that translation reflects and creates narratives and
then renegotiates meaning; thus, the bottomup synthesis for this project is concretely supported
by a 48,567word corpus (TT words) which has been further divided up into two smaller sub
corpora which assist the narrative analysis. Figure 4 below graphically presents the construction
of the corpus for this study.

Figure 4: Graphic illustration of the corpus design
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Creating Narratives

Within the lines of the attempt to describe the corpus design for this research, table 2 below aims to
provide a sample view of the data/articles shortlisted for this research.

General Themes

Greek Date Greek headline English Date Headline
Newpaper newspaper
I Kathimerini March, 16 The Washington March, 14 Clinton says she would
2007 Post 2007 keep some troops in
Iraq beyond 09
To Vima July 7, 2009 The Independent July 2, 2009 Felipe Gonzalez takes
on Blair for EU
presidency
Ta Nea September Foreign Policy September The Iran nuclear
28, 2009 Magazine 25, 2009 revelation

The Obama subcorpus

Newpaper newspaper
I Kathimerini July 20, 2008 O The Economist July 16, 2008 Looking Abroad

To Vima January 27, The Times January 22, 2009 Task No 1 for Barack
2009 Obama: reinvent
capitalism

Ta Nea December 3, Washington Post December 2, A team in need of a
2008 2008 plan
The biomedical subcorpus

Newpaper newspaper
I Kathimerini October, 19 2008 C The New York October 12,2008 Vitamin C May
Times Interfere With
Cancer Treatment
To Vima January 13, New Scientist January 11, 2009 Implant raises
2009 cellular army to
attack cancer
Ta Nea September 24, The New York September 22,
Shorter radiation
2008 Times 2008
for Cancer of the
Breast

Table 2: sample view of theme selection

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Creating Narratives

3.2.1. The political subcorpus

The findings of chapter 4 derive from a crosstextual investigation of 21 articlepairs, equally
contributed by the three Greek newspapers: 7 news articles from I Kathimerini newspaper, 7
from To Vima and another 7 news articles from Ta Nea. These have been retrieved from a
period ranging from January 2008 to February 2009. To ensure that the corpus is as
representative as possible an attempt has been made for both periods of the election
procedure to be represented in this data set, namely, before the elections (Feb. Nov. 2008),
and up to the inauguration period (Nov. 2008Feb. 2009). This chapter uses a parallel sub
corpus intended to sample tendencies traced in the wider corpus.

The political subcorpus includes source texts culled from prestigious news sources such as The
Economist, The Independent, The New York Times, The Washington Post and The Guardian. The
selection of target newspapers has been motivated by parameters such as availability of
translated political stories, and whether newspapers follow the main storylines accounted by the
source newspapers. During the period examined, I Kathimerini, Ta Nea and To Vima, consistently
appropriated news about the political candidates or their political campaigns. All three
newspapers provide a blend of politics, culture and general news presentation
(Papathanassopoulos, 2001:118). Table 3 below illustrates the distribution of the translated news
items per newspaper. Each target newspaper has contributed a set of 7 articles on President
Obama and the elections.

Periods I Kathimerini To Vima Ta Nea
Before the elections 3 5 4
(Feb.Nov. 2008)
The Inauguration Period 4 2 3
(Nov. 2008Feb.2009)
Total Word count 4763 4700 3856

Table 3: Distribution and wordcount of TT articles per period and target newspaper (The Obama
subcorpus)

Table 4 below provides a list of the 21 ST/TT articlepairs included in this chapter's subcorpus. It
comprises of a 13.319word sample of target articles together with their source/parallel versions
of about equal size (although source articles are usually longer, as not all parts of the source texts
are transferred in the Greek target version). The body of texts appears in Appendix 1; translated
material has been highlighted in an offgrey background. In the left column, any material left
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Creating Narratives

outside the grey background indicates that this information has not been transferred in the TT.
Similarly, in the right column, any material left outside the grey background indicates that it has
been added to the TT. Below each text pair in the Appendix a summary of findings has been
included to shed better light to what type of shifts each of the textpair manifests.

77
EnglishGreek News Creating Narratives CHAPTER 3: Experimental Design and Methodological considerations

ST Newspaper Date Source text title Target text title Date TT Newspaper Wordcount

The New York Times January 27,2008 A President Like My Father February 3, 2008 H 602

The Economist July 16, 2008 Looking Abroad O July 20, 2008 H 997
The New York Times September 15, September 21, 2008 H 654
Presidential Candidates Positions on Science Issues
2008

The New York Times January 21, 2009 Nations Many Faces in Extended First Family H 485

January 25, 2009
The New York Times January 18, 2009 From Books, New President Found Voice H 545
January 25, 2009
The Observer January 18, 2009 Hands that picked cotton now pick presidents. It's a H 1095
new day for the US
January 25, 2009
The New York Times January 21, 2009 The age of responsibility H 385
January 25, 2009

The Independent February 23, 2008 Obama: The Hawaii years February 24, 2008 808
The Independent August 6, 2008 Cool guy, Barack. But could he be too cool for US voters? 682
August 17,2008
The Guardian August 10,2008 If the Democrats want Obama to win, they have to get 861
rough
August 12,2008
The Independent August 28,2008 So is Obama the Saviour of his party? 'E 598
August 31,2008
The Independent September 7, 2008 McCain is swimming against the tide September 9, 2008 374
The Times January 22, 2009 Task No 1 for Barack Obama: reinvent capitalism January 27, 2009 748
The New York Times February 25, 2009 Disentangling Layers of a Loaded Term in Search of a February 28, 2009 629
Thread of Peace
The New York Times August 30, 2008 Would Obamas Plan Be Faster, Fairer, Stronger? September 6, 2008 786
The New York Times September 28, 2008 The 3 A.M. Call October 4, 2008 797

Washington Post October 30, 2008 Intelligence Head Says Next President Faces Volatile Era ( ) November 5, 2008 526
The Economist November 13, 2008 Change.gov November 16, 2008 863
Washington Post December 2, 2008 A team in need of a plan December 3, 2008 253
The imes January 20, 2009 Don't ask what Barack Obama can do for you, ask... v, January 21, 2009 313
The Independent January 19, 2009 The first BlackBerry president is here Blackberry January 20, 2009 318
Table 4: Detailed display of source and target newspaper information (Obama subcorpus)
Creating Narratives

3.2.2. The biomedical subcorpus

As chapter 4 does, chapter 5 also adopts a thematic approach to the investigation of translation
shifts and narratives that either reflect or construct reality. This chapter explores a sample data
set composed of 21 pairs of EnglishGreek health news articles culled from the Greek newspapers
I Kathimerini, To Vima and Ta Nea and put to content analysis. All 21 news articles span across
2008 and 2009. Target news articles have been matched with their source counterparts
originating from newspapers such as The New York Times, The Times, The Independent,
International Herald Tribune and The Economist. As was the case with the political subcorpus, in
this case as well an attempt has been made to have equal representation of press items across the
three newspapers. Thus 7 articles have been retrieved from each of the three (3) newspapers. In
terms of size, the press items from I Kathimerini round up to 4593 words, those from To Vima to
3475 words while the corresponding word count for Ta Nea amounts to 3424 words. The overall
subcorpus size comes up to 11,493 words. Table 5 summarizes the distribution of target press
items per newspaper.

Year I Kathimerini To Vima Ta Nea

No of 2008 articles 3 2 6
No of 2009 articles 4 5 1
Total Word count 4593 3475 3425

Table 5: Distribution and wordcount of TT articles per year and target newspaper (biomedical
subcorpus)

In terms of the thematic thread that governs all press items, health and biomedical innovations
has been the overarching thematic category. All translated press items have been retrieved in
electronic form via the official websites of each of the target newspapers, using the advanced
search feature, and applying theme and year of publication search filters. The source texts were
equally identified through the official websites of the source newspapers. Source and target items
have been included in Appendix 2. Table 6 below indicates source and target press item details.
79
ST Date Source text title Target text title Date TT Newspaper Word
Newspaper count
I/H/T
Creating Narratives
February 5, 2008 A February 10, 2008 917
Food Politics, HalfBaked

The NYT October 1 2, 2008 C October, 19 2008 351
Vitamin C May Interfere With Cancer Treatment

The NYT January 9, 2009 February 10, 2009 827
Major Flu Strain Found Resistant to Leading Drug, Puzzling Scientists

I/H/T December 31,2008 February, 15 2009 469
Blood sugar control Linked to Memory Decline, Study says
The NYT A March 1, 2009 585
February 2, 2009 Telling Food Allergies From False Alarms

he January 29, 2009 March 1, 2009 580
American attitudes to stemcell therapies are changing fast

Economist
The NYT March 29,2009 April 18, 2009 864
Cholesterol Drugs May Reduce Risk of Clots
Science News September 4,2008 September 6, 2008 473
Gene Domino Effect Behind Brain, Pancreatic Tumors

The December 14, 2008 December 16, 2008 330
Scientists may be able to stop cancer spreading round the body

Telegraph

New Scientist January 11, 2009 January 13, 2009 483
Implant raises cellular army to attack cancer
The Indep. April 23,2009 April 23,2009 627
Fertility expert:'I can clone a human being'.

The Times April 28, 2009 April 29, 2009 666
Deadly strain of swine flu gets under radar of the immune system

BBC June 24, 2009 June 26, 2009 362
New cancer drug shows promise
The Times October 5, 2009 : V October, 6 2009 534
HIV vaccine possibility after scientists rebuild camouflage mechanism

The Indep. June 19,2008 " June 20, 2008 566
Skin cancer patient cured' using his own blood cells
The Indep. 100 July 18, 2008 766
July 17, 2008 The future of fertility
The Indep. July 23, 2008 589
July 23, 2008 Prostate Cancer drug gives hope to untreatable patients
The Indep. July 25, 2008 402
July 24, 2009 Forget Dolly, theres an easier way to cloneand it works
The NYT September 22, 2008 September 24, 2008 344
Shorter radiation for Cancer of the Breast
The Times February 2, 2008 February 4, 2008 305
And next the contact lens that lets email really get in your face
The Times November 5, 2009 November 6, 2009 463
New Attack on Cancer with Nano Weapon
Table 6: Detailed display of source and target newspaper information (biomedical subcorpus)
Creating Narratives

3.2.3. Data selection and presentation

A methodological challenge that transcends this dissertation, and most especially the corpus
formation and design, is the reliable and objective collection and presentation of the data in such
a way so as to ensure validity of the results. For this challenge to be met, triangulation of results
(i.e. validation of results by applying more than one source and methods of observation) might
prove to be useful. This entails collection of evidence from multiple sources in order to ensure
that the study is valid. In principle, to triangulate results is not a challenge only for validating
results but also for gaining a better understanding of the object of inquiry (Olsen 2003). While
triangulation of results has been established in other disciplines, the metaphor of triangulation
has recently crossed over TS (Alves 2003) and refers to the combined use of different methods of
data elicitation and analyses in order to discuss methodological issues and actual experimental
methods in the field of translation process. The use of more than one method is assumed to be
able to exclude bias of subjectivity in the interpretation of the data. As shown in table 7 below
there are several methods and sources to be accounted for when conducting news analysis. If one
then was to triangulate findings the sources mentioned below would prove valuable.

This research has largely relied on the first source collection method i.e. archiving, to collect the
text pairs for analysis. This method was selected because it allowed sustained crosstextual
investigation and identification of translation shifts and allowed the assimilation of the
comparative and causal models elaborated in section 3.4.1. What is more, it enabled alignment of
source and target segments which gave a better view of the translation shifts that surfaced in
texts. Yet, this research, as shown in table 7, acknowledges other methodologies for collecting
data for a news translation project. Interviewing translators, both inhouse and freelancers,
would be a valuable source of data as it would give insights particularly concerning the process of
translation. The literature is abundant in researchers who argue for the importance and value of
interviewing key informants for the collection of both qualitative and quantitative data (Kumar
1987; Casley and Kumar 1988). In this project interviewing translators has been identified
(chapter 7) as a potentially valuable tool for fleshing out key information on the translators own
ideological leaning or ontological storylines that could potentially affect translation output. Real
time, onsite observation of the news translation flow would be of interest as it would give hands
on experience with main stakeholders. Observations, in turn, have been identified as a tool for
collecting qualitative data in social sciences (Spradley 1980; Marshall and Rossman, 1989)
although they also identify limitations in particular as far as controlling and exercising bias on the
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activity under observation. The value of realtime observations would be of significance here as it
would give insights to information regarding the process of translation that translators or
newspapers would be perhaps unwilling to disclose in an interview. Yet, my experience is that the
methodologies that involve interaction (active or silent i.e. observation) with translators were
inhibited by porcupine attitudes that do not allow an outsider to take a closer look at the
processes that take place within an institution (newspaper). These socalled porcupine' attitudes
by certain inhouse translators in newspapers and similar institutional settings have been a
frequent and persistent industrywide feature that hinders any personal involvement with
translators. Hence, although this research acknowledges the significance of tapping into the
translators mind, which could be done by carrying out personal interviews with translators,
working in newspapers yet it can pretend to have adequately exploited interviewing or realtime
observation. As I will discuss in section 3.4.1., the fact that this research does not go on to
investigate translator behaviour and mapping it out through translation choices, makes the use of
the process model to stand in the background, if not seem redundant. Thus, archiving has been
the most reliable and stable method for collecting data for this research. Table 7 below is
presenting the potential sources of collecting data for a news translation project, stating
advantages and limitations of each source.

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SOURCES OF DATA ARCHIVING INTERVIEWING TRANSLATORS REALTIME OBSERVATION
COLLECTION (Collection of ST/TT pairs) (inhouse, freelancers) of news translation process

ADVANTAGES (+) Retrievability (electronic sources) Access to authentic professional Handson experience with
Multiple classification options situations main stakeholders
Alignment of source and target Profiling translators as mediators Access to insiders information
segments on translation process that
would be otherwise irretrievable

LIMITATIONS () Setting up proper criteria for data Porcupine attitudes Porcupine attitudes
collection Power differential (depending Not textual
Static (excludes translators' input) on the status of translators)

Table 7 Sources of data collection: advantages (+) and limitations ()
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3.3. Gatekeeping: a key process in news translation

This section picks up the thread on international news flow from the introductory chapter 1
(section 1.1.); it then goes in more detail and describe and visualize the process of how news
makes it through the TT environment and focuses on news that checks out of the ST
environment before it checks in the TT one. This section has been motivated by my decision to
go in more detail in regards to the restless global local movement of news, before I actually close
in on the target text environment and develop a sustained and integrative model of analysis to the
data that will allow the analysis of unforced translation shifts and their crossreference to
narratives instantiated in those texts that have made it through all gates and into Greek
newspapers.

Modeling of the process of international news flow is a key component of this chapter as it lights
the way towards the development of a model of analysis. It is fueled by the need for critical
reflection on the totality of the communication, through translation, as stitching together the
different elements/factors and parameters which intersect during press translation enabled a
holistic view of the communicative process. Translation has remained largely on the background
in the framework of communication studies, despite its key position in facilitating the flow of
global news (Bani 2006); yet this study and more specifically this model presented in figure 5
underscores the role, function and interface of translation within the process of translating
international news for the Greek press. Although translation as a process is subsumed in news
institutions, yet journalists or translators that take up the challenge of translating dont
necessarily identify themselves as translators, but rather as journalists (Bielsa 2007). This study
agrees with Bielsa and Bassnett (2009) who look at the news translator as a negotiator of
meaning who inescapably acts also as a journalist who then needs to manage all institutional
reworkings and impositions.

The flow of information from the source text environment to the target one is influenced by a
number of factors, stakeholders and constituents and is dictated above all by the immense
pressure of time (Bassnett 2005; Bielsa and Bassnett 2009; Doorslaer 2010). As Bielsa points out
global news translation, categorized as a nonmaterial good, has realized the same fate as
circulated material goods in terms of their increased profusion and speed the last decades
(Bielsa, 2005:132). What accounts also for news time has largely changed to a degree that
scholars talk about instantaneous time (Lash and Urry 1994) when talking about the speed in
which a piece of press item is generated for readership consumption.

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Figure 5 below attempts to map out the news flow process which integrates processes and causal
relations between the ST environment and the TT one. Both the ST and TT
environments/cultures are presumed to be narrativerich regardless of whether these narratives
are the same or differ from one setting to the other. Embedded in the ST/TT cultures are the
respective ST/TT institutions (newspapers) in which the ST author and TT journalist/translator
are called to operate. The ST/TT texts pursue certain goals in terms their respective audiences17,
goals which are also served and maintained by means of linguistic/translational choices. Both the
ST and the TT newspapers aim for information transfer which is linguistically packaged in such a
way so as to sustain the existing readership and attain larger audiences and ultimately ensure
that the newspaper remains financially viable. Both then source and target texts form an integral
part of the newspaper which publishes them; they reflect the newspapers view on reality and
conform to the marketability processes which are put forward by the newspaper. I agree here
then with Lippmann (1965) who identifies news distortion and manipulation of the news story as
a means to avoid upsetting readerships which would then lead to a loss of subscribers
(ibid:205). To ensure that readers as subscribers will not discontinue, ST and TT newspapers
pander to target readership preferences and in this sense pay attention to and reproduce cultural,
social and discursive identities18 which a) are appealing to their respective audiences, b) serve a
specific ideological function and can direct and redirect the creation of identities towards an
intended path.

Starting from the ST environment and working ourselves down, the ST newspaper, operates
within a superimposing cultural system which in turn integrates and includes the ST institution
(i.e. newspaper The New York Times, The Independent, The Guardian or The Observer). It aims to
serve its own institutional and ideological and economic needs, frames news stories and
publishes these highlighting or downplaying perspectives of the event. Meaning manipulations,
accommodations to a specific writing style (Cotter 2001), selective appropriation of information
are all strategies that begin even before the text starts crawling towards the first gate and before
being shortlisted to make it through all gatekeeping functions (Chu 1985; Wilke and Rosenberger
1994; Vuorinen 1995; Hursti 2001) and cross over to the intercultural space and from there make
it to the target text environment which is of interest here. Hursti (2001) provides a detailed
17 Readers are of maximum importance to the newspaper for a number of reasons namely: a) they
represent the public opinion (Herbst 1993) and in this sense their buying of the newspaper should be
considered as an ongoing referendum (Myers 2005) which is verified by the numbers of circulation of the
newspaper, and b) they form the economic fuel of newspapers who seek to create loyal readers and
therefore stable consumers.
18 Binary constructions in newspapers can account for such a discursive identity.
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Creating Narratives

analysis of gatekeeping in working with English and Finnish and identifies gatekeeping19 as a
process based on selection. News agencies then select those news stories that are deemed as
newsworthy and allow them to pass on the other side, or as Bhabha would say audel
(1994:2). Gatekeeping then first concerns not how a news article will be translated but if it is
going to be translated at all. Following figure 4, once an eligible text enters the intercultural space
it means that it has passed on to the hands of the TT newspaper that shall claim its translation. It
is here that mediation from the part of the translator begins to act, and a series of other
gatekeeping functions or transformations take place in order to meet the needs of the target
environment institution and produce a culturally acceptable product (Schudson, 1989:278). The
culture dimension introduced here that has been also discussed in detail in section 2.2. has been
addressed in the gatekeeping context by Vuorinen (1995) who maintains that, news translation
entails attention to a number of cultures, namely (a) the culture of the source text that of the
target text, (b) the mass communication culture that prevails in a specific society and (c) the
culture of the institution which is embedded in a well founded socioeconomic system. It is then
information pertaining to (a)(c) above that undergoes translation and not just linguistic material.
These socalled cultures are identifiable also in the dimensions of media discourse which I have
analysed in detail in section 2.2.

The position I assume here visvis these cultures stated above are: in terms of (a) i.e. the culture
of the source text that of the target text, as stated earlier, the analysis of the data is targettext
orientated. Thus attention to the source text culture is only partial in the sense that explanation of
certain translation shifts draws support from crosscultural differences. Target newspapers seem
to receive a text that is inescapably and rigidly embedded in the ST culture. Translation then, as a
process, abruptly delocates the ST from its natural environment, destabilizes it, and puts it under
a number of transformations, linguistic and cultural in order to relocate it and position it in the
TT setting. Thus the target text is the outcome of cultural accommodation of the text, to the TT
culture norms and TT culture preferences. The targetoriented approach has been propelled by
the attested need of the news item to be adjusted to the target language and culture norms and
19 Gatekeeping started to appear during the 50s (White 1950), to talk about how news assembly line (Bell
1991) is controlled by journalists. The term passed on to TS to refer to the process whereby news has to
pass from one gate to the other by means of being selected as eligible to go through from one phase to the
next one. In this research, gatekeeping is defined in the terms of Hursti (2001) who uses the term to
describe the function that journalists have at various stages in order to control the amount of news flow
from gate to gate (as gatekeepers) by selecting those stories or story details they consider newsworthy to
be passed on to the next gate. Vuorinen (1995:164) identifies four gatekeeping functions performed by
news translators namely: a) controlling the quantity of the message; b) transforming the message, i.e.
altering the expressions of the original; c) message supplementing, i.e. adding expressions/information to
the original; d) message reorganization, i.e. changing the structure of the original. It is therefore up to the
gatekeepers and to those who control the gatekeeping processes to control a particular gate and either
block or allow the glow of information through a particular channel these are the so called in or out
choices as called by Vuorinen (1995:161).
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preferences. As Bassnett claims different stylistic conventions mean that often a considerable
amount of reshaping has to take place, to ensure that a text is suited to the target audience
(2005:124).

In terms of (b), this dissertation mainly looks behind representations that circulate in the target
mass communication culture and focuses on the role of translation to either reverberate or mould
these within the setting of the target printed mass media environment. Apart from being
embedded in the ST culture, the ST text is also anchored in the ST mass communication culture
that prevails. This means that the ST is conditioned upon the stylistic, institutional and
professional conventions that rule over the ST mass communication culture. Translating it then
implies alignment to the mass communication norms, conventions and requirements of the TT
environment. As it will be shown, representations that seem to emerge through the manipulation
of discourse in translation are largely related to societal expectations and structures of the target
environment. Yet, as it will be shown the mass communication culture in the target environment
has been factored in for the interpretation of data (chapter 6).

In terms of (c), this dissertation looks also at the culture of the institution which hosts the
translated news item in the sense that it addresses issues of translation shifts as being
institutionally motivated i.e. tailored to the particular institutional identity of each newspaper.
Also, the socalled culture of the institution unfolds its presence from the sustained analysis of
the thematic threads that underpin the translated press items. This means observation of the
themes that make it through the first gatekeeping stage and are shortlisted for appropriation by
target newspapers to undergo translation, enables identification of the source institutional
stories that qualify as newsworthy in the target institutional environment. Translated news
themes therefore allow access to the crossinstitutional preferences among newspapers.

At the final stage, zooming in the target text itself, the narratives that are negotiated there are the
product of a series of individual gatekeeping or framing strategies that are pinned down to the
translator and in this research to the TT newspaper that claims them and capitalizes on them.

It is at this stage then that the mediating role of translators looms large; it is here that translators
who internalize the language, the culture, the ideology and the narratives of the gatekeeping
successful source text proceed to conscious or unconscious, deliberate or unmotivated linguistic
manipulations and reframings to give life to the target text. Variants which may affect the
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Creating Narratives

decisionmaking and may interfere with the cognitive aspect of the Black Box20 include from
strictly external/institutional parameters such as time pressure, or textual space allotted for the
translation to more cognitivelyoriented ones such as the translators' knowledge, their
familiarization with or instinctive embeddedness to the target culture conventions and
preferences. This dissertation focuses on this target text and highlights the narratives and
emerging representations and identities which are the result of the translation output.
Translators then are challenged by the newspapers to produce texts which reflect the narratives
that circulate in the TT environment.21 These narratives, in turn, serve the information transfer,
the profitmaking, the identity reflection and construction with an aim to satisfy and justify
ideological positions and attain audience appeal. Therefore, the translated text is the outcome of
processes and causal relations that are established, link up and justify institutional intentions and
goals. It is ultimately a product that lies at the bottom end of the international news flow process
that inherits and always carries to some extent all features of the previous phases of the process.

The translator then, as I argue, although termed as an inbetweener, yet is not a neutral, idle and
silent participant in this process but an engaging one, someone that has to work in the
intercultural space as an inbetween entity that intervenes between the message of the source
text and that of the target text. However simplistic it may sound, translators are at the same time
first readers (amongst other individuals/stakeholders in the TT narrative environment) of the
material to be translated. However, as debatable is the notion of news translation (in terms of
how much does it correspond to what is called translation proper), the same goes for the
definition of translators. Bassnett (2006) in her project entitled The Politics and Economics of
Translation in Global Media, interviews many translators and observes that people engaged in
interlingual news writing did not want to call themselves translators but preferred terms such as
international journalist (2006:56). Research in the personal habitus of the translator
commissioned for a translation task is outside the scope of this dissertation.

20 In this research, Black Box is used in the sense of Williams and Chesterman who employ the term to
represent the mind of the translator which is difficult to observe directy (2002:53).
21 Further research could aim at uncovering the translators embeddedness in the narratives that circulate
in the TT environment and hence inform their linguistic decisions. This point is further discussed in chapter
7.
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Figure 5: Information flow, information transfer and gatekeeping

Having described the international news flow process, I proceed by focusing on what happens to
the target text in particular and to the institutional environment that hosts it. From now on then I
focus on the TT environment (in relation to figure 5) and on the impact of the translation product.
As my concern in this dissertation is to show the effects of unforced translation shifts in
constructing or reflecting identities and representations I need to zoom in on the newspaper that
accommodates the TT becomes the arena where news stories find their own living space where
translated news stories are allocated a specific textual space in a newspaper and each one of them
fits into a news story which in turn includes, enacts and integrates, as we shall see, narratives.
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Creating Narratives

This is a kind of living space, or Lebensraum22 allocated to news stories, which is hardly
random. It is rather a selective process determined by parameters such as a) the news stories that
circulate on a global scale, b) the agendas that dominate the newsmaking industry, c) the assumed
cognitive and representational foundations (assumed narrative intelligence) of the public, i.e.
news consumers, d) ideological intentions, power issues which are always there in the
institution (particularly in translated press) and are transformed into outputs i.e. effects in the
TT.

22
Lebensraum i.e. living space is a term coined by the German geographer, Friedrich Ratzel to be applied to territorial
aggression. In his 1897 Politische Geographie, Ratzel relates the term to the pursuit for more living space where more
powerful states need to acquire more living space for themselves. However, the term can be overextended and
metaphorically used to indicate any type of physical (spatial) or nonphysical territory that is seeking to mark and
expand its territory.
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Creating Narratives

3.4. Closing in on a model of analysis

This section smoothly paves the way for the formulation of a model of analysis to the data that
follows in section 3.4.2. It discusses the prevailing research models in TS highlighting the features
of each one and links two of these to this research. The description of the models of analysis
within TS proves eminently useful here as it provides methodological backing to the model
developed. The fact that TS has started in the past decades to adopt and adjust diverse, more
complex and fluid notions as it has been shown in section 2.3., may be one reason, as Olohan
notes, (2004) behind espousing methodological considerations that started to impregnate the
discipline which traditionally rested on Descriptive Translation Studies (DTS). The three models
that have dominated the methodological approaches in TS are the comparative, causal and
process model while all of them have been termed by Chesterman as intermediate constructs
between theory and data (2000:15). The following section 3.4.1. presents the three models
that have been defining translation research in the past years and are meant to smoothly lead
reading towards a robust model of analysis one that critically accommodates the Theory of
Narratives and framing strategies.

3.4.1. Models in Translation Studies

This section summarizes models of analysis in TS in order to select those elements required for
building a model of analysis to the data. The models that I detail below have been accounted for as
intermediate constructs between theory and data (Chesterman, 2000:15) and have been
introduced out of the need to bring ordering and organization to experimental, datadriven
translation research projects. Williams and Chesterman (2002) sketch out three models of
analysis in TS namely, the comparative, the causal and process model. While the comparative
model mainly adopts a descriptive approach to translated texts, the process and causal models
look at translation as a more dynamic process and integrate interpretative and critical
approaches.

a) Comparative model

According to Williams and Chesterman (2002) the comparative model relates to a static and
targettextoriented approach to translation data that views the translated text as a direct and
equivalent product of the source text. The comparative model can be used for descriptive and
translation projects that are focusing mainly on observation however it cannot be used to
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Creating Narratives

explain and predict causes and effects (Olohan, 2004:10). Graphically, the comparative model is
represented as follows

Figure 6: Comparative model adapted Williams and Chesterman (2002)

This model, approaches translation in static terms as ST and TT are juxtaposed as the one being
the linguistic mirror of the other. The obvious, of course, limitation of a comparative model is, as
Olohan argues, that it cannot be used to explain and predict causes and effects in the way that a
causal model can (2004:10). On the other hand, the comparative model can prove very useful to
the extent that we need to develop new hypotheses that link causal conditions, translation
profile features and translation effects (ibid), as it will allow us to build on large bilingual parallel
corpora and draw conclusions on the effects and causes on a more stable base. I would add then
that the comparative model enables the causal to work and yield results, also facilitating
quantitative analysis in the place of qualitative one that belongs more to the territory of the
causal one.

b) Process model

The second model elaborated in TS is called the process model and "represents translation as a
process not a product (ibid, 2002: 51). It links translation to cognition and simulates the
translators mind as a Black Box which operates as a buffer zone, as an inbetween entity in the
middle of 'input' and 'output' processes. Input processes are viewed here as the various
parameters that come into play and affect the translators cognition, which is directly connected
to how translation decisions are made. This model shows how shifts or strategies are thus often
ambiguous between process and product readings (ibid: 53), which in turn foregrounds that the
translation product cannot be detached from the process. Also, this model is valuable in order to
make statements about typical translation behaviour (Chesterman, 2000:15). Within the
framework of the process model translators then gain a central position as they are both the
receivers and transmitters of a message. The process is summed up and visualized in figure 7
below:

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Figure 7: Process model adapted Williams and Chesterman (2002)

(S1= Sender, M1= Message, R1=Receiver, S2=Sender 2, M2= Message, R2=Receiver)

This model sheds light to the role of translators as mediators, as they are active throughout the
process of translation. The translator assumes both the role of R1 (i.e. Receiver) and S2 Sender
which highlights the mediation phase. S1 (sender) creates the message that will eventually be
translated and may be the source newspaper (in this study) or the writer of a novel etc. The
product of S1's actions is M1 i.e. Message, which in this study is the source news text as produced
by the source institution (The New York Times, The Economist, The Guardian etc.). Following a
series of gatekeeping functions (Vuorinen 1995), which are not described by Williams and
Chesterman, the ST reaches the TT institution (TT newspaper I Kathimerini, Ta Nea or To Vima)
which in turn translate the articles that have made it through the gatekeeping (3.3.). Target
newspapers are held in this study to take the role of R1, as they receive the ST, and commission
its translation to a translator who is embedded in the institution.

c) Causal model

The socalled causal model implies that an output is caused by an input (Olohan, 2004:53),
which means that a specific translation shift has motivation and particular effects which can be
traced back and linked to certain levels of causality (ibid: 54). The importance of the causal
model lies in that it brings forward the notion of causality in TS and reveals the strong affinities
that govern the output of translation with mediator and institution intentions. Therefore, this
model focuses on the effect of a particular cause. Unforced translation shifts, as I argue, have the
potential to reveal the full causal force of translation practice and bring to the fore the depths of
translation discourse. In essence, then the causal model suggests that language has both
motivations and driving forces (e.g. ideology or a cultural preference) but also effects (i.e. the
emergence or enforcement of a particular narrative). Both causes and effects and their
identification by the researcher are critical parameters. Yet, as anticipated in TS research (Orengo
2005), news translation challenges the traditional and conventional notions of equation between
the ST and the TT. Often, the TT is a product of continuous additions and deletions of an ST and
therefore it is virtually impossible to draw concrete cause/effect conclusions about the
translational choices and output. In figure 8 below I aim to visualize and illustrate the causal
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model in TS. Defending the importance and role that the causal model can assume in the study of
translation, Chesterman maintains that the most important reason for the primacy of a causal
model is a methodological one: it encourages us to make specific explanatory and predictive
hypothesis. (2000: 21)

Figure 8: Causal model in translation studies

This research critically merges and makes use of the comparative and causal models as displayed
in figure 9 below. Figure 9 illustrates the role and interaction of the models of analysis in TS, as
these were presented above. Reading the figure from the top and moving downwards it illustrates
first the interdisciplinary nature of the project. The comparative and causal models are the two
models that hold the most prominent role in this thesis. Had this project been preoccupied with
the, admittedly underexplored, habitus, the ontological narrativity and the ideological leanings of
translators per se, then the role of the process model would have been even more important and
foregrounded. Yet, the fact that it decides to focus on the TT and on the effects this produces
ineluctably devitalizes the discussion on the investigation of the socalled Black Box together
with any indepth analysis to the translators cognitive, cultural and knowledgebase background.
On the other hand, the nature of this project necessitates the assimilation, at equal standing, yet at
different stages, of both the comparative and the causal model to respond a) to the
methodological challenges that necessitate a presence of a comparable corpus, one that allows
crosstextual analysis of unforced translation shifts and enables feedback on quantitative results,
b) to the critical challenges imposed by press translation that have guided my motivation to work
out the causeandeffect link between an unforced translation shift and its effect. Figure 9 below
then graphically illustrates how the two models of analysis intersect in this dissertation. This
figure also foreshadows the key role of narrative as a bridge unit between language decisions
and reflection and construction of reality. In the following section I integrate the tools of narrative
and framing to formulate a model of analysis to the data in chapters 4 and 5.
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Figure 9: Models and levels of news translation data analysis

3.4.2. A model of analysis

Hitherto, I have discussed in detail the models of analysis that are prevalent in TS (3.4.1.), argued
for the use of the comparative and causal models in this research and showed how these two
come together. Yet, although this research is firmly grounded on TS, the narrative overtones that
penetrate and organize it and which bring to the fore the meaningcreating and meaning
reflecting 'muscle' of language, address the need for tools that will allow me to both engage in
textual analysis (comparative model) and deduct valuable results as to the causes and effects of
the text analysed. Narrative and framing emerge here as those valuable tools that fit into the
confines of the comparative and causal models and have allowed me to analyze the translated
press items. In this section I commence by discussing and illustrating exactly how narratives have
been used and then describe the holistic model of analysis.

Figure 10 displays the model of analysis I have developed to apply to the data. It is a model that
has been formulated based on the need of this project to spell out the intertwining nature of
theory, methodology and application of methodology to the data. It also illustrates how tools of
microlevel analysis (framing) can be effectively combined with tools of macroanalysis
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(narratives). Attempting a lefttoright reading of the model, this is divided into 3 different
analysis phases/zones. Phase 1, the socalled input phase, pertains to the general setting that will
provide me, in phase 2, with the raw materials for the analysis. Phase 1 concentrates on the TT
environment which has been handed over from the ST that in turn has undergone a series of
gatekeeping stages (see figure 4). Phase 1 only sets the frame for translation and the analysis that
takes place in Phase 2. As I have mentioned and argued previously (section 3.2.3.), I am not
focusing here on the parameters that affect translation decisions (translator ideology, power
relations between the translatornewspaper etc.). This is why figure 10 only displays the TT
environment and newspapers as input items. Phase 2, the socalled analysis phase, focuses on the
TT. Here, I analyze two sample subcorpora, one political and one biomedical; I look at the
unforced translation shifts and analyze these using a toolbox of framing strategies as these have
been developed and put forward by Baker (2006b). As presented in section 2.5.2.2., framing
strategies include lexical variation (labelling), additions/deletions (selective appropriation) and
intrasentential configurations, i.e. thematization or endweight sentences (repositioning of
participants). Phases 1 and 2 are instantiations of the comparative model of analysis in TS as in
these two phases I am primarily concerned with comparing and juxtaposing STs and TTs. The
causal model assumes a role in this model in phase 3, the socalled output phase. It is there then
that framing strategies, organize how unforced translation shifts give rise, as I have argued (figure
3, section 2.5.3.) to ontological, political, conceptual and master narratives which either reflect or
construct reality (identities and representations). Analysis of data in chapters 4 and 5 has been
based on this model while chapter 6 goes on to interpret the output phase i.e. narratives, re
connecting these to the TT newspapers and talking about their meaningmaking potential.
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Figure 10: The Model of Analysis (figure adapted from PapaefthymiouLytra (1990: 142).

97
EnglishGreek News CHAPTER 4: Renarrating Obama in the US elections context
Creating Narratives

CHAPTER 4

Renarrating Obama in the US elections context

4.1. Introduction

Integrating the concept of narrative (Somers and Gibson 1994; Baker 2006b) in news translation
implies acknowledgement that translation may have the power to reflect and construct
worldviews. This chapter sets out to explore the role and implications of translation in providing
an alternate view of the US President Barack Obama, in the context of elections that would meet
the expectations of the target readership and promote meaning construction as intended by the
newspapers. It starts out with a descriptive approach to a 13,319word section of the Greek target
version of the data and unfolds towards a more critically oriented analysis by looking at linguistic
variation as being institutionally, ideologically and narratively conditioned. Building on the model
of analysis (figure 10, section 3.4.2.) this chapter reports on unforced translational variation,
relooked through the lens of framing strategies (section 2.5.2.2.), explores how the latter shapes
narratives which alter, reflect or construct a reality. Analysis of findings has followed a layered
approach. 21 translated news pieces from three newspapers, namely Ta Nea, To Vima and I
Kathimerini, have been isolated and put to the test.

The linguistic manipulation of news stories in translation shows amongst others a) appropriation
of B. Obamas ontological narratives by Greek newspapers, b) different rewriting of public
narratives emphasizing a discourse of stability and public suffering, c) emergence of a narrative of
passive electorate body in the Greek target environment, d) a different narration of Leadership
and Politics in the TT, e) variation in the articulation of a set of master narratives, especially in
that of binary thinking. The following sections in this chapter have been dedicated to show how
translation and translational variation has the potential to reflect, construct, cordon off or
shutdown narratives in the TT and shape cultural and social identities of the participants
through narrative shifts.

4.2. US 2008 Presidential Elections and aim of this chapter

The 2008 Presidential Elections marked a historically critical event for the United States, Europe
and the rest of the globe. In November 2008, Barack Hussein Obama became the 44th president of
Creating Narratives

the United States after having won the primaries and overpowered his political opponent John
McCain. This electorate period highlighted once more the rise of candidatecentered politics
(Wattenberg, 1991:5). Both the imagemaking industry and the media greatly emphasized on the
features and personal characteristics of the candidates, which were deemed of significant
importance for shaping voter behaviour. The stories appropriated by the media orbited around:
a) the polar juxtapositions of B. Obama either to his predecessor G. W. Bush or to John McCain
(Renshon 2008);
b) the key storylines of home affairs, the economy, the war in Iraq and Afghanistan and national
security issues;
c) stories about terrorism which included B. Obama as a participant in the decisionmaking
process for addressing issues relative to the war on terror. It was within this mediaintense
environment, ruled by heated debates and intersecting life stories about the two candidates, that
voters of the source environment made voting choices, which they based on a marriage of
information and predisposition: information to form a mental picture ... and predisposition to
motivate some conclusion about it (Zaller, 1992:6).

The months before the elections of November 2008 were marked by a circulation of newspaper
stories that addressed issues about candidates and juxtaposed their personalities, running mates
etc. After the presidential election of B. Obama and up to the date of the Inauguration, stories that
appeared in the source environment would focus on B. Obamas identity and on the issues that he
would have to deal with after assuming Office.

Unsurprisingly, Greek newspapers devoted much of their space to the US Presidential Elections.
This chapter draws attention to the translated versions of the original stories, their role in
disseminating and affecting the representation of political personae or the political context. It
provides evidence accounting for the proliferation of the various modified narratives that have
been integrated in news texts by Greek newspapers with a view to showing the application of
cultural and ideological filters that make messages appropriate in the target environment.

This chapter then aims to bring to the surface the interconnection between language, translation
and narratives. It showcases evidence of the interaction of cultural, institutional, ideological and
narrativerelated dimensions in reworking the construction of B. Obamas identity in the Greek
press. It agrees with Mitsikopoulou (2008) who stresses the interconnectedness of language and
semiosis in knowledge and informationbased societies (ibid: 356) and decides to interrogate
on this interdependence through the lens of translation. It also foregrounds the key relationship
between language and other more fluid notions such as context, narrative and institution that
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hosts linguistic choices and accommodates narratives. As the key concept elaborated here is that
of narrative, analysis attempts to reveal how variation is either a mirror image of a narrative that
circulates in the target environment or a tool for shaping audience expectations through the
reconstruction of a new narrative in the TT environments. In this sense the concepts of adapting
to, reflecting and making reality govern this study.

More specifically, this study aims at showing that translation is a sort of corridor that provides
mediation for frames, representations and narratives from the source environment to the target
one. Data pulled out from the three Greek newspapers (Ta Nea, To Vima and I Kathimerini) reveal
variation in the representation of B. Obama from the ST to the TT; variation is analyzed with
respect to the fact that the identity of B. Obama is viewed as an episode which is both constitutive
of the 2008 U.S. presidential elections and constituted by it; in this sense the representation of B.
Obama cannot be separated from the overall context that accommodates it and from which it
feeds.

The following key assumptions guide this chapter:
a) the identity of B. Obama was constructed via the media;
b) in translation, as it is with original text production, language, discourse and thought are
intertwined;
c) translation offers a different grammar of representation to the readers in terms of the
eventnarrative under way, thus challenging their cognitive representations of the
event;
d) cultural, institutional, ideological and narrative dimensions come into play and affect
the translation process and product.

As already discussed above, this chapter looks at how translational variation reflects, alters or
constructs a narrative. It defocuses attention from variation due to interlingual preference
registered in language (such as politeness phenomena, metaphoricity shifts which cannot be
associated with the representation of Obama and the context of elections, etc.) to highlight shifts
which contribute to a variant reflection in the TT of some narrative perspective of the ST. In terms
of data interpretation, this chapter strives to uncover the narrative potential of translation
choices which equals that although it acknowledges that certain linguistics shifts may be
associated with an attempt to legitimize discourse participants23 or events (Chilton 2004; Cap
23
For example often the target text versions gloss B. Obama as (i.e. Senator) in the place of
the ST equivalent Mr., thus awarding him an upgraded prestige. This concurs with the attempt of
newspapers to seek justification and support of actions (Cap, 2006:5). Issues of how language and
narratives relate to legimation or (de)legitimization intentions are revisited in chapter 6.
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2006) yet it chooses to give priority to how these are narrated and constructed discursively in
narratives.

4.3. A narrative approach to the Obama/election data

This chapter builds a case for the interaction between translation and a) the construction of
narratives in the TT environment or b) the reflection of narratives circulating in the TT in
translation. Recalling section 2.5.3. where I built a case around narrative as a means of identity
construction and reflection, this section proceeds to a sustained narrative analysis, along the lines
of the model of analysis (figure 10). The issue of narrative identity (Bamberg 2007) and identity
terrain (Somers and Gibson 1994) is key in this chapter as translation shifts speak out in terms of
the renegotiation of an identity for B. Obama (appropriation of ontological narratives) but also
echo the narratives that circulate in the TT environment and refer to e.g. the identity of the
electoral body or the identity that is constructed in the TT environment for the leader. Data shows
that linguistic variation that surfaces in translation is not impactfree but rather reflects or
rewrites narratives that either belong or are injected to the TT environment.

4.3.1. On B. Obamas ontological/personal narratives

This section aims at presenting evidence of how newspapers attempt to capitalize on the
ontological narrative of B. bama, through translation and translational choices. In section 2.5.2. I
presented the typology of narratives and provided the working definition of ontological
narratives as personal stories we tell ourselves about our place in the world and our own
personal history (Baker, 2006b:28). Although B. Obamas story is emplotted in other narratives
and contexts, and finds its way to an immense array of political stories, yet much of this
multiplicity of stories begins and stems from the lines of his ontological storylines. This focus
perhaps emphasises the very concept of ontological narrative as this relates to the way personal
identity is constructed through storied lives which in turn provide a way for creating structure to
experiences (Riessman 1993). During the period of the Presidential Elections, Greek newspapers,
along with other media, were accommodators of translated ontological i.e. personal stories about
Obama which were meant to present an intended view of Obamas personality to the Greek
readership. Translation is thus a host mechanism which both enables narratives to travel from
one environment to the other and a transforming mechanism which changes the way a narrative
is linguistically packaged. All examples below fall under the category of ontological narratives as
they tell a story about B. Obamas past, about his roots, family and in general his background.
Ontological narratives, housed by Greek newspapers, delineate B. Obamas personal world and
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plot his biographical story, manipulating along the way its meaning, while alerting and guiding
the public towards specific images of his ontological narrativity.

4.3.1.1. The exotic and multicultural

Reflecting on ontological narratives about B. Obama implies identifying the main constituents of
his biographical storyline as these emerge in translated versions of the source texts. What this
section will show is how translation shapes an ontological and hence biographical identity for B.
Obama. Among the main ontological topics that emerged in translation for B. Obama was the
exotic and multicultural background of his life.

The headline in example 1 below provides a fullblown exotic view for B. Obama, lexicalized
through the reference to Hawaii. Although both ST1 and TT1 include a reference to Hawaii, TT1,
selectively appropriates the item Hawaii by means of adding the phrase
(formed his worldview). It is in this way that it capitalizes even more on the
exotic and strikingly foreign view that the item Hawaii carries and fortifies its position in the
clause by attributing to it the grammatical function of an ACTOR. In TT1 Hawaii is not a static,
rolefree, and powerless entity but rather has the power to shape and form Mr. Obamas
worldview. Therefore the narrative potential here lies in the implications that the TT1 generates
in relation to the ST. Also while the ST frames the story in an abstract and generalized way, the TT
reframes it by particularizing on the event.

S1 Obama: The Hawaii years The Independent, February 23 2008

T1 H , 24 2008

BT: Hawaii formed his worldview

The Greek version of the article was also accompanied by visual material which amplified the
construction and proliferation of an ontological narrative for B. Obama, based on specific traits.
Photo 1 below is indicative of the multimodal nature of news discourse which has been studied by
theorists (Kress 2003) who attest that we live in a multimodal society which makes meaning
through the codeployment of a combination of semiotic resources (Lim, 2005: 53). Photo 1,
coupled with the translated material, creates a more profound and persistent image of B. Obamas
formative years;

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Photo 1 accompanying the article "H
, , 24 2008

As in example 1 above, example 2 shows how translation changes the ontological story of B.
Obama's family and retells, by means of labelling, another story in the TT. While the ST talks
about a family with more than one faces, the TT renders this image through the perspective of
multiculturalism, avoiding the translation24 of Many Faces into that would have
been more semantically accurate towards the original, but would have been loaded with negative
and not applaudable connotations, especially in a culture that favours directness (Sifianou 1992),
as it is affiliated with corruption and lack of sincerity and would profile a politician as not direct
and misleading. Instead, translation by means of labelling, chooses the item multicultural
() and assigns positive connotations to the personality of B. Obama bringing
forward traits of cosmopolitanism, inmixing, openness to Otherness25, heightened adaptability
potential and making B. Obama seem more like a hyphenated being, a translated being that
mediates between cultures and stories. The headline however has to be read and interpreted not
in isolation from the rest of the text; on the contrary, it seems that the headline offers a general,
emphatic frame of what follows. Therefore, if one follows the storyline as it deploys in the text
(Appendix 1), it becomes clear that the prevailing image that surfaces (and is captured in the
headline) is the one of a multiracial family taking a long journey from afar and ending up in front
of the steps of the White House to support and celebrate the Inauguration of B. Obama. The
constructed mental association that accompanies this image is one of a multiracial family with
close ties, a family that is rejoined by B. Obama who has just won the elections. As is the case with
the example 1 above, this narrative conveyed through the translated material is also retold
through the photo (2) accompanying the text. The story told through the visual material in photo
2 is that B. Obama integrates a multiethnic, multiracial past characterized by the strong ties he
harbored with his family (portrayed in the arms of his loved ones) and a present where he finds
support by a powerful, AfricanAmerican wife (Michelle Obama). Also TT2 offers a spatially
24 Baker talks about how translators mediating texts may wish to avoid specific translations (although more
semantically equivalent) when that equivalent is or has become embedded in a different and potentially
negative set of narratives in the target culture (2006b:64). This cultural sensitivity of narratives has been
evidenced in many examples in the two subcorpora.
25 The concept of Otherness or Othering relates here to the concepts of ingroup favouritism and outgroup
bias (Jackson, 2010:520) and is a process that allows individuals to construct relationships of sameness
and difference and construct their own identity. The importance of Othering in making sense of the Self has
been highlighted by researchers in psychology who underline the importance creating an Enemy or Other
with an intention to find the Self (Sherif 1966).
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confined conceptualization by tracking down the journey of the families while ST2 remains more
abstract and generalizing.

S2 Nations Many Faces in Extended First Family The New York Times, January 21 2009

T2 A
H , 25 2009

: The multicultural journey of two families from Africa to the Gates of the White House.

Photo 2 accompanying the article "H

, , 24 2008

Narratives and narrative worlds are not only inscribed in language but are multimodal (Kress
2003) and are hence told and retold through various media. Listening to the visual material,
which accompanies language and translations, offers an enhanced storytelling for the narrative
that is underway. The narrative that is eloquently put forward in photo 2 tells a personal story
about B. Obama as someone who has had in the past strong family ties and yet doesnt let go of
this connection to his family but seeks and accepts support from his wife who, like B. Obama, is a
hyphenated being too, as she integrates a racially nonwhite past with traditionally white traits
such as power.

Example 3 traces his family's roots all the way to Africa. Thus the American President's image
moves away from that of a 'regular guy' and closer to someone who has an ethnic background
that works in his favour. Examples stress Obamas diverse, mixed, interracial and hence
hyphenated nature. ST2TT2 and ST3TT3 pairs tally also in part with a discursive and conceptual
motivation to portray LIFE AS A JOURNEY (Lakoff and Johnson 1989) which is also consistent
with the ontological narrative of discovery of the self inherent in all human beings. What is more,
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the fact that the TT selects to incorporate the reference to Africa, (selective appropriation) is
considered of strategic importance as it fortifies the description of a multicultural politician, one
who has survived and lived through a journey all the way from the other end of the globe and
has arrived at the US political stage to play out his multiethnic existence.

S3 Nations Many Faces in Extended First Family The New York Times, January 21 2009

T3 A H ,
25 2009

: The multicultural journey of two families from Africa to the Gates of the White House.

While ST1TT1 to ST3TT3 pairs above foreground Obamas exotic, multiracial and hyphenated
background, examples 4 and 5 narrate Obama through a filter of nostalgia and romanticism for
his land of origin (example 4) and childhood tenderness (example 5). Emphasis then is placed on
his roots only to glorify his future accomplishments. Example 4 below includes a lexical shift
(labelling) by means of which the translator decides not to translate the ST item State, as
(which would be its direct TT equivalent and would carry the same political nuances), but opts for
a more emotive and rather nostalgic item i.e. (land). This decision highlights Obamas
connection with his own roots and history and mitigates the inherent negative comment that
follows on the expensive private school he attended.

S4 As Obama departed for the state where he grew up, the Republican Party sent him off with a 'Travel Guide'
mocking the upscale prep school Obama attended.
If the Democrats want Obama to win, they have to get rough The Observer, August 10 2008

T4 , ,
, ,
..
, 17 2008

: As Obama departed for the land where he grew up, the Republican Party sent him off with a 'Travel
Guide' mocking the upscale prep school Obama attended.

While example ST4TT4, highlights Obamas connection to his roots and origins, example 5 draws
on his childhood and replaces the more general ST item in his life with the TT item
(since childhood) which indexes purity and naivet. The anchoring of this example to his
ontological story lies in the retroversion that the TT attempts to a specific period in B. Obama's
life (his childhood) and to the positive nuances and associations that this period carries with it.
Again, labelling is used here to decouple B. Obama from the State and reconnect him with his
ontological roots. This coding of the narrative in terms of utilizing lexical references to B. Obama's
childhood is reinforced by the TT headline which refers
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(Books which marked the New President). Again, the lexical choice of marked () is a
strategic one as the implication it carries is that B. Obama has been shaped from a young,
innocent and tender early age, and therefore the results of these socalled formative years are
going to be longlasting and permanent. Examples TT4 and TT5 make salient the anchoring of
Obama to his past and especially his childhood roots, by means of labelling.

S5 Mr. Obamas first book, Dreams From My Father (which surely stands as the most evocative, lyrical and
candid autobiography written by a future president), suggests that in his life he has turned to books as a way
of acquiring insights and information from others as a means of breaking out of the bubble of selfhood
and, more recently, the bubble of power and fame.
From Books, New President Found Voice The New York Times, January 18 2009

T5 , ( ,
),
, ,
, .
H , 25 2009

: Mr. Obamas first book, Dreams From My Father (which surely stands as the most evocative, lyrical and
candid autobiography written by a future president), suggests that since he was a child he had turned to
books as a way of acquiring insights and information from others as a means of breaking out of the bubble
of selfhood and, more recently, the bubble of power and fame.

4.3.1.2. Afterthought on ontological narratives

Analysis of how ontological narratives about B. Obama are reproduced in the Greek press reveal a
tendency of the target newspapers to appropriate and capitalize B. Obamas biographical
storylines. Ontological stories encourage a storytelling of the past, given their often biographical
nature while at the same time newspapers seem to take advantage of this property of ontological
narrativity in terms of B. Obama. Translation then offered glimpses of B. Obama's personhood and
explored his exotic and multicultural life story. The newspapers that proceed then to a rewriting
of B. Obamas personal storylines integrate discursive aspects of global brands and branding
(Mitsikopoulou, 2008: 353) of political personas. Linguistically, this appropriation and
capitalization manifest via tactful labelling which constructs mainly rather than reflects a specific
profile for B. Obama. Among the features that surface through the translational choices in relation
to ontological narratives are the attempt to a) highlight Obamas exotic and multiethnic nature
and b) link his success (Election in office) to his childhood experiences and roots. The implied
effect on the narrative elaborated and underway is that translation offers a different narration of
B. Obamas diversity and polymorphy which is inscribed in traits which are default and from which
B. Obama cannot escape (colour, childhood) but also optional (journey of the family from Africa to
the USA). The combination of default and optional characteristics in the makeup of B. Obamas
story/early narrative is important as it too creates a narrative for him as a raceless persona, as
someone who successfully integrates a wide range of traits into his personality traits which have
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been both imposed to him (blackness) and which are the result from a more active decision
making (migration from Kenya), from his part or his family. In translation then he travels as a
subject that stresses difference within, a subject that inhabits the rim of an inbetween reality
(Bhabha, 1994:19). The narration in translation of . Obamas ontological being challenges the
perception of identities as fixed, inelastic categories and relaunches the idea of identity as a
product of assembling characteristics from various and often diverse terrains of representation.
B. Obamas mixed, spoiled and individuated identity is one such example. In turn, this integration
gives new momentum to the concept of Change26 since the realization of the small changes along
the ontological story of B. Obama makes more plausible and award an upgraded credibility to the
likelihood of Change taking place in the political scene of USA.
26 Concept that formed the main slogan in B. Obamas 2008 campaign.
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4.4. On public/collective narratives

The following set of examples shows how translational variation is reflective of shifts in public
narratives from the ST to the TT. As mentioned in section 2.5., public narratives are stories
elaborated by and circulating among social and institutional formations larger than the
individual (Somers and Gibson 1994, emphasis added). All categories mentioned below involve
narratives which are glossed as public or collective, as they move above the level of one single
individual and relate to features which characterize collective identities. Yet, the set of examples
included in the following section correspond more to the definition of public narratives as this
has been framed by Somers (1992) who terms public narratives as "public, cultural and
institutional narratives" (ibid:604). This definition is more reflective of the examples in this
section as it integrates the strong concept of culture. The data below show that manipulation of
language in translation and translation shifts reflect a collective cultural or social identity of the
target readership. Therefore, while in section 3.3.1. the aim was to reveal how variation in terms
of B. Obamas personal/ontological storyline was reflected in translation, here I move above the
level of the individual and aim to expose the broader, societal, collective or cultural narratives
that circulate in the public sphere (TT environment) and show how these are renegotiated in
translation. Also, translation variation presented below speaks for how language adapts and
reflects reality or constructs new frames of reality. What is really interesting, as we will see, is
that to a large extent the elaboration of public narratives in Greek translated items seems to
have been reconfigured in such a way so as to dovetail the target culture expectations and
aspirations.

4.4.1. Narrating stability

The following set of examples is indicative of how the target text adapts to a public
identity/narrative prevalent in the target environment; examples listed below showcase how
translation promotes the public narrative of stability inscribed in the Greek cultural and narrative
context. Researchers (Hofstede and Bond 1984; Hofstede and Hofstede 2005; Sidiropoulou
2008b) have identified in Greek culture this low tolerance for uncertainty and risk and have
linked it to how culture is capable of inscribing human behaviour, thinking and attitudes. In
explaining why uncertainty avoidance, as a cultural dimension, may affect the semiosis of identity
in texts, Martin and Nakayama (2003) note in relation to the various perspectives which
contribute to the formation of identity that "[t]he psychological perspective emphasizes that
identity is created in part by the self and in part in the relation to group membership. According
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to this perspective the Self is composed of multiple identities and these notions of identity are
culture bound" (ibid: 148). This study takes one step further and shows how translation favours
certainty and stability, avoiding any meaning of risk, and thus how it plays a catalytic role in
reflecting, enforcing or constructing a public narrative of low tolerance to uncertainty, making the
public blind to any association of risk. Examples show all three Greek newspapers to attempt
linguistic constructions which reflect a preference for bringing about and adjusting to the public
narrative of avoiding uncertainty and thus mitigating threat. In that sense, translation establishes
or reinforces a cultural identity that circulates in the TT environment. In this way translators
prove their role as cultural mediators (discussed in section 2.2.) as they tailor discourse
accordingly to assist the believability of the narrative, making it ring true in the TT environment
and ensure that individuals in any society will buy into the version of truth put forward by the
institution (Whitebrook 2001). Believability stands out as one aspect of reasoning, which
naturally assumes that events and happenings are verifiable by reference to some reality (Baker,
2006b:17).

The following examples (ST6TT6 and ST7TT7) reinforce the narrative of stability; translation
mutes the concept of vision and imagination, as a longterm aspiration, obscures any meaning of
risk and replaces it by more grounded lexicalizations that refer to and reflect a firm belief or
conviction. In this sense, translation adjusts to the cultural preference inscribed in the Greek
environment for higher certainty (a positive politeness device, Sifianou 1992). Furthermore, in
ST6TT6 pair the translator uses labelling as a framing strategy and introduces the
conceptualization that life is based () on certain ideals increases the sense of stability as
it creates an image of a stable foundation or base. On the contrary, the ST phrase live out his ideals
majors on personal experience and makes no reference to, or allows no implication of concepts
based on one another.

S6 I meet young people who were born long after John F. Kennedy was president, yet who ask me how to live out
his ideals
A President Like my father The New York Times, January 27 2008

T6 . ,
.
, H , 3 2008

: Many young people who were born after John F. Kennedys assassination ask me how to live a life based
on his ideals.

The discourse of stability and certainty is also present in pair ST7TT7 as the verb imagine of the
ST is translated with the participial adjective convinced (). Stability here is portrayed
as a value that is preferred in the target context. The verb imagine introduces aspirations which
do not provide a solid base for making voting decisions. Moreover, ST6TT6 and ST7TT7 pairs,
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introduce a shift of the cognitive schema that accompanies their semiosis. Nedergaard (2010)
maps out the perceptual or pictorial constellations that the human mind forms when perceiving
verbs and finds that there are two kings of visualizations i.e. static or stable ones and dynamic or
unstable. Both live out (ST6) and imagine (ST7) items create a horizontal, dynamic and unstable
imagery, as both entail a forwardlooking motion, free of spatial and time constraints with rather
uncertain results. On the contrary, the items (TT6) and (7) hand over to
the target narrative environment a vertical, static and stable cognitive visualisation as they entail
a ground based state rather than motion.

S7 Sometimes it takes a while to recognize that someone has a special ability to get us to believe in ourselves, to
tie that belief to our highest ideals and imagine that together we can do great things

T7 ,
,
.
, H , 3 2008

: Sometimes it takes a while to recognize that someone has a special ability to get us to believe in ourselves,
to tie that belief to our highest ideals and feel convinced that together we can do great things.

The discourse of stability manifests itself in various ways. In TT8, the rejection of McCains
politics is made on the grounds of his stance rather than his views, which if translated faithfully, as
would index in the Greek context as vaguer and less stable. Unlike views which are more
prone to change, stance () assumes a firm opinion and beliefs which could indeed qualify as
a criterion for decisionmaking.

S8 The real revelation of the last few weeks, however, has been just how erratic Mr. McCains views on
economics are.
The 3 A.M. Call The New York Times, September 28 2008

T8 .
.
, ctober 4 2008

: The real revelation of the last few weeks, however, has been just how erratic Mr. McCains stance on
economics is.

In TT9 the Greek newspaper constructs a different image altogether than that presented in ST9.
ST9 paints a highrisk picture through the directional conceptualization of Obamas
administration being on a path since neither the course nor the results of such a path are
predictable or certain. By contrast, TT9 rejects the dissemination of such a challenging and risky
situation and opts for a conceptualization which builds up an image of stability through the lexical
items of and (lay the foundations), in much the same way as life was based on ideals
in TT6. As in examples ST6TT6 and ST7TT7, this example also provides a different cognitive
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schema based on the horizontal/dynamic/unstable visualization versus the vertical/static/stable
one. While ST9 narrates Obama as being on a path to a course of actions, thus offering a
horizontal imagery, TT9 adopts a verticallooking lexicalization which entails more concrete and
stable results i.e. lay the foundations.

S9 Mr. Obama would put his administration on a path to doubling federal spending on basic defense
research. Mr. McCain is much less specific, speaking of ensuring that America retains the edge.
Presidential Candidates Positions on Science Issues The New York Times, September 15 2008

T9 .
. . ,
.
H , 21 2008

: Mr. Obama wants to lay the foundations for doubling federal spending on basic defense research. Mr.
McCain is much less specific, speaking of ensuring that America retains the edge.

Apart from labelling, which proves to be a prominent framing strategy used by translators the
construction of the public narrative of stability was also constructed in Greek newspapers
through instances of contextualization cues (Gumperz 1992) which help smooth down
uncertainty. In TT10, the fronting of the phrase (one thing is certain) offers a
frame of stability within which readers are encouraged to interpret the remaining of the sentence.

S10 []The next U.S. president will govern in an era of increasing international instability.
Intelligence Head Says Next President Faces Volatile Era Washington Post, October 30, 2008

T10 : 20 2009

O , 5 2008

: One thing is certain: from January 20th 2009, the next U.S. president will govern in an era of increasing
international instability.

Moreover, the construction of an image related to qualities that denote stability is also apparent
in the Greek newspaper To Vima. The quality of the ST item honesty is replaced in the TT11 by
that of reliability reliable broker ( ). Interestingly, the qualities of vision
(ST9TT9 lexicalized through the phrase on the path) and honesty (ST11TT11 below) are
associated to B. Obama's outlook or actions to foreign affairs. In extension, the fact that the
translator in both cases chooses to replace these qualities which stabilityrelevant lexicalizations
TT9 (lay the foundations and TT11 reliable) implies that the Greek readership understands or
expects a US leader who gives off a sense of stability rather than articulating vision or honesty
when it comes to the enactment of foreign policy.

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S11 If President Obama is serious about repairing relations with the Arab world and reestablishing the United
States as an honest broker in Middle East peace talks, one step would be to bridge a chasm in perception that
centers on one contentious word: terrorism.
Disentangling Layers of a Loaded Term in Search of a Thread of Peace The New York Times, February 25 2009

T11

,
: .
, 28 2009

: If Barack Obama really wishes to improve relations with the Arab world and reestablishing the prestige of
the United States as a reliable broker in Middle East peace talks, one step would be to bridge chasm in
perception that centers on one contentious word: terrorism.
Finally, this low tolerance to instability attributed to the Greek culture which has been evidenced
in examples illustrated above, viewed and analyzed in this section as a collective cultural
narrative, is also present in headlines which reach a considerably wider audience than the main
text itself and have a better framing potential of the event as they encapsulate not only the
content but the orientation (Abastado, 1980: 149). Examples below go hand in hand with the
high need for stability expressed in the Greek setting; in example ST12TT12 the sense of vision
encoded in the ST headline Looking Abroad is silenced and underrepresented in TT12. The target
version uses the expression places emphasis ( ) rendering the ST item Looking Abroad
denotes contact with the ground and therefore a more long lasting effect, while the President is
clearly presented to be evaluating situations. The dynamism of the Looking Abroad concept is
replaced in the Greek target environment with the static perspective of the expression places
emphasis ( ).

S12 Looking Abroad The Economist, July 16 2008

T12 H , 20 2008

: Obama is now placing emphasis abroad.

Also, in ST13 the notion of responsibility is reshaped in translation in terms of the simple and
robust speech ( ) which again invokes a frame of strength, weight and
straightforwardness.

S13 The age of responsibility The New York Times, January 21 2009

T13 H , 25 2009

: Simple yet robust the inauguration speech .

The public narrative of stability seems to run parallel to another publicdriven narrative, that of
struggle and sacrifice.
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4.4.2. Body and pain as narrative

he second set of examples under the category of public narratives relates to how translation
constructs or builds upon a public narrative of pain, struggle and sacrifice in the Greek culture.
Examples point towards a tendency in translation to bring about a more dramatic representation,
in the TT, highlighting struggle and sacrifice in a brave yet not belligerent way. This idea tallies
with what Marmaridou called [c]ultural narrative of selfhood (2006: 393) and gives evidence on
the frequency and quality of pain lexicalizations with reference to the physical self. Marmaridou
(ibid) suggests a model of understanding and encapsulating selfhood which differentiates
between (a) the rational self as the locus of consciousness and judgement, (b) the nonrational
self, the psyche, as the locus of emotions and feelings, (c) the social self as the locus of social roles
and interactions, and (d), the physical self as the locus of physical characteristics and sensations
(Marmaridou, 2006: 408). Examples illustrated below fall under the fourth category (d) which
relates to physical attributes awarded to the SELF. All examples illustrated below present
different modalities of lexicalizing physical/body experience through translation.

Interestingly, whereas the public narrative of stability mainly stood out as a result of labelling, in
the case of this set of public narrative, translation selectively appropriates material to promote
the narrative intentions. TT14, then includes an addition that produces a reconstruction of
reality; namely the phrase to heal the wounds that his predecessor opened (
) attributes physical properties to the presidency of W. Bush and
triggers an image of causing pain to an experiencing self" (Marmaridou, 2006: 395) realizing the
NON PHYSICAL IS PHYSICAL conceptual metaphor. It is both a verbal and nominal lexicalization
of pain thus reinforcing the perceived effect. What is more the TT adds the reference to B.
Obamas predecessor causally emplotting the narrative as it links it to a previous political persona
enhancing the political import of it as well.
S14 Inevitably, comparisons will be drawn to highprofile trips to Europe by John Kennedy and Ronald Reagan, as
Mr Obama talks about rebuilding Americas leadership role [ ] and forging closer ties with allies.
Looking Abroad The Economist, July 16 2008

T14 ,
.
,
.
H , 20 2008

Inevitably many will compare his trip to the historical trips to Europe by John Kennedy and Ronald Reagan, as
Mr. Obama promises to reestablish US prestige in the role, to heal the wounds that his predecessor opened and
forge closer ties with allies.
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Creating Narratives

Along the same lines, ST15TT15 pair, selectively appropriates events, as it introduces yet
another lexicalization of pain which is pragmatically important as it refers to a collective memory
of a painful aspect of reality (the assassination of John F. Kennedy). The ST avoids this pessimistic
potential altogether by referring to his time in Office, without sanctioning narratives of the past,
as this is evidenced in ST15.

S15 I meet young people who were born long after John F. Kennedy was president, yet who ask me how to live
out his ideals
A President Like my fatherThe New York Times, January 27 2008

T15 . ,

, H , 3 2008

: Many young people who were born after John F. Kennedys assassination ask me how to live a life
based on his ideals.
Another instance of translation reflecting a pain and body narrative in the TT is the expression
(gives flesh and bones) which assumes an embodied experience featuring
real humanlike properties and qualities: multicultural society is conceptualized as a human body
with flesh and blood.

S16 Barack's election is the expression of the idea of a grand, multiracial gathering.
Hands that picked cotton now pick presidents. It's a new day for the US The Observer, January 18 2009

T16
H ,25 , 2009

BT: Election gives flesh and bones to the vision of the multiracial gathering.

ST17TT17 to ST19TT19 pairs are indicative of how Greek newspapers construct reality through
the pain and body narrative, either by selectively appropriating material or labelling it; TT17
TT19 text fragments include translations which invoke (in the Greek target readership) values
such as bravery, sacrifice (in the sense of the contribution of brave fighters). The ST17 item
changes, translates into the TT item effort and sacrifice ( ), labelling it then
in such as way that allows readers to subscribe to the public narrative of heroism and
fearlessness. The TT17, constructs a new view as it describes a political environment where
changes are very hard to occur and entail hard work () and sacrifice (), spirit of
a fighter and bravery.

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S17 We have to invest to make these changes.

T17 , , .
H , 25 2009

BT: These changes however demand effort and sacrifice.
Similarly, TT18 and TT19, retell the story, by selective appropriating the ST, as both cases
introduce news elements, i.e. the notions of bravery (TT18) and fighters (TT19) and in that sense
they construct a variant image from ST18 and ST19 narrating a story of extreme efforts and
fighting for the future.

S18 Or the Little Rock Nine breaking through the walls of school segregation in 1957.

T18 ,
1957 ,
H ,25 2009

BT: Or the Little Rock Nine who with their bravery broke though the walls of school segregation in 1957.

S19 On Tuesday, Barack will stand on many famous shoulders Mahatma Gandhi, Dr Martin Luther King and
Nelson Mandela but also the millions of nameless.

T19 , , ,
,
H , 25 2009

BT: On Tuesday, Barack will stand on the shoulders of many, famous fighters Mahatma Gandhi, Dr
Luther King and Nelson Mandela but also the millions of nameless.

The discursive point of view in the translated versions of examples above bolsters and galvanizes
the collective potential of human suffering. The target text also allows the surfacing of a dramatic
effect which is absent in the source text and promotes reader engagement to the event under
description.

4.4.3. Authoritative group actions

The following set of examples shows how translation constructs a public narrative for the target
text readership by renegotiating the representation of individuals as standalone entities and
bringing to the surface a representation of individuals as members of a group, as individuals
assimilated in a mass. Examples show a different social identity of the Greek electoral body and
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thus reinforce a specific aspect of reality, by foregrounding a different positioning of individuals
(who are also potential voters). There is an assumed integration of individuals into a group in TT
as shown in examples 20 and 21. Expressions such as people now joining (ST20) and fellow
Republicans (ST21) privilege individual behavior and express a spirit of solidarity between
persons. While lexical choices of the STs reflect more transparent representations of individuals
(e.g. people now joining the Obama Administration), the TT tones down and blurs individual
representation and portrays people as members of a group i.e. (staff) in TT20 or
(Party) in TT21. The broad implication of this shift is that individual initiative and action is muted
and obscured while its place is taken up by a representation which valorizes the power and
momentum of authoritative group action. Individualism and contingency of private/individual
intervention as well as personal responsibility is also eliminated in translation, which favours
authoritative action. Ultimately, these examples point towards how translation can assist the
creation of social identities. Interestingly enough, another unforced translation shift that is
meaningful and reflective in terms to the disposition of Greek language is the translation of have
spent large parts of their careers with the lexis (experience27). Hoidas (1996) has
extensively reported on the uses of the lexical items (empiria) and (pira) which are
nearsynonymous (ibid:152) and interchangeably used as equivalents for the English experience.
As Hoidas argues then empiria refers to a verbal event conceptualized as a complete whole,
closed in itself, while pira provides supportive or subsidiary background information. (ibid). The
use of in example 20 secures the abovementioned conceptualization of an event as a
whole, closed in itself reinforces and legitimizes the role of Obamas staff.
S20 Given that many of the people now joining the Obama Administration, including the President, have spent
large parts of their careers in the nonprofit sectors.
Task No 1 for Barack Obama: reinvent capitalism The Times , January 22 2009

T20 .
.
To B, 27 2009

BT: Given that many of Obama s staff including the President, have spent large parts of their careers in the
nonprofit agents.

As is the case with the example illustrated above, TT21 foregrounds the value and significance of
the political Party in contrast to individuals (fellow Republicans).

27 This example has been marked with dotted underlining and has not been included in the list of examples
as it does not form part of a narrative.

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S21 McCain, by contrast, runs ahead of his fellow Republicans by about five points. This most unusual situation
gives Republicans an improbable glimmer of hope at a time when their party name is almost synonymous
with incompetence and corruption.
If the Democrats want Obama to win, they have to get rough The Observer, August 10 2008

T21 , , , . ,
, ,
.
To B,12 2008

BT: McCain, by contrast, leads his Party by about five points. This most unusual situation gives Republicans
an improbable glimmer of hope at a time when their party name is almost synonymous with incompetence
and corruption.
S22 We still have three months to go before Americans cast a vote in one of the most important Presidential
elections of the modern era.
Cool guy, Barack. But could he be too cool for US voters? The Independent, August 6 2008

T22
.
To B, 17 , 2008

BT: There are approximately three months left before Americans will be led to the ballots to vote in one of
the most Presidential elections of the modern era.

ST22TT22 pair marks yet another manifestation of a narrative via translation. Here, the Greek
newspaper To Vima relays the more descriptive ST verb to cast a vote ( ) with the TT
verb (will be led), which again forms a description of the Greek
electoral body as a group, a mass, moving together in the same pace, under authoritative
instruction in order to vote which is nonetheless an activity requiring acute personal involvement
reflexes. This description of the electoral body, as a politically disinterested and immobilized
cohort of people preparing to cast their vote defines the voters as governed by political apathy
and indifference. This rewriting, by means of labelling, hands over to the TT environment a
narrative that is different that the one in the ST where the citizenship norm (Dalton 2004), and
strong democracy (Barber 1984) require and presuppose the concepts of active participation,
civic engagement and autonomy in voting, and other participatory decisionmaking (Wolfinger
and Rosenstone 1980). Translation then introduces a new semiosis of this narrative in the target
environment.

4.4.4. Passive electoral body

Likewise, the fourth public narrative explored in this section is related to the representation of
the electoral body through translation. This category sheds light to the creation or reflection of a
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social identity for a group of people, something which awards this category its collective, shared
and public character. TT23 reveals a considerable difference, when contrasted to ST23, in that it
suggests that voters will remain passive and inactive and simply wait for Barack Obama to act by
adopting bold initiative. Whereas the ST puts emphasis on the action that Americans themselves
will take to define their own destiny by means of projecting new remedies, the TT describes B.
Obama as the one being responsible for whatever actions are to be taken; by placing that
responsibility in the hands of B. Obama translation reflects a narrative of passive citizenship, one
that is disengaged, exonerated of any political responsibility and accountability and inert visvis
its own challenges.

S23 20 January 2009 will be a grand celebration. For Americans, it will be a time to reflect on our troubled past
and to project new remedies to the problems that face us.

T23 20 2009 . ,

.
H , 25 2009

BT: 20 January 2009 was a day of celebration. For Americans, it was a time to reflect on our troubled past
and to project with hope bold initiatives that we wait from Barack Obama to adapt.
As the dominant reading of the pair ST23TT23 privileges a representation of the electoral body
as a passive entity, a lexicalization of the ST24 item struggling communities, which projects a
group of people striving and attempting to make changes and improve their living conditions: in
the Greek news text it appears as (socially excluded people)
which assumes inactiveness, social and political inertia and is synonymous to marginalization and
alienation from the social network. Once again, labelling in both ST23TT23 and ST24T24 pairs
looms large as a key framing strategy in translation.
S24 Senator Obama has demonstrated these qualities throughout his more than two decades of public service, not
just in the United States Senate but in Illinois, where he helped turn around struggling communities, taught
constitutional law and was an elected state official for eight years.

T24
20 , ,
, ,
.
, H , 3 2008

BT: Senator Obama has demonstrated these qualities throughout his more than two decades of public service,
not just in the United States Senate but in Illinois, where he helped socially excluded people, taught
constitutional law and was an elected state official for eight years.

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ST25TT25 pair also reveals a difference in the representation of the electoral body; whereas the
ST selects an image where people/individuals feel inspired and hopeful about the future of
America, the TT places the President in the ACTOR position making him responsible for inspiring
people, who passively await for such an inspiring persona to appear. In this example, the TT
reconfigures the position of participants and inevitably alters the dynamics of the immediate as
well as the widened narratives in which they are woven (Baker, 2006b:132). While the ST places
the public (they) in the active position the TT carefully positions the President in a position that
will again be tasked with inspiring people with hope and optimism.
S25 Over the years, Ive been deeply moved by the people whove told me they wished they could feel inspired
and hopeful about America the way people did when my father was president.

T25
, .
, H , 3 2008

BT: OVER the years, Ive been deeply moved by the people whove told me they wished they had a President
who could inspire them hope and optimism about America, the way my father did
Compatible with the inactive electoral body narrative are examples 26 and 27. Translation shifts
here produce an image of B. Obama as someone who will ultimately take up the responsibility to
fulfill a vision for our society. Also the lexical choice (labelling) of (job) in the TT is tactful
as the connotations associated to it grant Obama a profile of a hardworking man who does not
run away from a difficult task.
S26 But ultimately, none of this matters. The nominee's speech will stand or fall on its own merits, whether or not
Bill is there to watch. And it is not up to Hillary to stipulate whether her former rival is fit to be commander in
chief. It's up to Obama.
So is Obama the Saviour of his party?The Independent, August 28 2008

T26 .
. .
E To B, 31 2008

BT: But ultimately, none of this matters. And it is not up to Hillary to stipulate whether her former rival is fit to
be commander in chief. This is Obamas job
The ST27TT27 pair is also very rich in translation shifts which are narratively meaningful. In the
ST, B. Obama's role is to encourage his collaborators to achieve a vision, whereas in the TT it is
the President himself who is expected to realize the vision assuming a passive public. Ultimately,
these shifts do not only represent but also construct reality as TT readers interpret B. Obama as a
politician who will be responsible for all the undertakings, leaving no hints of contribution by the
electoral body. B. Obama assumes a deified role in the Greek target culture that mirrors a society
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of voters that is prone and willing to take matters out of its on hands and task political leaders
with the mission of managing a society.

S27 I want a president who understands that his responsibility is to articulate a vision and encourage others to
achieve it

T27

, H , 3 2008

BT: I want a president who undertakes the responsibility to articulate a vision and make it happen

4.4.5. Afterthought on public narratives

Analysis of public narratives in the Greek press reveals the upgraded role of translation in
reflecting and creating stories that are structured above the level of the individual. These shared
or collective narratives reflect and construct reality (stability, pain) but could also mirror
fossilized social attitudes (passive electoral body). Unlike ontological stories which are pinned
down to a specific individual, deciphered through a biographical storyline and often have a more
temporary character, public narratives are not ephemeral and reflect persistent societal or
cultural traits. In sum, public narratives created or reflected through press translation a) provide
access to and fortify target cultural identities (uncertainty avoidance, embeddedness in a
discourse of pain and struggle), and b) shed light to target social identities (passive electoral
body, collectiveness) that profile the target narrative environment. Conclusions are in agreement
with translation research findings in the EnglishGreek EU translation context where uncertainty
avoidance and collectiveness are shown (Sidiropoulou 2008b; 2012) to be favoured on the Greek
side, versus a more uncertaintytolerant and individualistic approach preferred in the English
versions of EU texts.
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4.5. On conceptual/disciplinary narratives

Conceptual narratives are concepts and explanations we construct as social researchers
(Somers and Gibson, 1994:62). Baker (2006b) takes one step further from this definition and
looks at conceptual narratives as also including disciplinary narratives, i.e. stories that scholars in
any field elaborate for themselves and others about their object of inquiry (ibid:39). As
mentioned in section 2.5.3., conceptual narratives are used here as concepts that shape the way
in which societal processes are understood and explained (Bori, 2008: 63). Two conceptual
narratives are elaborated in this section both of which are identified as conceptual in the sense
that they derive from the field of Politics and political thought. The data below show variation in
the rewriting of the narrative of Leadership and in the renarration of Politics. The breaking down
of the conceptual narrative of Leadership reveals:

a) how variation is linguistically played out through translation and brings about different frames
of representation that ultimately make up the narrative of leadership as a conceptual narrative
with political import, and

b) how a discourse of game frame (Hollander, 2006:569) offers a variant inscription of Politics
in the Greek environment. Game frames depict politics as a race, a battle or a game and politicians
as participants in such games. It has been shown that these types of frames are frequent during
election periods (Patterson 1994) and are considered strategic manipulations of discourse as
they shift attention from more politically meaningful events and towards the spectacle of a game.
As it will be shown, the tendency of the press to proceed to a game framing of politics and
participants in politics is reproduced in translation as well and constructs a variant conceptual
identity for politics and elections.

4.5.1. Narrating leadership

As Baker points out (2006b), all disciplines live and develop drawing on their own set of
conceptual narratives. This section offers a view of conceptual renarrations of the narrative of
leadership, a conceptual narrative as a product of field of political sciences. The
conceptual/disciplinary narrative of Leadership is reshaped through translation: new 'episodes'
or 'frames' to this narrative are used with reference to the representation of B. Obama. Frames in
this section are viewed as a methodological tool that emerges for the analysis: it relates to the
selection of certain aspects of perceived reality and making them more salient in a
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communicating text, in such a way as to promote a particular problem definition, causal
interpretation, moral evaluation, and/or treatment recommendation (Entman, 1993: 53). The
notion of frame has been also defined as "structures of anticipation, strategic moves that are
consciously initiated in order to present a movement or a particular position within a certain
perspective (Baker, 2006b:106); or, as Cunningham and Browning argue, frames provide a
mechanism through which individuals ideologically connect with movement goals and become
potential participants in movement actions" (2004: 348, emphasis added). Therefore, frames here
are viewed as representation filters through which readers get in touch' with the message
underway. Essentially frames are a way to renegotiate the underlying message and offer a
mental/cognitive schema to the readers in order to tap into and engage further into the news
story.

The following set of examples look at what type of qualities are associated with the conceptual
narrative of Leadership and are attributed to B. Obama, who, in this context is viewed as the
embodiment of leadership. It will be shown that B. Obama is narrated as a charismatic leader,
while the qualities attributed to him through translation are variant visvis those originally
narrated in the ST environment. It will also be shown how the Greek text plays out different
inscriptions of B. Obama's personality which seem to go along with a motivation to have a TT that
is inscribed with domestic intelligibilities and interests (Venuti, 2000:468).

Examples below have been categorized according to the underlying frame that emerges along the
linguistic and narrative reconstruction of B. Obama in the target text. Five strategic
representation frames have been isolated and pulled out, all of which seem to bring forward a
different episode in B. Obamas identity representation. These frames are considered to be
narratively significant as they assist the construction of a variant narrative concerning leadership,
in terms of what a leader should be, and which values he should incarnate. It is possible to see
then how translation offers a vehicle for the overrepresentation of certain frames and
underrepresentation of others.

4.5.1.1. Boldness and sensitivity

B. Obama is viewed and represented in Greek newspapers through filters/frames which refer to
specific values. Among the values and frames which permeate the representation of his persona
are those of boldness and sensitivity. As was that case with ontological and public narratives
explored in the previous sections 4.3., and 4.4., in this section as well conceptual narratives are re
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worked, shaped and altered in the TT by newspapers by resorting to labelling, repositioning of
participants and selective appropriation of material.

TT28 introduces variation, by labelling, in the representation of B. Obama as a bold leader. The
source text represents B. Obama as having a vague philosophy of hope and change, which if
rendered faithfully, would considerably weaken B. Obama's image. Instead, the TT strategically
selects the lexical item (bold philosophy), which amplifies his leadership skills.
S28 He also needs to translate his vague philosophy of hope and change into governance. Hearts are sure to be
broken and enemies made.
Change.gov The Economist , November 13 2008

T28 .
.
Ta , 16 2008

BT: He also needs to translate his bold philosophy of hope and change into governance. Hearts are sure to
broken and enemies made.

The following example shows translation to be portraying B. Obama as a socially sensitive leader,
an image absent in the ST. Interestingly, the added item in the following example is located close
to the phrase which opens up with a reference to J. McCain, perhaps with an aim to reinforce the
contrast between the two men.
S29 So what do we know about the readiness of the two men most likely to end up taking that call? Well, Barack
Obama seems informed about matters economic and financial John McCain, on the other hand, scares me.

T29 ,
;

. , , .
T , 4 2008

BT: So what do we know about the readiness of the two men running for the White House? Well, Barack
Obama seems informed about current matters and shows much sensitivity on economic and financial issues.
John McCain, on the other hand, scares me.
The Greek newspaper favours an optimistic representation of Obama and enforces the audience's
hope for change. Boldness and sensitivity28, two potentially conflicting qualities are attributed to
him to register the target perception of a good leader. The architecture of B. Obamas identity in
TT29 in conjunction with TT28 is suggestive of the attempt of Greek newspapers to integrate and
merge profile traits on B. Obamas account. Particularly in relation to TT29, the fact that the item
28
I would also add here that these two frames (boldness and sensitivity) also renegotiate B. Obama in terms
of the gender he inhabits. The surfacing in the TT of the bold and sensitive leader challenge the
masculinities (Connell 1995) and femininities (ibid) he integrates as he is narrated as mergring both
masculinestereotyped qualities (bold) and feminine ones (sensitive).
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shows sensitivity on is an addition, indicates that interventionist approach of the translation in
relation to the ST message. Also, the newspaper Ta Nea, claiming the translation in this case,
tactfully proceeds to the addition, i.e. selective appropriation, of the adverbial (much) an
addition that encourages readers to subscribe rather than dissociate themselves from the new
conceptual narrative that surrounds B. Obama as a sensitive leader.

4.5.1.2. Power and insight

A very prominent tendency in press translation is the preference of Greek for rendering reporting
verbs such as say or tell in terms of making their illocutionary potential explicit (Sidiropoulou
2008a): the ST verb say is often translated in the TT as state, complain, argue, contradict etc.
Example 30 shows the target text to be selecting an illocutionary potential which builds up a
frame of power. The translator employs a press discourse convention, in order to consolidate the
different narrative of Leadership. The following example is a resource for how translation either
portrays B. Obama giving an explicit order to his envoy or amplifies his image as a powerful
leader, and eliminating any hint of defeatist characteristics. He is portrayed as someone who
takes action on things and is generally up for the job, as someone who doesnt simply tells what
should be done, but gives orders. This finding is consistent with example in pair ST27T27, one
that establishes B. Obama in the public mind as deified persona. Ultimately these representations
affect the construction of a superimposing conceptual narrative of leadership as this is embodied
through B. Obama in the Greek narrative environment.
S30 President Obama told his envoy, George J. Mitchell, to go to the Middle East and listen.
Disentangling Layers of a Loaded Term in Search of a Thread of Peace The New York Times, February 25
2009

T30
, 28 2009

BT: Obama ordered his envoy, George J. Mitchell, to go to the Middle East and listen.
Furthermore, linguistic manoeuvring constructed a different frame in translation in relation to

how Obamas decisionmaking process is approached and narrated. The ST valorises decision
making as on the spot mental process; this shortterm orientation attributed to how a decision
should be taken by a leader is linguistically manifested through the ST item make the right call. On
the contrary, the TT narrates B. Obama as a leader who is prudent, and takes time before reaching
a decision: (foresight) entails a cognitive process with duration, which favours a
longterm orientation.

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S31 And when it comes to judgment, Barack Obama made the right call on the most important issue of our time by
opposing the war in Iraq from the beginning.

T31 , , .
, H , 3 2008

BT: As far as judgement is concerned, he had the foresight to oppose to the war in Iraq from the beginning.
The example seems to verify previous findings in EnglishGreek translation research: a short term
orientation potential has been shown to be favoured, in English, in advertisement translation
practice (Sidiropoulou 2008b) and in the EU translation context (Sidiropoulou 2012), versus a
longterm orientation preferred on the Greek side. Aspects of cultural realities seem to combine
with conceptual narrative considerations to construct a version of reality. At the same time
researchers (Hofstede 2001) have linked the cultural mindset of stability and uncertainty
avoidance to a preference for steadiness and longterm orientation29 vs a shortterm one. The
constructed conceptual reality sheds light to the strategic framing of Leadership put forward by
newspapers and to the ideological point of view they assume. All four frames elaborated above in
translation seem to moralize the picture of B. Obama in the Greek environment and reveal an
ideological leaning of newspapers towards a positive overrepresentation of B. Obama.

4.5.1.3. The Messiah and the Almighty

Another representational and strategic frame is the Deus Ex Machina one; it relates to the way B.
Obama is narrated in the target version as someone who suddenly appears on the political stage to
do good, or as someone who messianically plays an important role. Pairs ST32TT32 and ST33
TT33 (a headline), reveal significant shifts in the way B. Obama is portrayed. More specifically, the
TTs consistently represent him as a messiah and a saviour. This repositioning (from the ST to the
TT) ultimately forces a different reading of B. Obama as a leader and constructs different reader
perception of what a leader should be like. The use in the TTs below of the verbs, and
is also affiliated with the public narrative of a passive electoral body elaborated in
section 4.4.4. This is supported by the fact that whereas the STs include explicit and clear
reference to an active subject (I have found ST32 to recognizeST33), the TTs obscure the
mediation and contribution of an active subject and presume a somewhat sudden and messianic
type of revelation. The use of passive voice in examples ST32TT32 and ST33TT33 instantiates
Long Term Orientation stands for the fostering of virtues oriented towards future rewards, in particular,
29
perseverance whereas Short Term Orientation, can be defined as fostering of virtues related to the past
and the present, in particular, respect for tradition, preservation of face and fulfilling social obligations.
(Hofstede, 2001: 359).
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the responsibility shift from the public to the leader and vehicles the emergence of the all
powerful political leader.

T32 I have never had a president who inspired me the way people tell me that my father inspired them. But for
the first time, I believe I have found the man who could be that president not just for me, but for a new
generation of Americans.

T32 .
, , ,
.
, H , 3 2008

BT: I have never had a president who inspired me the way people tell me that my father inspired them. But
for the first time, I believe such a President has been found not just for me, but for a new generation of
Americans.
S33 Sometimes it takes a while to recognize that someone has a special ability to get us to believe in ourselves,
to tie that belief to our highest ideals and imagine that together we can do great things.

T33 ,
,

, H , 3 2008

BT: There are times when someone comes along in the political stage, who can get us to believe in
ourselves, to tie that belief to our highest ideals and imagine that together we can do great things.
The messianic conceptualization of the Leader is in agreement with the passive electoral body
conceptualization highlighted in the previous sections. In this section though, the public narrative
of a passive electoral body interacts with the conceptual narration. This interaction surfaces in
the sense that the conceptual narration of a Leader as someone who apocalyptically appears and
takes charge of politics implies an electoral body which awaits for such a Messiah, expects from
him to act upon problems of political nature while remaining inert and often indecisive.
Ultimately, this narrative tells a story of a public who surrenders its rights to political action and
active inclusion to a social network to one individual (the President) and in that sense
compromises the notion of political accountability.

ST34TT34 pair also points towards the same messianic frame by introducing the religiouslike
item o (the Almighty), which explicitly refers to someone who is a saviour, a
messiahlike figure.

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S34 It is now a clich to say that he must inevitably disappoint, and one as with the worst clichs. Then for his
presidency to fulfil the rest of us, it requires something from the rest of us from those around the world who
imagine themselves friends of democracy, or who just want a better and safer life, or a guarantee to our
greatgreat grandchildren of any life at all
Don't ask what Barack Obama can do for you, ask... The imes, January 20 2009

T34 ... ... .
,

, , January 21 2009

BT: It is inevitable not to fail" He is not the Almighty.the known clichs. In order to fulfil our
aspirations he needs something from us from all those around him who consider themselves friends of
democracy, or who just want a better and safer life, or a guarantee to our greatgreat grandchildren of any
life at all.
The architecture of the conceptual narrative of Leadership through translation points towards a
strategic attempt to build a new enculturated profile of what a Leader should personify in the
Greek context. By enculturated I mean here that this profile rests on target culture preferences
about what is expected of a leader to incarnate. The frames that surfaced through translation
shifts (boldness, sensitivity, power, insight) together with the Deus ex machina representation for
B. Obama, suggest that Greek newspapers are prone to narrate a Leader in alignment with the
assumed expectations of the target readership.

4.5.2. Narrating politics: Game frame

The second conceptual narrative elaborated in the samplecorpus relates to how Politics, political
events, and politicians as participants in political events, are conceptualized through translation.
Examples below will show a) a preference for gameframing politics and participants in political
events and b) the introduction of the value of transparency in relation to participants in the
political scene.

4.5.2.1. Politics: Narrating a game

Engagement and analysis of translated news texts revealed a tendency for tensionbuilding
materialized via the socalled game frame. It has been shown that politics, political campaigning
and the media, experience a symbiotic relationship in the way that the one feeds from the other
and capitalizes on each others features. Namely, as Schultz (1994:36) states, political actors
have reshaped politics to fit the practices and expectations of the media, reducing politics and the
discussion of ideas and issues to a mediadriven format which maximises conflict, significance,
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timeliness and prominence. Therefore, both the media and politicians themselves have guided
and taken advantage of the shift away from platformbased campaigns and towards more
candidatecentered ones which means that the focus has been removed from politics and all eyes
are set to politicians.

Crosstextual research revealed a tendency to renarrate and rewrite politics as a series of events
being part of a game or as a horserace (Hollander, 2006:570). The game frame then is not an
inchoate discursive performance but is seen in this dissertation as a strategic frame that reduces
voters to mere spectators viewing the contest from the stands, a contest won by the team which
outmanoeuvres the other (Mendelsohn 1996, cited in Hollander, 2006:570). Linguistically, this
was materialized through the proliferation of metaphorical conceptualizations of the elections as
a sports event, especially in the headlines. Turning now to the sports metaphors it seems that
these are employed by newspapers to create sports analogues to the political arena which
encourages a sensemaking that touches the collective sentiment and not simply the individual.
Therefore, it relates to a public narrative and rises above the ontological stories of the persons
taking part in the story that is unfolding (i.e. the elections). A reason for this might be that media
wish to create enthusiasm to the public by fueling people with what they know is of interest. This
assists media to commercialize themselves and their products. The overall impact of this
phenomenon is a commercialization of news as this blending of sports with politics makes politics
seem like entertainment (Herbeck 2002).

Example 35 below is evocative of how tolerant and open the Greek news environment is to openly
and explicitly lexicalize and label politics as a game and incorporate this view in a news text. This
tendency reflects an intrinsic trivialization of politics and is not independent from the ideological
leaning of the newspaper that accommodates this shift. Issues of newspaper ideology and
translation choices will be further explored in chapter 6.
S35 Senate days to prevent oversight of financial derivatives the very instruments that sank Lehman and
A.I.G., and brought the credit markets to the edge of collapse.

T35 ,
.
T , 4 2008

BT: The Senate did the best it could to prevent a regulation that would provide for more control in the
game with financial derivatives

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The selection of the item favori in TT36 forces an interpretation of politics through the
lens of the sports/game metaphor. An interesting shift in TT36 relates to the translation of the ST
item Americans are moving to the left with the TT phrase
(Americans are hoping for change). The ST expression moving to the left is eliminated
from TT36 and the shift is not valuefree; it subscribes to the narrative of change. The implication
of this change is twofold; firstly, the embededness of the Greek public in a specific cultural,
historic and cognitive frame (in relation to what the Left means) forces the translator to mute the
reference to the Left. This concurs with the tendency observed in the Greek newspapers in the
past decades to neutralise partisan divisions and opt for a more objective and commentfree style
(Papathanassopoulos 2001). Secondly, translation brings forward the concept of change, which
was the main campaign slogan for B. Obama around which he and his strategists constructed his
profile and political agenda.

S36
A conservative era is drawing to a close. Americans are moving to the left, telling pollsters they want a more
activist government.
McCain is swimming against the tide The Independent, September 7 2008

T36
. 80%

To , 9 2008
BT: Obama is leading the race. Americans are looking forward to change and 80% of the population
believes that the country is on the wrong path.

Headlines proved also rich in how translation appropriates a discourse of game or race to provide
a first orientation to the readers in terms of what follows in the text. TT37 provides yet another
instance of the game/race conceptualization and, as it represents the final weeks before the
election time as a race translating the ST headline with the phrase (the last 100
meters).

S37 Cool guy, Barack. But could he be too cool for US voters? The Independent, August 6 2008

T37 To B, 17 2008

BT: The last 100 meters for the White House

The implied effect of the employment of these frames for the representation of B. Obama in
Greek is manifold. In specific, these framings give rise to a representation of B. Obama as a
participant in a "race" in which he has to fight" in order to win. This imagery downplays the
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criticalness on the elections for issues which are substantial and important for the USA and the
rest of the globe, and stresses the intensity of the elections for the candidates.

4.5.2.2. Transparency as a conceptual narrative

Besides the conceptualization of politics within the game frame, the corpus revealed variation
which led to the construction of another narrative of political import which is constitutive of and
part of the larger conceptual narrative of Leadership. It seems that the TT versions are dominated
by strengthened views of the value of transparency and silences any linguistic innuendos and
nuances of covertly attempting to reach power in clandestine ways. The narrative of transparency
does not only surface in relation to B. Obama but applies to McCain as well. ST38TT38 pair
shows how translation mutes the lexical item sneak, which if translated accurately (i.e. )
would imply an undercover and not sincere attempt to gain Presidency and would not go
unnoticed by the TT readership.

S38 The US economy may have hit bottom, and with oil and gas prices dropping and even the dollar inching back
up, it's possible voter bitterness towards Republicans will subside enough to let McCain sneak into office
If the Democrats want Obama to win, they have to get rough The Guardian, August 10 2008

T38 ,

.
, 12 2008

BT: The US economy may have hit bottom, and with oil and gas prices dropping and even the dollar inching
back up, it's possible voter bitterness towards Republicans will subside enough to let McCain reach Office.

The priority attributed to the concept of transparency in the source text is manifested in the
decision to ignore the adverbial item quietly in TT39 and to only maintain the verb, i.e.
(removed), a translation decision that clouds any interpretation that would suggest an intentional
and devious act for removing from any content from the website. This unforced translation shift
by means of selective appropriation (omission) encourages structure of the conceptual narrative
of transparency.

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S39 He has quietly removed from his website predictions that the surge of American troops to Iraq would fail to
improve matters there.
If the Democrats want Obama to win, they have to get rough The Guardian, August 10 2008

T39 ,
.
H , 17 2008

BT:The Senator has removed from his website predictions according to which the surge of American
troops to Iraq would fail to improve matters there.

The favouring of the narrative of transparency through translation (as in the last two examples) is
a manifestation that press translation makes references to values with social significance. This
means that language can be used and manipulated (particularly by the newspapers as incubators
of ideological positions) to condemn and/or applaud actions or pass down to the public values
such as veracity, integrity, sincerity according to assumed socially determined expectations and
preference. In this case transparency is a narrative that is generated through translation, which at
the same time obfuscates any reference and evaluation to a dishonest, deceitful or immoral
action.

The narrative of transparency, as an underlying political value that weighs heavily on the target
readership, is associated to the narrative of leadership in the sense that it is included in the
expectancies of the target public visvis a leader. Yet, this narrative reveals a methodological
challenge to categorize and classify narratives to clearcut categories. This means that the
narrative of transparency qualifies for a member of other narrative types e.g. public ones
(uncertainty avoidance). Obviously, the interpretative filters applied to each narrative guide the
classification of them along the range of the typology of narratives.

4.5.3. Afterthought on conceptual narratives

Conceptual/disciplinary narratives open a window into understanding how we think of and
about, meaning how we conceptualize, specific abstract concepts or notions that belong to a
disciplinary field. According to the working definition adopted by Baker (2006b)
conceptual/disciplinary narratives relate to notions and objects of inquiry that fall under a
scientific domain, yet they often permeate and influence the entire range of narratives
(ontological, public, meta) as they enter the social fabric and are proliferated through institutions
(newspapers included). This section focused a) on the categories that make up the conceptual
narrative of Leadership in the Greek environment and b) on the conceptualization of Politics,
through translation. It seems that, in terms of Leadership, the Greek version of the narrative gives
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rise to frames which respond to properties of tenacity (brave and insightful leader), ethics
(sensitivity), as well as capacity (power). Also, translation introduces a representation of a leader
in the Greek public sphere who is admired and looked at as a saviour which also accords with the
public narrative of a passive electoral body. It should be noted however that, by no means, is a
political persona the outcome of a conjugation of certain characteristics, conceptualization or
frames that constitute a political profile. In terms of the conceptualization of Politics, translation
provides proof of the emergence and proliferation of the game frame in the Greek version; this
frame signals the creation of a trivializing narrative about Politics that ultimately hides from
citizens the political information that they could use to make sense of politics and also works in
favour of politicians as they risk less being held accountable for their actions or omissions
(Lawrence 2000). Also translation brings about a reinforced image of transparency as a highly
valued quality in politics in the Greek narrative environment. The narrative of transparency
emphasizes the significance that the target readership collectively assigns to the experience of
unfortunate and improper management of home affairs. This narrative could potentially operate
as a kind of Xray', or mirror of a target collective experience of long mishappenings in state and
domestic affairs and suggests that the lack of transparency has had concrete and unfortunate
implications for the country.

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4.6. On meta/master narratives

The fourth type of narratives, according to Bakers (2006b) typology, relates to the case of meta
(master) narratives as these operate over and above the local/individual level, transcend
societies and can be said to concern all individuals as contemporary actors in history (Somers,
1992:605). Master narratives are in essence public ones which gain currency via their ongoing
promotion and construction via various means, media included. A key point is that master
narratives do not draw this label for themselves; rather they assume this hierarchical typology
from individuals who construct it (Hutcheon 1988). Thus media and translation play a pivotal
role in making a public narrative acquiring master narrative status. Although the trait of master
(meta narratives) is, as Alexander notes, their "transcendal status, the separation from specifics of
any particular time or space" (2002:30), when a master narrative travels through translation then
it is up to translators to handle it. Ultimately, it seems that the master narratives are different
from public ones, in the sense that we cannot escape them; they are ineradicable, ossified
(Harding, 2009:46) and heretostay representations and identities. They have been imposed on
us by history or other forces and have come to be an inescapable way of interpreting reality and
of defining our own ontological narrativity. Master narratives, although they emerge as an all
powerful unit of representation, one that forces and offers ubiquitous stimuli for understanding
reality yet they do not eclipse the other typologies, as all narratives have a meaningmaking
potential of its own right.

The corpus yielded results in relation to the rewriting and reframing of three master narratives,
namely the master narrative of race, that of terrorism and that of binary thinking, which seems be
both a standalone narrative but also one that crossfertilizes others. Firstly, race is treated here
as a master narrative as it is a transcendal, universal system of classifying individuals according
to their origin. Moreover, it is a tool for articulating and reifying difference (Chandler, 2010:
369390) which makes it even more universal and attributes it features of a master narrative. On
its part, terrorism is related to the War on Terror, a public narrative which is a potential
candidate for a metanarrative (Baker, 2006: 45). Data will show how variation in translation
hands over a different reading of these master narratives to the Greek readership. Labelling,
selective appropriation and repositioning of participants have been identified in this section as
framing strategies of narratives. Finally, binary thinking will be treated as a master narrative both
on its own right, but also as an organizing narrative for the other two master narratives as binary
discourse constructions assist the construction and lithification (Jackson, 2006:3) of these
narratives.

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4.6.1. Race and terrorism
Examples below illustrate how translation of press items provides different visions of the master
narrative of race.
ST40TT40 pair below includes two meaningful shifts. Firstly, the temporal organization of the
clause varies: the ST uses the temporal when which indicates a momentous and shortlived event,
while the TT uses the item (for as long as) which refers to an extended time period. This shift
in duration conveys the implication of persistence and gives prominence to the issue of
segregation. In terms of racial narration, the meaningful shift takes place in relation to the concept
wall of segregation. The attribute legal in the ST seems to legitimize segregation, while the TT
attempts a repositioning of the item which legitimizes the wall. The importance of this shift lies in
the fact that the legal wall connotes the artificiality of the wall as a manmade device that kept
races apart.

This victory took decades. It could not have happened in an earlier America; certainly not before 1954, when
S40
the wall of legal segregation kept us divided, ignorant and fearful.

T40 . ,
1954, ,
.
H , 25 2009

BT: This victory took decades. It could not have happened in an earlier America; certainly not before 1954, for
as long as the legal wall of racial segregation kept us divided, ignorant and fearful.
ST41TT41 pair promotes a racially amplified image of the world: the item civil rights is rendered
(by means of labelling) in the TT as civil rights of blacks, connoting that black people have been
engaged in a fight for their civil rights. This explicitness attempted in TT41 also tallies with
Bakers selective appropriation (2006b:71) which entails that [t]o elaborate a coherent
narrative, it is inevitable that some elements of experience are excluded and others privileged
(ibid). The pattern adapted in the following example shows how addition can be a form of
selective appropriation as it privileges the rights of one racial group over another. Whereas the ST
is more inclusive and talks about civil rights without making reference to a specific race, the Greek
version holds black people as those associated with civil rights which forces an interpretation by
the Greek public.
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S41 For me, it will be a moment of unbridled joy at the achievements of the campaign for civil rights.

T41 ,
.
H , 25 2009

BT: For me, it will be a moment of unbridled joy at the achievements of the campaign for civil rights of blacks.
Translation shifts relative to the master narrative of race indicate a tendency on the part of Greek
newspapers to overrepresent the issue of race and award specificity as is the case with example
ST41TT41.
Another master narrative retrieved from the samplecorpus is that of terrorism. ST42TT42 to
ST44TT44 pairs below show shifts (labelling) and additions (selective appropriation) which
construct a different narrative of terrorism in the Greek narrative environment. In TT42, Osama
bin Laden is accompanied by a number of terrorcreating attributes, such as Islamist and Chief
terrorist which are absent from the ST. Moreover, apart from providing a more threatening image
of Osama Bin Laden, the TT also frames his supporters differently through lexical choice: TT
lexical item (cooperators) translates the ST item followers, which carries a religious
gloss. The TT item gives off the impression of an underlying conspiracy whereas the
ST item followers is suggestive of a more spontaneous and impulsive action. his example is
consistent with Somers and Gibson (1994:734) comment that [t]he extent and nature of any
given repertoire of narratives available for appropriation is always historically and culturally
specific", this means that, as Baker notes (2006b), a narrative may not necessarily have the same
resonance outside a specific cultural context. For this reason translators may proceed (often
unconsciously) to certain readjustments of the original material in order to make the narrative at
issue to 'ring true' in a different domestic context. The evaluative additions
(wanted Islamist Chief Terrorist) that appear in the TT make the
threat and the TT narrative of terrorism more intense: translation integrates the adjective
Islamist which is not valuefree; on the contrary it is deeply embedded in the western history and
institutional structures in the post 9/11 era. The addition of these hardhitting lexemes allows
translation to zoom in on terror more than the ST and magnify the threat. Also, the additions
(wanted Islamist Chief Terrorist) increase the range
of negativevalues attributed to Osama bin Laden, excoriate him and imply that his tracking down
and annihilation would be very difficult. This does not imply that Osama bin Laden is not equally
portrayed as a terrorist in the ST but rather that the TT readjusts the material and makes
strategic selection of items in order to construct and enforce awareness of a threat in an
uncertainty avoidance culture and ensure the credibility of the narrative in the TT.
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S42 In the near term, the focus remains largely on alQaeda and its global network, which remains "very lethal"
despite dramatic setbacks in Iraq and elsewhere, McConnell said. But in spite of progress against Osama bin
Laden and his followers, the terrorist threat is not likely to disappear in the next 20 years.
Intelligence Head Says Next President Faces Volatile Era Washington Post, October 30 2008

T42 ,
, .
20 ,

.
( ) , 5 N 2008

BT: In the near term, the focus remains largely on alQaeda and its global network, which remains "very lethal"
despite dramatic setbacks in Iraq and elsewhere. But terrorist threat is not likely to disappear in the next 20
years although the operations against the wanted Islamist Chief Terrorist Osama bin Laden and his co
operators, have progressed

In ST43TT43, the lexical choice of (organizations) has a legitimatory effect in the TT;
this becomes prominent by the fact that the lexical item groups in the ST signifies a less organized
and more sloppy structured team of individuals, while the TT item organizations forces an
interpretation that sees these hostile groups as more effectively put together, less
disenfranchised and organized, and hence dangerous. This effect tallies with the effect created by
the item in the place of followers in ST42TT42 above.
S43 Whether the United States has declined to speak with hostile groups because it considers them terrorists, or
whether it slaps the terrorist label on groups it wants to sanction or marginalize, a battle over the term terrorist
has become a proxy for the larger issues that divide Washington and the Arab public.
Disentangling Layers of a Loaded Term in Search of a Thread of Peace The New York Times, February 25 2009

T43

.
.
, 28 2009

BT: Whether the United States has declined to speak with hostile organizations because it considers them
terrorists, or whether it slaps the terrorist label on groups it wants to sanction or marginalize, a battle over the
term terrorist has become a proxy for the larger issues that divide Washington and the Arab public

ST44TT44 draws on the narrative of Middle East conflict and the War on Terror; whereas the
English version simply refers to Gaza as a place, the TT selectively appropriates Gaza and the
situation in general as it reveals an ideological stance through the TT item after the invasion in
Gaza. In my view, apart from invoking imminent threat, the lexical choice of invasion activates the
invasion to Cyprus narrative which has currency in the target environment and thus assists the
narrative to be assimilated more easily by the Greek readership as it forms a historical memory.

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S44 The perception gap, which grew wider when President George W. Bush declared his war on terror in 2001,
was blown even further apart in Gaza, when most Arabs came away certain who the real terrorists were.
Disentangling Layers of a Loaded Term in Search of a Thread of Peace The New York Times, February
252009

T44 , 2001
, .
, 28 2009

: The perception gap, which grew wider when President George W. Bush declared his war on terrorism in
2001 was blown even further apart after the invasion in Gaza.
Observing the translational manipulation of the master narrative of terrorism in Greek

newspapers it seems that translation attempts from explicit extreme inscriptions in relation to
terrorism which in turn makes the positioning of the newspapers evaluative stance more
identifiable and overt.

4.6.2. The binary thinking narrative

Another master narrative is binary thinking which relates to the degree that the Greek society is
enmeshed in a context of binary oppositions and adversarial ideology. It reveals itself as a
tendency of creating ones image by drawing on and comparing ones self to a real or imaginary
Other. This preference for drawing on oppositions in news discourses has been anticipated in
EnglishGreek translation research (Sidiropoulou 1998b, 2004, 2008a): binary and
confrontational conceptualizations were shown to be preferred in Greek versions of texts. The
contrastiveness was claimed to be motivated by the translators attempt to promote a particular
ideological stance (namely that we live in a world of binary oppositions) and award naturalness
to texts.

Binary thinking has also been related to and affiliated to ideology; to his end, Adorno identifies
ideology with the notion of Otherness. In his book Negative Dialectics (1966), Adorno provides
an insightful account on ideology and various approaches to it like that of "identity thinking" (in
Eagleton 1991:126) which is always identified not in comparison to the Self, but to the Other:
hence there is a "binary opposition between the self or familiar, which is positively valorised, and
the nonself or alien, which is thrust beyond the boundaries of intelligibility (ibid).

Binary thinking is considered to be a master narrative as it too moves above the level of the
individual and refers to how institutions (e.g. newspapers) or societies perceive and represent the
world as sets of opposite representations or narratives. Also, these binary representations
assume a pronounced significance during periods which are by default intense such as electoral
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periods (Kim et al 2005). During these periods, newspapers being shelters for stories and
ideologies, construct or repeat binary representations and add new episodes to narrate the world
as set of binaries. Examples in this section point to binary representations as a form of identity
building strategy which 'instructs' us to make up our identities not by drawing from the Self but
by dwelling on the opposite and often demonised Other. By increasing the tension then between
the Self and the Other, the familiar and the alien, the chances for achieving a sort of
reconciliation that might prove mutually beneficial are diminished. Pratt (2003), who moves
within the disciplinary territory of Narrative Theory, suggests that identity builds up in two ways:
one is called biographical (in Baker, 2006b:28) and the other is called "vertical" (ibid). In the
first case, identity of the Self is constructed along the lines of time and with connectivity to one's
one storyline; therefore while section 3.1. traced evidence of ontological narrativity in relation to
B. Obama and thus moved horizontally (back and forth to B. Obamas history), this section draws
on vertical narrativity (ibid) which, according to Pratt (2003), operates best when it seeks to
explain itself via opposition, via creating a binary, often hostile, Other. The following set of
examples illustrates how translation choices reflect binary representation and, in this way, they
resonate with journalistic practices which favour contrastiveness.

Examples listed below show how B. Obama is juxtaposed both to his predecessor G.W. Bush and
to his immediate (at the time) opponent John McCain, while oppositions were meant to save
face for B. Obama. Also, it will be shown that binary representation of reality may also draw on
more abstract i.e. nonpersonalized conflicting narratives. There seems to be a pattern in the
distribution of binary conceptualizations promoted by source newspapers: before the election
time (i.e. until November 2008), translation seems to construct polar discourses juxtaposing B.
Obama with J.McCain, while after the elections and during the Inauguration, B. Obama was
opposed to G. W Bush.

4.6.2.1. Obama vs Bush and McCain: Opposing tactics

ST45TT45 foregrounds a binary construction by means of an addition: the TT adds and thus
selectively appropriates, the phrase leaving behind for good the tactics of the Bush Presidency
( ) and creates a stark contrast
between the antiterrorism policies applied before B. Obama. Also, while B. Obama will face
myriad challenges ( ), strategies used by G. Bush are called tactics (), a
labelling strategy that connotes military language and implies sketchy practices, which are not so
difficult to implement as challenges and make him the binary Other.

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S45 Barack will face myriad challenges. Hopes are high that he will chart a new course for America's foreign policy
and role in the world;[] that he will reverse the policy of preemptive military strikes, of unilateral approach, of
violating international law under the guise of fighting the war on terrorism.

T45 .
,
, .
H , 25 2009

BT: Barack Obama will face myriad challenges. Everyone is hoping that he will choose a new course for
America's foreign policy enforcing the countrys role in the international stage and leaving behind for good the
tactics of the Bush Presidency who selected preemptive military strikes.

ST46TT46 offers an even more pronounced juxtaposition which forces a reading of B. Obama in
the TT as the absolute opposite of G.W. Bush; again as was the case with ST45TT45, in the
following example translation selectively appropriates material by means of adding the phrase
which is nothing alike George Bush's manihaistic worldview (
) and highlights the opposition between the two
candidates.
S46 Mr. Obama, on the other hand, has tended to look to nonideological histories and philosophical works that
address complex problems without any easy solutions, like Reinhold Niebuhrs writings, which emphasize the
ambivalent nature of human beings and the dangers of willful innocence and infallibility.
From Books, New President Found Voice The New York Times, January 18 2009

T46 ,

.
H , 22 2009

BT: On the contrary, Mr. Obamas preference towards philosophical works without any easy solutions, and his
love for literature and poetry endowed him with an understanding of the ambivalent nature which is nothing
alike George Bush's manihaistic worldview

Binary representations are also realized through variation in the degree of optimism carried by
the lexical choices associated to B. Obama and his opposite Other. In ST/TT47, where B. Obama
is compared to John McCain, the lexical item victory which occurs twice in the ST, is labelled by
means of selecting the item (the readily available option for victorytranslating the first
occurrence of ST victory) and (prevalencerendering the second occurrence of ST
victory) which carries a less optimistic implication. On the one hand, the item (victory) is
implicated in a positive cognitive milieu and context as it is reminiscent of the gameframing of
politics (section 4.5.2.); on the other, the item (prevalence) attributed to McCain is
emplotted to contexts and meanings that assume a topdown dominance of a powerful entity or
group over a weaker one. Although the stories of the two candidates intersect then yet they
stand apart in the way they are lexicalized in translations.
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S47 The two Great Partisan Divides combine to suggest that, if history is a guide, an Obama victory in November
would lead to faster economic growth with less inequality, while a McCain victory would lead to slower
economic growth with more inequality.
The 3 A.M. CallThe New York Times, September 28 2008

T47 ,
,
.
T , 4 2008

BT: The two Great Divides lead to the conclusion that if history is a guide, an Obama victory in November
would lead to faster economic growth with less inequality, while a McCain prevalence would lead to slower
economic growth with more inequality.

As anticipated in previous research, the tendency for binary conceptualizations is strong in English
Greek press translation (Sidiropoulou, 2004, 2008a) as shows the practice registered in the
headlines of the present datasample. Out of the 21 TT headlines of the articles in the present data
sample, 8 show a binary conceptualization registered (table 8 below), while the ST headline
includes no such representation.

Likewise, the ST48TT48 pair reveals polarization and binary thinking materialized in discourse by
opposing conflicting narratives instead of juxtaposing two individuals. In this case Otherness is
expressed by means of opposing the narrative of slavery manifested though the phrase
(built by slaves) to the symbol of western leadership and politics i.e. The White House.
In this case, the translator selectively appropriates the item White House, also exercising his
pragmatic competence as he/she adds the new information (built by slaves).
In this way translation stigmatizes the White House, spoiling its whiteness and highlighting its
Otherness, constructing a narrative that is similar to the double persona of B. Obama.

S48 As they convened to take their familys final step in its journey from Africa and into the White House, the
group seemed as if it had stepped out of the pages of Mr. Obamas memoir no longer the disparate kin of a
young man wondering how he fit in, but the embodiment of a new presidents promise of change.
Nations Many Faces in Extended First Family The New York Times, January 1 2009

T48
,

,
.
A H ,
25 2008

BT: As they convened to take their familys final step in its journey from Africa and through slavery to the
into the White House which has been built by slaves, the group seemed as if it had stepped out of the pages
of Mr. Obamas memoir no longer the kin of a desperate young man wondering how he fit in, but the
embodiment of a new presidents promise of change.

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4.6.2.2. Binary oppositions in headlines

The master narrative of binary oppositions through translation has been also established in
headlines which frame the story that follows and create visions or in the words of Fairclough di
visions (2003:130). Examples illustrated below will indicate a growing tendency in Greek to
appropriate binary discourse in translated headlines something which challenges Bells the view
(1991) that headline formation is relatively the same across languages. The strategic significance
of translation incorporating binary discourse in headlines relates to the framing potential
inherent in headlines as these mainly provide a leadin and are forerunners to the main story that
follows and can influence the interpretation of the text. By assessing the headlines in table 8, it
seems that many ST headlines have been rendered in Greek in such a way so as to incorporate
either an overt or covert type of binary thinking.

Also identified was a corpuswide tendency of the Greek versions to integrate subheads (absent
from the ST) which were used as subheadings inside the text and function as ways of breaking up
the text and reframing it before the end. These subheads were also rich in implicit or explicit
contrastive and binary structures which are suggestive of the omnipresence of such discursive
practices. For example, the text entitled H (The victory of
hope over cynicism), claimed by I Kathimerini, includes the binary subheading
(Gap between the rich and poor) which is absent from the ST and implies that hopes build
up around B. Obama to relief USA from such social inequalities. Equally, the target text from the
newspaper Ta Nea entitled (Test election for the
unequal American democracy) includes the subheading ,
(Obama wins inequality loses) which reframes the text and creates an even more polarized
setting. Table 8 below summarizes instances of headlines (from the B. Obama subcorpus,
referred to below as ST/TTs 4956) which reveal constrastiveness.

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ST Headline /Newspaper TT Headline /Newspaper Items implying conflict

ST/TT/49 Nations many Faces in Extended Africa vs White House
First Family/ NYT
/ I Kathimerini
ST/TT/50 Hands that picked cotton now pick Hope vs Cynicism
presidents. /The Observer /I Kathimerini

ST/TT/51 Change.gov./he Economist Obama vs established
/ Ta Nea status
Simple vs robust
ST/TT/52 The age of responsibility/ NYT / I
Kathimerini
ST/TT/53 If the Democrats want Obama to Fight

win, they have to get rough/The
/To Vima
Guardian
ST/TT/54 Disentangling Layers of a Loaded War of words
Term in Search of a Thread of /To Vima
Peace/NYT

ST/TT/55 The 3 A.M. Call/NYT Crashtest of two
/Ta Nea candidates
ST/TT/56 Dont ask what Barack Obama can x /Ta Us for him/not him for us
do for you, ask./The Times Nea

Table 8: Binary thinking in headlines per target newspaper in the political subcorpus

In attempting a reading of table 8 we see that translation often adopts a binary discourse
structure when rendering headlines in a news text. These binary structures may be conceptual
juxtapositions as in examples 49 and 50 where the two opposing entities are Africa and the White
House (example 49) and Hope and Cynicism (example 50). In example 49 the opposition is implicit
and covert as there is no immediate contrastive marker e.g. (against, although, despite, on the
contrary, unlike) but the opposition is implied and left to the reader to interpret. On the contrary,
the opposition in example 50 is explicit and overt and is materialized through the item
(versus). Example 51 represents B. Obama ready to face and challenge well established social
structures (). Example 52 talks about a simple yet robust speech ( )
where the opposition is implicit and assumed. Example 53 represents the elections as a great
battle where candidates need to fight for the Presidency, while example 54 makes reference to a
war of words in the Middle East. Example 53 invites the same interpretation as example 53 as it
too talks about a crashtext between the two candidates running for Presidency and overtly
suggests a conflict. Finally, the polarity in example 56 is covert as the two entities contrasted are
not opposite (B. Obama and the people/him and us).

This contrastcreating intention seems to be ubiquitous in Greek. On its part, this deepseated
tendency in Greek culture of creating binary associations and constructions of Otherness has
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been verified by Itzkowitz as a historicallydriven trait who talks about stereotyping as a means
of otherizing and the ego of victimization (1996:36) when analysing the embeddendess of the
Greek nation in a imaginary fight with the opposite Other i.e. Turks. Also, enemymaking has
been attested by phychoanalytic approaches (Rieber and Kelly 1991) according to which the
construction of a polar Other legitimizes and gives meaning to the Self. In examining this
tendency in EnglishGreek press translation (in a 20.300word sample of 1993 Greek translated
discourse and elsewhere), Sidiropoulou (2004) attributes the tendency to assumptions about the
type of addressees and the producers intention to construct a new reality

It is assumed that the present target version displays a richer contrastiveconcessive
network, because the producer addresses people who seem to be willing to take up a
denier and contradicter roles more openly [] The reflection of contrastcreating
intention in the news reporting genre seems to be a twoway process: it both mirrors the
type of readership addressed (contradicters) and constructs target reader positions, thus,
enforcing ideology through language (ibid: 3334).

4.6.3. Afterthought on master narratives

Master narratives relate to structures or representations that are not limited to one individual, to
one specific social group or to a public institution; on the contrary, they form universal, large
scale, and often omnipresent representations which govern, direct or even confuse our
understanding of the world. Their omnipresence and allembracing quality of master narrativity
does not however equal that master narratives are fixed, frozen or singular categories of
representation. On the contrary, they too can be renegotiated, and reframed, and thus altered,
adjusted and translated into different representations. The target version of the samplecorpus
provided traces of three master narratives, namely that of race, terrorism and binary thinking. All
three master narratives have a breadth that transcends national and geographical boundaries but
also depend on translation (Baker 2006b) in order to travel from one territory to the other.
Particularly when it comes to binary thinking, this is a master narrative on its own right, but also
crossfertilizes other narratives such as terrorism and race. This crossfertilization takes place by
creating pronounced binary discourse structures of Us vs Them which a) accentuate the sense of
threat that forms the emotive base for the narrative of terrorism, b) intensify the feeling of owning
our identity that is inherent in the narrative of Race and c) bolster certainties (which may be
false) in terms of how the world is structured.

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Master narratives, like other types of narratives, rest on culturallypreferred traits and find
support on culturallyconditioned predispositions of the target text readership (such as the
tendency and openness for binary constructions), to construct and reflect yet another episode of
narrativity. For example, while Greek has been shown to have a culturallyinnate tendency for
contrast highlighting, in this subcorpus this tendency has been used as a vehicle for narrating
Obama's Inauguration Speech [see (simple yet robust)] and therefore
constructs a new reality. Along the same lines, example TT44 (The perception gap.was blown
even further apart in Gaza/ ...
) reveals how narratives feed on and take advantage of the evaluation tendency to
architecture a coherent master narrative of threat. Table 9 summarizes the narrative shifts types
and the implication they promote in the TT, per ex. number and target newspaper. Shifts
presented in table 9 correspond to all shifts identified in the 13,319 political subcorpus.
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Table 9: Summary of the linguistic shifts analyzed per newspaper and narrative type, with the
highlighted target concept/narrative
(a) NEWSPAPER: I KATHIMERINI

Narrative Concept highlighted ST TT/Example No Framing
Type in TT Stategy
Multiculturalism Nations Many Faces in Extended Labelling
First Family A
ntological (TT2)
Exotism Nations Many Faces in Extended Selective
First Family A Appropriation
(TT3)
Connection to suggests that in his life he has Labelling
childhood, navet, turned to books (5)
innocence
Stability, uncertainty to live out his ideals Labelling
avoidance (TT6)
Stability, uncertainty and imagine that together we can Labelling
avoidance do great things (TT7)
Stability, uncertainty put his administration on a Labelling
avoidance path to doubling federal (TT9)
spending
Stability, uncertainty Looking Abroad Labelling
avoidance (TT12)
Stability, uncertainty The age of responsibility Labelling/
avoidance (TT13) Selective
Appropriation
Pain, sacrifice and [ ] and forging closer ties with Labelling/
bravery allies (TT14) Selective
Appropriation
Public Pain, sacrifice and born long after John F. Kennedy . Selective
bravery was president, (TT15) Appropriation
Pain, sacrifice and Barack's election is the (TT16) Labelling
bravery expression
Pain, sacrifice and We have to invest to make these , , Labelling
bravery changes (TT17)

Pain, sacrifice and Or the Little Rock Nine breaking , Selective
bravery through the walls of school Appropriation
segregation in 1957
1957 (TT18)
Pain, sacrifice and will stand on many famous Selective
bravery shoulders (TT19) Appropriation
Integration into a runs ahead of his fellow , Labelling
group Republicans by about five points (TT21)
Passive electoral body project new remedies to the Labelling
problems that face us (TT23)
Passive electoral body helped turn around struggling Labelling
communities (TT24)
Passive electoral body they wished they could feel Labelling
inspired and hopeful (TT25)
Passive electoral body I want a president who Labelling
understands that his

responsibility is to articulate a
vision and encourage others to (TT27)
achieve it;

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Narrative Concept highlighted ST TT/Example No
Type in TT
Narrating Leadership, Barack Obama made the right call (TT31) Labelling
frame of on
insightfulness
Narrating Leadership, I believe I have found the man 30 Labelling
Messiah and Almighty (TT32)
Conceptual
Narrating Leadership, it takes a while to recognize that Labelling
Messiah and Almighty someone has a special ability (TT33)
Narrating Politics, to let McCain sneak into office Labelling
Transparency (TT38)
Narrating Politics, He has quietly removed from his Labelling
Transparency website (TT39)

Narrating Race when the wall of legal Labelling/
segregation kept us divided Selective
(40) Appropriation
Narrating Race the campaign for civil rights Labelling/
.(41) Selective
Appropriation
Binary Thinking that he will reverse the policy of Selective
preemptive military strikes, of [] Appropriation
unilateral approach, of violating ,
international law under the guise
of fighting the war on terrorism (45)
Master Binary Thinking Mr. Obama, on the other hand, , Selective
has tended to look to non Appropriation
ideological histories and []
philosophical works that address
complex problems without any
easy solutions (46)
Binary Thinking final step in its journey from Selective
Africa and into the White House , Appropriation
(48)
Binary Thinking Nations many Faces in Extended Selective
First Family Appropriation
(49)
Binary Thinking ()
subhead Selective
(addition) Appropriation

The age of responsibility
Binary Thinking Labelling/
(52) Selective
Appropriation
Binary Thinking Hands that picked cotton now Selective
pick presidents (50) Appropriation

30 Examples ST32TT32 and ST33TT33 are also suggestive of a passive electoral body
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Creating Narratives

(b) NEWSPAPER: TO VIMA
Narrative Concept highlighted ST TT/Example No Framing Stategy
Type in TT
ntological Connection to departed for the state where he , Labelling

childhood grew up (TT4)
Exotism Obama: The Hawaii years H Labelling
(TT1)
Stability, uncertainty The next U.S. president will : 20 Selective
avoidance govern 2009 Appropriation

(TT10)
Stability, uncertainty an honest broker in Middle East Labelling
Public avoidance peace talks
(TT11)
Integration into a many of the people now joining . Labelling
group the Obama Administration (TT20)
Integration into a before Americans cast a vote in Labelling
group one of the most important
Presidential elections
(TT22)
Passive electoral body And it is not up to Hillary to Labelling
stipulate whether her former
rival is fit to be commander in .
chief. It's up to Obama
(TT26)
Conceptual Narrating Leadership, Obama told his envoy Labelling
frame of power
(TT30)
Narrating Politics, A conservative era is drawing to
Labelling
Game Frame a close.
. (TT36)

Narrating Politics, Cool guy, Barack. But could he be Labelling
Game Frame too cool for US voters? (TT37)
Master Narrating Terrorism declined to speak with hostile Labelling
groups
(TT43)
Narrating Terrorism was blown even further apart in Labelling
Gaza,
(TT44)

Binary Thinking If the Democrats want Obama to
Labelling
win, they have to get rough
/(TT53)
Binary Thinking Disentangling Layers of a Loaded Labelling

Term in Search of a Thread of /
Peace (TT54)

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(c) NEWSPAPER:
Narrative Concept highlighted in TT ST TT/Example No Framing Strategy
Type
Public Stability, uncertainty Mr. McCains views on . (TT38) Labelling
avoidance/ economics

Narrating Leadership, translate his vague Labelling
frame of boldness philosophy (TT28)
Narrating Leadership, seems informed about Labelling
Conceptual frame of sensitivity matters economic and (TT29)
financial
Narrating Leadership, It is now a clich to say ... Labelling
Messiah and Almighty that he must inevitably ... .
disappoint, and one as (TT34)
with the worst clichs
Narrating Politics, Game Senate days to prevent Labelling
Frame oversight of financial (TT35)
derivatives the very
instruments
Narrating Terrorism against Osama bin Laden Labelling/
and his followers, the Selective
terrorist threat is not Appropriation
likely to disappear in the (TT42)
next 20 years
Binary Thinking an Obama victory in Labelling
November would lead to
faster economic growth ,
Master with less inequality, (TT47)
while a McCain victory
Binary ThinkingHeadlines Change.gov Labelling
/ST51TT51 (TT51)
Binary ThinkingHeadlines () , (addition) Selective
/ST53TT53 Appropriation
Binary ThinkingHeadlines (Subhead) The transition Subhead: Selective
/ST52TT52 to a new administration , Appropriation
is already well under
way

Binary Thinking The 3 A.M. Call/NYT Labelling
/ (TT55)
Binary Thinking Dont ask what Barack /(TT56) Labelling
Obama can do for you,
ask./The Times

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4.7. Afterthought on the Obama/election narratives in news
translation

This chapter set out to examine the role of translation in manipulating narratives in the Greek
press; analysis incorporates the notion of narratives which reflect, represent and constitute
reality. It focused on how translation shapes news and shows how this is closely linked to how
translation, triggers, silences, reflects, constructs or fossilizes narratives. Analysis adopts a critical
view in analyzing data and applies a model of analysis (section 3.4.2.) to explore how unforced
translation shifts can be explained (framing strategies) and reassigned to a narrative type. This
chapter did not look only at the effect but also at the motivation that a translation shift brings
about in texts. Examples have been categorized and linked to a type of narrative (ontological,
public, conceptual or master), following Baker's (2006b) typology.

Two generic and universal assumptions pertain to all four types of narratives. Firstly, no type of
narrative forms a closed and clearcut system or representation of thought; on the contrary, it
seems that boundaries between the four types of narratives are often fuzzy and elusive since
ultimately there is a natural tendency of the human mind to create narratives (White, 1980:1),
which foregrounds the subjectivity and the complexity of parameters that can have an impact in
the creation of a narrative. Therefore narratives are multidirectional, they vacillate along the
range of all four types and may appear in various forms and means; ultimately they are processed,
elaborated, disseminated or rejected by the human mind, something which makes narrative
prone to subjectivity. Secondly, there seems to be a relation between the theme of the news text
and the emergence of a narrative in the TT; for example the public narrative of pain and struggle
which has been elaborated above, surfaced in the translation of the text entitled Hands that picked
cotton now pick Presidents ( ), which narrates with
nostalgia and romanticism the road of B. Obama to the Presidency. Also, many translation shifts
relative to the master narrative of Terrorism have been retrieved from the text entitled
Disentangling Layers of a Loaded Term in Search of a Thread of Peace (
), which narrates a conflictloaded situation.

Findings summarized above, in table 9, point towards various patterns in terms of narrative
distribution across the three newspapers. All narrative types seem to be largely affected by
framing strategies, namely labelling, selective appropriation and repositioning of participants (in
that order of occurrence). Ontological narratives, in the sense that they have been used in this
research seem to be underrepresented, public narratives take up the majority of the space, while
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conceptual narratives that emerge rank higher in I Kathimerini than in the other two newspapers
finally, master narratives are mainly identifiable in I Kathimerini and To Vima. Also, analysis
brings to the surface differences in terms of those types of narratives which are more likely to
relate to the property of narratives to reflect and construct reality. This remark accounts for
differences in the nature of each narrative type. To make things more elaborate, it seems that:

a) ontological narratives by nature draw on oneself; in this study ontological narratives relate to
how newspapers appropriate and capitalize on Obama's ontological narrative by means of
foregrounding certain aspects of the source storyline. Therefore, ontological narratives in press
translation have the potential to reflect someones past and create a new image of his present.
Therefore, in this study, in terms of ontological narratives, it is not Obama who 'does the talking'
but the newspapers who talk on his behalf and account;

b) public narratives are by nature collective representations that navigate in society and relate to
attitudes and norms of a greater audience, compared to ontological ones; in this study findings
point towards a pattern for public narratives to mainly reflect and construct a social reality. This
means that public narratives that have surfaced through translation are mainly grounded on and
influenced by certain social identities inherent in the target narrative environment (e.g. passive
electoral body, uncertainty avoidance);

c) conceptual narratives are analyzed here in terms of how translation conceptualizes the
narrative of leadership and politics. Findings suggest that conceptual narratives have a more
pronounced potential to construct reality by using as support already well established target
cultural dimensions. The surfacing of different frames in narrating leadership attests the enforced
potential of conceptual narratives to construct reality;

d) master narratives are viewed in this study as more universally accepted norms of representing
reality.

Attempting a concretization of results the following seem to be valid:

a) Ontological narratives relate to how translation relies and capitalizes on President B. Obamas
ontological narrative that i) brings forward his exotic, cosmopolitan nature, portraying him as the
cultural product of a faraway place and ii) draws on his childhood in order to promote a frame of
naivet and innocence. Ontological narratives, as Baker stresses (2010), can however be used in
order to enforce public ones. In this sense translations of B. Obamas ontological narratives that
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Creating Narratives

have circulated in the Greek press enforce the narratives of cosmopolitanism and exotism, as well
as that of multiculturalism which can also gain currency as public narratives.

b) In relation to public narratives, there is significant difference in terms of the newspaper that
hosted these, as I Kathimerini seems to elaborate more on public narratives (53 instances of
various narrative types as shown in Table 10, see section 4.7.2 below). Findings reveal a pattern
of public narratives to use linguistic preferences inscribed in the target environment as a vehicle
for reflecting or creating a social identity of the target environment, that of stability (section
4.4.1.). Interestingly, the public narrative of stability traced in the TT seems to be distributed in
newspapers during the period that B. Obama was running for Office i.e. before the elections of
November. Another story that is elaborated in public narratives relates to the construction of a
variant image of the electoral body (sections 4.4.3. and 4.4.4.) which is presented as passive,
manifests voting apathy, is integrated in a mass, and is deprived of real selfinspired initiative.
Besides, this narrative is in alignment with findings of researchers in the discipline of political
science (Demertzis and Kafetzis 1996) who talk about the gradual decline of public interest in
politics in Greece materialized through a persistent increase in the number of abstention of voters
from electoral procedures or through a soaring number of void votes. Still, it is important to note
that, especially when it comes to public, conceptual and master narratives it is important to
integrate the impact on the addressee (Shenhav 2005), meaning that it is important to shed light
to how the addressees assimilate or internalize a narrative. Also, public narratives, raise the issue
of the fuzzy boundaries between types of narratives, as a collective or shared narrative elaborated
by formations and institutions larger than the individual (e.g. newspapers) may also be a part of a
persons ontological storyline, e.g. slavery. Apart from visions of B. Obama, and in relation to
public narrativity, this study brought about and investigated views relative to the electoral body;
in this case, Greek newspapers seemed to prefer to create an ingroup relationship among readers
in which the individual is absorbed by the mass. Results here seem to have a link with the
remarks by Sifianou (1992:4142), who notes that for Greeks the limits to personal territories
seem to be looser among the individual who belong to the same ingroup.

c) Conceptual narratives have been examined here in relation to two key concepts namely
leadership and politics. Again, as is the case with ontological and public ones, conceptual
narratives are related to how leadership is narrated in Greek newspapers. Conceptual narratives
(section 4.5.1.) revealed a greater potential for creating narratives such as the Messianic and
Almighty frame (which is salient particularly in the Greek newspaper I Kathimerini) and
presented B. Obama as a messiah. Evidence has been also provided for a thriving
conceptualization of politics as a game (section 4.5.2.1.) one that as I will discuss in chapter 6 is
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Creating Narratives

institutionallymotivated and a culturallydriven narrative of transparency of the political sphere
(section 4.5.2.2.).

d) Interesting conclusions may be drawn by interpreting results on the distribution of master
narratives (section 4.6.) As master narratives work best above the level of the individual, they
may also stretch far beyond a specific, politically loaded period. Selective appropriation and
labelling (Baker 2006b) are the main framing strategies that emerge here as well, as additions
and deletions affect the construction of master narratives which are then handed over in the
Greek public under a new perspective. Also, as is the case with public narratives, the master
narrative of binary thinking (section 4.6.2.) too uses the preference (innate in the target
environment) for creating contrastiveness as a vehicle for buildingup tension and for fossilizing
already established narratives31.

4.7.1. Narratives: common ground and narrative interaction

Apart from looking at each narrative type separately and attempting to distinguish the features
and framing strategies that put together each narrative, there is also evidence of a common
ground that governs all four narrative types and govern their geography. Firstly, a common
narrativewide feature that surfaced in this study is how narratives are sensitive to and
accommodate cultural preferences and conventions of the target environment. All four narrative
types seem to remember and mirror long established cultural positions of the TT, and re
member (Bhabha 1994) these, in the sense of reassembling the cultural realities in their
translated versions. All four narratives, but particularly, public, conceptual and master narratives,
manifested a pattern for adjusting to the cultural dependencies before redeploying themselves to
the target text and constructing a new worldview. Hence, narratives follow a twoway motion in
the sense that they look back and use as a vehicle already established, culturallypreferred traits,
before moving forward and constructing a new reality for the target readership. This pattern of
narratives for backwardlooking (reflecting culture)/forwardmaking (constructing reality)
ultimately shortens the distance and narrows a gap between long established cultural
idiosyncrasies and the newly constructed press discourse through translation.

The second common and intrinsic feature that narratives share is their openness to various
readings, various interpretations; this attestation simply highlights their possibility of showing
difference, their fuzzy nature since one narrative may surrender, and lend itself for interpretation
31 For example, TT48 that includes a conceptual juxtaposition, contrasting slavery () with the White
House ( ) foregrounds the public narrative of slavery (or for some ontological).
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under the lens of another narrative. Fuzziness of the narrative boundaries imposes a
methodological challenge as it makes narrative escape the perils of fixity, shows how identities
and representations dont stand still but rather evolve, are influenced and influence other
narrative types. This reveals that narrative types are not irreconcilable entities but
representations open to first and second level interpretations. Still, the fuzziness of narrative
boundaries by no means implies that narratives are elusive and cannot be understood and
assimilated; it means that they cannot be confined into a closed taxonomy, as they are the product
of the ability of the human mind to make sense of events, which is subjective in nature.

Apart from the two features that define some common ground for narratives, there is also
evidence of systems that could be used to further follow up on narratives. For example, this study
showed how the ontological, conceptual and master narratives interact to construct a new
identity for B. Obama in the target environment. To shed light in this interaction we draw on the
distinction offered by Pratt (2003) who explains that identity narratives develop along two axes.
One is the socalled horizontal axis which explains how identity is constructed through time and
how it extends backwards; the second axis is the vertical one and "functions through opposition"
which means that an ontological narrative develops in relation to the Self and less in contrast to
a binary other. In that sense, ontological and conceptual narratives are biographical (Pratt 2003,
in Baker 2006b: 28) and are constructed along the horizontal axis, following a horizontal or
backwardslinear motion in history and by appropriating on B. Obama's own episodes of life. On
the contrary, master narratives pertain to the vertical axis and reveal themselves by means of
constructing binary discourse structures. Figure 11 below attempts to graphically depict the
interaction of ontological, conceptual and master narratives along the horizontal/vertical axis.

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Figure 11: Interaction of ontological, conceptual and master narratives in the construction of B.
Obamas identity.

4.7.2. Narratives in newspapers

Looking at translated versions of press items on B. Obama and the 2008 Presidential Elections
means looking at how newspapers narrativized stories, identities and participants and impose
meanings to specific events. Greek newspapers, in this study, also manifest a certain degree of
narrative intelligence, meaning the competence to tell the right thing at the right time (Mateas
and Sengers 1999). Analysis of the competence and methods of newspapers to integrate
narratives invite also reflection on the very definition of narrativity in the sense of interpreting
meaning. This merely means that meaning could equally be interpreted as something imposed by
newspapers to readers but it could also work the other way around, in the sense that it is readers
who need to exhibit a degree of competence in assimilating and understanding narrative and
storytelling and in that sense it is them who impose meanings to texts.

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This section aims to look at the bigger picture and identify the distribution of narratives
throughout newspapers. Table 10 below illustrates what types of narratives were traced in each
newspaper. Numbers included in table 10 pertain to the entire Obama subcorpus (shown in
Appendix 1); Appendix 1 has been exhaustively searched for the narrative shifts that the political
subcorpus displays while the key points have been underlined to indicate the type of narrative
that surfaced in the translated version; a visual marker32 has been added next to the underlined
translation shift indicating the narrative realized. So, table 10 below summarizes the shift
instances in the entire samplecorpus per newspaper. In this sense the table and results
presented below are exhaustive.

TARGET NEWSPAPERS
NARRATIVE I Kathimerini To Vima Ta Nea
TYPES
Ontological 26 7 0
Public 53 23 17
Conceptual 35 23 16
Master 26 24 12
Table 10: Distribution of narrative shifts in the sample corpus (B. Obama)

It seems that the newspaper I Kathimerini shows a strong, narrativewide manipulative intention.
Translations published in I Kathimerini are richer in shifts which either reflect or construct a
narrative. Particularly, in terms of public narratives, the difference among newspapers is striking.
Also, there is a stark difference in terms of conceptual narratives where I Kathimerini is still
leading and there seems to be a similar distribution of conceptual narratives in the other two
newspapers. Moreover, Ta Nea is rather reluctant in integrating ontological, narratives while it
ranks almost the same in the elaboration of public, conceptual and master narratives. An
interesting point is that many TT headlines revealed a master narrative which is mainly
attributed to the reflection of the binary structures. How political narratives are deployed in and
accommodated by newspapers is further analyzed in chapter 6.

This chapter revealed a constellation of varying discourses which contributed to the translation of
Barack Obama and to his representation in the Greek readership. It provided evidence that
translation and narratives can contribute to identity building and create either vilified or lionized
images for a persona (B. Obama in this case). Also, it agrees with what Fairclough notes it terms of
news discourse who sees the latter as preconstructed and taken for granted divisions through
which people generate visions of the world (2003:130). In this sense, newspapers are
determinants not only of local opinions by also of global public opinion. This chapter provided a
32 [O] Ontological, [P] Public, [C] Conceptual and [M] Master
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different target vision of the story (Presidential Elections) or the participants (B. Obama) than
that of the source environment. It also promoted a reflexive understanding to the
interdependencies between translation and reality, in relation to the representation and
construction of narratives which are viewed as an allpervasive, omnipresent set of forms and
entities of making sense of the world.

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English Greek News CHAPTER 5: Renarrating health and science in the Greek press
Creating Narratives

CHAPTER 5
Renarrating health and science in the Greek press

5.1. Introduction

This chapter sets out to critically investigate how biomedical stories are narrated through
translation in the Greek press. As I have done with political narratives (chapter 4), here as
well, I apply the model of analysis formulated (section 3.4.2.) to look at how biomedical texts
realize narratives through press translation. Interest in translated biomedical discourse
implies acknowledgement of a) a tendency to popularize science (Myers 1990a), b) the
narrativerich nature of scientific stories (Baker 2006b) as these encapsulate narratives about
the human condition. The aim of this chapter is to problematize on how language rewrites
health in the target narrative world and how it aims to uncover the narratives that emerge,
are emphasized or downplayed through translation. This chapter contrasts how a scientific
event is (re)contextualised (Verschueren 2007) in the two languages and cultures through the
press and critically analyzes the narratives that are either reflected or constructed through
translation of biomedical texts. The same three Greek newspapers of mass circulation and
wide appeal (I Kathimerini, To Vima and Ta Nea) have been searched for biomedical articles
and 21 articles have been retrieved for each paper along with their source text counterparts.
In terms of methodology, this chapter uses framing and framing strategies (Baker 2006b) to
describe translation shifts and then analyses these in relation to the narratives they reflect
and construct. Like in the political subcorpus, the canvas of ontological, public, conceptual,
master narrative typology developed by Baker (2006b) has been deployed here as well.
Preliminary findings point towards (a) a tendency of Greek newspapers to create a public
narrative of Science Deified that tells the story of a reinforcement of the faith put to the
technology behind biomedical research and science, (b) the renegotiation of conceptual
narratives of illness, health and science and c) the emergence, in the target versions of texts,
of master narratives that are instantiated through i) competing repertoires building on risk
for human health and hope for science and ii) battle framing health and science. The corpus
produced no meaningful findings in terms of ontological narratives; however, this chapter
assumes the position that health is always and inescapably ontological as it reflects and
preoccupies the human condition as a whole.

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5.2. Introduction to the study of biomedical texts in the
press

The discourse of science has gained momentum as a standalone field of investigation while
there are at least two topoi of inquiry (Steward 2005): on one side, research has focused on
how science goes public and, on the other, on how scientific discourse per se is structured and
disseminated among professionals. As far as the first strand of research is concerned, it
signals a popularization of science which breaks away from the limited confines of the
scientific community and gains social valence. Nevertheless, the accommodation of science in
public discourse, as Darsey mentions, requires "for the public to accept scientific explanations
that are nonobvious and counterintuitive (2002:471). Also, the infiltration of biomedical
discourse in newspapers reveals a mediation which is twofold: the first mediation phase
takes place when the biomedical or scientific event enters the source newspaper. As
Vliverronen notes, [s]cience journalism is about translating scientific knowledge to lay
audiences and about the public role of scientists as popularisers, educators or experts
(2001:39). Biomedical content then is delocated and relocated from one institutional context
to another (MacDonald, 2002:447). Thus, when science and scientific knowledge migrate to a
context different than their natural habitat i.e. a medical journal, inevitably this does not
happen without leaving any traces. The second mediation phase, on which this study focuses,
is realized via the process of translation of the source text by the target newspaper.
Translation in this case underlines issues of recontextualization of a textual genre from one
textual/institutional environment to another. This means that science stories are delocated
from their original terrain of publication (science journals) and relocated to a different
institutional space i.e. newspapers governed by other discursive rules and patterns.
Interestingly, translated press items about health and science also become a territory where
the tension between the discourse of news (fast, constantly changing and often arbitrary) is in
contrast to the discourse of science and research that is often slow, well thoughtout and
planned. Biomedical texts then contain intrinsically selfcontrasting and selfcompeting
themes.

The growing interest of newspapers in disseminating scientific and healthrelated knowledge
to the audience is reported by Atkin and Arkin (1990:13) who state that at least oneforth of
all articles in daily newspapers are in some way related to health, mapping out the state in
American newspapers. Reporting on the role of news institutions, Kasperson has argued that
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institutions, as is the case with newspapers, may at times assume the role of amplification
stations creating interpretations of hazards and providing rules of how to select, order, and
explain signals from the physical world (1992:159). Besides, the practice of having
biomedical and scientific stories circulating in the press is a sign of a social behavior of
individuals who seek to adopt preventive health behavior (Rakowski et al 1990). The
coverage by newspapers of health and scientific stories is, in turn, as Briggs and Hallin note,
structured around a particular conception of the neoliberal subject, the patientconsumer
who actively and responsibly seeks health information and produces health by regulating his
or her choices accordingly (2007:44). The translation of such stories in turn provides
assurance of a growing interest by Greek readers for healthrelated information.

In terms of studies conducted so far with reference to science communication, perhaps one of
the most pervasive and influential contributions has been Sontags Illness as Metaphor (1978)
where she showcases the social construction of illness and sufferers, while placing emphasis
on cancersufferers and on how they are portrayed as causing the illness themselves. In
essence, the fantasies and myths about illness shape our representations about ourselves as
both healthy/well and sick/unwell human beings. Lyne (1983) looks at news citations for
experts and scientists testing the strategies of awarding credibility to them, while the work of
Myers (1990b) has been important in raising awareness on the popularization of science.
Myers taps into the construction of frames in scientific articles and finds differences in the
construction of science between articles intended for scientists and those intended for the
general audience. More recently, Calsamiglia and Ferrero (2003) focused on the
representation of participants in discourse (e.g. scientists, representation of scientific voices).
Therefore, the collection, organization and presentation of scientific knowledge do not escape
the conventions of the medium through which it travels, may this be a scientific article or a
newspaper.

This chapter highlights the recontextualization, through translation, of scientific stories in
the Greek press with particular attention to the narrative values created and reflected
through translated science. It landscapes the main components of scientific and medical
mythologies and imaginations as these are put down on newspapers through translation. In
that sense, it adopts a standpoint towards language and (in extension visvis translation)
considering them as the lens through which one investigates biomedical discourse, with
emphasis on the surfacing narratives which partly reflect or construct reality.
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5.3. Aims and motivations to this chapter

This chapter aims to show how the representation of scientific and biomedical knowledge in
newspapers is entangled with and constructs narratives of the human body and human
condition. It attempts to identify and describe unforced translation shifts that are pertinent to
narratives which are hence triggered and activated by the biomedical genre of news discourse
across EnglishGreek. It focuses on the translated version of biomedical and scientific texts
and ultimately shows how translated biomedical texts in the Greek press include both perils
and promises in relation to health issues, how the emotional frames (Nabi, 2003:224) of risk
and fear about the human condition intersect with those of hope and optimism about
scientific advancements. Interestingly, both fear and hope occupy and are generated from the
same psyche, the same cognitive sphere, that of the individual, that lives in two split worlds
and is challenged to deal with two polarities. This chapter attempts to make up for the limited
attention paid so far to the investigation of translated discourse with focus on health stories
and on the masterplots (Baker 2006b) that undergrid them.

The motivations that guide this chapter have more than one starting points; the first
motivation is mediacentered and aligns itself with Calsamiglia and Ferrero (2003: 147) who
talk about the need to explore the different settings in which knowledge circulates". This
means that the discourse of biomedical stories is looked into in relation to the
medium/newspaper that hosts them. The second motivation is narrativecentered and rests
on the assumption that all we come to know and feel is narrative. Towards this assumption,
Fisher notes that "there is no genre, including even technical discourse that is not an episode
in the story of life (1987:85). To highlight the connection between narrative and science,
Baker notes that [n]arrative, including scientific narrative, categorizes the world into types of
character, types of event, bounded communities. It also systematizes experience by ordering
events in relation to each other. (2006b:10, emphasis added). The third motivation comes
from Sontags work (1978) who talks about discourse challenging social construction of
illnesses such as cancer, AIDS, and tuberculosis and maps out the social determinants of each
of the abovementioned illstates.

Overall, this chapter contributes to the investigation of representations and narratives that
circulate in the translated news discourse in relation to the collective, universal, and always
present notions of health, sickness, wellness, life and death. In that sense, it touches upon a
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wideground of concepts which are innate to the human nature and tantamount to individual
and collective fears about life and death. By wideground it is meant that although this
chapter is concerned with all four types of narratives that are played out in the subcorpus,
yet dealing with health issues encourages a widening of our understanding of ontological
narratives in particular. Therefore, regardless of the narratives that lurk in between the lines
of health stories, these never lose their ontological nature as they always relate to the human
being and to the most personal, private space of individuals. A public health narrative, that is,
will always maintain a more or less strong link with an ontological narrative, as it is people
who suffer from a disease and receive treatment.

5.4. A narrative approach to health stories

This chapter reports on the relationship between health discourse presented in the Greek
press via translation and narratives as entities with the potential of "not only representing but
also constituting reality" (Bruner, 1991:5). Viewing biomedical stories (elaborated in the
press through translation) from a narrative perspective and attempting to interpret the
narrative value of these stories implies awareness of the allpervasive nature of narrative as a
tool for understanding reality. As it will be shown, news texts provide frames and form
perceptions about health and science which in turn supports what Hall et al (1978) suggest in
relation to media and society that the mass media both offer reflections of societal aspects but
may assemble and organize social knowledge unleashing meanings and interpretations of
events.

In relation to narratives of political import, analysed in chapter 4, it seems that the medical
discursive sphere integrates narratives that appeal to a more primitive spectrum of the
human mind and psyche as these are associated to the human body and the human condition;
these challenge our relationship with our very existence, disturb our apprehension about
health and create a precipitated tension between the desire and strive for health, the fear of
losing it and the encouraging hope created by scientific achievements. This stems from the
belief that telling stories about sickness means probing into the most private fears of man
which penetrate human consciousness and trigger the anxieties and angst of fear of death and
inexistence. And, telling stories about scientific research and innovation enhances hope for
the human condition; in these stories research is portrayed as an antidote to pain and forces
representations of winning the battle with lifethreatening diseases and turning to
groundbreaking inventions that may heal humans and relieve them of suffering.
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Navigating the storylines that undergird the biomedical subcorpus, this chapter identifies a
canvas of stories that fall under either the thematic umbrella of health issues or that of
scientific research. The thematic threads therefore that penetrate the subcorpus mainly
include a) stories about cancer as lifethreatening disease and as a point of focus of scientific
research, b) stories about cloning of humans and food, c) stemcell research and d) treatment
methods of lifethreatening diseases. Translation shifts identified in the subcorpus and
classified according to their narrative value point towards the buildup of narrative worlds
that symbolically oscillate between the private sphere (health of the self) but also are not
contained and limited to the self and may gain a position in the public sphere. This means that
certain unhealthy conditions (e.g. cancer) are transcending the person and exacerbate public
consciousness (Sontag, 1978:36). They touch on agonies and fears of a larger societal group.
The fact that newspapers and the media show interest in health narratives and that
biomedical stories are eligible for translation means also that illness and suffering lends itself
to public view, and readers become witnesses to the deployment of suffering of a distant
'Other' (Joye 2010).

This chapter applies the model of analysis (3.4.2.) to analyze data; it followsup on the
construction and reflection of ontological, public conceptual and meta narratives by means of
framing strategies (labelling, selective appropriation, repositioning of participants) to
investigate translated biomedical stories recovered in the Greek press. Findings show that
biomedical narratives are both culturally and institutionally motivated, stem from a range of
framing strategies, and permeate public discourse by penetrating the media and more
specifically the press. On their part, translators and newspapers appear as selectors
(Hermans, 2007: 71) of those elements to be highlighted or undermined. What analysis here
will show then is how translated biomedical texts give rise to or obscure narratives that are
either awarded the significance of a social construction (Murrey 1997; 2002), or engage in a
dialectic relationship with culture and target cultural preferences.

In this chapter narratives assume the following roles:

Ontological: according to the taxonomy offered by Baker (2006b) and Harding (2009)
ontological narratives are formed through personal stories we tell ourselves over time and
come to shape our identity. These stories may be first person accounts narrating a personal
health story. The subcorpus does not seem to yield significant results in relation to emerging
ontological narratives elaborated in Greek translations.
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Public: public narratives are those stories reflected in translated discourse which relate to
patterned public, shared and/or collective attitudes of the target readership in relation to
health and health science. In this chapter, the public narrative of Deification of Science (section
5.4.1.) looms large and is used as an organizing narrative for four other public narratives.
Findings point, amongst others, towards a set of framinginduced unforced translation shifts
which all lean towards a collective narrative of glorification of science and scientific research.
Amongst others the corpus verified previous findings, as it yielded results which concur with
narratives also identified in the sample corpus with stories of political import.

Conceptual: conceptual narratives (section 5.4.2.) include narratives that relate to the
conceptualization of health and science, which often rest on public myths. Findings elaborated
in the conceptual narratives section, below, (a) show that attention is occasionally defocused
from certain frames (such as the Frankesteinian [Holmgreen 2008] frame of representation)
pronounced in the ST and (b) point to the emergence of other narrations that rewrite man as
a modern David defeating Goliath, taking up the challenge and succeeding in mastering the
Goliath task of scientific research for the sake of mankind. The biomedical subcorpus also
yielded results that point towards the surfacing of a frame that narrates man as a modern
Prometheus. Finally, this section elaborates various conceptualizations in translation of the
most lifethreatening illness of our days: cancer.

Master: master or meta narratives (section 5.4.3.) intend to show the persistence and
pervasiveness of certain representations in relation to health and science. As in Chapter 4,
here too binary constructions surface and indicate that the health world is, too, constructed
and represented through polarities which force 'either/or' readings of health and science
stories. These dichotomies or better primordial polarities (Bhabha, 1994:5) act as a mental
background to the entire chapter, and show that

Illness is the night side of life, a more onerous citizenship. Everyone who is born
holds dual citizenship, in the kingdom of the well and in the kingdom of the sick.
Although we all prefer to use only the good passport, sooner or later each of us is
obliged, at least for a spell to identify ourselves as citizens of that other place
(Sontag, 1978:3).

Master narratives elaborated in this chapter orbit around and are steered by the numerous
tellings and retellings of a) fear of illness and hence death and b) optimism and hope on
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scientific endeavour. Master narratives then are viewed here as pervasive, collective and
lithified perceptions on health and science that guide our understanding about the self and
society.

The following sections use concrete examples pulled out of the subcorpus to illustrate the
instantiation of public, conceptual and master narratives in translated news texts.

5.4.1. Public narratives on deification of science

In his work Science Deified and Science Defied (1995), Olson commits to the necessity for
awareness of the extent to which scientific influences have become so pervasive in the late
nineteenth and midtwentieth century. He also asserts that there is an admiration for science
as an impressive stage for the exercise of human imagination and intelligence" (1995: 5). On
her part, Harding, author of The Science Question in Feminism, talks about scientific identity
inscribed in all of us when she states

We are a scientific culture. Scientific rationality has permeated now only the
modes of thinking and acting in our public institutions, but even the ways we think
about the most intimate details of private lives .Neither God nor tradition is
privileged with the same credibility as scientific rationality in modern cultures
(1986:2).

This section aspires to show and investigate the integration of science and science stories to
nonscientific institutions through translation. News stories about health and science
integrate hopes and fears in the quest for wellbeing and health. Translated stories in the
Greek press give evidence, as the examples below indicate, of a pronounced faith in scientific
research and medical endeavours. The tendency to privilege science in translation points to
an attempt to award a scientific perception of the world and glorify scientific meaning of the
story. This narrative is awarded its public nature since it relates to societal attitudes and
collective behaviours about science and scientific achievements. All three framing strategies
(labelling, repositioning of participants and selective appropriation), elaborated in section
2.5.2.2., have been identified in this section as contributing patterns for giving rise to
narratives.

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5.4.1.1. The potential of science and the role of researchers

Examples point towards a target culture which admires and is fascinated by achievement in
medical research and science, deemed to be in the service of individual and public health.
Sections below detail the various lexical (labelling) and intrasentential configurations
(repositioning of participants) taken up by the target newspapers all of which offer an
amplified renarration of science and scientists and thus relate to the construction of a
publicly shared narrative of appraising science. As it will be shown further on, the narrative of
deification of science is instantiated in more than one ways in translation. Labelling and
selective appropriation manage to rearrange and upgrade the role of scientists, representing
science as serious and, underrepresenting the role of medical companies in the TT as financial
institutions that support research.

Example 1 below shows how the TT newspaper adds the evaluative adjectival item
(revolutionary) to attribute a quality to the item contact lenses that eulogizes
science and emphasizes the pioneering nature of innovations. This is a case where both
labelling and selective appropriation direct the narrative at issue.

S1
The days of picking up a mobile phone to read a text message are numbered. In the future, all youll
have to do is stare intently at a projected image in front of your eyes.
And next the contact lens that lets email really get in your face The Times, February 2 2008

T1
. , ,
.
, 4 2008

: The days of reading a text message in our mobile phone or computer are numbered. In the future all the
tasks of a computer will take place in front of our eyes with the use of revolutionary contact lenses. .

Adjectival modification allows stylistic variation that also glorifies science in example 2. The
TT employs the adjective (smart) to upgrade confidence and trust in the invention.
S2
New Attack on Cancer with Nano Weapon The Times, November 5 2009

T2 Ta N, 6 2009

: Attack on cancer with smart nanoparticles

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Example 3 comes from the same news article and pairs up with the previous one as smart
nanoparticles are shown to be targeting cancer with accuracy. The adverbial evaluation
attributed in this case to nanoparticles steers reader perceptions away from a more vague
description of the process of fighting the disease and closer to a clarified and idealized view of
the treatment process. The addition of the item (accuracy) highlights the
repercussions of selectively appropriating material in translation, selecting (or deselecting
with omissions) key items in a sentence.

S3
The nanoparticle, which targets tumour cells while evading the bodys immune system, promises to deliver
larger and more effective doses of drugs to cancers, while simultaneously sparing patients many of the
distressing sideeffects of chemotherapy.

T3 ,
.
.
Ta N, 6 2009

: The nanoparticle, which targets with accuracy tumour cells while evading the bodys immune system,
promises to deliver larger and more effective doses of drugs to cancers, while simultaneously sparing patients
many of the distressing sideeffects of chemotherapy.

Likewise, the addition of the lexical item (revolutionary) in TT4 highlights the
discourse of optimism in relation to the portrayal of science. Science hence is glorified, in the
TT version, and attributed the qualities of pioneering, smart, and revolutionary that can
deliver treatment with accuracy.

S4
A nanotechnology therapy that targets cancer with a stealth smart bomb is to begin patient trials next year in
the first clinical test of a pioneering approach to medicine.

T4
2010.
Ta N, 6 2009
:A pioneering therapy that uses nanotechnology to attack cancer with a stealth smart bomb is to begin
patient trials next year in the first clinical test of a pioneering approach to medicine

The second linguistic routine linked to the public narrative of deification of science relates to
an intrasentential structural pattern, identified in the subcorpus that lends itself for
interpretation, is the pattern of emphasizing the role of researchers and scientists in the TT.
This is done by means of either thematizing i.e. fronting scientistrelevant information
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(examples 57) or providing this information at the end of the sentence (principle of end
weighting new information). Selective appropriation then is a tool for mediating the
narrative elaborated in a source text or utterance (Baker, 2006b:112). Exploitation of the
linguistic mechanisms (of crafting either front or endweight TT sentences) affects the
credibility of the participant accounted for in discourse. ST5TT5 pair clearly shows how the
shift of focus is instantiated by highlighting key information. Stating subjects (through
activization) in a prodrop language is a rather marked option, which highlights the
importance attributed to the marked theme. The example echoes the importance attributed to
the target environment to researchers and scientific discoveries. The translation of the
headline is also indicative of a target culture that persists on uncertainty avoidance
(elaborated in sections 2.2. and 4.4.1.) one that cannot handle the unbearable ordeal of the
collapse of certainty (Bhabha, 1994:214). While the ST headline clearly talks about a Domino
Effect (highrisk situation with unpredictable and uncontrollable effects) the TT mitigates this
view by adding the verb (chartered) which guides readers towards
establishing a more solid and safe view of the situation at issue.

S5
Genes blamed for one person's brain tumor were different from the culprits for the next patient.
Gene Domino Effect Behind Brain, Pancreatic Tumors Science News, September 4 2008

T5

.

, 6 2008

: Researchers have found out that the genes blamed for one person's brain tumor were different from the
culprits for the next patient.

The same goes with examples 6 and 7: the target version enforces the narrative of
achievement in biomedicine, through items like
, (TT6) which highlights the testimonial aspect of discourse or the item
(TT7). The power distance assumed between the
ordinary human beings and scientists seems to go hand in hand with the tendency for
increased formality in the TT, a trait that has been anticipated in research on inscription of
ideology in Greek translated news discourses (Sidiropoulou 2004).

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S6
The three studies, published in the journals Science and Nature, mark a milestone in cancer genetics.
Gene Domino Effect Behind Brain, Pancreatic Tumors Science News, September 4 2008

T6 ,
, Science ature,
.

, 6 2008

: According to experts on cancer genetics, the new findings come from three studies published in the
journals Science and Nature and mark a milestone.

S7
Their breakthrough involves implanting cylinders of an FDAapproved biodegradable polymer into the
body.
Implant raises cellular army to attack cancer New Scientist, January 11 2009

T7
(FD).

, 13 2009

: The achievement of the Harvard experts involves implanting cylinders of an FDAapproved
biodegradable polymer into the body.

Besides fronting information to award emphasis, the corpus provided evidence of translators
exploiting the endfocus principle in the TT which reserves new information for the end of the
clause also stress the significance of scientific research. In the pair ST8TT8, the ST pronoun
he is expanded in the TT ( ), it is repositioned at the end of the sentence and
thus upgrades the status of the participant and underlining the role.

S8
The ability to regulate glucose starts deteriorating by the third or fourth decade of life, he added.
Blood Sugar Control Linked to Memory Decline, Study Says International Herald Tribune, December 31 2008

T8 ,
.

... H , 15 2009

:The ability to regulate glucose starts deteriorating by the third or fourth decade of life, added the scientist.

In ST9TT9 below, the thematic arrangement remains the same yet there is an amplification
of the ST item Teams which gains a more scientific flavour in terms of the TT9 item different
research teams ( ). The meaningfulness of the shift lies in the
appropriation or labelling of both the item (which implies diversity and
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multiplesourcing of results and hence reliability of information) and that awards
a scientific value to the noun .

S9 Teams led by Johns Hopkins University examined more than 20,000 genes in tumors taken from 24 pancreatic
cancer patients and 22 patients with the most dangerous brain tumor, called glioblastoma multiforme.

Gene Domino Effect Behind Brain, Pancreatic Tumors Science News, September 4, 2008

T9
20.000 24 ,
22 ,
.

To B , 6 2008

: Different research teams led by Johns Hopkins University examined more than 20,000 genes in tumors
taken from 24 pancreatic cancer patients and 22 patients with the most dangerous brain tumor, called
glioblastoma multiforme

In the news, experts behind scientific research are often assigned multiple roles, and as
Vliverronen states, journalism is concerned with legitimizing science as social activity

they can act or they are represented by the media as expert witnesses,
authoritative commentators, advisers, advocates of pressure groups or promoters of
science. This means that science journalism is not only about information but also
about science as social activity, the public legitimation of science and the role of
scientists as experts (2001:39).

The TT version in example 10 seems to take every opportunity to distinguish scientists from
ordinary people and thus create and maintain a more pronounced power differential. TT10
replaces the general lexical item people and uses with the more specific and highstatus item
scientists.

S10
People are already trying to do reproductive cloning. The only problem is getting hold of enough viable human
oocytes [eggs].
The future of fertility The Independent, July 17 2008

T10 .
.
100 , 18 2009
: Scientists are already trying to do reproductive cloning. The only problem is getting hold of enough viable
human oocytes [eggs].

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5.4.1.2. Research is serious matter

A contributing narrative to the public narrative of the deification of science is the
representation of biomedical research as 'serious business'. This frame too is linguistically
materialized through translation shifts in the sample data. In TT11 the reference to ST trick, is
deleted, for the negative implications of the TT item , carries would raise suspicions as
to the transparency and honesty that governs scientific research, allowing interpretations
that are more close to a subterfuge. Again, the theme position of the ST item trick forces the
TT newspaper to adjust the content and neutralize the opening of the sentence.

S11
The trick that Gerons researchers have learned is how to turn embryonic stem cells into cells called
oligodendrocytes. These, in turn, generate a structure called the myelin sheath, which insulates nerves against
leakage of the electrical signals that carry their messages around. .
American attitudes to stemcell therapies are changing fast conomist, January 29 2009

T11 Geron
. ,
, .
, 1 2009

:What Geron researchers have learned is how to turn embryonic stem cells into cells called
oligodendrocytes. These, in turn, generate a structure called the myelin sheath, which insulates nerves against
leakage of the electrical signals that carry their messages around.

Research is also glorified in the following example as the TT12 adds the adverbial item
(seriously), a notion that is absent from the ST and awards a legitimization potential
to the TT. The addition of the TT adverb serious also serves the purpose of creating a view of
science as a challenging and difficult task that cannot allow for anything else than serious
handling.

S12 Dr. Ridker said the findings indicated that people with high CRP levels should be taking statins, a
recommendation that the national medical panels are considering.

Cholesterol Drugs May Reduce Risk of Clots The New York Times, March 29 2009

T12 O Ridker , , CRP
, .
H , 18 2009

: Dr. Ridker said the findings indicated that people with high CRP levels should be taking statins, a
recommendation that the national medical panels are seriously examining.

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Creating Narratives

Moreover, example 13 upgrades scientific research through evaluation and narrates experts
and scientists as eager to take little steps towards mastering it. TT13 talks about experts who
conduct (thorough research) and awards a perception of a difficult task that
needs meticulous work if it is to be achieved.

S13 What emerged from this investigation undertaken by population experts, plant biologists, farmers,
conservationists, nonprofit foundations and agricultural scientists was cautious optimism for a new
technology.

Food Politics, HalfBaked International Herald Tribune, February 5 2008

T13 , ,
.
A H , 10 2009

: Thorough research by population experts, plant biologists, farmers, conservationists, non profit
foundations and agricultural scientists was cautious optimism for a new technology

Example 14 shows a similar concern for upgrading research. The TT item
(rendering the ST work) paints a more secretive and large scale project of cloning than the ST
does, which has a neutralizing tone and sounds to be of substandard importance.

S14 He carried out the work at a secret laboratory, probably located in the Middle East where there is no
cloning ban.

Fertility expert: 'I can clone a human being' The Independent, April 22 2009

T14 . ,
.
, 23 2009

: The endeavour took place in the secret laboratory of Mr. Zavos "somewhere in the Middle East"
where there is no human cloning ban

Privileging a view of science as serious work ( ) and often overwhelmingly
challenging () for man, propels an understanding of scientific research as a Goliath
task undertaken by David.

5.4.1.3. Treatment and illness as ongoing process

Narrating health in the Greek press yielded results that indicate a preference for more
processoriented interpretation of disease treatment, rather than an effectoriented
perspective in the ST. This discursive construction reveals an unconscious bearing on behalf
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of the TT newspaper that is keen on underrepresenting illness as a state that occurs out of the
blue, as a sudden condition that comes as an uninvited guest to inhabit the human body. The
TT then reflects a preference for constructing images that are penchant on the notion of
process (that implies a long term condition). Translated items revealed a preference for
translating ST effects as (influence) instead of or (which
would be semantically accurate alternative options for the ST item). TT 15 saliently expresses
this preference.

S15
Researchers at Memorial SloanKettering Cancer Center in New York studied the effects of vitamin C on
cancer cells. As it turns out, the vitamin seems to protect not just healthy cells, but cancer cells, too.
Vitamin C May Interfere With Cancer Treatment The New York Times, October 12 2008

T15 Memorial SloanKettering
C
.

C H , 19 2008

: Researchers at Memorial SloanKettering Cancer Center in New York studied the influence of vitamin C in
cancer cells. As it turns out, the vitamin seems to protect not just healthy cells, but cancer cells, too.

Similarly, example 16, is indicative of the same shift towards the processoriented approach in
translation by means of translating effects as . The body, in TT 16, is represented as
'diseased' and the TT item attributes to the sentence a more longterm perspective in
relation to the ST item effects that implies a more spontaneous and sudden impact on the human
body that is perhaps taken aback. In any case the public, collective understanding of diabetes is
that it is a pathology that is chronic, and builds up in the body. The linguistic selection here is
therefore pinned down to the identity of the disease itself which is more prone to representations
that favor an escalating process perspective.

S16
Researchers said the effects can be seen even when levels of blood sugar, or glucose, are only moderately
elevated, a finding that may help explain normal agerelated cognitive decline, since glucose regulation
worsens with age.
Blood Sugar Control Linked to Memory Decline, Study Says International Herald Tribune, December 31, 2008

T16
() .
,
.

... H , 15 2008

: Researchers said the influences can be seen even when levels of blood sugar, or glucose, are only
moderately elevated, a finding that may help explain normal agerelated cognitive decline, since glucose
regulation worsens with age.
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Creating Narratives

Example 17 provides an even clearer picture of this TT preference for processorientation by
means of replacing the ST item form memories that draws on a more spontaneous
representation with the TT phrase , which is more sustained. If
translated literally, the TT phrase would have triggered a narrative
of memories created on the spot, while the lexical item gives rise to an orientation
that is more prolonged in time.

S17
Spikes in blood sugar can take a toll on memory by affecting the dentate gyrus, an area of the brain within
the hippocampus that helps form memories, a new study reports.
Blood Sugar Control Linked to Memory Decline, Study Says International Herald Tribune, December 31,
2008

T17 ,
(dentate gyrus), (
) , .

... H , 15 2008

: Spikes in blood sugar can take a toll on memory by affecting the dentate gyrus, an area of the brain
within the hippocampus that helps the process of memory, a new study reports.

In turn, example 18 also highlights the processorientation preference of the TT through the
phrase continues to develop ( ). The patient in the Greek text is then
more vulnerable and threatened by the disease that spreads and develops.

S18 Despite this, some men have had "hormoneresistant" cancers
Prostate cancer drug gives hope to 'untreatable' patients The Independent, July 23 2008

T18 ,
.

, 23 2008

:Despite this, some men have had "hormoneresistant" cancers i.e. that continues to grow .

The representations that check in the TT environment through the abovementioned
examples foreground how translational choices can reflect a target public narrative on
disease and biomedical research while constructing a representation of ongoing processes.
Moreover, interestingly this processbased construction of treatment in Greek is in agreement
with Lascaratous work on the construction of pain and emotions and finds that there is an
interpretation of pain an inner activity or a selfinduced processual event (2007:183).
Although pain belongs to the private sphere (and in this sense contributes to ontological
narratives) yet on a par, the ongoing process conceptualization verifies a tendency on the
Greek side to favour a longterm orientation in time specification in the Greek version of EU
texts (Sidiropoulou 2012), in contrast to English.
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Creating Narratives

5.4.1.4. Selective appropriation of public entities

Unforced translation shifts evidenced in this section show how framing by omitting or
changing information obscures the STevident narrative of private healthcare and
privatization of it, deselecting it from the TT environment and allowing the emergence of a
different one in the TT. More precisely, the TT strategically manipulates and selectively
appropriates items, as contrasted to the names of private, giant, medical companies linked to
research, and which occupy a prominent place in the ST. These manipulations ultimately
shutdown and cordon off the narrative of privatization of health and health care that is
elaborate in the ST cultural environment and create a narrative that fears and is suspicious of
and apprehensive towards a potential dependency of research on financial institutions and
interests. It appears then as if the TT readership is less tolerant to the interaction of scienctific
research with entities that are not directly visible by and transparent to readers who
potentially may mistrust any scientific endeavour that is linked to private sector funding.
In ST19 the shift is meaningful in that the TT undermines and pushes aside the name of the
company Geron and gives prominence to scientists working with it; this may have been
motivated by an assumed collective objection and intolerance to privatization of healthcare
while the admiration to scientists is highlighted.

S19
Geron plans to inject its oligodendrocytes into the damaged spines of patients between one and two weeks
after their injury.
American attitudes to stemcell therapies are changing fast conomist, January 29, 2009

T19 Geron
,
.

, 1 , 2009

: The plans of the scientists of Geron are to proceed to the injection of oligodendrocytes into the damaged
spines of patients between one and two weeks after their injury

TT20 has deleted and selectively appropriated then, the information that is relevant to the
company, the manufacturer of the drug, as if privatization of healthcare is unimportant or
nonrelevant to our perception of reality. Unlike TT 19 that repositions the name of the
company Geron, TT 20 omits it altogether, blocking any view of it by the TT public.

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S20
The statin used in the Jupiter study is the most potent on the market, rosuvastatin, sold as Crestor and made
by AstraZeneca, which sponsored the study.

T20
Jupiter .
rosuvastatin, Crestor.
H , 18 2009

:The statin used in the Jupiter study is the most potent on the market. It is rosuvastatin, sold as Crestor.
This tendency towards avoiding reference to commercial organizations (which may prove
critical for stigmatizing scientific research as being controlled and guided by financial
institutions) is activated in TT21 which omits ST21 phrase The study was funded by the
Association for International Cancer Research.
S21
This spreading around the body is what kills cancer patients as the internal organs become overcome by
tumours. Professor Falasca said: "Our work not only identifies a molecule that plays a crucial part in the
spread of cancer; it also shows how this process might be halted."We have discovered this using a model
system: the next big challenge is to show that this also happens in patients." The study was funded by the
Association for International Cancer Research.
Scientists may be able to stop cancer spreading round the body The Telegraph, September 14 2008

T21
,

.
. .
, 16 2008

BT: As mentioned by the research leader professor Marco Falasca, this study identifies a molecule that plays
a crucial part in the spread of cancer while at the same time it appeared that this process might be halted.
Until now we proved this in experimental models. The new big challenge would be to prove it with patients.

One would assume that the tendency would apply to all health organizations referred to in the
news. However the data show otherwise: Not only does TT retain the reference to the
organization but also it amplifies it and expands it by attaching the TT lexical items
and , to highlight the public relevance of the organization. This occurs in example 7
(repeated below as 7)
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S7
Their breakthrough involves implanting cylinders of an FDAapproved biodegradable polymer into the body..

T7
(FD).

, 13 2009

: The achievement of the Harvard experts involves implanting cylinders of an biodegradable polymer into
the body approved by the competent FDA department.
ST22TT22 defocuses attention from the potential of translation shifts and looks at how
translation accurately renders the names of public organizations. This shows that while public
institutions are rendered with accuracy yet private, profitmaking enterprises are silenced.
Such inclusionary or exclusionary practices in translation show that the public sector is
emphasized and rendered transparent in the TT environment while private institutions are
omitted. The TT here explicitates the acronym C.D.C. (
) as this legitimizes the estimate on the annual flu victim numbers.
S22 The flu typically kills about 36,000 Americans a year, the C.D.C. estimates
Major Flu Strain Found Resistant to Leading Drug, Puzzling Scientists The New York Times January 9 2009

T22 , , 36.000

H , 8 2009

: The flu, according to the estimates of the Disease Control and Prevention Centers, kills approximately
36.000 Americans a year.
Ultimately, pairs ST19/TT19ST22/TT22 elucidate aspects of translation discursively

manipulating entities that are related to funding of health and science related research.
Choices that silence in translation any reference to funding research may also have a political
import and coincide with a target culture that is resistant to references that stand for
privatizing health. This means that translation creates a conceptual narrative of integrity and
transparency behind scientific research: political, corporate and financial centres to carry on
with their own agendas.
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Creating Narratives

5.4.1.5. Afterthought on public narratives

This section mapped out the linguistic vectors employed by translation to reflect or construct
public narratives about health and science. Problematizing on the interface of translated news
discourse and narrativity produced fruitful results in extracting narratives out of unforced
translation shifts. Public narratives about science and health are in essence collectively shared
attitudes and cognitive representations that impregnate institutions, such as the newspapers,
and surface via discourse. Newspapers, either in their ST versions or in translations,
contribute to the socalled social construction of science and illness (Conrad and Barker
2010). In this context, social construction relates to the linguistic manipulation and buildup
of a shared, collective and mass experience in contrast to a private and individualized one.
The representations that spring up through translation point towards a discursive
construction of science and illness. The narrative of deification of science, under which several
subnarrative themes are classified, looms as the most important public narrative of science
sketched out in the data. The most prominent frame pulled out of the samplecorpus talks
about a glorification and deification of scientific research which is linguistically framed in
translation via labelling (lexical choice) and repositioning of participants (theme/endfocus).
Apart from this public narrative, the subcorpus produced results in terms of a narrative of
illness with emphasis on processes rather than on the effects, which reflects a collective target
preference for narrating illness. This type of narrative, in extension, showcases that in certain
cases dissemination and representation of medical knowledge is conditioned upon the social
behaviours and patterns of individuals. Finally, the target versions of texts reveal a low
tolerance for putting forward information that establishes a link between research, private
institutions and privatization of healthcare, a pattern that also reflects a social behaviour of
mistrust and resistance towards a health and science system that is dependent on
privatization and privately owned organizations. At the same time translation obscures and
blocks views of favouring privatization of healthcare (narrative that circulates in the ST
environment), making the public blind visvis any such views. In essence, the narrative that
circulates in the TT environment is one that holds public healthcare as more legitimate over
private.

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5.4.2. Conceptual narratives on health and science

The two main conceptual entities for which this chapter seeks to find their narrative threads
in translation are health (and its counterstate i.e. illness) and science. While the previous
section had an eye towards patterning the deployment of pubic narratives of health and
science, this one aims to show how the Greek press has conceptualized them through
translation. It looks therefore at how health cognitions are articulated in the press and uses
frames as the basis for building the argument towards narratives. These are viewed here as
mental maps (Dunwoody and Griffin, 1993:24) on the basis of which journalists create news
and other stories and represent/conceptualize key elements of biomedical narratives such as
the disease, the human body, science etc. These representations that lurk in translated texts
are deemed to penetrate the general population of news readers and constitute the mental
ingredients from which they build their ontological and public narratives.

More specifically, this section has identified and goes on to present and discuss the following
conceptual narratives and frames, a) a conceptualization of the human body as CARRIER of a
disease, (section 5.4.2.1.) b) the emergence of two opposing frames namely the socalled
Frankensteinian (Holmgreen 2008) frame which gives emphasis and narrates scientists as
creators' who often end up playing God with human life vs a heroic frame of scientists who
measure up against Goliath scientific endeavours, (section 5.4.2.2.), c) a Prometheus frame
that narrates scientists as a postmodern Prometheus who gave a gift to mankind and are
faced with the wrath of God, (section 5.4.2.3.), d) a conceptual construction of cancer as a
pathology of space (section 5.4.2.4.) .

5.4.2.1. Body as carrier

The sample corpus also yielded results which indicate that in the Greek press the
representations that encompass illness and disease conceptualize the suffering, ill Self as
carrier of the disease. Moreover, the diseasecausing factors are conceptualized as taking own
action over the body which is left helpless and is not represented as the one causing the
sickness. The farreaching implication of the construction of this conceptualization, through
translation, is that suffering individuals are not represented as bringing about the illness
themselves; hence the individual is not held accountable for his/her own illness. It has been
shown (Sontag 1978) that physical illness has been often intertwined with conceptualizations
and punitive sentimental fantasies" (ibid:3) which no ill subject can escape. As Sontag puts it
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Creating Narratives

the healthiest way of being ill is one most purified of, most resistant to, metaphoric
thinking. Yet, it is hardly possible to take up ones residence in the kingdom of the ill
unprejudiced by the lurid metaphors with which it has been landscaped (ibid: 4).

On this issue, Sontag (1978) shows that the construction of disease in the course of history
has not been linear and predictable and for example people suffering from cancer in the
twentieth century have been blamed for their illness. Through the passivization
transformation, TT23 renarrates that the venous clots develop in the body of Americans
( ) whereas the ST awards blame to the Americans who get
venous clots instead. The TT makes reference to these clots as healththreatening organisms,
cohabiting the human body in which they develop on their own. The body seems to be taken
over by the ever growing and selfdeveloping venous clots, a state over which the individual
has no substantial power. The argument that is put forward in TT23 is in line with findings by
Lascaratou (2008) who looks at the construction of pain as experience in language and
concludes that amongst others "pain is conceptualized as an objectified moving entity, a self
willed moving entity or as a malevolent, imprisoning and ruthlessly torturing enemy
(ibid:35). Example 23 brings forward the conceptualization of pain/disease as a selfwilled
entity that follows and is subscribed and loyal to its own rules and wills. The disease then is
narrated in the TT as a selfgoverned, autonomous entity, a narration that may ultimately
intensify fear induction.

S23
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that up to 600,000 Americans get venous clots
each year and that at least 100,000 die from them.

T23 (CDC),
600.000 100.000
.

H , 18 2009

: According to the estimates of US Centers for Disease and Prevention in approximately 600,000
Americans venous clots develop annually and around 100,000 individuals lose their lives from them.

Similarly, in example 24 the TT renarrates by labelling the inflammation as a selfdeveloped
irritation that takes vital space in the body and causes health problems. Also, the
inflammation (the cause of the disease) is personified in the TT and is directly blamed for the
problems ( ). As was the case in section 5.4.1.3., lexical shifts and grammatical
choices (passive/active voice) assist the externalization of pain (Lascaratou 2007) in such a
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Creating Narratives

way that it can be apprehended as an agent that takes up space in the human body which is
often narrated as a captive of pain and others as a host space that accommodates an invader.

S24
And he said that inflammation, and not just high cholesterol, appeared to cause heart problems, rather than
merely being an indicator of problems.

T24 , ,
.

H , 18 2009

: He added that the inflammation that develops, and not just high cholesterol, appeared to cause heart
problems, rather than merely being an indicator of problems

In ST25TT25, the BODY AS CARRIER conceptual narrative surfaces in translation through
labelling as patient bodies are described in TT as carrying () the disease, in relation to
the neutral ST item had. Besides, the TT headline encourages even more the representation of
the human body as a container space manifested in the lexical item (mapped
out) to convey the image of the genes that rest in the human body. This linguistic shift for
once narrates the body as containing and carrying the disease and in essence disempowers
the human being from taking control over the disease.

S25 Twelve percent of glioblastoma patients, mostly young ones, had a mutated version that brought longer
survival: a median of 3.8 years compared with the 1.1 years for patients without the mutation.

Gene Domino Effect Behind Brain, Pancreatic Tumors Science News, September 4, 2008

T25 , 12% , ,
: 3,8 1,1
.

To B, 6 2008

: As it appears, 12% of patients with glioblastoma, mostly young ones, carried a mutated version that
brought longer survival: a median of 3.8 years compared with the 1.1 years for patients without the
mutation.

TT 26 paints a more threatening picture in relation to the clots which can move to the lungs
(driven by unknown forces, see TT vs ST travel) and cause other health
problems. The conceptualization offered here is one where the body and human organs offer
potential destinations for the disease to migrate and expand. Again, the body is a CONTAINER
and the mediation of the sufferer is inhibited.

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S26 The clots, which often develop in the legs, can be fatal if they travel to the lungs

T26 , ,
.. .

H ,18 2009

: The clots, which often develop in the legs, can prove fatal if they move to the lungs.

What examples above chiefly show is that the ST and TT language systems produce different
experiences of the suffering body. The cognitive apparatus of Greek language uses a
conceptualization which describes disease as inhabiting the human body. The linguistic shifts
show that language is not simply mirroring the world of health but is actively constructing
and reconstructing reality (Lascaratou, Despotopoulou, Ifantidou, 2008). The constructions
elaborated in the examples are indicative of Sontags views on discursive constructions of
certain diseases that are spatially motivated. Apart from the conceptual narrative of the body
as carrier, this section elaborates on conceptual frames which have been retrieved from the
corpus, and relate to the construction of conceptual narratives that draws on prominent and
wellestablished target narrative scripts.

5.4.2.2. A ST Frankensteinian vs a TT heroic narrative of science

Close investigation of the biomedical subcorpus and of the conceptual stories that find their
place across versions revealed that two opposing and selfexcluding conceptual frames co
habit the biomedical subcorpus: the Frankesteinian (ST) and the heroic (TT) one. These two
cognitive schemas create discursive representations and counterrepresentations which are
put forward by translation. The socalled Frankesteinian frame (Holmgreen 2008) "pertains
to the modernist, or Frankensteinian, approach to biotechnology and aims at creating images
of mad scientists and horrendous physical results" (ibid:108). Drawing on Mary Shelleys
famous 1818 novel, this conceptualization builds on the fears of society that scientific
research may prove fatally wrong if basic rules of human life are not treated with respect. The
ST includes evidence of this frame that seems to be a narrative that circulates in the ST
biomedical news environment. It privileges discursive constructions (and visual material)
that is highly instrumental of science, advancing a technological and procedural view of
research and biomedicine. Often, this frame bounces back and reflects an innate public fear on
the effects and repercussions of uncontrollable scientists tampering with biomedical research.
Broadly speaking, the elements that make up the storyline of Frankenstein include humans
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Creating Narratives

tampering with science and playing Gods, taking his place as creators of human life.
Translated press items revealed that this frame is visible in the ST and is often embraced by
the TT versions. Yet, this conceptual narrative, evident in the ST, is negotiated in the TT by a
different one, a counternarrative that is elaborated and accommodated in the TT versions
and narrates scientists as modern heroes, who are capable of small scientific miracles, who
are able to face science. It is a narrative that tells the story of scientists being empowered and
producing positive effects, while the Frankesteinian one is a script for challenging man's fears
of science.

ST27TT27 pair below offers a good example of how shades of Frankesteinian narrations have
been identified in the ST and were equally translated in the TT. Example 27 presents no shift
with respect to the Frankesteinian frame, yet the TT exhibits an interesting capacity of
adopting and coining neologisms such as , or to elaborate
and capitalize on the narrative script of Frankenstein. It does so by selecting these items that
are directly 'reminiscent' of the creation of a monster that is out of the human control and
may prove extremely hazardous and risky for mankind.

S27 Frankenfoods became the term of choice for genetically modified crops. Chemical companies engaged in
biopiracy; they were killers of monarch butterflies, engineers of future superweeds, and according to
Jeremy Rifkin, the prominent biotech opponent, monopolizers of an insi dious technology that posed as
serious a threat to the existence of life on the planet as the bomb itself.


T27
,
,

.

A H , 10 2009

Although the TT capitalizes and takes advantage of the STpresent Frankesteinian frame, yet it
activates a different aspect of scientists. Example 28 shows that the ST verbal item make (that
generates routine procedural associations) is replaced in the TT by the nominalization
(creation of human embryos) which upgrades the scientists contribution. This is
an unforced shift as the TT newspaper could have translated the verb make as
, nominalizations that would echo an equivalent instrumentalism.

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S28 It will be possible to make iPS cells from skin cells, to make germ cells from these, and then combine
them to make human embryos. It means every person, regardless of age, will be able to have children:
newborn children could have children and 100yearolds could have children.

The future of Fertility The ndependent, July 17 2008

T28 .
, , , 100
.

100 , 18 2008

BT: We could combine them to create human embryos. This means every person, regardless of age, will
be able to have children: newborn children could have children and 100yearolds could have children

These two opposing frames have been equally identified in nonverbal material that
accompanies the ST and TT equally. The photos below configure two totally different
narratives expressed visually in the ST and TT environment. Photo 1 tells the story of a
mistaken science that has created a monstercow which provokes outmost fear to humans,
who are overshadowed by it and are portrayed small, and insignificant. On the contrary, the
TT visual material promotes an entirely different story one that is procloning, and represents
piglets as a positive and hopeful scientific outcome. TT29 promotes an intertextual reference
to the fairy tale the three piglets that evokes positive childhood associations.

S29 TT29
Photo 1: accompanying the source text Photo 2: accompanying the target text
Food Politics, HalfBaked A
`International Herald Tribune, February 5 2008 H , 10 2008

These visual examples challenge and are reminiscent of Kress and van Leeuwens (1996)
thinking on the grammar of visual design. By integrating visual material, newspapers allow
alternative or reinforced readings of one or the other narrative voiced in their texts. This is an
instance of a selective appropriation strategy applied to visual material that they seem to
select entirely new photographic material that fits the narrative needs and requirements of
the new text. ST30TT30 photo pair opposes technological innovation and research (which
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Creating Narratives

may have unpredictable results and generates fear for innovation), with the optimistic view of
motherhood and fertility realized in TT30.

S30 TT30
Photo: accompanying the source text Photo: accompanying the target text
The future of fertility 100
Independent, July 17 2008 , 18 2008

Both visual pairs (ST/TT 2930) erase the Frankesteinian narrative from the TT in favour of a
narrative of optimism associated with the potential of science. A heroic and powerful
conceptualization of scientists is recorded in example 31 where the ST item [b]y looking at is
upgraded in the TT (through the managing item, ) to deflect attention from a
neutral role of scientists and import a view that narrates scientists as small Davids measuring
up against the Goliath challenges of health problems and scientific endeavors.

S31
By looking at blood sugar levels in mice and monkeys, researchers said, they tried to confirm a causeand
effect relationship between the glucose spikes and the reduced blood volume, Dr. Small said.
Blood Sugar Control Linked to Memory Decline, Study Says International Herald Tribune, December 31
2008

T31 , ,

( ) , Small.

... H , 15 2009

: Experimentally, by managing the blood sugar levels in mice and monkeys, researchers said, they tried to
confirm a causeandeffect relationship between the glucose spikes and the reduced blood volume, Dr. Small
said.

In each of the abovementioned examples one can identify the narrative interplay and swap
that is played out during the translation process. Shifts show that narratives are confined in
cultural environments and while one narrative may have a place in one cultural system (ST) it
cannot be accommodated and assimilated by another (TT) with the same ease. The
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Creating Narratives

replacement hence of the Frankensteinian narrative in the TT versions of texts manifests a
target narrative of intolerance to specific frames.

5.4.2.3. Scientists as postmodern Prometheus

The examples that fall under this section indicate how translation shifts identified in the
Greek press, narrate scientists as a modern type of Prometheus who overstep finite
boundaries and may be exposed to the wrath of God. The Greek myth talks about a Titan
(Prometheus) who steals fire from Gods and gives it to primitive mortals before finding
himself bound to a rock, punished by Zeus. The main ingredients that make up this conceptual
narrative are essentially a) the human intelligence and will, b) the act of providing a gift to
mankind and c) the godly punishment. Translation shifts presented below point towards the
surfacing of Prometheuslike narrations. TT32 strategically selects the lexical item
(offer as a gift) provides evidence of such a rewriting of the news story in the Greek
newspaper. Unlike the Frankensteinian frame, this one does not entail a conceptualization of a
mad scientist of risk for human health. On the contrary, it is a more optimistic frame in
relation to scientific research as it presumes that science and technology may provide succour
to humans.

S32 After all, our collective failure to grapple with genetic modification on its own terms been accompanied
by the equally unfortunate failure to bring its benefits to cultures that might gain the most from it
insectresistant cassava or droughttolerant maize could be a boon to subsistence farmers in Africa.


T32 ,

.

A H , 10 2008

: After all, our collective failure to grapple with genetic modification has been accompanied by the
equally unfortunate failure to donate its benefits to cultures that might gain the most from it insect
resistant cassava or droughttolerant maize could be a boon to subsistence farmers in Africa

However, the script of Prometheus also involves the wrath of Gods () triggered from the
disrespectful behavior (hyvris) of Prometheus towards them. These two concepts have traced
in the target sample version: scientists take the place of Prometheus who triggers wrath of
God.

TT33 below clearly presents this frame by means of appropriating the lexical item that
directly alludes to the myth of Prometheus.
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S33 This arrogant attitude spurred the antibiotech forces to promote their own distortions.

T33 ,
.

A H , 10 2008

: This arrogant approach caused the wrath of opponents to biotechnology who tried to project as much as
possible their own erroneous opinions.

Apart from activating conceptual frames on health and science the subcorpus included
conceptualizations in translation about what perhaps is accounted for the most life
threatening disease of modern times: cancer.

5.4.2.4. A conceptual narrative on cancer

Assessing a conceptual narrative implies identifying and breaking down the linguistic vehicles
of underpinning our understanding and perceptions on the unit of analysis (health and
science in this chapter). This section takes an interesting turn along the path of conceptual
narrativity and looks to identify patterns and cognitive determinants of cancer as a disease
that is made up of various popular mythologies (Sontag 1978). The subcorpus shows that
translation mobilizes certain conceptualizations of cancer which ultimately may generate
popularized misconceptions of it which are far from the scientific truth.

Example 33 demonstrates how translation constructs cancer as a spatial disease and
therefore concurs with Sontag who attests that "[m]etaphorically, cancer is not so much a
disease of time as a disease or pathology of space" (1978:14). The discourse on cancer
narrates this life threatening disease as traveling from one site of the body to the other
(ST/TT26), as migrating or spreading from one organ to the next one; even the lexical item
tumor that is often used in the popular or scientific literature to designate neoplasia strongly
implies a spatial dimension by referring to the space it takes up in the suffering body.

The representation of cancer as a pathology of space is evident in the following example and
is instantiated linguistically by means of exchanging the ST causative preposition by, with the
space relevant items , . While the ST talks about testosterone as a hormone
produced by the tumor itself, the TT reports differently on this image and narrates
testosterone produced at a specific bodily venue, i.e. the tumor and the testicles. Translation
hence fortifies the image of cancer as having occupied the human body and reflects Sontag
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who says that cancer is notorious for attacking parts of the body (colon, bladder, rectum,
breast, cervix, prostate, testicles) that are embarrassing to acknowledge (ibid:17).

S34 The key discovery was that the cancers depend on testosterone manufactured by the tumour itself, not by the
testicles.
Prostate cancer drug gives hope to 'untreatable' patients The Independent, July 23 2008

T34
.
, 23 2008

:The key discovery was that the cancers depend on testosterone manufactured in the tumour itself, not in
the testicles .

TT35 uses a metaphor to portray cancer cells as being born () inside the body that
carries them, while the ST uses the less emotionally loaded item originate (which could be
translated literally with the verb , or the nominalization ). Also, the
ST item carries the metaphor of startend point and entails a source and a destination, thus
marking a course or path of action, while the TT item activates a metal image of containment
in a space. The selection of the verb narrates the disease as uncontrollable and
virtually vulgar and emphasizes the representation of the body as CONTAINER.

S35 Because cancer cells originate within the body, the immune system usually leaves them alone. Therapies
exist that involve removing immune cells from the body before priming them to attack malignant tissue
and injecting them back into a patient.

T35 ,
, .

, 13 2009

:Given the fact that cancer cells are born inside the body, many times the immune system fails to
recognize them as alien and leaves the field open to them for multiplying.

The conceptualization of cancer as a pathology of space is salient in example 36 where the
TT proceeds to a spacerelative addition .

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S36
Olaparib a member of a new class of drug called PARP inhibitors targets cancer cells, but leaves healthy
cells relatively unscathed.
New cancer drug shows promise BBC, June 24 2009

T36 olaparib, , R,
.

, 26 2009

: Olaparib a member of a new class of drug called PARP inhibitors targets cancer cells, but leaves
healthy cells around them relatively unscathed

Findings show that translation may offer variant discursive constructions in relation to cancer
that narrate a delimited body, and communicate the disease as being spatially conditioned.

5.4.2.5. Afterthought on conceptual narratives

Conceptual narratives in translation about science and health seem to be anchored on
conceptualized and publicly available scripts (Frankenstein, Prometheus) on which they
draw. Findings show that conceptual narratives are both reflective and constructive in nature.
The emergence of narratives in translated press that gives rise to the heroic frame of
scientists (TT), while neutralizing the STpresent Frankensteinian frame, reflects a
conceptualization of navet around science that does not fear human intervention, but rather
activates admiration. The publicly available mythology of Prometheus emerges in the TT and
encourages the conceptualization of scientists as modern Prometheus. Moreover, this section
has presented evidence of a construction of a narrative of cancer as pathology of space
(Sontag, 1978:14), as a territorialized narrative that is deemed to slowly percolate into public
consciousness and guide public fears about the disease. The output of this section concurs
with Lascaratou (2008) who examines the function of language in the experience of pain and
followsup on the approaches that have been applied in the examination of the relationship
between language and emotion. In that sense, this section in particular and this chapter in
general agrees with Lascaratou (2008), Pavlenko (2002) and (Enfield and Wierzibicka 2002)
who talk about a dynamic link between language and emotion in the sense that the former "no
longer mirrors that world of emotions but instead actively constructs and reconstructs it"
(Pavlenko, 2002:209). Therefore, translation is a second, metaconstruction of pain and as
Lascaratou suggests emotions are differently conceptualized across different languages and
cultures, every language imposing its own classification upon human emotional experiences
(2008: 36).
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5.4.3. Master narratives about health and science

Turning now to the fourth type of narrativity identified by Baker (2006b), master narratives,
this chapter has identified three narratives that seem to qualify for entering the sphere of
master narrativity. The first master narrative relates to the surfacing in translation of binary
constructions surrounding health issues and scientific research and the narrative. These
constructions play around notions and dichotomies such as natural/artificial,
beneficial/harmful, healthy/sick. This section, by highlighting binary construction in this
genre of news discourse, confirms the omnipresence and hence master nature of this
narrative which has been also identified in the political sample corpus.

The second type of master narrative (identified in the sample health corpus) relates to a
martial narrative of science, where it is portrayed as a key participant in the battle against
illness. The battle frame is accounted for as a master narrative that works best in the
institutional context of newspapers, as it creates a cognitively and discursively strong imagery
that reflects a universalized embeddedness in polemical and adversarial frames.

Finally, the third master narrative theme is the intense and dialogic relationship between fear,
an emotional state closely linked to and triggered by the sense of inhabiting a diseased body,
and optimism, a state linked to the emotive fabric as well that contributes a different
conceptualization of science and biomedical research. The thematic thread of health then
zooms in on emotional frames (Nabi 2003) of risk and fear about human health that is
narrated as being 'under attack by often lifethreatening situations diseases but also orbits
around schemas that support the opposite frame of hope and optimism about science that is
represented as coming to the rescue of man from fear for the disease.

5.4.3.1. Binary constructions on health and science

In analysing master narratives that emerge through the translated subcorpus of biomedical
texts, this chapter found evidence of multiple binary constructions that forced a different
interpretation of the ST material into the TT. Motivations behind binary discursive
constructions are deemed to be mainly institutional in nature.

Example 37 draws on the binary construction of artificial/natural female reproduction
organs. The TT adds a subheading, , which reframes the TT narrative through
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the lens of the binary opposition and guides readers towards a different reading. In this
example the artificial is narrated as the counterworld of natural (womb).

S37 Ectogenesis , in which the foetus develops outside the body in an artificial uterus.


T37
.
100 , 18 2008

BT: Artificial womb
Ectogenesis , is the creation of an organism in an artificial environment

Similarly, the binary conceptualization that surfaces in example 38 relies on the
beneficial/harmful dichotomy. More specifically, the target headline talks about vitamin C
( C), which is however friendly () towards cancer thus activating the
beneficial/harmful master narrative. In the same vein, in example 38 the addition, as a
subheading, of the phrase adds to the binary
conceptualization put forward by the translation.

S38 Vitamin C May Interfere With Cancer Treatment The New York Times, October 12 2008

T38 ,
C H , 19 2008

BT: It protects not only healthy but also cancer cells.

Representations and counterrepresentations complement factual, biomedical information.
Polar juxtapositions may also function as a distraction away from the real, factual and
scientific information and towards an intensity, created and established, through binary
construction. Readers are expected to buy in the binary version of the story rather than the
raw, factual events.

5.4.3.2. Science as a battle against illness

The binary construction has another realization in biomedical translated discourse. The
discourse of translated biomedical texts, as shown in the analysis of the sample corpus,
revealed a construction of a narrative of battle against illness. This conceptualization brings
forward transformations and discursive reconfigurations that in essence take place when a
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text is delocated and relocated from one institutional context to another (MacDonald, 2002:
447). Thus, when science and scientific knowledge migrate to a context different than their
natural habitat i.e. a medical journal, inevitably this does not happen without leaving any
traces. The frame of battle that emerges in translated news items is interspersed among other
factual information and ultimately intensifies the overall textual ambiance. This concurs with
what van Dijk asserts that news reports may use words that function as hyperboles
(overstatements, exaggerations) or understatements, or word and sentence meanings that
establish contrast or build a climax (1988:30). Examples illustrated below are meant to
provide evidence of the battle frame that is employed by Greek newspapers to conceptualize
issues of health and science. TT39 metaphorically uses the military item to
increase the risk factor attached to the flu.
S39
''The bottom line is that we should have more antiviral drugs,'' said Dr. Arnold S. Monto, a flu expert at the
University of Michigan's School of Public Health. ''And we should be looking into multidrug combinations.''
Major Flu Strain Found Resistant to Leading Drug, Puzzling Scientists The New York Times, January 9 2009

T39
, . Arnold S. Monto,
, .

H , 8 2009

: The main argument is that we need to add to our arsenal more antiviral drugs and we should be looking
into multidrug combinations stressed Dr. Arnold S. Monto, a flu expert at the University of Michigan's School
of Public Health.
The battle framing of science emerges across themes that vary from cloning to the theme of
flu (example 39 above). TT40 focuses on experts representing them as an army of scientists
( ), bringing forward a frame of scientists allied for a common purpose.
Therefore, the battle frame homogenizes the group of scientists who are represented as
stronger against research.

S40
They also looked at the hundreds of studies finding that this technology was relatively safe.

T40

A H , 10 2009

: An army of scientists studied hundreds of completed and found out that consuming modified foods was
relatively safe to human health

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Example 41 reinforces the military metaphors by means of articulating aggressive
expressions such as (crossfire) and talking about a war of rhetoric
( ). This example underlines the tendency of news discourse to proceed to
radical rearrangements of information as the TT item is present further
below in the ST as political crossfire.
S41 Lost in this rhetorical battle was a quiet middle ground where the benefits and drawbacks of genetically
engineered crops were responsibly considered


T41 ,
.

A H , 10 2009

: Lost among the crossfire of the rhetoric war is the middle ground, where the positive and negative
aspects of genetically modified crops have been carefully studied.

Mediation levels in TT42 are even more pronounced in terms of the battlefield image that is
highlighted. The lexicalizations and are appropriated from the military
discursive landscape and paints an image of a battle taking place inside the human body, thus
mystifying the disease even more. Contributing to the narrative is the deselection (selective
appropriation) of the section priming them to attack malignant tissue which if translated
faithfully would require a terminological upgrading.

S42 Because cancer cells originate within the body, the immune system usually leaves them alone. Therapies exist
that involve removing immune cells from the body before priming them to attack malignant tissue and
injecting them back into a patient

T42 ,
, .

, 13 2009

:Given the fact that cancer cells are borne inside the body, many times the immune system fails to
recognize them as enemies and leaves the field open to them for multiplying.

Example 43 unmasks the polemical discourse in translation; while the ST uses the phrase
responsible discourse (rendered as ) the TT displays an
addition, that paints a picture of the debate around the issue
of cloning as heated, fierce and potentially pernicious.

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S43
It might seem just weird, but cloning deserves a fair hearing, one in which impassioned language yields
the floor to responsible discourse.

T43 ,

.

A H , 10 2009

: It might seem just weird, but we should at least draw a conclusion on the issue of cloned meat
though a rational and cool debate without fierce rhetorical fireworks.

The polemical discursive dcor offered through military expressions circulates in translated
versions of biomedical texts. They are manipulated to portray a) the battle and war of science
against illness, b) the general polemical and warlike background within which science is
played out and c) the body as a battlefield where alien and unfriendly cells are grown and
spread.

5.4.3.3. Threat and optimism: two opposing master narratives

This section looks at the interplay between two emotional frames (Nabi, 2003:224) that
accompany health and scientific stories. The plot of fear that is routinely addressed in news
texts is regarded as a master narrative because it relates to a global and often inescapable
feeling or instinct of fear of death. Fear may be articulated and lurk behind a specific
unhealthy condition, yet it subscribes and appeals to more innate emotional shadows that
make man fear loss of life or loss of health. These articulations in translation are often co
constructed with optimistic representations that associate to scientific research and to
technological innovation and to the benefits of the latter, representations though that are
repeatedly distracted by the presence of fear of illness. Texts therefore are not monolithic, nor
do they include solely one or the other narrative; often texts include both opposing narratives
while this coexistence may reflect a different narrative altogether, one that narrates
uncertainty.

Example 44, highlights threat in the subheading [] that
narrates the story of scientists fearing excessive drug dosage. The subheading has been added
in the TT newspaper that selectively appropriates the translated material, creates a fearrich
image, probably in an attempt to exaggerate sensational aspects of narratives a bit to improve
the newspapers circulation numbers (Baker, 2006b:119). This narration may also reflect a
prevailing and long standing narrative in the target environment, , (all in
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good measure) which rejects all exaggeration. The addition of this subheading is then
culturally conditioned as it reflects the cultural process of excessiveness (Triandis and
Vassiliou 1972, in PapaefthymiouLytra, 1995:144) according to which Greeks exhibit a
behavioural pattern towards requesting everything in excess. Threat derives from
unpredictable and unknown treatment results after receiving potential large doses of the
drug.

S44 Vitamin C appears to protect the mitochondria from extensive damage, thus saving the cell, Dr. Heaney
said.
Vitamin C May Interfere With Cancer Treatment The New York Times, October 1 2 2008

T44

C
Heaney.

C H , 19 2008

: Concerns from big doses
Vitamin C appears to protect the mitochondria from extensive damage, thus saving the cell, Dr. Heaney
said

The narrative of threat in example 45 lurks in the deletion of the ST item appears to be
spontaneous which, had it been translated, would have given off a sense of abrupt and
unpredictable reaction. This shift underlines a type of selective appropriation of material, one
that lies in the effective elision of the ST item, and disorientates the interpretations intended
by the ST. The assumption is that the TT may be avoiding this representation of fear of the
unexpectedness it triggers. The TT expels any reference to spontaneity (that would trigger
associations of risk and fear of the unknown) and replaces it with the more culturally
satisfying (recorded) that eases readers back to the comfort zone of
uncertainty avoidance. The TT then emerges as a culturally acceptable and satisfying object.

S45
The single mutation that creates Tamiflu resistance appears to be spontaneous and not a reaction to
overuse of the drug. It may have occurred in Asia, and it was widespread in Europe last year.
Major Flu Strain Found Resistant to Leading Drug, Puzzling Scientists The New York Times, January 9
2009

T45 , Tamiflu

..

H , 8 2009

: The single mutation that causes Tamiflu resistance is not recorded as a reaction to
overuse of the drug. It may have occurred in Asia, and it was widespread in Europe last year.
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The fear frames are however intertwined with optimistic frames that gear cognition towards
more hopeful assertions on health. In relation to cancer and to cancer healing, it is interesting
to note that Ehrenreich calls this optimism (inscribed in discourse) as brightsiding
(2002:345). It implies a cheerful and less dreadful health situation, which encourages or
deceives the suffering patient into believing in healing. This pattern of prettying up treatment
discourse in relation to lifethreatening diseases has been identified in the sample corpus.
This finding resonates with Despotopoulou, Ifantidou and Lascaratou who attest that

Society, through its media, political and cultural resources has been
persistently promoting a culture of joy, pleasure and numbness which
aims at controlling negative emotions by imposing a cheerful disposition
(2008:2, emphasis added).

Example 46 draws again on cancer and its treatment; the TT headline presents a more
optimistic view of the treatment goals and targets. While the ST provides only factual
information on the treatment, the TT assumes an evaluative stance in regards to the
treatment and is optimistic about the sufficiency of radiation. Evaluation identified at this
point concurs with findings by TirkkonenCondit (1989) who refers to topic headings (that
refer to the theme) and response headings (that expose a position that the writer assumes
towards the theme). The TT headline has a response orientation in that it fabricates author
attitude.

S46
Shorter radiation for Cancer of the Breast The New York Times, September 22 2009

T46 Ta N, 24 2008

: Three weeks of radiation are enough

Example 47 is refers to fertilization and seems to construct a more positive and optimistic
view of the embryos that are subjected to in vitro fertilization; whereas the ST uses the rather
negativelyloaded item spares to evaluate the embryos, the TT translates this as
(backup) which is a more positivelyloaded item.

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S47
The embryos in question have no future anyway (they are usually spares from in vitro fertilisation
procedures).
American attitudes to stemcell therapies are changing fast The conomist, January 29 2009

T47 ( in
vitro ).
, 1 2009

: The embryos in question have no future anyway (they are usually backup embryos from in vitro
fertilisation procedures).

Headlines proved rich in providing evidence of an optimistic approach to science. ST48 below
creates a much more vivid and optimistic view of motherhood assisted by scientific research
and narrates hopes about extending the timespan available for motherhood. The presence of
optimism about science in headlines is salient in example 48.

S48

T48 100 , 18 2008

BT: We will be able to have children at 100

The optimism in headline TT49 is established by means of a word pun that trivializes the
threat frame of the main text and deviates from the factual narration adopted in the ST
headline.

S49 And next the contact lens that lets email really get in your face The Times, February 2 2008
T49 , 4 2008

BT: A computer for your eyes only.

Texts from which examples have been retrieved reveal a tendency for accommodating
contradictory master narratives. This textual cohabitation of fear and hope, threat and
optimism ultimately narrate a binary health world that lends itself to various readings. Also,
threat and optimism are omnipresent emotional states, to which every person subscribes to
in relation to health and which seem to be highlighted in translation.

5.4.3.4. Afterthought on master narratives

Translation shifts instantiated either in headlines or in the course of a news text reveal a
tension between the reflection and construction of master narratives about health and
science. Biomedical narratives appeal to different cognitive frames and activate different
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narratives. While translations of biomedical articles trigger master narratives that orbit
around the threat of illness and death, the same texts activate the master narrative of hope
and optimism about achievement of science and scientific research. Master narratives that are
reflected in translation do not leave unchallenged already established and deeply rooted
feelings (fear/threat) and ossified human behaviors (optimism) that are empowered through
journalistic discourse. From the examples illustrated, it seems that translation refines master
narratives that emerge as lithified, social and attitudinal constructions which are stored in
texts and are either activated or muted in translations. Hence, the polar orientations of
fear/threat are activated in translation in regards to the contingency of a disease and those of
hope/optimism are addressed in relation to scientific research that is going to conquer the
disease. The concepts disease/science themselves are strongly binary and contradictory in
nature (and hence master) as the former attacks spontaneously the human body and may lead
to unpredictable and often irrational consequences, while the latter is the direct output of
rational work and endeavor.

5.4.4. Variation across newspapers

The patterned differences and narrative diversity in the biomedical subcorpus that governs
TT newspapers boosts awareness that each newspaper is a distinct socioeconomic institution
that uses and often manipulates language to a) transfer information, b) sustain readership
and promote own economic agendas and c) assist the creation and sustainment of existing
ideologies that may prove advantageous for the promotion of own economic and societal
agendas. The role that discourse plays in exemplifying diversity in newspapers is highlighted
by means of crossexamining and juxtaposing translated versions of STs. As mentioned above,
the biomedical corpus appeared in three high circulation target newspapers in 2008 and
2009, which in turn shows the penetration potential of newspapers into public life. Table 11
below summarizes the circulation figures for each newspaper for years 2008 and 2009.

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Newspaper 2008 2009
I Kathimerini 9.043.31933 8.103.385
To Vima 6.223. 660 5.015.243
Ta Nea 9.059.61534 8.507.236

Table 11: Newspaper circulation figures

Investigation of the discursive diversity that covers all three newspapers in the biomedical
subcorpus may provide useful insights as to how stories are discursively constructed
through translation, and what discursive and narrative impact they bring about in each
newspaper. Two issues have been scrutinized to reveal variation across newspapers, namely:
a) the popularization of science and b) framings of hope and fear which are the two main
emotive scripts that prevail in texts about health and science and often overlap along the
deployment of the story. Results show that there is considerable variation in the way
narrative priorities are passed down in newspapers.

5.4.4.1. Popularizing science

Translating scientific articles for newspapers ultimately challenges the interrelationship
between the scientific cognitive sphere of experts and the public sphere of lay people. This
section looks at the levels of technical discourse embedded in the translated news text and
views the level of mediation of each newspaper in relation to popularizing science and making
it available to the public. Popularization of science ultimately relates to diffusing scientific
information into nonscientific contexts. On this point Felt notes:

[w]hat individuals believe about science, the pictures that prevail in their heads, the
attitudes they take towards science as well as sciencerelated, political and social
issues, all that is largely determined by the kind of information channels that are
institutionalized, by their accessibility, by those who take the role of mediators and
finally by the way the diffused information is selected, processed and reintegrated
into a wider, nonscientific context (1994:2).

33 1The circulation figures have been retrieved from http://www.eihea.gr/default_en.htm last accessed
at 31/5/2011.
34 Sunday papers not included
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Popularization level of biomedical discourse has been examined across newspapers through
translated versions of the sample texts with an aim to trace modes of handling scientific
information: e.g. which newspaper prefers an upgraded scientific terminology to refine
scientific meaning, and which one displays a more manipulative intention, what assumptions
newspapers seem to make about readers etc. Popularization and degrees of popularization
are indexes of the relationship that a newspaper attempts to accomplish between itself and
readership. A high popularization degree reflects attempts to create an intimate relationship
with readers, requiring less cognitive and background knowledge involvement, on the
readers part for understanding the text. On the contrary, low popularization shows a
tendency for preserving terminological items and knowledge and for rearticulating scientific
truths; low popularization then calls for more reader involvement. Ultimately, popularization
manifested in biomedical news discourse is linked to the degree that each newspaper
surrenders to or resists the institutional conventions.

Table 12 illustrates news mediation patterns, manifested through the interrelationship
between popularization of discourse, institutional conventions and newspaperreader
relationship. It seems to be the case that the higher the popularization of science the more the
text conforms with journalistic conventions (that promote closer relationship with readers),
which in turn narrows the gap between reader and newspaper. On the contrary, the
relationship is reversed when the popularization levels are low; in this case the conformity
with the institutional conventions ranks low () and the distance between the newspaper and
the readers widens (+).

Popularization levels Conformity with Readernewspaper Reader involvement
journalistic conventions power distance (background
knowledge)
High popularization High (+) Low () Low ()

Low popularization Low () High (+) High (+)
Table 12: Discourse news popularization patterns

Cross textual investigation shows that I Kathimerini seems to make a less comprehensive
effort to ascribe to the narrative of popularization of science as it either upgrades or
maintains approximately same levels of technicality in translation. Examples below illustrate
and challenge the translationdependent interaction between scientific knowledge for experts
and for laymen. Example 50 shows that the TT newspaper upgrades the terminological gloss
of the TT by opting for the terminological item to translate the more simplistic ST
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tumors. Specialized vocabulary minimizes threat in that emotionally loaded terms used in
everyday communication are avoided.

S50
A second set of experiments implanted cancer cells in mice. They found that the tumors grew more
rapidly in mice that were given cancer cells pretreated with vitamin C.
Vitamin C May Interfere With Cancer Treatment The New York Times, October 1 2, 2008

T50 .
,
C.

C H ,19 2008

: A second set of experiments implanted cancer cells in mice. They found that the neoplasia grew
more rapidly in mice that were given cancer cells pretreated with vitamin C.

On the contrary, findings suggest that the newspapers Ta Nea and To Vima attempt a more
popularized translation of scientific terms, triggering a greater allegiance to popularization of
science. TT51 ranks higher in popularization degree in relation to TT50. This is manifested in
the lessening the precision to specific terminological details which would possibly alienate
the reader from the meaning of the sentence. Therefore, the ST Tcell treatment has been
rendered as (treatment), scans are rendered as (exams).

S51
The cancer, triggered by sunburn, started in a mole on the skin and had spread to a lymph node in his
groin and to his lungs. But, two months after the Tcell treatment, scans revealed no tumour
Skin cancer patient cured using his won blood cells The Independent, June 19 2008

T51 ,
. , , ,
.

, 20 2008

: And in this case, things were very tough the cancer had spread to a lymph node and to a lung. Two
months after the treatment, examinations showed that the cancer had disappeared.

Yet, I Kathimerini seems to make no effort to lower specificity and popularize discourse.
Meaning and knowledge in I Kathimerini exhibit a more firmly grounded and intertwined
relationship than in the other two newspapers. This is evidenced in example 17 (repeated
below as 17) where the TT translates and retains the English terminology (in brackets) thus
making it transparent and accessible to reader interpretation.

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S17
Spikes in blood sugar can take a toll on memory by affecting the dentate gyrus, an area of the brain within
the hippocampus that helps form memories, a new study reports
Blood Sugar Control Linked to Memory Decline, Study Says International Herald Tribune, December 31
2008

T17 ,
(dentate gyrus), (
) ,

... H , 15 2009

:Spikes in blood sugar can take a toll on memory by affecting the dentate gyrus, meaning an area of the
brain within the hippocampus that helps form memories

Focusing on translation, this section looks at various instantiations of popularization of
discourse. Lexical variation, mainly by adopting more highvalued and fieldspecific
terminology ranks high as a mode of upgrading technical style and lowering popularization.
Table 13 summarizes the newspaper/popularization relationship per newspaper.

Newspaper Popularization Conformity Reader Instantiations
with newspaper power
journalistic distance
conventions
I Kathimerini Low () Low () High (+) Maintaining terminology and

technical precision
Avoiding figurative language
Upgrading terminological
meanings
To Vima High (+) High (+) Low() More instances of deleting alien
terminological information
Ta Nea High (+) High (+) Low() More instances of deleting alien
terminological information
Figurative language
Table 13: Biomedical news popularization patterns across news

This section attempts to understand the deployment and manipulation of scientific
information in translated biomedical news texts and theorizes on the interrelationship
between inscription of terminology in newspapers and the construction of a more or less
popularized health discourse. Terminology manipulation in translation then works as an
index for understanding the intentions of the institution (newspaper) to address
knowledgeable news consumers. Yet, it has been shown that knowledge levels affect the news
consumers information acquisition behaviours (Moorman and Matulich, 1993:208). In this
sense, a text with higher informational load may inspire less motivation on behalf of readers
and viceversa. Information then and terminological manipulation become a lens through
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which researchers can evaluate to what extent a newspaper aims to construct an actively
responsible individual (Briggs and Hallin, 2007: 44) in relation to health issues.

Crosstextual analysis of the entire biomedical subcorpus yielded the following results (Table
14) in terms of a) extending terminological value from the ST to the TT by means of keeping
the ST terminological item intact in the TT, e.g. a tumor called teratoma
, b) upgrading the terminological value of an item, thus lessening the
popularization levels, e.g. a tumor called teratoma
and, c) downgrading the terminological value of an item, thus reinforcing the popularization
levels e.g. what virologists fear is a different process, called antigenic shift or reassortment
,
(reassortement not translated). Results below indicate a newspaperwide attempt for
retaining terminology. I Kathimerini ranks higher in its attempt to retain or upgrade
terminological value, while Ta Nea and To Vima exhibit approximately equal results.

The dominant reading of the results below is that ultimately by retaining or smoothing out
terminology newspapers shape their scientific profile. I Kathimerini raises the standards in
terms of what readers are expected to understand and decipher out of a translated biomedical
text. Translated biomedical discourse in I Kathimerini then is a closer reproduction of the ST
discourse. Equally, texts from To Vima and Ta Nea make more use of figurative language,
retain terminology yet often downgrade it.

Newspaper Retaining Upgrading Downgrading
Terminology Terminological terminological
value value
I Kathimerini 58 13 5
To Vima 36 5 8
Ta Nea 35 2 2

Table 14: Quantitative view of biomedical terminology deployment across newspapers

5.4.4.2. Fear and hope

Along with adopting and integrating biomedical stories to their daily journalistic routines,
newspapers, organize health and science experiences along two conflicting axes: a) hope
about scientific research and b) threat imposed on human condition stemming from disease.
The thematic thread of health zooms in on emotional frames (Nabi 2003) of risk and fear
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about human health and hope and optimism about science and technology. Findings point
towards translation being a manipulative process that mainly employs labelling and selective
appropriation as framing strategies to a) give emphasis to the risk or hope dimensions
underlying a health or science story, b) reflection or emergence of a cascade of public,
conceptual and master narratives. Screening translation to identify constructions that are
consistent either with hope narrations or fear related ones showed that newspapers that
construct both frames using those means to frame reality that concern ways in which writers
can control the participants in communicative events (Valden, 2005: 198). The attitude or
frame of optimism (hope) and fear (risk) narrated in the Greek press surfaces, in a) intext
shifts, b) shifts in headlines35 and c) photographic material accompanying the text. The
optimistic perspectivization adopted in TT items is associated with an overreliance to
scientific findings and to the efficacy of these as well as with an inherent resistance of the
target public to open itself up to victimization. It also stands for and aspires to gain affective
feedback from readers in the sense that hope about science passes on a sense of trust and
confidence to readers. On the contrary, constructions of risk and threat induce fear about
human condition and affect social and biomedical' behaviors of readers. In view of the above
considerations, Beacco (1992) showcases the complementary nature of texts and the
dependency of one story on another when talking about the main text and satellite text(s).
The former occupies a key position in the introduction of the topic and makes reference to the
main event. On the other hand, the satellite texts are dependent on the main text and offer
more evaluative information in order for readers to better understand the main event. Fear
and hope then form sort of main narratives in this subcorpus which are made up by satellite
texts that follow up on these two main themes.

Table 15 below summarizes all types of narrative shifts identified after crosstextual
investigation of STTTs in the three newspapers. In this sense the table is exhaustive in terms
of the shifts that emerged in the TT. The aim of the table below is to assist readers in
understanding the key points of focus which have guided the reading of translation shifts in
terms of their narrative effect.
35 To Vima exhibits evidence for creating more optimistic view in terms of how health is narrated. For
example the ST headline Implant raises cellular army to attack cancer has been rendered as
E (train the immune system). This TT headline ereases the
reference to cancer and injects the hopecarrying concept of training ().
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Table 15: Summary of the linguistic shifts analyzed per newspaper and narrative type, with the
highlighted target concept/narrative
(a) NEWSPAPER:

Narrative Concept ST TT/Example No Framing Strategy
highlighted in TT
Deification of The ability to regulate glucose Repositioning of
Science starts deteriorating by the third participants
or fourth decade of life, he added ,
[TT8]
Deification of The trick that Gerons Selective
researchers have learned is how Geron appropriation/
Science /Research is
to turn embryonic stem cells into labelling
serious matter cells called oligodendrocytes
[TT11]

Deification of Dr. Ridker said the findings O Ridker , Labelling
indicated that people with high ,
CRP levels should be taking CRP ,
serious matter statins, a recommendation that
the national medical panels are

considering [TT12]
Deification of What emerged from this Labelling
investigation undertaken by , ,
population experts, plant
serious matter biologists, farmers,
conservationists

[TT13]
Treatment and Researchers at Memorial Sloan Labelling
Illness as ongoing Kettering Cancer Center in New Memorial Sloan
process York studied the effects of Kettering
vitamin C on cancer cells. As it C
Public turns out, the vitamin seems to
protect not just healthy cells, but
cancer cells, too .
[TT15]

Treatment and Researchers said the effects can Labelling
Illness as ongoing be seen even when levels of
process blood sugar, or glucose, are only
moderately elevated ()
[TT16]
Treatment and Spikes in blood sugar can take a Labelling

Illness as ongoing toll on memory by affecting the
process dentate gyrus, an area of the ,
brain within the hippocampus
that helps form memories, a new (dentate gyrus),
study reports (
)
,
[TT17]
Selective Geron plans to inject its Geron Labelling
appropriation of oligodendrocytes into the
public entities damaged spines of patients
between one and two weeks after
their injury ,

[TT18]
Selective The statin used in the Jupiter Selective

appropriation of study is the most potent on the Jupiter appropriation
public entities market, rosuvastatin, sold as .
Crestor and made by rosuvastatin,

AstraZeneca, which sponsored Crestor[TT19]
the study

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Concept ST TT/Example No Framing Strategy
Public highlighted in TT
The statin used in the Jupiter Selective

Selective study is the most potent on the Jupiter appropriation
appropriation of market, rosuvastatin, sold as .
public entities Crestor and made by rosuvastatin,
AstraZeneca, which sponsored Crestor[TT20]
the study
Selective Their breakthrough involves , Selective
appropriation of implanting cylinders of an FDA appropriation
public entities approved biodegradable polymer , 36.000
into the body [TT22]

Body as carrier The Centers for Disease Control Labelling
and Prevention estimates that up
to 600,000 Americans get venous
clots each year and that at least (CDC), 600.000
100,000 die from them

100.000
[TT23]
Body as carrier And he said that inflammation, Labelling
and not just high cholesterol, ,
appeared to cause heart ,
problems, rather than merely
being an indicator of problems
[TT24]

Body as carrier The clots, which often develop in , Labelling
the legs, can be fatal if they travel ,

to the lungs
Conceptual .. [TT26]
An ST Frankenfoods became the term Labelling

Frankensteinian vs a of choice for genetically modified [TT27]

TT Heroic narrative crops

of science

An ST
Frankensteinian vs a
TT Heroic narrative
[TT29]
of science
An ST By looking at blood sugar levels , Labelling
Frankensteinian vs a in mice and monkeys [TT31]
TT Heroic narrative
of science
Scientists as to bring its benefits to cultures Labelling
postmodern that might gain [TT32]
Prometheus
Scientists as This arrogant attitude spurred Labelling
postmodern the antibiotech forces to
Prometheus promote their own distortions ,

[TT33]
Binary ADDITION , Selective
constructions on [TT38] appropriation
Master health and science

Science as a battle ''The bottom line is that we Labelling

against illness should have more antiviral drugs

[TT39]

Science as a battle They also looked at the hundreds Labelling
against illness of studies [TT40]

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Concept ST TT/Example No Framing Strategy

highlighted in TT

Science as a battle Lost in this rhetorical battle was
against illness a quiet middle ground Labelling

Master [TT41]

Science as a battle one in which impassioned Labelling
against illness language yields the floor to
responsible discourse
[TT43]

Threat and ADDITION Selective

appropriation
Optimism: two [TT44]

opposing master

narratives
Threat and Tamiflu resistance appears to be Labelling
spontaneous Tamiflu
Optimism: two
[TT45]
opposing master
narratives
Threat and The embryos in question have no Labelling
Optimism: two future anyway (they are usually (
opposing master spares from in vitro fertilisation in vitro
narratives [TT47]

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(b) NEWSPAPER: TO B
Narrative Concept ST TT/Example No Framing Strategy
highlighted in TT
Deification of Genes blamed for one person's Repositioning of

Science /The brain tumor were different from the participants/Selective
potential of science culprits for the next patient appropriation
and the role of
researchers

[5]
Deification of The three studies, published in the Repositioning of
Science /The journals Science and Nature, mark a , participants/Selective
potential of science milestone in cancer genetics appropriation
and the role of ,
researchers
Public Science
ature,
[TT6]
Deification of Their breakthrough involves Repositioning of
Science /The implanting cylinders of an FDA participants/Selective
potential of science approved biodegradable polymer appropriation
and the role of into the body
researchers

(FD)[TT7]
Deification of Teams led by John Hopkins Repositioning of
Science /The University examined more than participants/Labelling
potential of science 20,000 genes in tumors.
and the role of [TT9]
researchers
Deification of He carried out the work at a secret Labelling
Science /Research is laboratory, probably located in the .
serious matter Middle East where there is no ,
cloning ban

.[TT14]
Selective The study was funded by the DELETED IN TT .[TT21] Selective appropriation
appropriation of Association for International Cancer
public entities Research [subhead]
Conceptual Body as carrier mostly young ones, had a mutated , Labelling

version .[TT25]
A conceptual Because cancer cells originate Labelling
narrative on cancer within the body,
[TT35]
A conceptual but leaves healthy cells relatively Labelling
narrative on cancer unscathed [TT36]
Master Science as a battle Because cancer cells originate Labelling
against illness within the body, the immune ,
system usually leaves them alone
[TT42]

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(c) NEWSPAPER:
Narrative Concept highlighted in ST TT/Example No Framing Strategy
TT
Deification of Science .all youll have to do is stare , Labelling
/The potential of science intently at a projected image
and the role of in front of your eyes
researchers
[TT1]
Public

Deification of Science New Attack on Cancer with Labelling
/The potential of science Nano Weapon [TT2]
and the role of
researchers
Deification of Science The nanoparticle which Labelling
/The potential of science targets tumour cells while ,
and the role of evading the bodys immune
researchers system
. [TT3]
Deification of Science A nanotechnology therapy Selective
/The potential of science that targets cancer with a appropriation/Labelling
and the role of stealth smart bomb
researchers [4]
Deification of Science People are already trying to Labelling
/The potential of science do reproductive cloning. The
and the role of only problem is getting hold of
researchers enough viable human oocytes .

[TT10]
Treatment and Illness as Despite this, some men have Selective appropriation
ongoing process had "hormoneresistant"
cancers ,

[TT18]
An ST Frankensteinian vs and then combine them to . Labelling
a TT Heroic narrative of make human embryos
science [TT28]
An ST Frankensteinian vs
a TT Heroic narrative of
Conceptual science

[TT30]

A conceptual narrative manufactured by the tumour Labelling
on cancer itself, not by the testicles

[TT34]
Master Binary constructions on ADDITION [TT37] Selective appropriation
health and science
Threat and Optimism: Shorter radiation for Cancer Labelling
two opposing master of the Breast [TT46]
narratives
Threat and Optimism: The future of Fertility Labelling
two opposing master 100[TT48]
narratives
Threat and Optimism: And next the contact lens Labelling
two opposing master that lets email really get in [TT49]
narratives your face

Attempting an interpretation of findings, it seems that the newspaper I Kathimerini, a
newspaper that ideologically and in terms of political views adopts a conservative position,
integrates shifts that balance out fear and hope frames. Fear frames promote precautionary
behaviors while hoperelated ones, advance trust and confidence towards the miracles that
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science is deemed to work. Also, Ta Nea, seems to opt for translation shifts, or in the words of
Valden for transformative acts (2005: 198), that create an optimistic attitude about
science.

5.4.5. Afterthought on biomedical narratives in news translation

This study looks at the discursive values of translation shifts to both see through and
interrogate on the discourses on which health and science narratives are grafted. This section,
in turn, shall attempt to summarize, describe, generalize on and evaluate findings pinpointed
in the sections above. This section gazes on translation shifts as these have emerged in TTs
and follows up on their potential for reflecting and/or constructing narratives. Narrative
analysis in relation to health and science entails recognition of a social dimension to the
creation of health meaning, an issue which has been discussed and researched by Harter et al
(2005). Also, since this research investigates translation within the institutionalized context
of newspapers it inevitably looks at narratives about science and health and not by scientists
or patients. In that sense, the narratives elaborated in the texts are sort of 'second hand' and
do not account for firstperson stories; instead they are mediated by a) the newspaper that
hosts them and b) the translation to which they are subjected. Focus on translation shifts
shows in turn that news discourse is manipulative in nature, reflecting Drossou's (2001) work
on advertising who claims in her overarching hypothesis that advertising discourse is not
merely persuasive but manipulative.

Integrating translated health and scientific stories in newspapers means that there is a
storytelling intention (on behalf of the newspapers that undertake the translation in the first
place) and an implied storylistening by assumed newsreaders. This oneway communication
forms an explicit, manifested, attempt to bridge the gap between expert knowledge and lay
public, between the scientific sphere and the public sphere. However, interfacing of two
worlds apart (science and public) often implies discursive tensions or compromises. This
means, that texts exhibited a merging of the scientific world (appropriation of scientific
terminology, integration of scientific and research institutions and bodies) with that of
journalism (metaphoric use of language, preference of awarding emphasis). Discussing,
therefore, issues of news texts about health, entails reflection on how nonspecialists narrate
and report on the work of specialists. This reflexive stance towards the theme is key for
understanding that certain linguistic shifts that surface in translation are institutionally
conditioned.
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Biomedical rhetoric is not valuefree nor is it a simple deployment of factual information. It
follows its own agenda that comes to influence social behavior and potentially crossfertilize
other narrative worlds (i.e. the political sphere), and thrusts readers to form new conceptions
and representations about health and science. As Rosenberg notes,

[m]edical knowledge is not valuefree ... but is at least in part a socially
constructed and determined belief system, a reflection of arbitrary social
arrangements, social need, and the distribution of power. The physician is not
above social interest but is a social actor whose mission of defining and treating
disease can express and legitimate professional, class, or gender interests (1988:
13).

This chapter rests on the premises that knowledge is neither standalone nor selfinduced. It
concurs with social constructionism which examines how individuals and groups contribute to
producing perceived social reality and knowledge (Berger and Luckman 1996). In that sense,
the production of social reality and knowledge is summarized and glossed in this chapter as
narrative, which is viewed as a holistic, omnipresent and coherent structure of
representation, whether personal (ontological), collective and shared (public), pertaining to
conceptualization of events (conceptual) or profoundly rooted, rigid and lithified super
collective representations (master).

A methodological premise that governs this chapter, and reflects figure 3 in section 2.5.3., is
that language and translationinduced choices, identified in translated texts both reflect and
construct reality. This dual role of language has been exemplified by scholars researching
metaphors as conceptual systems. Lakoff and Johnson (1980) have shown that metaphors are
cognitive vehicles for understanding reality while Mabeck and Oleson (in Reisfield and Wilson
2004) take one step further, and produce evidence that metaphors don't simply describe
reality but create it. They showcase that once these metaphoric constructions penetrate the
conceptual system, they have the potential to modify our behaviour, attitudes and positioning
towards reality. This distinction is central for following up on the construction of expertise
(Collins and Evans 2002) in translation.

Before describing in more detail the results which have emerged out of the juxtaposition of
biomedical source and target texts, it is perhaps wise to address and contour the narrative
lines on which this chapter has been based to identify the translation shifts. As was the case
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with the narrative meanings inscribed in press translation of political texts, in translated
health and science stories, narrative remains a rather elusive construction for grouping and
patterning the shifts. This does not mean that the model of narrative offers only broadbrush
assumptions and generalizations; it means though that the design of the narrative map of
health and scientific stories is influenced by the fuzziness and overlapping nature often
exhibited by narrative types. A natural tension that emerges in this chapter (and in chapter 4),
and has its roots in using narratives to explain the impact or motivations of translation shifts
is that on one hand it holds on to more or less traditional methods of analysis
(lexicogrammatical variation, syntactical reconfigurations) and progresses to the assignment
of the results from the analysis to narratives (a rather new model of analysis in TS). The
challenge therefore has been to uphold established and valuable theoretical tenets but also
consider new starting points, routes and venues of destination for what is reported here as
translational shift and narrative impact. Finally, the motivation behind using narratives in this
study has been neither to homogenize, oversimplify findings, nor to dichotomize linguistic
shifts as pertaining to the one or the other narrative category. Rather, the incentive has been
to put narrative to the spotlight as an alternate organizing tool for linguistic shifts, as a
discursive orientation that may open different windows and pathways to understanding the
significance of translation as a process and product for reflecting and constructing political,
health, or scientific worldviews. Indeed, a growing number of researchers have talked about
the potential of news frames to transfer to readerships and audiences, impact their
conceptions and readings of events, and their participation in the social and political spheres
(Capella and Jamieson 1997).

Attempting a concretization of results the following seem to be valid:

In terms of ontological narratives, these are underreported here; one explanation behind this
absence is the struggle of newspapers to achieve the muchappreciated objectivity.
Ontological narrativity, challenges the boundaries of objectivity and nonpersonified
reportability of events as it introduces a story with personal/biographical hues. Yet, it should
be mentioned that this chapter adopts the view that all health stories are inescapably
ontological in the sense that health always reflects and bounces back to the Self and thus
health stories inevitably call for some introspection. Though ontological narratives are not per
se reflected in the translation shifts of the subcorpus, yet they are useful in providing an
explanatory background to certain optional shifts that occur and are linked to public or
master narratives. This means for example that as Baker (2006b) asserts ontological
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narratives, although constrained to the individual, yet they have the potential to cumulatively
impact social cognition and representations.36 Ontological narratives therefore crossfertilize
public, conceptual and master narratives something that a) argues for the flexibility of
narrative as a unit of analysis (as I claimed in section 5.2.2.) and b) confirms that
systemization of narrativity always remains open to narrative interaction.

Public narratives: the translation shifts identified in the biomedical subcorpus give rise to a
public narrative of deification of science that is instantiated both via lexical shifts and
syntactical configurations that awards legitimacy to scientific enactment. The public narrative
of a deified science creates therefore a health consensus, a silent unisonance and scientific
legitimacy in terms of research advances and endeavours. The second public narrative told in
translation is contributing to the story of the glorification of science and narrates scientific
endeavours as a serious, hard and Goliath task. The public narrative of the deification of
science offers the raw materials for the solidification of the master narratives of hope and
optimism37.

Conceptual narratives: Science and health meanings instantiated in the corpus revealed the ab
initio construction of narratives from the source text to the target text. Mythological scripts
that are available to the target culture such as the Prometheus frame seem to be elaborated in
translation and surface through tactful discursive enactments. Also, the subcorpus yielded
results that show a discursive representation of cancer as a pathology of space (Sontag 1978).

Master narratives: The subcorpus showed that the translation opted for polarized
constructions of health that relate to the master narrative of binary thinking, that seems to be
innate in the target environment (also present in the political subcorpus). The tendency for
creating contrastiveness serves as a vehicle for buildingup tension and for fossilizing already
established narratives. Also, the TT presented evidence of the martial metaphor that
penetrates the target versions of texts. This discursive construction qualifies as a master
narrative as it is ubiquitous in our society. Also, it seems to be suitable for describing life
threatening disease and is
36 The feminist paradigm offers a good example of this function of ontological narratives where the
personal stories of feminists have given rise is the 80s and 90s to a new view of the public narrative of
femininity.
37 Potentially, research could uncover links between the biomedical public narrative of the deification
of science and the religious and social narrative of Death of God (La mort de Dieu) concept first
introduced by F. Nietzsche and associated to the development of technology and rationalism in the
West.
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easily adaptable to cancer, wherein there exists a seemingly perfect
metaphoric correspondence: there is an enemy (the cancer), a commander
(the physician), a combatant (the patient), allies (the healthcare team), and
formidable weaponry (Reisfield and Wilson 2004).

The martial metaphor then supposes a fight against the diseased cells that is played out
within the human body. It also serves a purpose of engagement, as it puts the assumed patient
in a position to fight back and resist the disease. The tension that is created between narrative
types seems to be more intense in the biomedical subcorpus than in the political one.
Narrative interaction in this chapter seems to emerge mainly between public and master
narratives. For example, the context of the deification of science elaborated above as public
narrative reinforces and stabilizes the master narrative of hope and marginalizes that of fear.
By glorifying scientists and scientific output, newspapers inject to the public a narration that
calms down fear and stimulates optimism. On its part fear as an emotion does not promote
rationalized action but rather paralyzes individual selfaction; on the other hand, hope and
optimism encourage, inspire and stimulate fighting back at a disease. Narratives therefore
that emerge in health and science stories relate to types of feelings and emotional states that
are triggered or inhibited. Hope and optimism are stimulated by the public narrative of
deification of science while the martial metaphors and the binary constructions in relation to
health encourage the feelings of fear and agitation that may inhibit public, collective action
against a disease.

As this section attempted to summarize the distribution of narratives throughout
newspapers, table 16 below illustrates what types of narratives were traced in each
newspaper. Numbers included in table 16 pertain to the entire subcorpus (Appendix 2) and
are therefore exhaustive; to indicate the type of narrative that surfaced in the translated
version, a visual marker38 indicating the narrative has been added next to the underlined
translation shift, in the target version of the text. So, table 16 below provides qualitative and
quantitative information on the narratives traced in the biomedical subcorpus. Table 16 then
summarizes the shift instances in the entire biomedical subcorpus per newspaper. The
following section will attempt to critically interrogate on the role of newspapers in translating
and renarrating political and biomedical discourse.

38
[O]Ontological,[P]Public,[C]Conceptualand[M]Master
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TARGET NEWSPAPERS
NARRATIVE I Kathimerini To Vima Ta Nea
TYPES
Ontological
Public 52 30 18
Conceptual 9 13 5
Master 33 27 14

Table 16: Distribution of narrative shifts in entire sample corpus (Biomedical)

According to table 16, I Kathimerini has the lead in housing public narratives, followed by To
Vima and then Ta Nea. On the contrary, To Vima ranks higher in conceptual narrativity leaving
behind I Kathimerini and Ta Nea. As far as master narratives are concerned results from I
Kathimerini and To Vima are virtually commensurate, and Ta Nea is slightly lagging behind.

5.4.5.1. Narratives across newspapers

This section briefly summarizes the narrative results that came about from the two sub
corpora. It takes a critical view at the distribution of narratives across the three newspapers
and begins to scratch the surface in relation to the narrative profile of each newspaper (this
issue is further analyzed in section 6.3.2. that follows). It then looks at the big picture using
narratives as a lens, gazes behind and inbetween the narratives as I believe that these speak
for the newspaper that hosts them in the first place. This section takes a comparative
approach between newspapers and narratives and starts to think more of and about the type
of agendabuilding" or "agendasetting" (Lang and Lang, 59:1983) that newspapers put
forward by building on narratives.

Table 17 below presents a holistic view of the narrative performance of newspapers; it
merges then the findings from tables 10 and 16 and details in numbers the narratives that
surfaced in the two thematically distinct corpora. The merging of two tables (from the two
corpora) to one, in a horizontal display, aims to assist narrativewide interpretation of
findings.

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Creating Narratives

Political subcorpus Biomedical subcorpus
NARRATIVE I Kathimerini To Vima Ta Nea I Kathimerini To Vima Ta Nea
TYPE
Ontological 26 7 0
Public 53 23 17 52 30 18
Conceptual 35 23 16 9 13 5
Master 26 24 12 33 27 14
Table 17: Distribution of narrative shifts across newspapers

When contrasting the two thematic threads per newspaper the following readings can be
assumed:

a) I Kathimerini, one of the oldest newspapers that are in circulation exhibits a high
activity in terms of all narrative types across both themes. This highnarrative activity can
be partly explained by the consistently extended material that is translated, although as
displayed in tables 19 (Appendix 1) and 20 (Appendix 2) selective appropriation of
material is a key feature. I Kathimerini is the only newspaper that ranks high in the
appropriation of ontological narratives in the political subcorpus. Looking at public
narratives these are almost equal in the political (53) and biomedical (52) subcorpus
something which seems to speak for a consistent and stable nature of public narratives.
Moreover, there is a considerable difference and nonalignment in the deployment of
conceptual narratives in the political translated discourse (35) and in the biomedical one
(9). This narrative gap may speak for a reluctance of the newspaper to negotiate
biomedical conceptualizations versus a willingness for shaping political
conceptualizations. Finally, the registered master narratives in I Kathimerini are close, in
the two corpora (26 vs 33) which supports the omnipresence of this type of narrative.

b) To Vima ranks quite lower (7) than I Kathimerini in articulating ontological narratives
in the political subcorpus. On the contrary, when it comes to public narrativity it presents
23 instances in the political subcorpus and 30 in the biomedical one. A marked difference
with I Kathimerini comes up in the biomedical subcorpus where To Vima features 13
instances of conceptual narratives. Master narratives, in this newspaper is consistently
high (24 and 27 for the political and biomedical corpus respectively) which explains the
nature of this type of narrative as lithified, recycled representations that crossfertilize
other types of narratives as well.

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c) Ta Nea provided no evidence of ontological narratives in the political subcorpus.
Public narratives are almost coequally distributed across the two newspapers i.e. 17
instances in the political subcorpus and 18 in the biomedical one. As was the case with I
Kathimerini, in this newspaper conceptual narratives rank higher in the political sub
corpus than in the biomedical one. Master narratives in Ta Nea are almost the same in
numbers (12 and 14 for the political and biomedical corpus) and particularly for the
biomedical corpus they seem to be related to a manipulation of frames of fear and hope in
relation to human health and science respectively. The fact that in all three newspapers
master narratives are instantiated through binary thinking and polarized (either/or)
discourse shows a newspaperwide link that argues for the lack of sophistication
(Dimitrakopoulou and Siapera, 2005:145) of content that runs across Greek translated
news discourse. This means that all newspapers assimilate and internalize structures that
are homogenous and do not assist readers to distinguish between newspaper profiles.

216
English Greek News CHAPTER 6: Interpretation of data
Creating Narratives

CHAPTER 6

Interpretation of data

6.1. Introduction

So far this dissertation has presented two sets of data, thematically distinct, after having
analysed these using a model of analysis, one that integrated tools for microlevel analysis
(framing) and tools for macrolevel analysis (narratives). In the chapters preceding this one, I
explored the meaningmaking potential of unforced translation shifts, attempted to
compensate for the limited attention awarded so far to narratives and representations in
Greek translated news discourse and built a case around narratives that are either culturally
or socially conditioned and induced. Presentation of data both clarified certain aspects as to
the location, origin and effects of narratives but also generated new questions, particularly in
relation to the significance and value of narratives identified and isolated both for each
newspaper but also visvis the Greek press in general. This chapter then begins to address
these questions; it does so by critically interpreting data, elicited from previous sections and
associates findings to the socalled institutional dimension of news language identified in
section 2.2. Whereas, therefore, chapters 4 and 5 managed to connect language and news
discourse to the cultural and social dimensions, talked about in section 2.2., this one focuses
on the institutional one and assesses the connection of narratives, reflected and constructed
in translated press with the newspapers to which narratives are credited. The structure of
this chapter is layered: it first begins (6.2.) by discussing the institutional import and
significance of narratives, arguing for how these can lend a helping hand to the ideological
motivations of newspapers; it treats ideology then as the critical link, as the cognitive glue
that allows associations to be made between narratives and the TT newspapers that take
them in. In section 6.2.1., I briefly present Ideology as a concept and discuss its relation with
TS and institutional discourse. Then I continue in section 6.3. to profile the three newspapers
under investigation (I Kathimerini, Ta Nea, To Vima), and detail the distribution and patterns
of inputs/outputs of framing/narratives as these resulted from the analysis before I compare
(6.3.2.) the narrative findings from the two chapters 4 and 5, drawing results for the
newspapers that house them. Finally, this chapter discusses how language, through
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Creating Narratives

narratives, may also serve a legimatory/delegitimatory cause in favour of narratives, thus
taking a CDAoriented turn (section 2.4.).

6.2. Narratives in news: the institutional connection of
narratives

Chapters 4 and 5 called attention to the socalled translation outputs i.e. effects of translated
news language; these effects were identified in the aftermath of using a methodological
gearbox i.e. framing strategies (section 2.5.2.2.) and analyzed after working out a model of
analysis that integrates the typology of narratives. Accounting for the interaction between
translated language input and narrative output also raises particular questions that further
interrogate on the abovementioned narrative output and its association(s) and connections
with the institutions that produce, and channel, discourse and to which narratives are
credited i.e. the newspapers. As this dissertation situates itself between media and translation
studies, seeking to contribute towards a better understanding of the interrelationship
between linguistic performance (manifested through unforced translation shifts) and
discursive output (manifested through narratives), it inevitably factors in ideology. The latter
then seems to constitute the critical link between the institutional nature of newspapers and
the language they choose to use. This certainty is solidly grounded on the awareness that
newspapers are powerful arguers [and] may manipulate their audiences by treating language
in such a way so as to promote selfserving arguments (van Dijk 1995). Awarding attention
therefore to ideology equals attention to the manipulative intentions of powerful
groups/institutions which are then, as Gitlin (2003) observes subtle, implicit and indirect. In
this dissertation the link between narratives, ideology and newspapers aims to show how
different newspapers perceive and uphold a) identities inscribed in news discourse and
reflect perceptions/ideologies visvis to a political leader (as shown in the B. Obama sub
corpus), b) identities inscribed in news discourse and reflect perceptions/ideologies visvis
health and science (as shown in the biomedical subcorpus). Data analyzed from the two sub
corpora indicated then that unforced translation shifts do mirror and bounce back on
cultural and societal perceptions/ideologies on the themes investigated. This chapter goes
back to the source, i.e. the newspaper itself and unpacks narratives all over again to reassign
them to the newspaper that gave rise to them in the first place. It keeps then narratives and
the host environment continuously in play claiming that narratives are not independent
from and irrelevant to the broader concept of ideology and political standings of newspapers.
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Ideology offers in this chapter the bridging concept between narratives and their institutional
shelter. Also linked up to newspaper mediation which means that it is not individual
translators/journalists and their own ideologies that are exclusively being put under the
spotlight, but the newspaper's. Mediation is viewed as the extent to which one feeds ones
current beliefs and goals into processing a text (de Beaugrande and Dressler 1981:182), and
to a large degree in can be an unconscious process. Therefore, its the newspapers ideological
stance that is discussed, as it is the newspaper's conscious or unconscious attempt to imbue
translated texts with ideological patterns that interests this dissertation. In turn the
translator/journalist commissioned with a specific translation task is regarded to be
embedded and deeply affected by the professional and institutional imperatives of the
newspaper.

6.2.1. On Ideology

The working definition on ideology adopted here is a broad one that does not limit itself to
the political context; hence, ideology39 is seen here as the set of beliefs and values which
inform an individuals or institutions view of the world and assist their interpretation of
events, facts and other aspects of experience (Mason, 1992:24). In general, ideology is meant
as a general worldview, a set of beliefs or disbeliefs shared among a group of people that
transcends every social practice and influences our experiences. The broad meaning,
preferred among others by some social scientists (Barnett and Silverman 1979), defines
ideology as any set of shared ideas that order and direct a group of life. Yet, throughout the
course of history and depending on the context and on the field of application the term has
been attributed various definitions some with a clear focus on language and others giving
more emphasis on other societal aspects.
The structuralist Althusser (1971) has linked Ideology to power when he states that it is a
particular organization of signifying practices which goes to constitute human beings as
social subjects, and which produces the lived relations by which such subjects are connected
to the dominant relations of production in a society" (ibid:18). Indeed, the traditional overt
39 Ideology is a highpressure term, used and reused by various disciplines. It was first coined in 1796
by Count Destutt de Tracy (idologie), used and reused by various disciplines. It arguably encompasses
different practices depending on the context within which it has been used. In fact Eagleton writes that
nobody has yet come up with a single adequate definition of ideology (1991:1). Throughout history
the term has been associated with dominance, hegemony and power (Gramsci 1995) while others
(Adorno 1966) have viewed ideology as being inescapable from our existence, thinking and acting.
Munday sees the term as politically loaded and acquired the (Marxian) sense of false consciousness,
which has persisted so much that ideology nowadays has a generally negative connotation of
distortion (Munday, 2007:196).
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emphasis awarded to the interconnection of ideology and power has been highlighted by
discourse scholars (Van Dijk 1998a) who noted that traditional concepts regarding ideology
viewed it in its narrow sense where the elite and dominant parts of society would impose
their ideas on the masses. Apart from the power' strand that has been present in the
literature of ideology, another key strand has been that of 'Otherness'. For Adorno, ideology is
a form of "identity thinking" (in Eagleton, 1991:126) which is always identified not in
comparison to the alien. Along the same lines, Jameson suggests that the fundamental
gesture of all ideology is exactly such a rigid binary opposition between the Self and the
familiar, which is positively valorized, and the nonself or alien, which is thrust beyond the
boundaries of intelligibility (ibid, emphasis added). More recently, van Dijk touches on the
issue of ideology and Otherness when he states that few of us (in the West or elsewhere)
describe our own belief systems or convictions as 'ideologies'. On the contrary, Ours is the
Truth, Theirs is the Ideology" (1998a:2). The notion of Otherness' and its affinity to ideology
are relevant to this research in the sense that translation shifts elaborated and presented
often point towards the reflection of construction of target identities that are different from
those enacted by the source text. By different is meant that they may relate to more/less
pronounced identities, or lead to the construction of new ones. Newspapers seem to adopt
positions of Self/Other and seem to assume ideological positions that enhance and legitimize
the position of a powerful actor. The following example from the newspaper I Kathimerini
reveals the level of mediation from the part of the TT, and informs us on the dissonant points
of view that the ST and the TT assume.

S After a weekend in which the Bush administration sent a top State Department official to a meeting in
Geneva with an Iranian official, the North Korea meeting may well amount to last rites for the axis of
evil, the one that President Bush said in 2002 was arming to threaten the peace of the world.

A New Openness to Talks With That Axis of Evil The New York Times, July 22 2008

T
, .
,
, .

, 27 2008

BT: After a week during which a top State Department official participated in a meeting with an Iranian
official, the meeting of Mrs Rice with a representative of North Korea may mark the last rites for the axis
of evil, as George Bush had called six years ago Iran, North Korea and Iraq.
Several shifts are identified in this example all of which are elucidating the ideological
position of the ST newspaper (New York Times) and also show how ideology is masked when
filtered through translation. The ST lexical choice of sent, reflects an image of the West as a
colonizing power assuming a hierarchical view of the world, one which presupposes a top
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down perspective. The TT, when it is handed over this lexicalization (and ideology) opts for a
less imposing representation lexicalized through (participated); thus it expels any
hierarchical or hegemonic identities of the West versus its binary Other (Iran in this case).
What does this tell us however in terms of the ST and TT newspaper ideological position? It
first verifies the claims that the socalled ideological dichotomy between the socalled Orient
and the West (Said 1994) is the life force of Western selfidentification (Sardar, 1999:19).
The ST newspaper, imbued in this ideological setting externalizes it by means of specific
lexical choices and thus stays local to the worldviews and ideologies of the society it serves
(Knight and Dean 1982).

Apart from ideology being played out based on Us vs Them dichotomies, Fairclough
(1992;1995b) analyzes media discourse and pays attention to ideology and observes that
ideological processes are builtin the forms and content of texts; he specifies that it is
impossible to eliminate ideologies from texts and argues that
Ideology is located both in the structures that constitute the outcome of past events
and the conditions for current events, and in the events themselves as they reproduce
and transform their conditioning structures. He then takes this thought one step
further and looks at ideology in relation to power. He believes that ideology is
meaning in the service of power, which contributes to producing or reproducing
unequal relations of power or dominance (1995: 23).

The link between ideology, language and discourse has been emphasised by the work of
Fowler et al. (1979) which has laid the foundations for Critical Linguistics. In his work
Language and Control, Fowler sets out to explore the way language works in social and
political practice. Later work by Fowler (1986, 1991) shows how tools provided by standard
linguistic theories (Chomskyan grammar, and Hallidays theory of Systemic Functional
Grammar) may be used to uncover linguistic structures of power in texts. Also, suggesting a
critical view of language and ideology are Hodge and Kress who talk about language as a
medium for storing of perceptions and thoughts" (1996:5). A multilayered approach to
language and ideology has been at the core of van Dijks (1998a) work on ideology. The
interplay between language and ideology that is performed upon discursive structures is
crucial in understanding the social function of ideologies" (van Dijk, 1998b:22). This means
that ideologies do not exist in absentia but are ordered within a specific discourse (news in
this case) which in turn makes ideologies "not personal, but social, institutional or political"
(ibid, emphasis in original). Van Dijks (1998a) work on ideology has been pivotal in
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introducing a multidisciplinary approach to ideology that integrates cognition (own beliefs
and ideas), society (interests of societal groups or institutions that wish to promote their own
dominance) and discourse (language use that manifests ideological positioning). These views
open the window for a more discursive approach to ideology in the sense of the later being
seen as even more institutionally and socially conditioned.

Newspapers, in turn, offer an institutional space, a socioeconomic arena, in which text40 and
discourse that encompass ideologies can be accommodated. Theorists such as Marcuse
(1964) and Thompson (1995) hold the media to be institutional players that have potency in
space and time and affect the transmission of symbolic and economic values underlying
ideology. To explore the nature of the engagement with the media and media discourse, we
borrow the words of the media researchers Gurevitch and Blumer who define the media a
robust uninhibited and wideopen marketplace of ideas, in which opposing views may meet,
contend and take each others measure" (1990:269). In this sense newspapers manifest a
hybrid, hyphenated discourse where facts are presented merged with commonsensical
comments and ideologies since as Fairclough expounds the effectiveness of ideology depends
to a considerable degree on it being merged with this commonsense background to discourse
and other forms of social action" (1989:77). Ideology hence works best when it operates
unnoticed and indirectly encoded in language and newspapers offer this potential of
camouflaging ideology by merging it with knowledge intended for the general news
consumers.

Drawing our attention to the relationship between ideology and TS, it has been attested
(Orengo 2005; Munday 2007, Bielsa and Hughes 2009) that for a long time the dimension of
ideology had been invisible in translation studies, which remained largely focused on issues of
equivalence between source and target texts. Amongst the first to make a note of the
ideological implications on translation was Lefevere who claims that [t]ranslation is, of
course, a rewriting of an original text. All rewritings, whatever their intention, reflect a certain
ideology and a poetics and as such manipulate literature to function in a given society in a
given way (1992:6). Also, concerning inscription of ideology in translation, lvarez and Vidal
(1996b) argue that behind every one of the translators choices, as to what to add, what to
leave out, which words to choose and how to place them, there is a voluntary act that reveals
his history and the sociopolitical milieu that surrounds him; in other words, his own culture
40 As Hatim and Mason (1990) use the term it refers to a unit of structure which is deployed in the service of an
overall rhetorical purpose.
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[and ideology] (ibid: 5). Ideology in translation therefore has been overtly linked to a
rewriting of the original text in the target environment which in turn is linked to a skewing
and manipulation of the source text. The covert implication of this however is that ideology in
translation has been associated to the idea of distortion and manipulation (Hermans 1985);
yet, this idea implies an overt and conscious intervention and imposing onto the source text
which results in the construction of a different text in the target environment. What it also
does is to skate over the potential of a textual rewriting and of translator choices that are
largely unconscious. This has been in fact pointed out by Mason, who suggests that ideological
skewing of the target text may not be deliberate, since mediation, as the extent to which one
feeds ones current beliefs and goals into processing a text may largely be an unconscious
process (1994:33). Regarding the relationship between ideology and translation, Mason
avows,

ideology impinges on the translation process in subtle ways [] text users
consciously or subconsciously bring their own assumptions, predispositions and
general worldviews to bear on their processing of texts at all levels, including
lexical choices, cohesive relations, syntactic organisation and text type (1994:23).

More recently, Munday (2007) approaches the issue of ideology through its textual
manifestations in political speeches, something which constitutes a sustained effort to look at
ideology through the raw i.e. original textual material and critically reflects on whether shifts
of key linguistic features that take place during the linguistic transfer. Ultimately, Munday
takes a close peek as issues of conscious and unconscious linguistic choices suggesting that

while it is always more exciting to suggest that such shifts have an ideological
motivation, I think we should not be too hasty to jump to such a conclusion. My
contention is that the shifts in key features, when they do occur, may arise both
from the conscious strategy of the translator but also, and perhaps more
interestingly cognitively, from less conscious translation choices at the
lexicogrammatical level that pertain to the translators unique experience of the two
languages (ibid:213).

As is the case with the literature on language and ideology, in TS as well issues of power and
dominance occupy a position. Concepts of the power differential manifested and created by
translation have been investigated by TS scholars (lvarez and Vidal 1996a, Gentzler and
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Tymoczko 2002, Calzada Prez 2003). The multifarious relationship between ideology and
translation has also noted by Schffner (2004), who also discusses discursive manifestations
of power structures and ideologies in their linguistic realizations, at lexical and grammatical
level. On her part, Tymoczko analyzes ideology not only as determined by the content of the
source text and the transferred material but also in the sense that translation is a sort of
metastatement (Tymoczko, 2000: 23) since it constitutes a version, an interpretation of the
source text.

This oscillation and debating between conscious vs unconscious translation choices in regards
to ideology needs to factor in one extra parameter i.e. the institutional setting that
accommodates the translated piece in the first place. Researchers have set out to examine
how ideology is fostered in translation environments and highlight the various ideologies
that permeate TS; as Calzada Prez mentions translators translate according to the
ideological settings in which they learn and perform their tasks. These settings are varied and
have resulted in a rich concoction of ideologies (2003:7, emphasis added). Ideology is
treated here as the implied motivation of newspapers, one that arms the hand of translators
(and primarily newspapers) to proceed, consciously or unconsciously, to specific framing
(labelling, repositioning of participants, selective appropriation) that in turn ends in the
articulation of narratives. Ideology is nothing short of a persistent vector of analogy that
allows me to make assumptions in relation to the motivation behind a shift and framing
strategy applied in texts. The following section profiles the Greek press industry and paves
the way for a holistic patterning of the distribution of narratives in the three Greek
newspapers under survey.
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6.3. Profiling the Greek Press

This research is concerned with the various narratives that circulate in Greek newspapers and
addresses issues of their rearticulation from the ST to the TT. These narratives, however, do
not emerge out of nowhere; they form a part of the newspaper's overall organization and
structure and they are also part of the newspaper's attempt to create an image, a 'brand' for
itself. Something would be amiss then if I would leave newspapers out of the picture. In this
section I draw on modern communication theories to find references on how the press
features traits of personality, and in this way I draw conclusions on and profile Greek
newspapers.

The first media communication theory is described in Peterson and Schramm's Four Theories
of the Press (1956) which, grossly simplified, has formed the theoretical basis for
categorizations in the press for the past 40 years. This approach is based on the binary
descriptions of authoritarian visvis libertarian theories of the Press and yields a great
distinction on Communist vs Western systems of press practices. However, this manihaistic
view has no longer currency in today's fused and globalized systems of information flow
while a basic deficiency of it is that it does not stay informed on the role of economic influence
in media systems (AkhavanMajid and Wolf 1991).

The second media communication theory is Williams work Communications (1976), where he
distinguishes between authoritarian, paternal, commercial and democratic communication
systems, while attempting to create a typology for the United Kingdom.

In authoritarian systems the press is part of the apparatus through which a small number of
individuals control the society. We can therefore speak of a monopoly of press control.

In the paternal systems the parameter of conscience is added, hence, newspapers in their
personification as paternal systems seek to promote ideas, instructions and attitudes and
pursue, in this way, the gratification of the readers who in turn envisage the newspaper as a
"serious" and "newsworthy" source of information.

As far as the commercial systems are concerned, these are based neither on the need to
exercise control nor on paternaltype of tutelage; on the contrary they have their roots on the
rules and terms that govern the free market and free consumer choice.
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In democratic systems the increasingly competitive market still exercises a dominant role but
emphasis is placed on the democratic forces of free communication which creates stronger
bonds between consumers of communication product and citizens while it is understood that
some rights of free communication should not be left unprotected from the forces of capital
and the market.

6.3.1. Profiling Greek newspapers

Newspapers, and in particular the Greek TT newspapers fall under the commercial and
democratic systems as, at first glance, they are institutions, emancipated from state control,
operating in a free communicative zone. Yet, they maintain their status as political and
financial instruments, as globalization initiators and propagators aiming to achieve and
sustain profitmaking by means of sustaining readers as subscribers (view figure 3 in section
2.5.3.). The strive of newspapers for sustaining profit has been identified by Valkenburg,
Semetko, and de Vreese (1999) who talk about the economic consequences that news items
may have on an individual, group, institution, region, or country (ibid: 552). Arguing here
that news discourse, as a particular institutional form of dialogue with the public, enacts
economic consequences is only a first short leap to suggest that both the language and the
linguistic choices are in a position to assist newspapers towards profitmaking and profit
sustaining. Newspapers then, as chapters 4 and 5 illustrated create a linguistic and discursive
identity for themselves by means of manipulating features such as game framing (Schultz
1994; Herbeck 2002; Hollander 2006) or binary constructions that increase the tension
building atmosphere and attract reader attention. Also, it seems (table 18) that ownership of
newspapers and press in general has increasingly went to the hands multinational
corporations (Bagdikian 1983), who seek to have sustainable profitmaking. Hence
newspapers, are viewed as incubators of certain ideological positions that need to find the
means to keep their audience and to keep in line with their ideological positioning. Language
articulation, and translation choices accomplished by framing, can serve as such a formula of
sustainment, can encourage readership loyalty and thus secure audience commitment and
involvement (Baker, 2006b:8).

The Greek newspaper landscape is part of the Western Europe newspaper sector; still there
are differences between the various countries while the

226
EnglishGreek News CHAPTER 6: Interpretation of data
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development of the media in any country reflects the political social and economic
conditions as well as the population and cultural traits, which in turn give the
media their particular characteristics (Merrill and Lowenstein, 1990: 53).

What is however the connection with the Greek press situation? It seems that the period after
the military regime of 1974 has been affected first by the regulations on censorship and
freedom of speech as these have been stipulated by the 1975 Constitution (Kontochristou
2003) by the socalled Europeanization that has taken place in the 80s and 90s and by the
fastdeveloping technology and mainly the emergence of the internet which has altered in
many ways the traditional views on receiving information. Papathanassopoulos (2001) goes
on to map out some basic trends and differences between the Greek newspaper sector and
that of other European countries which mainly sum up to the following features:

a) Greece, Sweden and Britain manifest a very strong tendency for consumption of Sunday
newspapers;
b) Greece seems to form an exception in regards to the readers preference of evening dailies;
c) Greek media (and therefore newspapers) have been influenced by the countrys troubled
political history and political instability. Greek newspapers have a long history of divisions
along party lines, which has literally split the country during its modern political history
(Papathanassopoulos, 2001: 109123);
d) the State plays a decisive role in regulating aspects of the media life making the system less
selfregulatory than in cases of developed capitalism such as Britain or the US (ibid);
e) a more marketorientated tendency has dominated the press sector since the mid80s
mainly due to the growing effects of advertising and commercialization in print media.

All three Greek newspapers that I selected data from have been glossed as quality, elite or
selected newspapers (Halkias 2004; Dimitrakopoulou and Siapera 2005; Politis 2008). Ta Nea
and To Vima published by the Lambrakis foundation ranked high in terms of circulation
figures and have been identified as mainstream or liberal press and hence more centrist
(Papathanassopoulos 2001; Dimitrakopoulou and Siapera 2005) whereas the newspaper I
Kathimerini is ideologically more of a moderate rightwing newspaper (Halkias 2004) or an
independent one (Papathanassopoulos 2001). Table 18 below is a snapshot of
circulation/political stance of Greek newspaper that tells us something also in relation to the
ideological affiliations of the three newspapers.
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Table 18: socioeconomic profile and circulation of Greek newspapers (Papathanassopoulos, 2001:111)

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6.3.2. Narrative patterns in newspapers

This section attempts to attribute and establish a narrative connection in newspapers, as
institutions. Here, I pick the thread from where section 5.4.5.1. left it, and go more deeply in
sketching out the distribution pattern of narratives in newspapers. Narratives are understood
here as dynamic entities (Baker 2006b:3) that are the output of specific framing strategies,
tactfully and subtly used by newspapers. Narratives, as I will argue below in section 6.3.2.
offer branding potentials for newspapers in the sense that they assist them in building and
sustaining a specific profile. Propounding a connection between language, ideology,
narratives and newspapers equals a more or less faint acknowledgement that the discursive
outputs (narratives) are associated to the intentions of newspapers, to their own discursive
and political leanings, identities and intentions. To explain this connection I need to resort
however to key principles of the CDA paradigm (elaborated in section 2.4.) as it is CDA that
places attention to a) understanding the intricate relationships among discourse, ideology, and
media, (van Dijk 1998a ; Wodak 2001), b) the power dimension that runs across the entire
connection between language and media. This has been particularly explained and
underscored by van Dijk who points out the biased (1993: 249) nature of media discourse
since it encourages us to pay more attention to 'topdown' relations of dominance than to
bottomup' relations of resistance, compliance and acceptance (ibid). Ostensibly, analyzing
news language and illustrating its effects marginalizes and limits the role of readerships to
that of receivers of messages, to audiences that are open to receive and (hopefully for
newspapers) internalize messages, subscribe to meanings and continue assimilating the
discourses injected by newspapers to society. This is obviously a unidirectional, topdown
approach, one that neutralizes readers and puts them in an a priori subordinated position.
However, as I maintain, the presence of framing, enacted by newspapers and bringing about
narratives shows that the problem, or better issue, of control is also bottomup. Newspapers
then, as I argue, are also relentlessly engaged in a search to articulate those narratives that
best appeal to their readerships. They are sensitive to the cultural conditioning, tolerances
and resistance of the TT readership and in this way they bottom (readers/TT environment)
exercises a silent influence on the top i.e. newspapers that use and manipulate language.
Media then seem both willing and eager to discursively articulate and offer their readerships
those representations and/or identities (cultural, social, and institutional) that are more
reciprocal to ideologies, beliefs, cultural affordances and expectations of their readers.
Inevitably then, although at first glance narrative distribution is synthesized and presented as
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a topdown process of control and socialization, yet this topdown bearing emphasizes exactly
how newspapers are spin stories according to reader profiles, are alert and sensitive to
bottomup responses and selfplacements of their readerships, tacitly articulated by means of
remaining loyal adherents to a newspaper or not. Nevertheless, this silent, yet present
bottomup attending and sensitivity of newspapers to target readership preferences is, as I
claim below, and have briefly addressed in section 2.4.1. motivated by the preoccupation of
newspapers to silently achieve legitimization or delegitimization for their agendas.

The next section organizes the manifestations of narratives across newspapers, building on
results from chapters 4 and 5. I use figures (12, 13 and 14) to display the framing/narrative
patterns per newspaper integrating the results from chapters 4 and 5 without ignoring the
results provided from the analysis of the two Appendices and presented in table 17. The
figures and descriptions that follow focus on the tenacity and presence of newspapers in each
newspaper in both subcorpora, track the framing strategies in the newspapers and associate
these narrative and framing patterns to traces of legitimization attempted by newspapers.

First, taking a closer look at the manifestation of framing/narratives in each newspaper, I
Kathimerini, when it comes to translated discourse, seems to primarily use labelling (lexical
shifts) to reframe politics and biomedicine in the TT. Relexicalizations then are the most
prominent framing strategy used by this newspaper. I Kathimerini systematically reproduces
those public narratives that are favoured by the target environment. The prominence of
public narratives (53 in total) in the entire subcorpus (Table 17 in section 5.4.5.1) vouches
for the effort of the newspaper to stay consistent and close to the cultural preferences of the
target readership. I Kathimerini then seems to use framing and reflect or construct public
narratives in ways that it can capitalize upon ambient cultural predilections (HornigPriest,
2001:60). Packaging hence a story in a culturallysafe and culturallystimulating environment
could potentially reinforce the chances of the stories underway to become accepted by
readers and assimilated by the target environment as a whole. The persistent reflection, in
translated news language, of uncertainty avoidance testifies towards this hypothesis. What is
more I Kathimerini engages in the rewriting of ontological narratives (26 in total, based on
Table 17); the ontological significance and weight that the newspaper attributes to B. Obama,
apart from the fact that it allows the retelling of B. Obamas story in the Greek setting.
Moreover, as I argue, shapes an image for the newspaper itself and brands it as an institution
that does something more than mere reporting of events, as a newspaper that rather looks
through the political entities it promotes or reports on. I Kathimerini is also keen on
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reproducing conceptual narratives, either political relating to Leadership and the Leader. Yet,
much less (9) instances of conceptual narrativity are reported in the biomedical subcorpus.
This difference in numbers of conceptual narrativity may be linked to how the newspaper
perceives itself, and to the role it attributes to itself, one that may be more close to negotiate
political meanings rather than biomedical ones. Also, when looking at the framing strategies
used by newspapers, findings reveal that I Kathimerini, is more reluctant to use repositioning
of participants as a framing strategy, particularly in the political subcorpus. This may be
reflective of a discursive/professional behaviour of translators who would be perhaps more
intimidated to intervene in the source text and proceed to significant themerheme shifts and
are more prone to lexical shifts (labelling) or deletions and additions (selective
appropriation). In both thematic threads (political and biomedical), I Kathimerini
systematically uses selective appropriation to frame events. Interestingly, less deletions or
additions are reported in the biomedical subcorpus than in the political one. Selective
appropriation in the politicalsubcorpus is credited with 15 narrative instances whereas in
the biomedical one only 6 narratives are the result of selectively appropriating material. The
nature of biomedical information, one that is more grounded on objectivity may justify the
reluctance of translators to delete and or add material. Both subcorpora display master
narratives (section 2.5.) confirming their omnipresence and ossified nature (Harding 2009).
The presence of binaryinflected narratives in both subcorpora is motivated by and serves
the institutional dimension of discourse (presented in section 2.2.) as CDAfocused scholars
(van Dijk 1988, 1991a; Chilton 2004) have pointed out, polarities serve the tensioncreating
and tensionescalating intentions of media. However, the concept of creating dichotomies
seems to be more deeply rooted in the language system itself, as de Saussure supports (1959),
and argues that all human language systems need to articulate concepts by also expressing
and articulating the binary Other. I Kathimerini, as well as the other newspapers under study,
strategically value binary discourse as it has been attested that it is this type of polarity and
twofold conflict that locks the success of a good news item (Patterson 1994). Binaries are,
therefore, mechanisms in the hands of newspapers to sustain the interest of news readers.
Iconographically the narrative pattern in I Kathimerini is displayed in figure 1241.

41
Figure 12 draws data from tables 9 and 15. Tables 10 and 16 illustrate an exhaustive presentation of
narrative numbers throughout the biomedical and political subcorpora.
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* UTS: Unforced Translation Shifts
Figure 12: Narrative output in I Kathimerini
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Turning the gaze now to the newspaper To Vima, I remark that the ontological narratives that
surface in the TT are also articulated via labelling (i.e. lexical shift). Whereas I Kathimerini
marked 26 labelling instances To Vima shows in the political subcorpus 7 instances. The
repositioning of participants framing strategy is absent from this newspaper as well. Labelling
also gave rise to the narratives of stability, integration into a group and passive electoral body
which confirms the reflection of political attitudes and beliefs in translated language. Also,
while I Kathimerini elaborated a master narrative of race, To Vima gives room to the
elaboration of the master narrative of terrorism; binary thinking is reported here as well.
According to Table 17, conceptual and public narrativity are coequally represented in the
political subcorpus. This tendency bespeaks of the attempt of To Vima to a) prop up target
representations that are tolerated by the public b) reconstruct for the target public those
conceptualizations of a Leader and Politics that are assumed to have the most penetration in
the target readership and avoid potential alienation of readers which could in turn impact
loyalty to the newspaper itself. Attending to target preferences (via public narrativity) and
guiding conceptual narrativity is a sign of increased mediation from To Vima when it comes to
translating news items. Interestingly, the biomedical subcorpus marks in a difference this
newspaper in the sense that repositioning of participants is taken up as a strategy to
articulate a public narrative of glorifying science and scientists. Translators then working for
this newspaper used repositioning of participants less reluctantly than those working for I
Kathimerini, something which may reflect different professional embedding of translators in
the two institutions as well as different policies and translation briefs given by the two
newspapers to translators. In any case, repositioning of participants signifies an upgraded
degree of liberty taken by translators who intervene to the TT not simply by proceeding to
lexical shifts. Repositioning of participants and selective appropriation both gave rise to
public narratives here. Figure 13 displays the narrative distribution in To Vima.

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Figure 13: Narrative output in To Vima
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In regards to the newspaper Ta Nea, crosstheme analysis showed no results in ontological
narratives. The narrative activity reported in the two subcorpora is almost equivalent across
the other three (3) other narrative types. In terms of public narratives I remark that these are
articulated via labelling in the political sample corpus and labelling and selective
appropriating in the biomedical one. Repositioning of participants is not accounted as a
framing option in the newspaper Ta Nea. The Game frame, as a discursive strategy to
conceptualize Politics, is also present in this newspaper, and as I argued in section 4.5. may
compromise the newsworthiness of Politics or the Elections. Game framing is also considered
to be a strategy motivated by the institutional discursive needs for exciting the readerships
interest (Patterson 1994). This finding tailgates the characterization of sensational
journalism that is often attributed to Ta Nea (Triandafyllidou and Gropas 2006) and defends a
type of language that is mostly addresseefocused. Master narratives elaborated in
translations by Ta Nea bring forward two opposing frames that of threat for human life vs
hope for scientific achievements. This master narrative is prominent in this newspaper yet
underreported in its affiliated institution To Vima. Figure 14 displays the narrative
distribution in Ta Nea.

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Figure 14: Narrative output in Ta Nea
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6.3.3. Crossnewspaper analysis

So far Ive indicated how newspapers frame political and biomedical news stories in
translation and have argued that this type of institutionalized framing produces specific
discursive outputs, meaning narratives, that are both grounded on and constitute new
cultural and social representations, preferences and identities. I have also mapped out the
distribution of narratives in each newspaper and talked about the meaning(s) of this
distribution for each institution. What remains interesting yet are the similarities and
differences that govern the three newspapers under investigation. In this section I attempt
therefore to associate these to a) the profitmaking intentions of newspapers and b) to the
effort of newspapers to garner legitimacy for their narratives (Martin Rojo and Van Dijk 1997;
Chilton 2004; Cap 2006, 2008), reflecting section 2.4. where I pointed towards the CDA
threads that impregnate this dissertation.

This perspective stimulates awareness of the internal external or the emic and etic
perspectives (Pike 1967) to culture and language that distinguish between approaches that
on the one part focus on the insiders point of view, on the perspectives of participants in any
communicative event, and on the other, to those that attempt to show the interface between
the cultural and linguistic practices and other parameters that are independent and therefore,
external to it, such as the economic or social conditions within which language and culture are
produced, conditions that may or may not be salient to cultural insiders (Harris 1979). The
argument I am putting forward here is in favour of the symbiotic relationship between
language, culture, the institution that produces this relationship (i.e. social conditioning) and
the discursive output (narratives). It is in favour then of the etic approach that takes into
account the social, cultural and institutional context within which a narrative is introduced.

Figure 15 illustrates the input, analysis, and output phases in all three newspapers under
study and tracks the differences and similarities.

The common feature that has been identified in all three newspapers is their favouring
attitude towards labelling and towards relexicalizing, as a strategy for renegotiating meaning
from the ST to the TT. This is a pattern identified in both subcorpora and has given rise to all
four types of narratives. It can be hence surmised that labelling constitutes the first, preferred
framing strategy for news translators and newspapers to resort to. Interestingly, conceptual
narratives are, in all newspapers, solely associated to, and the result of, labelling. This
preference is perhaps emphasizing the property of labelling, as a strategy, to offer an
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interpretive frame that guides and constraints our response to the narrative in question
(Baker 2006b: 122).

Also selective appropriation, that sees framing as the instantiation of additions or deletions of
material, is reported in all three newspapers. Often, selective appropriation can be justified by
what translators see as established background knowledge, in the TT environment.
Background knowledge in turn is linked to sociocognitive approaches to discourse and
memoryprocesses (van Dijk 1988). Other researchers (Kintsch & van Dijk 1978; Anderson
2000) have also highlighted the importance of knowledge as a significant factor for the
interpretation of texts. On their part, Sperber and Wilson (1986) speak of "mutual cognitive
environments" allowing efficient communication (ibid: 41). Cognition and familiarization of
readers with background information presented in a press item are then important tools of
interpretation. Data analysed in chapters 4 and 5 provided ample evidence of translation
shifts between the English and the Greek text which are also motivated by differences in
background knowledge. The upgrading or downgrading of terminological values in the
biomedical context (chapter 5) for once, indicated that newspapers often expect more
background knowledge from their readers or, on the contrary, undermine their thematic
competence. Interestingly, selective appropriation in all three newspapers has been used to
constantly reframe the translated news stories, by means of adding (rather than omitting)
subheadings42. Selective appropriation in all three newspapers mainly gave rise to public and
master narratives. Repositioning of participants is the least favoured framing strategy
employed by translators and newspapers; this may reveal that this type of linguistic
management (Baker 2006b: 123) stimulates an awareness that reconfiguring the position of
participants may alter the story or event at issue43. Moreover, it seems that Ta Nea strives
considerably for the articulation of public and master narratives, which is partly indicative of
the newspapers intention to wet the readerships appetite with stories that have a global
appeal. It therefore resists the appropriation of ontological narratives (perhaps in its attempt
to portray itself as objective as ontological narrativity mainly draws on subjectivities to
grow). Across newspapers, master and public narratives are shaped in and through
translation, decisively challenging reader responses and as I claim forming a type of collective
driving force for readers, a framework within which the story underway can be more easily
42 For example the subheadings: (Gap between rich and poor)

H , 25 2009 and
(Concerns from big doses) C H , 19
2008

43 Conclusions however on the translators behaviour(s) visvis framing strategies could be drawn
within the framework of a behavioural and interviewbased research.

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assimilated, understood and adopted by readers. On the one hand, master narratives
particularly in the biomedical corpus, challenge the readers emotive sphere (hope and
optimism/fear) and on the other public narratives touch on their cultural rooting (deification
of science, uncertainty avoidance).

All newspapers provide visions of culture and visions of society. These are linked and related
to the profitmaking aspirations of newspapers to the extent that these visions, articulated
through language, stay in tune with reader expectations as long as these do not disturb their
existing cultural capital (Bourdieu 2000).

Despite the crossnarrative quantitative differences that the three Greek newspapers exhibit,
the distribution and deployment of narratives provides evidence that all newspapers manifest
a translational activity that creates and impacts discourse and worldviews (regardless of
motivations behind the shifts). The assumed connection among narratives, language and
newspapers lies in what Bloor and Bloor call value system of a social group (2007:18),
where the newspaper assumes the role of the social group and internalizes narratives on
which its ideology feeds. Contentwise, both political and biomedical translated discourses
remain open to translational transformations and in this sense it remains open to readings
and interpretations. Newspapers then assume those positions that legitimize (Chilton 2004;
Cap 2006) and speak in favour of the established cultural conditions that govern the TT and
the institutional practices that, presumably, will ensure more readership loyalty. The driving
force of public narrativity, in particular, lies in the fact that it culturally normalizes (Baker,
2006b:163) the stories underway, packaging them in such a way to ensure, as much as
possible, their assimilation by the target readership. My argument here then is that
newspapers (consciously or unconsciously) choose and use those safe cultural pathways (i.e.
uncertainty avoidance) for promoting legitimate and therefore acceptable frames of reality,
either in relation to Politics and the Leader, or in relation to health and science. Profiling for
example the American President, B. Obama, as the Messiah or as a reliable and bold leader
legitimizes both the position of B. Obama and that of a culture that seeks to find an object of
admiration. All three newspapers construct then, in a way, a sort of self identity for
themselves (one could even argue an ontological narrative); this identity reflects newspapers
as authorities or institutions with a voice, knowledge and will to participate in the formation
of public opinion.

In sum, the patterns of framing and narratives that has been illustrated in figures 1214 are
not meant to produce a savoir traduire for newspapers but rather to map out narratives as
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cultural and social outputs credited to each newspaper, and resulting from a particular
framing strategy. Figure 15 then replaying the model of analysis (3.4.2.), clearly displaying all
three phases of the research (i.e. input > analysis > output) yet mirroring the findings from
chapters 4 and 5. The significance of figure 15 is that it holistically illustrates the framing
strategies coupled with their resulting narratives per newspaper. The significance of figure 15
lies in the fact that it displays the whole palette of framing per newspaper and links the
framing strategies that have been identified in each newspaper to their output i.e. narratives.
It also makes salient their differences and similarities and pins each narrative type down to
the newspapers that gives rise to it through framing. Framing strategies in general can tell us
a great deal about the mediation role of translators who resort to various strategies to
strengthen or undermine particular aspects of the narratives they mediate, explicitly or
implicitly (Baker, 2006b:105).

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Figure 15: Crossnewspaper patterns of framing and narratives
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EnglishGreek News CHAPTER 7: Concluding remarks and further research
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CHAPTER 7

Concluding remarks and further research

This is the final chapter of this dissertation; I begin by revisiting the research questions as
these have been posed in section 1.2. and explored in chapters 4 and 5 and gradually move on
to discuss the contributions and limitations of this research. Then this chapter gradually
distances itself from the direct object of inquiry (the TT) and examines the position of news
translation as a process in relation to globalization. Within this context, it interrogates on the
possibility of translation to either shout or completely cloud difference. The next goal of this
chapter is to assume a selfreflexive stance, one that does not turn its back to limitations of
the narrative, as a unit of analysis, but rather seeks to diagnose these; it therefore discusses
the methodological restrictions that this approach entails and then moves on to shed light to
other possible research areas.

7.1. Revisiting the research questions

This dissertation commenced by asking the question:

How can narrative theory, operating within the social representation paradigm,
elucidate the effects of unforced translation shifts in translated news items?

To address this question and the ensuing ones, posed in detail in section 1.2., chapters 4 and 5
looked for, identified and analyzed, using a model of analysis (section 4.3.2.), the unforced
translation shifts in two distinct subcorpora (political and biomedical). The overarching
hypothesis was that by looking at and exploring language through the unforced translation
shifts that come about in a news translated text we can follow up on the deployment of
narratives that surfaced in the target text version. This hypothesis presupposed that the
translated text is not an unruffled, quiet, textual territory where language is smoothly
deployed as a conjugation of lexical, grammatical and syntactical elements, but rather that it is
an arena of tension and turmoil between the source cultural and narrative sphere and the
target one. The transition from one sphere to the other inevitably leaves traces i.e. shifts. It
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also assumes that language and translation promote, construct and reflect (same) or different
TT understandings of their ST counterparts. Viewing, understanding and interpreting
translated language as a meaningmaking territory then means that translation too is not
perspectivefree but rather has the power to sustain, streamline, distil and renegotiate
meaning. The tool of analysis for this renegotiation process mentioned above has been a
model of analysis that integrated framing and framing strategies to analyze microlevel
reconfigurations and narratives, operating within the social representation stream of
narrative research, to be used as topography for mapping out outputs behind those shifts.

In this research, narrative surfaced as a critical tool for analyzing and categorizing
representations (cultural and social) and identities (political/health or sciencerelated).
Results produced in this dissertation came about from the emphasis awarded to unforced
translation shifts. The centrality of translation in negotiating and transforming meaning has
been acknowledged by Baker (2006b) who does not limit the focus to issues of difference
between ST and TT but also awards importance on the issue of sameness (2010) as it too has
meaningmaking potential. Narratives and narrative analysis come into play as the method
and tool for analyzing, categorizing, and interpreting the discursive motivation and impact of
the shifts encountered. As Harding notes "narrative is the unit of analysis that provides a
framework for the integration of micro macro analyses" (2009:242), this, coupled with the
assistance provided by framing strategies, allowed me to oscillate between what lies in a
translated sentence and what rests beyond that. This oscillation, grounded on narratives,
never loses touch with one or the other end of the theoretical pendulum. Findings then show
that translation offers a linguistic repackaging of a news story from the ST to the TT which
ends up in injecting to the TT setting a new story, which contains narratives that are in
essence cultural and societal blueprints of the TT setting. Two main thematic threads have
been isolated and analyzed. The promoted thematic diversity in news (political, international,
and biomedical) and the translated versions reflect the tenets of democratic theory and the
"range of information and news necessary for an informed citizenry" (Hermans, 1985:135).
One theme moves along the political storylines and one along the biomedical ones. This
distinction has been helpful and insightful as it allowed research to explore the canvas of
narratives in more than one thematic settings.

The first political thematic thread drew on texts relating to B. Obama's candidateship and
election. The political sample corpus gave evidence of all four types of narratives that
emerged, namely:

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ontological narratives were examined from a slightly different angle than that in the
original model. While Baker defines ontological stories as personal stories that we tell
ourselves about our place in the world and our own personal history (2006:28); in this
corpus ontological stories were associated to the personal stories of B. Obama that were
appropriated, translated and reproduced by newspapers. These narratives showed that
framing was mainly used to give emphasis to B. Obamas past and to create an image of
double identity for the candidate President at the time, one that did not forget to bring
forward his AfricanAmerican background. The ontological narrative that Greek newspaper
capitalized on was one that rewrote B. Obama as someone that exists in a third space44
(Spivak 1987; Bhabha 1994), as a recordbreaker, as a firsttimer; this means that he was
narrated and framed as someone with the naivet and pure spirit of doing things for the first
time. Ontological narrativity then in the political sample corpus renegotiated the identity of B.
Obama, accentuated those elements of his biographical storylines that would make him more
visible in the target text sphere and ultimately portrayed him as an object of selfbecoming.

public narratives proved a more fruitful category than ontological ones. These are
narratives that are attached to cultural and institutional formations larger than the single
individual" (Somers and Gibson, 1994:62). Both corpora yielded results that showed how
translation shifts reflected or created public narratives that were culturally conditioned. One
of the strongest, fossilized target narratives that emerged was that of stability. This narrative
was interpreted as resting on the TT cultural preference of uncertainty avoidance, observed
in various instances. Furthermore, a public narrative of integration into a group (section
4.4.3.) or collectiveness was identified one that too rests on cultural traits of the TT
environment. It has been shown that Greek culture favours ingrouping (Triandis & Vassiliou
1972) in the sense that Greek society awards emphasis to the integration of individuals into a
mass and defocuses attention from individual behavioural patterns. This high concern for
integration into the mass has been pinpointed in the corpus in the form of a societal
behaviour of the voting mass. This high concern for favouring collectiveness has been also
pinpointed by PapaefthymiouLytra (1996) who talks about highcontext cultures (Greek
being one of them) that a) seek support from the context to make out the meaning in a
communication setting and b) aim at sustaining the balanced integration of the individual in a
group. Then,

conceptual narratives mainly gave rise to different frames for perceiving Leadership and
the concept of Leader. Translation here was a carrier for new conceptualizations which again
44 A metaphor used in postcolonial studies and has been appropriated by TS
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were grounded on the TT setting or gave rise to new identities. Conceptual narratives seem to
feed on public conceptions about e.g. Leadership without this however implying that
conceptual narrativity supplants the public one. Findings in section 4.5. suggest that
conceptual narratives have a potential for accelerating the reflection and construction of new
representations as these surface in translated discourse structures. Finally,

master narratives were elaborated in the corpus. These narratives were understood as
takenforgranted, ineradicable, recurrent, iterative and lithified representations that
informed the political subcorpus. A textwide master narrative that was identified was that of
binary thinking that loomed large in translations, infiltrated institutional discourse and affect
the representation of the political campaigning and leaders that run for presidency. The TT
gave rise to a master narrative of contrastiveness and binary thinking that could be regarded
as an institutional master narrative in the sense that all newspapers and public discourse is
imbued in this type of communication. The press contrasted the two presidential candidates
(Barack Obama and John McCain) either by direct comparison of the two giving emphasis on
the profile traits of the one candidate vs the those of the other (thus construction of reality via
adopting a binary and often manihaistic discursive pattern); or via parallelizing them not
within the textual constraints of one article but by putting their stories side by side. Also the
TT provided different frames for interpreting the master narratives of terrorism and race by
means of enforcing awareness of the terrorism threat and overrepresenting racial difference
respectively.

The elaboration of the biomedical subcorpus this rests on the premise of the integration of
scientific knowledge in other contexts; in her inspiring 2007 article Epistemicide! The Tale of
a Predatory Discourse, Karen Bennett gives an account of academic discourse and how the
latter migrates through translation, which is viewed as an activity of highly globalizing force.
The object of investigation in this research is not academic discourse; in the translational
context, however, knowledge does not migrate only horizontally: i.e. across languages
retaining the text type (e.g. an article in an academic journal in language A that gets translated
in an academic journal in language B). It may as well travel vertically which means that it can
jump from one type of discourse to another: in this case it finds itself framed by journalistic
discourse.

This subcorpus proved poor in ontological narratives; this absence of ontological narratives
in the biomedical sample corpus may be justified by an amplified concern to insulate
biomedical news discourse, as much as possible, from any subjectivity, a de facto feature of
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ontological narratives. Neverhteless, I would stress that in my view all stories and narratives
about health are always and unavoidably personal and hence ontological as we are all
inescapably embedded in our own health grid. These narratives are always there, and
steadily seep into our consciousness to become a part of our everyday fabric of life (Baker,
2006b:13). The assumption at this point is that this is exactly the case with biomedical stories
and it is interesting to note that popularized health narratives were in these newspapers
sandwiched between articles on the war in Iraq or other international affairs.

Public narratives mainly gave rise to a narration of a deified science where scientists
hold a key position, and science is an object of public glorification. The presence of this
narrative was secured and locked in texts mainly by means of labelling, but also through the
other two framing strategies elaborated here i.e. selective appropriation and repositioning of
participants. This narrative can be also viewed and explained if we pull our eyes back into
focus on the cultural preference of uncertainty avoidance. I consider then the need to glorify
and deify science, research and scientists as yet another attempt to obliterate, thwart, obscure
and expel any fear of the unknown, any anxiety for the concealed human destiny that also
includes postponement of death, and hence ignorance and oblivion of the human condition.
Moreover, the tactful appropriation in translation of research and public entities relating to
health and research testified to how translation may block a belief system that is not tolerated
in the target culture (privatization of health and research). Translation here refused to allow
the introduction, in the TT, of new narratives about research and health handling. Again this
reluctance, coupled with the fascination to assign the responsibility for health research to
public institutions seems to rest on the assumed way that the public would understand and
assimilate public/private research endeavours.

Conceptual narratives gave rise to different frames for narrating science and revealed
variation between the English and the Greek versions. Also, different conceptualizations
between the English and Greek version in relation to cancer were also classified under this
narrative category. Conceptual narratives that surfaced in translation rejected a displaced and
silenced a Frankesteinian frame for scientists (ST) and replaced it with a heroic one which
goes hand in hand with translationinduced representations that rewrite the modern scientist
as a modern Prometheus. In terms of health, the TT offered variant narrations in relation to
the lifethreatening disease of cancer. Finally,

Master narratives reported in the biomedical subcorpus which were mainly
associated to the polar concepts of hope and fear which in turn are linked to scientific research
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and loss of health, respectively. These themes seem to come together and are abridged in
biomedical texts. Master narratives about health and science in translated press discourse
seem to be steered by the numerous tellings and retellings of a) fear of illness and b)
optimism and hope for scientific endeavour. Chapter 5 particularly chose to tease results out
of the themes of health and science as it is believed that health integrates meanings of risk and
fear about the human condition and in this sense participates in the concept of 'risk
communication' (Beck 1992). On its part, science, integrated meanings of hope and optimism
about the research and technological endeavours. The institutionally conditioned battle frame
also emerged here and participated in the construction of an environment of tension where
health becomes a highstakes outcome and goal for everybody.

In relation then to the overarching question that interrogates on the power of narrative theory
to elucidate the effects of unforced translation shifts there is evidence that narrative as a unit of
analysis can assist us in organizing and ordering reality. It is my view that narrative has then
the potential for particularizing social and cultural identities in such a way that we can make
better sense out of our own social and ontological positioning. The identification of unforced
translation shifts which have been explained using the framing toolbox has lighted the way to
the palette of ontologicalpublicconceptual and master narratives that are present in
translated news texts. Working from the starting point that language and translation are not
without perspective and are never without point of view or pointofviewless (Bruner,
1991:3) traced the subtle reworkings that take place in translating a news text and uncovered
the particular outputs (narratives). This overarching question however was also supported by
several ensuing subordinate questions. Namely:

What happens exactly when meaning encoded in the ST is delocated and disjoined
from its original environment and forcefully adjusted in and relocated to a new
cultural and institutional milieu, that of the TT? The answer to this question has been
empirically provided in chapters 4 and 5 where I illustrated that translation comes to
challenge meaning(s) that once belonged to the textual territory of the source text and
socioeconomic property of the source newspaper. This has been observed through the
unforced translation shits, which provide the yardstick for interrogating on the ways
that meaning is renegotiated (framing) and on the effects that this renegotiation brings
about (narratives). The delocation and relocation concepts referred to in the question
above ultimately bring forward the conceptualization of the translation process itself as
a process involving a sort of encounter with a new context (Freeman 2009). This
encounter or merging of two different narrative worlds unavoidably creates a stir which
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is cultural, institutional and narrative at the same time. This stir is caused then when the
source text is pushed out of its comfort zone, i.e. source newspaper for which it was
originally produced and squeezed into a new, often distant, zone i.e. target newspaper.
When meaning then is delocated from its original environment and then relocated in a
new one it undergoes mediation (framing) and changes, according to the sensitivities,
affordances and resistance of the cultural and institutional milieu which has entered.
How do Greek newspapers handle texts in translation, meaning how do they decide
to rewrite and reframe political and biomedical meaning(s)? The answer to this
second subordinate question has been extensively addressed and covered through the
analysis of data in chapters 4 and 5. The interpretation of results in chapter 6 also
lighted the way in which newspapers decide to participate in the rewriting and
storying of meaning in the political and biomedical texts. All three Greek newspapers
put under the test here exhibited an increased mediation activity and used labelling,
repositioning of participants and selective appropriation to retell political and
biomedical stories. It seems then that translation rewrites meaning in the TT version by
proceeding to lexical shifts, reconfiguration of sentence structures, editorial changes
and simple additions or deletions of material. Also, newspapers seem to offer to
translators, or journalists commissioned with a translation task an institutional habitat
that also motivates and guides their choices. When faced then with specific news
translation projects, they seem to be also affected by the discursive practices that
govern journalism; this means that besides translationspecific knowledge they also
need to have institutional knowledge which assures profitmaking through ideological
affiliations etc.

What exactly is the output of the framing strategies enacted and appropriated by
newspapers to renegotiate meaning? This question has been also answered in detail
in chapters 4 and 5. The output of framing strategies enacted by newspapers is
narratives which to which we subscribe and guide our behaviour (Baker, 2005:4). The
first part of this section, where I revisit the findings for ontologicalpublicconceptual
master narratives from both subcorpora provide a solid and complete answer to this
subordinate question 3.

What do narratives tell us in relation to the newspapers that host them and give
rise to them in the first place? This question entails a critical rethinking and reflection
of the narrative output and presence in newspapers. It has been addressed in chapter 6
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where I attempted to establish an institutional connection of narratives. Results show
that narratives to which translation gives rise are not equally distributed in all three
newspapers and that in each newspaper. Narratives then tell us mainly that newspapers
a) seek to produce those representations that are deemed to be culturally acceptable by
the target readership; in this way they both seek legitimization and acceptance for the
stories they are putting forward and attempt to keep readers aligned with their
agendas, b) create conceptualizations and wordviews and in this way delineate the
readers world by subtly and tactfully guiding their perceptions, c) silence those
conceptualizations and narratives to which the target readership is deemed to exhibit
some sort of resistance (the example of privatization of health is typical of this pattern);
the target readership then becomes blind visvis representations and identities,
which where very much alive in the source environment. Narratives then as a whole
also emerge as a type of metasystem (Lszl, 2008:89) that replays cultural and social
identities as these circulate in the TT space, also serving as an index of the ideological
location of newspapers themselves.

What is the role and position of news translation visvis globalization? This
question has not been directly addressed in the chapters that preceded this one.
However, it is a question that lurks behind the entire process of news translation, begs
for further reflection and cannot be ignored. The extended space allotted here for
addressing this fourth subordinate question is justified by the limited attention paid to
it in the previous chapters. In the paragraphs that follow I answer this question by
keeping in mind the overall process of news translation and being guided by the
findings revealed in the previous chapters.

Studying and researching news translation necessitates looking through the underbelly of
translation as a process but also at the translated text as an outcome of various overlapping
processes. The news translated text stands at a middle space, has it has been, forcefully I
would argue, extracted from its original textual habitat (ST newspaper) and tactfully
channeled into its new home (TT newspaper). It is then divided between two institutional,
linguistic and cultural realities. The news translated text as a product then is often a territory
or intercultural tensions, a space that does not belong to either end of the translation line (ST
TT). As Tymoczko (2000) argues

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[t]ranslations are inevitably partial; meaning in a text is overdetermined, and the
information in and meaning of a source text is therefore always more extensive than
a translation can convey (ibid: 24 emphasis added).

This notion of partiality is manifested via the various translational choices of
journalists/translators when for example they create a target text which only partially
resembles the original. Of course, what remains to be investigated is if these choices are
conscious and ideologically motivated (perhaps even motivated by the ideological position
heralded by a newspaper, which here is viewed as an institution governed by specific socio
political and economical agendas). Partiality challenges theory to view translation as a
compromising activity that does not sustain the understanding of translation as a series of
options that will lead to either domestication (Bassnett 1991) or foreignization. Thus, coming
to terms with partiality in translation ultimately resists polarity (domesticate vs foreignize)
and reconciliates two seemingly irreconcilable spaces45. It is exactly here then that the
domesticating/foreignizing approaches to translation open the translationfocused
discussions to interrogate on whether the TTs are surrendering to the originals (STs) and
opening to the target audience views of the source culture or whether the TTs are actually
resisting the STs, etiolating the ST items in the TT and keeping foreign items away from the
target environment, thus insulating the latter from foreign ideologies/representations/views.

Partiality redirects the discussion then away from the abovementioned polar, manichaeistic
and exclusive rhetoric and towards a merging, inclusive and dialogically open one. Although
partiality is semantically speaking a negativelyloaded item yet, in the words of Tymoczko

[p]artiality is not merely a defect, a lack, or an absence in a translation it is also an
aspect that makes the act of translation partisan: engaged and committed, either
implicitly or explicitly. Indeed partiality is what differentiates translations of the
same or similar works, making them flexible and diverse, enabling them to
45 Globalization also looms large as process that facilitates communication between spaces and
different locales. Translation and globalization seem to share a symbiotic relationship where
globalization needs translation to sustain the globallocal pattern, that characterizes it in the first place,
while translated products are linguistically repackaged, leave their local environment, travel and reach
other local audiences/readerships and in that way serve globalization needs. Yet, while globalization
implies a sense of interconnectedness (Shiyab 2010) and dependence between environments yet
translation is the product of detachment from one linguistic and cultural setting (ST) and re
attachment to another (TT) which raises doubts if translation actually assists globalization. Therefore,
while translation as a process is a key component to globalization, as it participates and intensifies
interaction between states and cultures, modern understanding and theorizing about the target text
mainly require from it to fulfill its domesticating role and fully fit the target environment (textual,
institutional and narrative).
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participate in the dialectic of power, the ongoing process of political discourse, and
strategies for social change (2000:24).

Drawing on the inspiring work of the cultural critic Bhabha, who within his articulation of
ideas on postcolonialism defines translation as the movement of meaning (Bhabha 1994),
this work then assumes that the translated text exists, in the middle, is a third linguistic and
cultural territory which, on the one side, relies on the source text and manipulates it and, on
the other, prepares the cultural surface of the target culture to create other narratives similar
to the one of the target text. This "movement of meaning" does not limit itself to the transfer
from the source text to the target text but expands to the migration of elements from the
source culture to the target culture, from the dominant culture to the marginal one. Also,
Bhabha insists that translation is an insurgent act, or a process which repeats political
tensions, contradictions, instabilities. It exists in the space which he calls the interstices
the performativity of cultural translation as the staging of cultural difference (Bhabha 1994
in Wolfe 2003: 187).

The theoretical foundations put forth by Bhabha, who talks about the notion of transition, and
transitional space, present translation as a sort of virtual corridor that connects the source
with the target narrative area, however partial. It is also supported that translators ply their
trade in the interstices between two narratives, that of the source culture and the target one.
This is made explicit in figure 5, in chapter 3, where translators are challenged with the task
of merging the intercultural space and bridge two realities in one new text. Partiality is in that
sense only inevitable; as shown in the figure news translators therefore seem to be working
within a transitional channel influenced by economic, technological and political, ideological
and cultural parameters which in turn affects the way they manipulate the language of these
narratives they are challenged to translate. In this process as Baker (2005) notes, translators
are under no circumstances unaccountable and passive mediators in the entire process of news
translation; on the contrary they are circulating narratives to construct reality.

Translation, apart from negotiating linguistic material, carries forward meaning, concepts
representations and hence narratives. Translation is also participating in the shaping of the
host culture i.e. the culture that accommodates the translated text. This has been exemplified
by Mitsi (2005) who underlines the effects that Racine's translation of Aristotle's Poetics had
on French culture and literature that acted as the host culture for these translations. In his
work Culture and Imperialism cultural critic Edward Said mentions that narratives "create
structures of feeling that support, elaborate and consolidate the practice of the empire"
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(1994:14). By structures of feeling he means a state of common consciousness shared among
people or groups of people who use these structures for selfdetermination. Translation as a
form of renarration can be a powerful means of creating images and sustaining or silencing
structures of feeling and ideology. The linguistic metamorphoses which take place during the
phase when a source text is metabolized into the target text to be consumed by target text
readers may be forced by the grammatical and syntactical norms of the TT environment but
ultimately affect the meaning put forward. There are cases then when narratives of the ST are
then metabolized when arriving in the TT environment. For example, the conceptual
narrative of Leadership, elaborated in chapter 4, shows that translation transformed the
narrative through rewriting and reframing the leader. The process of translation then is a
globalizing one in the sense that it entails a movement, an exchange of linguistic and cultural
material. Translation assists and enables the mobility of cultural artifacts such as texts from a
specific metropolis (Bhabha 1994) to certain peripheries. The translated text on the other
hand, being the product of translation, stands out as a text inbetween which shares the
consciousness of both ST and TT environment and inevitably carries in it both narrative
worlds. The translated text then may harbour and create linguistic and cultural dichotomies
in that it may not pertain utterly to one or the other environment.

The concept of partiality presented above, creates a fertile ground then for posing the
question: Does the translated news text assist or block globalization and globalization
practices? Globalization has amassed the attention of translation scholars (Cronin 2003; Pym
2004; Bielsa and Hughes 2009; Shiyab 2010) who interrogate on the role of translation in
globalization as a set of processes that are governed by constant interactions and exchanges
between the global and the local. Although, there are numerous definitions of globalization,
some stressing economic and trade factors and others focusing on the flow of humans and
commodities and ideas, to a large extent46, there seems to be some consensus about the fact
that globalization is a means of producing interconnectedness and interdependence among
different people and different nations (Shiyab, 2010:3). Globalization has influenced TS
"simply because globalization necessitated translation (ibid:7) because translation is thought
to be indispensable in turning global into local. Cronin also points out that globalization
triggers the growth in volume and need for translation (2003:13).

News in this dissertation is held as a global product that needs translation as a vehicle to
travel to other local territories and cultures. Text mobility hence is deeply dependent on
46 Jones (2000) disagrees on this issue and describes globalization as less homogenizing and promoting
interconnectedness.
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translation. Still, the key dynamics that traditionally have governed translation seem to be
challenged by news translation within the framework of globalization. This happens because
as Pym notes

[w]hereas translation is still thought of in terms of languagemeetslanguage
situations, where it is meaningful to talk about source and target, globalized
distribution operates on the basis of onetomany, which is a fundamentally
different geometry. We find centralized production of the one internationalized
text or product, which is then more efficiently localized (translated and
adapted), to a wide range of consumer environments (locales) (2003:7).

The news text is therefore a global product which, via various news agencies, reaches
different locales, different news consumers with different news tastes. Translation of news
texts in this dissertation is seen to integrate the two polar ends of globalization; on one hand
globalization invites translation to take part in its processes and assist the newsmaking
industry to export its products i.e. news; on the other it runs counter and undermines
globalization as the TT environment imports news and camouflage it with the local target
preferences of the point of arrival. The linguistic metamorphoses played out during
translation are then guided by the often strong localization forces that demand for the news
text to be fully adjusted to the target culture preferences. Consequently, target newspapers
are viewed as the institutional arena where this import/export phase of globalization is
played out and are included amongst those institutions through which globalization initiators
attempt to sustain the practice of deterritorializing products.

As data analysis in this dissertation is targetoriented, it mainly focuses on the import phase
of news items. It then shows that while translation in principle may assist globalization, as it
is too a process that participates in the global transformation of capital (Bhabha, 1994:306)
and seems to remove spatial bounding, yet once the news text enters the target sphere then
linguistic choices seem to be guided by a strong urge for localizing; mainly either reflective of
the target language preferences or constructive of a target language discourse and in that
sense block images of the source culture something which ultimately disrupts globalization.

Hence, translators of news items become a) first readers of the story they are about to
translate and b) mediators of both the worldviews promoted in the source text and those to
which they respond and appropriate as members of the target text environment, cultural and
institutional. Translational aspects of news items are therefore examined while having as a
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backcloth the worldviews and ideological perspectives they shape and are ultimately gazed
and assessed in terms of their potential to reflect, create, propagate, solidify or mute stories,
i.e. narratives which are glossed as news and travel from the source to the target
environment.

As findings then suggest, the translated news text is a direct product of the forces of
globalization yet its nature, language and narratives foreground that it is engaged in a
constant struggle with its globallocal Self. Often, as it seems, there is nothing quiet about the
TT as it shouts variation or even better gives a chance to difference and therefore swims
against the globalization current proclaiming and representing heterogeneity and not
homogeneity. Other times though it provides evidence of how compellingly the TT merges
with the TT culture and expectations, in such ways that it does not stand apart from other
texts, originally produced in the TT language.

7.1.1. Contribution of research

As I have already claimed in section 1.3. this thesis is an original attempt to identify, analyse
and report on narratives in translated news and not on news as narrative as this has been done
by other researchers (Harding 2009, 2011). In section 1.3. I identified the disciplinary areas
with which this thesis interfaces. The description of the contributions of the thesis in the
introductory section however lacked a vision of the findings, one that only came about and
has been crystallized after having analysed the two corpora and interpreted the data. The
contributions of the thesis are then summarized in the following points:

I. This thesis mobilizes a fairly new, relatively untested and understudied research agenda
i.e. narrative theory, to analyze translated discourse in the Greek press. The adoption
and application of the theory in general, and of narrative as a unit of analysis in
particular, has been triggered by the awareness i) of the established relationship
between news and social construction (Richardson 2007) and ii) of the potential of
narrative to reflect and construct reality (Bennett and Edelman 1985). News and
narrative innovatively merged in this research through the lens of social construction
and reflection;

II. also, this thesis introduced the synthesis and application of a model of analysis that
combined framing with narrative to arrive at the analysis of data in the Greek press
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context. This synthesis of micromacro tools that was substantiated through the
development of the model of analysis (3.4.2.) and put to the test in chapters 4 and 5
offered an integrated approach and tooling for analyzing translated discourse through
the lens of inputs/outputs;

III. although this thesis made use of the typology of narratives that has been developed by
Baker (2006b), yet it provided a slightly different reading for ontological narrativity.
Although the original typology describes as ontological those narratives that are
claimed by the individual and are then the personal stories we tell ourselves about our
place in the world and our lives (ibid: 28), in this research ontological narrativity takes
a slightly different turn. In particular, the ontological narratives encountered in the
political subcorpus have been used to describe the biographical and personal stories
about the American President B. Obama that Greek newspapers appropriated,
translated and published. This new reading of ontological narrativity attests to the
typologys flexible architecture and makeup, previously discussed in section 2.5.3.;

IV. moreover, combining narrative to analyze data with CDA to interpret findings and
identify the institutional connection or import of narratives, as output(s) of translated
discourse is a methodological contribution of this research. It particularly shows the
potential of the theory to merge and interconnect with other research tools. While
narrative has been employed in this research to recover the constructed outputs of
translated language in news discourse, CDA contributes insights from the much
favoured concept of delegitimization (Chilton 2004; Cap 2006, 2008) and argues for the
interconnection between narratives and the delegitimatory intentions of newspapers;

V. finally, apart from methodological contributions, findings participate in forging a new,
enlarged understanding of crosscultural and crosslinguistic variation through the lens
for narrative. Public narrativity in particular established new relations for reflecting or
constructing collective realities either in relation to Politics, the voting mass and the
electoral body or in relation to scientists and biomedical research. On its part,
conceptual narratives provided a fresh lens for measuring and accounting for target
reader expectations visvis the Leader. The frames that emerged in the political corpus
show that conceptual narrativity is culturally negotiable as the frames for the political
leader that circulated in the source environment varied form those that emerged in the
target one. Conceptual narratives in the biomedical subcorpus signalled crosstextual
and crosscultural variation as narratives that circulated in the source text in relation to
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scientists (Frankensteinian frame) would be substituted by narratives that were more
compliant with the TT expectations (heroic frame). Narratives and frames then proved a
suitable tool for looking and drawing results in terms of crosscultural variation.

7.1.2. Limitations

The commitment of this research to narrative, as a unit of analysis, does not equal at the same
time a blindfold adoption of the theory of narratives within the social representation confines;
on the contrary, after having applied the model of analysis to the data I cannot do without
acknowledging that narrative reasoning is not without limitations. These are primarily
related to the fact that elaboration and assessment of any narrative inevitably draws on the
subjects own narrative positioning and seating. This has been stressed by Baker (2006b)
herself who recognizes the interpretative subjectivities that ensue from narrative itself but at
also acknowledges that it is exactly this subjectivity that makes the theory altogether
democratic (ibid). The most prominent then limitation and challenge that emerges is to call
our attention to how we interpret and assess narrative, as a tool and outcome of translated
discourse. Our own subjectivities, embedding to narratives (ranging from ontological to
master) may guide our interpretation of discourse, give emphasis to some aspect or even
camouflage others. The risk then when conducting narrative analysis is that certain
perspectives may be privileged or subordinated, depending on our own positionings.
Secondly, it seems that methodologically, adopting a narrative gaze to news stories in general
and translated news stories in particular, cannot rule out, nor venture away from dimensions
that link and justify language production with audience reception. Kirkwood (1992), who
does not work with news discourse, yet attests to the need to examine whether narrative is
affected by what is appealing to the audience as he suggests that effective narratives cannot
and perhaps should not exceed peoples values and beliefs, whether or not these are
admirable or accurate (ibid:30). The methodological then challenge, rather than limitation,
that emerges is to attempt a wise triangulation of narrative output with readership
perceptions, beliefs and narratives locations. For, claiming for the meaningmaking potential
of translated language demands further attention to and consideration of the readers point of
view and understanding of translated language.

Regardless however of these limitations and challenges of narrative, it seems to me that its
flexible structure coupled with the fact that it is radically democratic (Baker 2006b:163),
make it an attractive and precious tool for associating language production, institutionally
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grounded or not, and agency, translationgrounded with language effects and outputs. The
theory draws then its democratic logic by the fact that it privileges values where other
models privilege intelligence (ibid). To my mind, the fact that narrative has the potential to
capture the ontological (personal), public/master (collective) and conceptual (theoretical)
being or Self speaks loud of its democratic qualities.

7.2. Areas for further research

What this research has, amongst others, shown is that news translation is a research territory
that allows for further exploring and honing in the routes and manifestations that translated
discourse can take in various settings. Potential fruitful avenues of investigation that directly
emerge from this research can be summed up as follows:

a) zoom in on particular participants in the news translation process and look at the
pragmatics that govern their role; for example it would be interesting to take a closer
look at the role of translators and examine their own ideological and narrative
starting points which in turn may shed light to the motivations behind specific
translation choices. This insider dimension broadens the research spectrum to
include research that combines linguistic and discourse analysis with Bourdieus
habitus (1977, 2000) and with aspects of the ontological narrativity of translators. In
this line Bourdieus social vocabulary and theory has been appropriated by TS
scholars (Inghilleri 2003; Claramonte 2005). This research path will also prove
helpful in showing the proportion of agency and mediation that is accomplished by
the translator working within an institutional setting;

b) point (a) described above paves the way for further investigation on the socalled
translators Black Box (section 3.3.) that relates to the mind of the translator.
Research that could integrate interviewing of translators and could thus shortcut
around the porcupine attitudes of newspapers could reveal interesting results in
terms of the decisionmaking process in news translation and tell us more things in
relation to the motivations (ideological or professional) that fuel particular decisions
or obstruct others. This research path was yet outside the scope of this thesis;

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c) investigate the readers' reactions visvis translated discourse. Letters to the editors
could potentially prove to be a valuable source for evidence for this type of research. It
would also be interesting to see if the readers' conceptual idea of translation is one of
faithful (strict wordtoword) rendering of the message from the source text to the
target text then the content of the target text (in the Greek newspaper) may be
considered as more truthful, free from any personal interpretations and
subjectivities; if the readers' conceptual idea of translation is one of more free
rendering of the original message then they will probably interpret the target text as a
version of the truth, as content which as been twice filtered (probably twice
translated);

d) further interrogate on and research the notion of hybridity (Bhabha 1994) that
emerges or is challenged by the translated text. In this framework it would be useful
to address questions that illuminate the nature of the translated news text. This path
of research could show if the translated news text is a hybrid form of communication
or if it stands as an equal partner next to other originally created texts that circulate in
the newspaper. Potential evidence that argue for the presence of hybridity in news
texts may well raise questions on whether translation assists globalization or hinders
it and draw the conclusion that translation is a part of culture that is always in the
making; as Rutherford notes all forms of culture are continually in a process of
hybridity"(1990:211);

e) further explore and focus on specific narrative (e.g.) the meta narrative of terror that
persists and is entrenched in our current society and then follow up on its diachronic
persistence across genres and time. This direction could prove the usefulness and
pervasiveness of the narrative model of analysis;

f) extend narrative research to other institutional settings, i.e. business settings or
advertising to identify the discursive instantiations of narratives at those settings,
always in conjunction with the framing tools elaborated. The model of analysis
developed and applied in this research can be with deviations perhaps readily
applicable to various settings;

g) adopt Systemic Functional Analysis (Halliday 1994; Halliday and Matthiessen 2004)
as an analytical tool to triangulate and verify the potential of narrative to account for
shifts which in turn could have been looked at and analyzed from another theory. The
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Creating Narratives

intended purpose would be then to show that the theory of narratives itself harbors
the potential to describe and interpret shifts or grammatical and textual relations
inscribed in discourse. The fact that Systemic Functional Linguistics finds theoretical
support in earlier ideas that link up anthropological investigation with language
analysis (Firth 1957), make it a promising line for further research within the
narrative boundaries.

Taking up any of the abovementioned research paths would imply a willingness to elaborate even
more on the connectivities between narrative and translation and would certainly support or
even challenge results and claims put forward in this research. For, it is my belief that the
preoccupation with the interconnectedness of language and reality equals an unsurmountable
motivation and dialectic angst for participating in the tracing of meaningmaking through
linguistic choice and crosslinguistic variation. It is by building on the strengths of narrative while
staying aware of its liabilities that we can gain a view of the analytical and representational
sinews that thrust, support and uphold a robust, discoursesensitive, narrativethick and yet
realistic coupling of translated language with its outputs.
259
EnglishGreek News References
Creating Narratives

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277
EnglishGreek News Appendix 1
Creating Narratives

Appendix 1
The Obama/Elections samplecorpus47

The New York Times/January 27,2008
H K/February 3, 2008
A President Like My Father
,
[P/A]
OVER the years, Ive been deeply moved by the people whove told me
they wished they could feel inspired and hopeful about America the way [P]
people did when my father was president. This sense is even more [P] ,
profound today. That is why I am supporting a presidential candidate in .
the Democratic primaries, Barack Obama. .
, [C]

.
My reasons are patriotic, political and personal, and the three are
,
intertwined. All my life, people have told me that my father changed their
. [P/A]
lives, that they got involved in public service or politics because he asked

them to. And the generation he inspired has passed that spirit on to its
,
children. I meet young people who were born long after John F. Kennedy
.
was president, yet who ask me how to live out his ideals.
[P] .
.
,
[P].
Sometimes it takes a while to recognize that someone has a special ability

to get us to believe in ourselves, to tie that belief to our highest ideals and [P/A],
imagine that together we can do great things. In those rare moments,
when such a person comes along, we need to put aside our plans and , [P]
reach for what we know is possible. We have that kind of opportunity .
with Senator Obama. It isnt that the other candidates are not experienced [P/A] ,
or knowledgeable. But this year, that may not be enough. We need a
change in the leadership of this country just as we did in 1960. .
[P/A], .
[A]
. ,
.
, 1960.
Most of us would prefer to base our voting decision on policy differences.

However, the candidates goals are similar. They have all laid out detailed [P] . ,
plans on everything from strengthening our middle class to investing in [P/A] .
early childhood education. So qualities of leadership, character and
judgment play a larger role than usual.
[P]. ,
,

, .

Senator Obama has demonstrated these qualities throughout his more 20
than two decades of public service, not just in the United States Senate ,
but in Illinois, where he helped turn around struggling communities, , ,
taught constitutional law and was an elected state official for eight years.
,[P],
And Senator Obama is showing the same qualities today. He has built a

movement that is changing the face of politics in this country, and he has
. , .
demonstrated a special gift for inspiring young people known for a

willingness to volunteer, but an aversion to politics to become engaged
.
in the political process.
47
ElaborationsincludedintheAppendixaremeanttoshedlighttothequantitativeviewofnarrativesandframingthatareatplayineach
pressitem.EachshiftidentifiedhasbeenunderlinedandmatchedtoitscounterpartintheST.IntheTT,everyshifthasbeenindexedwitha
visual marker according to the narrative category to which it pertains.Where applicable, next to the narrative category an A or D has been
addedtoindicatethatthetranslationshiftistheresultofanAddition(A)orDeletion(D)i.e.selectiveappropriation.Therefore,theindication
P/Asuggeststhattheshiftunderlinedpertainstoapublicnarrativeandistheresultofanadditionoflinguisticmaterialotherwiseabsentfrom
theST.Allunforcedtranslationshiftshavebeenunderlined,regardlessofwhethertheyimposeadifferentnarrativemeaning.Also,thevisual
marker[CS],standsforCulturalShift,andtagsshiftswhicharestronglymotivatedbyculturalpreferencesoftheTTenvironmentandarenot
necessarilynarrativerelevant.AsmallsummaryhasbeenaddedbeloweachtargettexttodescribethetranslationalshiftsavailableintheTT
and to elaborate briefly on their importance. Obvious cases of mistranslations are identified by the marker [MISTRANS]. The visual marker
[A/EMPH]hasbeenaddednexttoitemswhichhavebeenaddedtotheTTandupgradeemphasisawardedtothesentence.Atablehasbeen
addedattheendofthepoliticalsubcorpusreflectingtheselectiveappropriationofmaterial(inwordcount)inallthreenewspapers.
278
Creating Narratives

I have spent the past five years working in the New York City public
schools and have three teenage children of my own. There is a generation .
coming of age that is hopeful, hardworking, innovative and imaginative. ,
But too many of them are also hopeless, defeated and disengaged. As . ,
parents, we have a responsibility to help our children to believe in . ,
themselves and in their power to shape their future. Senator Obama is [P/A]
inspiring my children, my parents grandchildren, with that sense of
possibility. . ,
.

[A/0/REFRAMING]
Senator Obama is running a dignified and honest campaign. He has .
spoken eloquently about the role of faith in his life, and opened a window [CS]
into his character in two compelling books. And when it comes to
[O]
judgment, Barack Obama made the right call on the most important issue
. , ,
of our time by opposing the war in Iraq from the beginning.
[C] .

[P],
I want a president who understands that his responsibility is to articulate
a vision and encourage others to achieve it; who holds himself, and those . [P]
around him, to the highest ethical standards; who appeals to the hopes of .
those who still believe in the American Dream, and those around the [C/A].
world who still believe in the American ideal; and who can lift our spirits, [P/A]
and make us believe again that our country needs every one of us to get .
involved.

I have never had a president who inspired me the way people tell me that . ,
my father inspired them. But for the first time, I believe I have found the [C] ,
man who could be that president not just for me, but for a new , .
generation of Americans.

Summary of findings: Translational shifts identified in the ST/TT pair above indicate a prevalence of Public Narratives
in the TT. Public narratives identified relate to the narrative of group integration i.e. or
passive electoral group instantiated through the choices of (someone else taking on the
responsibility instead of the people), thus forcing a reading of the TT as narrating socially inactive individuals. Also,
findings include instances of ab initio additions to the TT, such as , while
the ST make no reference to a new generation that used to believe in certain ideals and needs to believe again. This
creates a narrative of a generation lost that used to be hopeful but is no more. Framing is instantiated in this text by
means of adding (selectively appropriating that is) subheadings such as , phrase
that redraws attention to the ontological/personal narrativity of B. Obama. Also, unforced lexical variations which have
been imposed to the TT alter the narrative impact of the TT and force a different reading. For example chiildren are
described as the part of society that is going to change () , while the ST talks about shaping
() the future. The lexical choice of reinforces in the TT the urgency for change, and strongly echoes
the main campaign slogan of B. Obama i.e. Change. Conceptual narratives recognized in the text refer frames of
conceptualization that assist the construction of his image/identity in the TT environment. Furthermore, the integration
of the subheading in the TT is there to reinforce the conceptual narrative
created further on that narrates B. Obama as the embodiment of the vision of the American Dream. In sum, this text
includes a large pool of public narratives, of public narratives that were the result of additions and certain conceptual
narratives. No master narratives have been identified.

ST WORDCOUNT TT WORDCOUNT
662 602
279
Creating Narratives

The Economist/July 16, 2008
H K/July 20, 2008

Looking abroad [P],

Barack Obama tries to focus on foreign policy ahead of a tour of .
Europe and the Middle East [P/A]
FOR the past few weeks the economy has dominated the American ,
presidential campaign. Now the two candidates for the White House . ,
are turning to foreign policy. Barack Obama is at something of a [CS]
disadvantage: he is young, his time in the Senate has been short, and .
his party has traditionally been seen as weaker on foreign affairs. , . ,

[C].
Mr Obama responded this week with a speech on foreign policy, in .

which he argued that the war in Iraq has weakened Americas efforts
in Afghanistan, where Islamist terrorists are getting stronger. Mr . [C]
Obama wants to begin drawing down troops in Iraq. He has grown ,
reluctant to say precisely how many soldiers would leave, and when, .
but he still insists they would do so soon, saying this would give him [EMP/CS]
room to redeploy 10,000 troops to Afghanistan. .

, [CS]
, [C]

10.000
.

,
Nextalthough details of his trip are still unclearMr Obama is going
,
to Europe and the Middle East. Europeans widely prefer Mr Obama to
. ,
his Republican rival, John McCain, whom many see as a continuation
[M]
of George Bush. Thus the Democrat may be met by enthusiastic
crowds, which would furnish him with useful television footage. ,
Inevitably, comparisons will be drawn to highprofile trips to Europe [A/M]
by John Kennedy and Ronald Reagan, as Mr Obama talks about .
rebuilding Americas leadership role and forging closer ties with allies. ,
He will also visit Israel, Jordan and probably Iraq and Afghanistan.
.[A/O] ,
[A]
.
[C]
, [P],
[A/M] [P]
.

,
[EMPH/REFRAMING]
[CS], .

His focus on doing better in Afghanistan makes some political sense. It .
lessens the impression that he is a typical Democratic dove. He is fond . ,
of saying that he is not against all wars, just dumb ones. A poll . [EMPH]
commissioned by the Washington Post and ABC News suggests that ,
half of all voters consider the war in Afghanistan is not going well, and . The
that the same proportion agree with Mr Obamas plans for withdrawal Washington Post ABC,
from Iraq. 50%
,
[P] .
[A/EMPH]
.
[EMPH/P]
,
Neither figure is overwhelming, but the Democrat would be happy if
he could hope to split the foreignpolicy vote with Mr McCain, a policy ,
area in which the Republican is much stronger. That said, Mr McCain [C]
is solidly preferred by voters as a potential commanderinchief. .
, .
.
280
Creating Narratives

, , [A] .
.
It is another question whether Mr Obama is speaking clearly about [D/C] ,
foreign policy. He has quietly removed from his website predictions
that the surge of American troops to Iraq would fail to improve .
matters there. He now acknowledges the partial success of the surge,
while pointing out that Iraqis need to make more political progress. ,
His restated promise to pull out troops from Iraq, made on the eve of a .
likely trip to that country, might complicate discussions with [A/EMPH]
commanders there. But he is keen to get that trip out of the way: the
Republican Party has a counter on its website showing how many ,
days (920, as of Wednesday) have passed since he last went there. . .
, , [C] .

[A/REFRAMING]

.
(
[A/EMPH]
Mr Obama correctly notes that as violence has dropped in Iraq (May
2003), .
saw the fewest American casualties since the invasion in 2003), it has
,
risen in Afghanistan. In May, and again in June, more American and

NATO troops were killed in Afghanistan than died in Iraq. He points
. [A/C]
out, too, that Pakistan is as big a part of the problem as Afghanistan

itself. Afghanistans government has accused the Pakistanis being
.
behind a bombing of the Indian embassy in Kabul last week. Relations
[EMPH/M]
between the two countries are terrible, and yet they must cooperate,

and America must support both, to root alQaeda remnants from the
.
Pakistani tribal areas on the Afghan border.
, ,
,

[M]
.

, ,[A]

[EMPH/C] . . .
But there is some wishful thinking in Mr Obamas focus on [CS]
Afghanistan. He wants to deliver more nonmilitary cash to ,
Afghanistan and Iraq, but it is not clear that this would do much to [P/CS] . .
boost economic growth or to undermine terrorism. He calls (as does , . ,
Mr McCain) for more nonAmerican NATO troops to be deployed to ,
Afghanistan, and with fewer restrictions on their operations. But [CS].
whoever is Americas next president will struggle to persuade his [P] [C]
allied partners to deliver significantly more soldiers, seven years into [P]
a wearisome war. ,[P]
.

[A/REFRAMING]

[A]
The surge has had a surprising effect. Mr Obama, who rose to
. . ,
prominence opposing the Iraq war, wants now to emphasise the
,
situation in Afghanistan, along with matters such as nuclear terrorism

and the need to rebuild alliances.
, [M] .

. ,
Mr McCain, for whom the many disasters of Iraq once appeared to be a , .
millstone, now takes every chance to talk about Iraq. But he has also .
been forced to respond to Mr Obama with a speech on Afghanistan,
promising to deploy at least as many troops as Mr Obama and
probably more. (He has said the drawdown from the Iraq surge would , . (
free up the needed troops.) The foreignpolicy bit of the election is
turning out to be far more than the dreary backandforth on Iraq that
could have been expected just months ago. ).

,
.

281
Creating Narratives

Summary of findings: While the previous text featured an overrepresentation of public narratives, in this one,
conceptual narratives seem to take charge. Findings suggest that the thematic thread of the text (Obama and Foreign
Politics) and the narratives that emerge in relation to the conceptualization of B. Obama are coconstitutive. Constructions
of trustworthiness , decisiveness and generosity (in the place of non
military cash) transform and emphasize certain political values in B. Obama, that the TT wishes to promote, in relation to
how he shall tackle with the challenging task of foreign politics. Polar juxtapositions with his direct at the time opponent
John McCain are also evident and emphasized in translation i.e. (in the place of the ST preposition to which could
had been translated with the most mildsounding ). The relevance of the thematic thread of the text is also
evident in the emergence of the conceptual frame of BATTLE lexicalized through the phrase (in the place of
the ST item struggle, which alternatively could have been rendered as ). This frame is
deemed to have an institutional motivation, meaning that it constitutes a preference of the news industry to heighten
reader anxiety and anticipation for what comes is next. In this press item, as well reframing is accomplished by means of
adding subheading and refocusing attention of the readers to a specific storyline. Another discursive feature that surfaces
in the translated version of the text relates to the temporal climax attempted by the TT newspaper instantiated through
the temporallyorientated phrases, , and ; these temporal
phrases impact the reader's view of the urgency of the upcoming changes in the field of foreign policies. Labelling is to the
most part, the most significant tool for reframing meaning.

822 997
282
Creating Narratives

The NYT/September 15,2008
H K/September 21, 2008

Presidential Candidates Positions on Science
[M]
Issues
[C/A]
[A/REFRAMING]
Their responses show clear areas of agreement on such

applepie[D/CS] issues as ocean health, as well as sharp
contrasts, as when Mr. Obama stresses the role of .
government and Mr. McCain that of business in addressing ,
some of the nations main challenges. . [A]

[P], ,
. [A/P]

.
What follows is a digest of their answers, as posted by ,
Science Debate 2008. The private group, in an effort www. sciencedebate2008.com.
endorsed by leading scientific organizations, has worked
since November to get candidates to articulate positions on
science policy. The full answers are at
www.sciencedebate2008.com. : . [P]

INNOVATION Mr. Obama calls for doubling federal budgets [P/A]
for basic research over a decade and supports broadband . . [M/A]
Internet connections for all Americans. Mr. McCain
stresses policies to provide broad pools of capital, low
, [C/A] ,
taxes and incentives for research in America, as well as the
. ,
streamlining of burdensome regulations. Mr. McCain also
said Congress, under my guiding hand, adopted wireless 72 [C/A]
policies that spurred the rapid rise of mobile phones and ,
WiFi technology. .
: [P]
.
CLIMATE CHANGE Both candidates talk of human activities [P], [A/O]
warming the planet, with Mr. McCain saying that they .
threaten disastrous changes and Mr. Obama that they are . 1990,
influencing the global climate. In terms of 1990 levels of . 60% .
carbon emissions, Mr. McCain would ultimately have the 80%.
nations output drop by 60 percent and Mr. Obama by 80
percent. : .
, 150
ENERGY Mr. Obama would increase federal investment in , [A/EMP]
clean energy by $150 billion over a decade, including . .
research on alternative fuels and conservation. Mr. McCain 45
would speed the building of 45 new reactors and make [A/CS] ,
government an ally but not an arbiter in developing [C] .
alternative energy sources.

: [P]
EDUCATION Both candidates advocate policies to develop a [C] ,
highly skilled workforce, partly with cash incentives for . .
teachers. Mr. McCain would put $250 million into a program [A] 250
to help states expand online education.
.

: . [P]
NATIONAL SECURITY Mr. Obama would put his . .
administration on a path to doubling federal spending on ,
basic defense research. Mr. McCain is much less specific, .
speaking of ensuring that America retains the edge.
:
GENETICS RESEARCH Both laud the potential benefits and . .
point out the social dangers, with Mr. Obama saying he [CS]
backed the recently passed Genetic Information , [A/M] .
Nondiscrimination Act. Mr. McCain speaks of a new green [C] .
revolution in food development.
:
STEM CELLS Both support federal financing for embryonic
283
Creating Narratives

stem cell research. .
SPACE Both candidates say they want to revitalize space :

exploration, with Mr. McCain calling for new technologies , .
to take Americans to the Moon, Mars and beyond. He also ,
suggests possibly extending the space shuttles life. Mr. . ,
Obama would reestablish a White House Space Council to .
coordinate all the nations space efforts, including ones , (M/A) .
intended to aid understanding of climate change and expand ,
our reach into the heavens. , [C]
.

:
SCIENTIFIC INTEGRITY Both implicitly fault President Bush,
whom critics have assailed as weakening the federal .
advisory apparatus and politicizing scientific panels

Summary of findings: Interesting results can be identified by looking at the deployment of translational shifts in this
text. Information transfer in this text gives rise to all types of narratives, with Public and Conceptual ones retaining the
lead. Taking a look at the patterning of narratives in the text, it seems that the TT purportedly introduces the
conceptualization of BATTLE for the two political opponents, lexicalized through the items, and . The
debate therefore they are having on issues which potentially would require mutual consent and cooperation such as
research and education, is narrated in the TT as a battlefield. Master narratives are also present in the text and are
restricted to instances of binary representations, which mainly surface from syntactic structures such as
. Although, translators at this point may act upon a text and add such structures in order to ensure the cohesion
and coherence in a text (Neubert & Shreve 1992), yet they need to be always aware of the impact that such linguistic
devices have in the interpretation of the text. An interesting public narrative that emerges in the text lies in the sentence
(BT: both candidates admit human intervention) in the
place of the ST verb talk of. The narrative that is constructed in the TT through the lexical item summarizes
the collective feeling of man being responsible for climate change and the need for someone to be held accountable for the
treats that present in relation to the environment.. Several narrativemeaningful additions have been also identified in the
TT; the addition for example of the information in relation to John McCain i.e. 72 (The
72 year old Arizona Senator), guides readers towards interpreting McCain either as an aged and potentially tired
candidate or as a knowledgeable and experienced one, with the first frame being more likely. Finally, the TT section
. produces two narratives. The first
one relates to the intensification of threat in relation to environmental changes and is instantiated through the lexical
item . The second is interpreted here as an ontological narrative, as the personification created via the addition of
the lexical item (face of earth) ultimately tells the ontological story of earth itself renarrating the globe
in translation as a human being which potentially suffers from human intervention. Interestingly, this text accommodates
fidings that concur with evidence of shifts in conceptual narrativity in the biomedical sample corpus. More particularly,
the TT erases collocation food development which if translated accurately as would put man in the
position of creator or developer of organisms and opts for the translation (food production) that
erases any fear of unknown, risky, Frankestenianlike effects. Again, labelling plays a strategic discursive role as a framing
strategy.
467 654
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Creating Narratives

The NYT/January 21,2009
H K/January 25,2009

Nations Many Faces in Extended First Family
[O]

WASHINGTON The presidents elderly stepgrandmother [O]

brought him an oxtail fly whisk, a mark of power at home in Kenya. .
Cousins journeyed from the South Carolina town where the first ,
ladys greatgreatgrandfather was born into slavery, while the [O] ,
rabbi in the family came from the synagogue where he had been
commemorating Martin Luther Kings Birthday. The president and .
first ladys siblings were there, too, of course: his Indonesian : , ,
American halfsister, who brought her ChineseCanadian husband, ,
and her brother, a black man with a white wife. , .
When President Barack Obama was sworn in on Tuesday, he was

surrounded by an extended clan that would have shocked past [O/A] ,
generations of Americans and instantly redrew the image of a first
family for future ones. As they convened to take their familys final [P]. [A/O]
step in its journey from Africa and into the White House, the group
seemed as if it had stepped out of the pages of Mr. Obamas
[EMPH/A].
memoir no longer the disparate kin of a young man wondering

how he fit in, but the embodiment of a new presidents promise of
[M/A]
change.

[MISTRANS]
,

.

For well over two centuries, the United States has been vastly
,
more diverse than its ruling families. Now the Obama family has
,
flipped that around, with a Technicolor cast that looks almost
. ,
nothing like their overwhelmingly white, overwhelmingly
, [C]
Protestant predecessors in the role. The family that produced
Barack and Michelle Obama is black and white and Asian,
Christian, Muslim and Jewish. .
[MISTRANS]
, , , .

, , , , ,
They speak English; Indonesian; French; Cantonese; German;
, , ,
Hebrew; African languages including Swahili, Luo and Igbo; and
,
even a few phrases of Gullah, the Creole dialect of the South
Carolina Lowcountry. Very few are wealthy, and some like . [A]
Sarah Obama, the stepgrandmother who only recently got ,
electricity and running water in her metalroofed shack are .
quite poor. Our family is new in terms of the White House, but I , [P]
dont think its new in terms of the country, Maya SoetoroNg, the ,
presidents younger halfsister, said last week. I dont think the [P] , ,
White House has always reflected the textures and flavors of this ,
country. .
Though the world is recognizing the inauguration of the first

AfricanAmerican president, the story is a more complex narrative,
about immigration, social mobility and the desegregation of one of
the last divided institutions in American life: the family. It is a tale
of selfdetermination, full of refusals to follow the tracks laid by
history or religion or parentage.

Mr. Obama follows the second President Bush, who had a
presidential sons selfassured grip on power. Aside from a top
quality education, the new president came to politics with none of
his predecessors advantages: no famous last name, no deep
pocketed parents to finance early forays into politics and, in fact,
not much of a father at all. So Mr. Obama built his political career
from scratch, with bestselling books and longshot runs for office,
leaving his relatives astonished at where he has brought them.
It is so mindboggling that there is a black president, Craig

Robinson, Mrs. Obamas brother, said in an interview. Then you
layer on top of it that I am related to him? And then you layer on
top of that that its my brotherinlaw? That is so overwhelming, I
285
Creating Narratives

cant hardly think about it.

Though Mr. Obama is the son of a black Kenyan, he has some

conventionally presidential roots on his white mothers side:
abolitionists who, according to family legend, were chased out of
Missouri, a slave state; Midwesterners who weathered the
Depression; even a handful of distant ancestors who fought in the
Revolutionary War. (Ever since he became a United States senator,
the Sons of the American Revolution has tried to recruit him. )

But far less has been known about Mrs. Obamas roots even by
the first lady herself. Growing up on the South Side of Chicago, it
was sort of passeddown folklore that soandso was related to so
andso and their mother and father was a slave, Mr. Robinson
said.

Drawing on old census data, family records and interviews, it is
clear that Mrs. Obama is indeed the descendant of slaves and a
daughter of the Great Migration, the mass movement of African
Americans northward in the first half of the 20th century in search
of opportunity. Mrs. Obamas family found it, but not without
outsize measures of adversity and disappointment along the way.
Tracing Family Roots
Only five generations ago, the first ladys greatgreatgrandfather,

Jim Robinson, was born a slave on Friendfield Plantation in
Georgetown, S.C., where he almost certainly drained swamps,
harvested rice and was buried in an unmarked grave. As a child,
Mrs. Obama used to visit her Georgetown relatives, but she only
learned during the campaign that her forebears had been enslaved
in the same town where she and her cousins had played.
According to Megan Smolenyak, a genealogist who has uncovered

the roots of many political figures, Mrs. Obama has ancestors with
similar backgrounds across the South. The public records they left
behind give only the briefest glimpses of their lives: Fanny Laws
Humphrey, one of Mrs. Obamas greatgreatgrandmothers, was a
cook in Birmingham, Ala., born before the end of the Civil War.
Another set of greatgreatgrandparents, Mary and Nelson Moten,
seem to have left Kentucky for Chicago in the early 1860s, a hint
they might have been free before the end of the Civil War. And in

1910, some of Mrs. Obamas ancestors are listed in a census as
mulatto, adding some support to family whispers of a white

ancestor.

The jobs that her relatives held in the early 20th century
domestic servant, coal sorter, dressmaker suggest an escape
from sharecropping, the system that trapped many former slaves
and their children in penury for generations.

Still, the familys progress has a two steps forward, one step back
quality. Jim Robinson was born into slavery, but his son, Fraser,
ran a lunch truck in Georgetown. In turn, his son, Fraser Jr., struck
out for Chicago in search of something better. But he was unable to
find work, and left his wife and children for 14 years, according to
his son Nomenee Robinson. As a result, Mrs. Obamas father was
on welfare as a boy and started working on a milk truck at 11.

After serving in the Army in World War II and finally securing a job
as a postal clerk, Fraser Robinson Jr. rejoined his family. He was so
thrifty that he would bring home chemicals to do the family dry
cleaning in the bathtub. But his son Mrs. Obamas father, Fraser
Robinson III became overwhelmed with debt and dropped out
of college after a year. He worked in a city boiler room for the rest
of his life, helping to send his four younger siblings to college, then
his two children, Mrs. Obama and her brother, to Princeton.
Classroom Values
For all of the vast differences in the Obama and Robinson histories,
a few common threads run through. Education is one of them. As a
young man, Mr. Obamas father herded goats, then won a
scholarship to study in the Kenyan capital. When Mr. Obama lived
in Indonesia as a child, his mother woke him up for at 4 a.m. for
286
Creating Narratives

English lessons; meanwhile, in Chicago, Mrs. Obamas mother was

bringing home math and reading workbooks so her children would
always be a few lessons ahead in school.

Only through education, generations of Robinsons taught their
children, would they ever succeed in a racist society, relatives said.
My mother would say, When you acquire knowledge, you acquire
something no one could take away from you, Craig Robinson
said.

The families also share a kind of adventurous selfdetermination.
In the standard telling, the Obama side is the one that bent the
rules of geography and ethnicity. Yet the first ladys family, the
supposed South Side traditionalists, includes several members
who literally or figuratively ventured far from home. Nomenee
Robinson was an early participant in the Peace Corps, serving in
India for two years; later, he moved to Nigeria, where he met his
wife; the couple now live in Chicago. Capers Funnye Jr., a cousin of
Mrs. Obamas and a rabbi, was brought up in the black church, he
said, but as a young man, he felt a calling to Judaism he could not
ignore.

In daring crosscultural leaps, no figure quite matches Stanley Ann
Dunham Soetoro, Mr. Obamas mother. As a university student in
Honolulu, she hung out at the EastWest Center, a cultural
exchange organization, meeting two successive husbands there:
Barack Obama, an economics student from Kenya, and later, Lolo
Soetoro, an Indonesian. Decades later, her daughter Maya Soetoro
was picking up fliers at the same EastWest Center when she
noticed Konrad Ng, a ChineseCanadian student, now her husband.
Now the ObamaRobinson familys move to the White House

seems like a symbolic end point for the oncefirm idea that people
of different backgrounds should not date, marry or bear children.
In Mr. Obamas lifetime, racial intermarriage not only became legal
everywhere in the United States, but has started to flourish. As
many as a quarter of white Americans and nearly half of black
Americans belong to a multiracial family, estimates Joshua R.

Goldstein of the Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research.

Diversity inside families, said Michael J. Rosenfeld, a sociologist at
Stanford University, is the most interesting kind of diversity there

is, because it brings people together cheek by jowl in a way that
they never were before.Theres nothing as powerful as family
relationships, Mr. Rosenfeld said, and thats why interracial
marriage was illegal for so long in the U.S. Initially, some of the
unions in the Obama family caused consternation. What can you
say when your son announces hes going to marry a Mzungu? said
Sarah Obama in an interview, using the Swahili term for white
person. But it was too late, she said, because the couple was
deeply in love.
Now, the relatives say, their family feels natural and right to them,
that they think of each other as individuals, not as members of
groups. Ms. SoetoroNg said she was not the Indonesian sister,
but just Maya.

A Special Reunion

On Monday, some of Mr. Obamas Kenyan relatives milled around
the lobby of the Mayflower Hotel here, their colorful headscarves
earning them more curious glances than even the sports and pop
music stars in the room. Zeituni Onyango, the presidents aunt,
explained that their family had always been able to absorb
newcomers.
Pointing out that her male relatives used to take on multiple wives,
she said, My daddy said anyone coming into my family is my
family. (Ms. Onyango, who lives in Boston, recently faced
deportation charges, but those orders have been stayed and she is
pursuing a green card.)
At holidays and celebrations, you get a whole lot of people who

are happy to be around family, Craig Robinson said. They happen
to be from different cultures, but the common thing is that they are
287
Creating Narratives

all family.

Like the inauguration, those celebrations draw on a happy

mishmash of traditions and histories. Take the Obamas 1992
wedding, which included Kenyan family in traditional dress, a
clothbinding ceremony in which the bride and grooms hands
were symbolically tied, and blues, jazz and classical music at the
reception (held at a cultural center that was once a country club
where black and Jewish Chicagoans were denied admission).White
House events may now take on some of the same feel.
Four years ago, when the family descended on Washington for Mr.
Obamas Senate swearingin, Mr. Ng strolled over to the White
House gates and took a picture of his theninfant daughter, Suhaila , [O]
gentle in Swahili sleeping in her stroller. , ,
[A] ,
Days before leaving Hawaii for the inauguration, Mr. Ng stared at ,
the picture and wondered how much had changed since it was
taken. After Tuesdays ceremony, he said, folks like me will have a , .[A/O] [A],
chance to be on the other side. [A]
,
[MISTRANS]
. , ,
[O]
.

Summary of findings: Translation shifts in this text mainly relate to the ontological storylines of B. Obama, either
creating or ontological narrative from scratch or intensifying an already existing one. The level of translator mediation in
this text seems elevated as the information transfer from the ST to the TT is not consistent, with previous texts from I
Kathimerini. On the contrary, a large portion of the ST has not been rendered at all in the TT, and ultimately the latter
constituted an abbreviated version of the former and not its exact mirror image. It is within this framework of extensive
deletions that translation shifts in the TT emerge. Also, certain mistranslations surface, which suggest challenge the
identity of translator/journalist commissioned with the translation task in the first place. A clear instance of
mistranslation lurks in the STTT pair: ST: The family that produced Barack and Michelle Obama is black and white and
Asian, Christian, Muslim and Jewish and TT:
, , , .Here, the translator makes a decoding error as he/she
misunderstood the syntactic significance of the verb produced and instead of assigning Obama and his wide Michelle as
the verb's indirect object it translates these as being the subject. The messianic conceptual narrative is also present and
created in the target text here, strengthening the findings presented in section (4.5.1.3). The addition (selective
appropriation) of the verb in the TT sentence for
the ST sentence Now the Obama family has flipped that around provides narrates the Obama family as if making an ad
hocish appearance in the US politics.

1988 465
288
Creating Narratives

H K/January 25,2009

From Books, New President Found Voice [O]
, , [C] [C]
In college, as he was getting involved in protests [C/D] ,
against the apartheid government in South Africa, Barack .
Obama noticed, he has written, that people had begun to . , ,
listen to my opinions. Words, the young Mr. Obama , ,
realized, had the power to transform: with the right , .
words everything could change South Africa, the lives of
ghetto kids just a few miles away, my own tenuous place in
the world.

Much has been made of Mr. Obamas eloquence his
ability to use words in his speeches to persuade and uplift
and inspire. But his appreciation of the magic of language
and his ardent love of reading have not only endowed him
with a rare ability to communicate his ideas to millions of
Americans while contextualizing complex ideas about race
and religion, they have also shaped his sense of who he is
and his apprehension of the world.
Mr. Obamas first book, Dreams From My Father (which , (

surely stands as the most evocative, lyrical and candid ,
autobiography written by a future president), suggests that [A/EMP] ), [O]
in his life he has turned to books as a way of acquiring [O]
insights and information from others as a means of [O] , , ,
breaking out of the bubble of selfhood and, more recently,
.
the bubble of power and fame.

He recalls that he read James Baldwin, Ralph Ellison,
Langston Hughes, Richard Wright and W. E. B. Du Bois when

he was an adolescent in an effort to come to terms with his
racial identity and that later, during an ascetic phase in

college, he immersed himself in the works of thinkers like
Nietzsche and St. Augustine in a spiritualintellectual search
to figure out what he truly believed.
As a boy growing up in Indonesia, Mr. Obama learned about [O] ,

the American civil rights movement through books his [M]
mother gave him. Later, after a stint as a fledgling . , [C]
community organizer in Chicago, he found inspiration in ,
Parting the Waters, the first installment of Taylor Branchs .
multivolume biography of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
, [O]
More recently, books have supplied Mr. Obama with some .
concrete ideas about governance: its been widely reported ,
that Team of Rivals, Doris Kearns Goodwins book about
Abraham Lincolns decision to include former opponents in [C]
his cabinet, informed Mr. Obamas decision to name his chief .
Democratic rival, Hillary Rodham Clinton, as Secretary of
State. In other cases, books about F. D. R.s first hundred
days in office and Steve Colls Ghost Wars, about
Afghanistan and the C.I.A., have provided useful background
material on some of the myriad challenges Mr. Obama will
face upon taking office.Mr. Obama tends to take a magpie

approach to reading ruminating upon writers ideas and
picking and choosing those that flesh out his vision of the

world or open promising new avenues of inquiry.
, ,
His predecessor, George W. Bush, in contrast, tended to race
,[A/EMPH]
through books in competitions with Karl Rove (who
( 2006 ,
recently boasted that he beat the president by reading 110
110 95 )
books to Mr. Bushs 95 in 2006), or passionately embrace an
.
authors thesis as an ide fixe. Mr. Bush and many of his
, ,
aides favored prescriptive books Natan Sharanskys

Case for Democracy, which pressed the case for promoting
,
democracy around the world, say, or Eliot A. Cohens
. ,
Supreme Command, which argued that political strategy
should drive military strategy. Mr. Obama, on the other [O]
hand, has tended to look to nonideological histories and [O]
philosophical works that address complex problems [O] [O]
without any easy solutions, like Reinhold Niebuhrs
289
Creating Narratives

writings, which emphasize the ambivalent nature of human .[M]
beings and the dangers of willful innocence and infallibility.

Whats more, Mr. Obamas love of fiction and poetry
Shakespeares plays, Herman Melvilles MobyDick and
Marilynne Robinsons Gilead are mentioned on his
Facebook page, along with the Bible, Lincolns collected
writings and Emersons Self Reliance has not only given
him a heightened awareness of language. It has also imbued
him with a tragic sense of history and a sense of the
ambiguities of the human condition quite unlike the
Manichean view of the world so often invoked by Mr. Bush.

Mr. Obama has said that he wrote very bad poetry in
college and his biographer David Mendell suggests that he

once harbored some thoughts of writing fiction as an
avocation. For that matter, Dreams From My Father

evinces an instinctive storytelling talent (which would later
serve the author well on the campaign trail) and that odd
combination of empathy and detachment gifted novelists
possess. In that memoir, Mr. Obama seamlessly managed to
convey points of view different from his own (a harbinger,
perhaps, of his promises to bridge partisan divides and his
ability to channel voters hopes and dreams) while
conjuring the many places he lived during his peripatetic
childhood. He is at once the solitary outsider who learns to
stop pressing his nose to the glass and the coolly omniscient
observer providing us with a choral view of his past.
As Baldwin once observed, language is both a political

instrument, means, and proof of power, and the most vivid
and crucial key to identity: it reveals the private identity,
and connects one with, or divorces one from, the larger,
public, or communal identity. For Mr. Obama, whose
improbable life story many voters regard as the
embodiment of the American Dream, identity and the
relationship between the personal and the public remain
crucial issues. Indeed, Dreams From My Father, written
before he entered politics, was both a searching
bildungsroman and an autobiographical quest to
understand his roots a quest in which he cast himself as
both a Telemachus in search of his father and an Odysseus
in search of a home.
,
Like Dreams From My Father, many of the novels Mr. (
Obama reportedly admires deal with the question of , ,
identity: Toni Morrisons Song of Solomon concerns a )
mans efforts to discover his origins and come to terms with
his roots; Doris Lessings Golden Notebook recounts a
womans struggles to articulate her own sense of self; and
Ellisons Invisible Man grapples with the difficulty of self
definition in a raceconscious America and the possibility of
transcendence. The poems of Elizabeth Alexander, whom

Mr. Obama chose as his inaugural poet, probe the
intersection between the private and the political, time

present and time past, while the verse of Derek Walcott (a
copy of whose collected poems was recently glimpsed in Mr.
Obamas hands) explores what it means to be a divided
child, caught on the margins of different cultures,
dislocated and rootless perhaps, but free to invent a new
self.

This notion of selfcreation is a deeply American one a
founding principle of this country, and a trope addressed by
such classic works as The Great Gatsby and it seems to
exert a strong hold on Mr. Obamas imagination.

T 2005, [O]
In a 2005 essay in Time magazine, he wrote of the humble
beginnings that he and Lincoln shared, adding that the 16th [CS] 16 ,
president reminded him of a larger, fundamental element ,
of American life the enduring belief that we can .
constantly remake ourselves to fit our larger dreams.

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Creating Narratives

Though some critics have taken Mr. Obama to task for self
consciously italicizing parallels between himself and
Lincoln, there are in fact a host of uncanny correspondences
between these two former Illinois state legislators who had
short stints in Congress under their belts before coming to
national prominence with speeches showcasing their
eloquence: two cool, selfcontained men, who managed to
stay calm and graceful under pressure; two stoics
embracing the virtues of moderation and balance; two
relatively new politicians who were initially criticized for
their lack of experience and for questioning an invasion of a
country that, in Lincolns words, was in no way molesting,
or menacing the U.S.
, ,
As Fred Kaplans illuminating new biography (Lincoln: The
[]
Biography of a Writer) makes clear, Lincoln, like Mr.

Obama, was a lifelong lover of books, indelibly shaped by his
.
reading most notably, in his case, the Bible and
Shakespeare which honed his poetic sense of language
and his philosophical view of the world. Both men employ a
densely allusive prose, richly embedded with the fruit of
their reading, and both use language as a tool by which to
explore and define themselves. Eventually in Lincolns case,
Mr. Kaplan notes, the tool, the toolmaker, and the tool user
became inseparably one. He became what his language
made him.
The incandescent power of Lincolns language, its resonance ,

and rhythmic cadences, as well as his ability to shift gears
between the magisterial and the downtoearth, has been a [P]
model for Mr. Obama who has said he frequently rereads
Lincoln for inspiration and so, too, have been the uses to [P] .
which Lincoln put his superior language skills: to goad

Americans to complete the unfinished work of the founders,
and to galvanize a nation reeling from hard times with a
new vision of reconciliation and hope

Summary of findings: In this text, as is the case with the previous one, manifests a considerable degree of mediation in
part of the TT newspaper, as significant portions of the ST have remained untranslated. This indicates, amongst others, a
tendency to create a coherent and concise story for the TT readership, free of difficult cultural references. Ontological
stories dominate the TT version and shifts aim to narrate B. Obama as someone who has been shaped from an early age to
adopt ethical and educational values of high standards versus his J. Bush who is portrayed e.g. as a superficial reader who
participates in reading races. Tactful linguistic choices of the ST stress a) Obamas descent ( in the place of ST
item beginnings), b) a narrative of camaraderie visvis his fellow Americans (instantiated through the item
in the place of the neutral Americans of the ST), c) a narrative of Obama as one having solid and unyielding
references to his past that surface though the linguistic choices of
, and d) the presence of the frame of power awarded to Obama in translation manifested linguistically in the TT
sentence , where the newspaper
utilizes the power reminiscent verb instead of to name that is included in the ST.
1470 565
291
Creating Narratives

H K/January 25,2009

Hands that picked cotton now pick presidents.
[]
It's a new day for the US

On the eve of Barack Obama's inauguration, America's ,
leading civil rights campaigner and a former presidential [] ,
candidate argues that the president has a unique
opportunity to lead the US out of war and recession and
into a new age of fairness and equality

Barack Obama's inauguration as America's first black
president will be a magnifient moment in the decades
long race for civil rights, both in America and around the
world. For so many, his victory represents hope against [P] [CS]
cynicism. Expectation rides high for his success in leading , , .
us out of global war and recession. People trust him to ,
restore the democratic values of America. He symbolises [M].
redemption in the face of a sordid past. It's the dawning of , .
a new era.
. ,
. .
On Tuesday, Barack will stand on many famous shoulders ,

Mahatma Gandhi, Dr Martin Luther King and Nelson , [P/A] ,
Mandela but also the millions of nameless, faceless ,
people who made his victory possible. From villages in , [C].
Kenya to neighbourhoods in Kansas, his inauguration will , ,
be celebrated. It is a victory that reflects the times and .
gives inspiration to the times. Barack's election is the .
expression of the idea of a grand, multiracial gathering. [P] .
This coalition believed that together we could win what , [C]
separately we could not. The figures are astonishing. On 4 95% , 75%
November last year, the coalition included 95% of the 75% . , ,
AfricanAmerican vote, twothirds of the Latino vote, two , ,
thirds of the youth vote. Barack won huge majorities .
among Asian Americans, Native Americans and among
Jewish voters and ArabAmerican voters. There were big
wins among union voters, gay and lesbian voters, single
women and "secular" voters.
[A/REFRAMING]
This victory took decades. It could not have happened in
an earlier America; certainly not before 1954, when the [A/EMPH].
wall of legal segregation kept us divided, ignorant and ,
fearful. Think of the black veterans coming home from the 1954, []
second world war, successfully demanding the integration , .
of the armed forces. Or the 1954 Brown vs Board of , [CS]
Education case that finally ended centuries of legal
segregation. Or Rosa Parks in 1955 refusing to go to the .[]
back of the bus. Or Dr King emerging to lead the
Montgomery bus boycott. Or the Little Rock Nine 1954,
breaking through the walls of school segregation in 1957. ,
Or Dr King rallying millions on the steps of Washington 1955
DC, demanding jobs and healthcare, a "dream" for all
America in 1963, which led to the passage of the Civil . ,
Rights Act. Or the Voting Rights Act in 1965. My rainbow [P/A]
presidential campaigns of 1984 and 1988 were a link in 1957 ,
this unbroken chain. Hands that once picked cotton now
pick presidents. It's a new day and a new way for 1963.
America. 1984 1988
. ,
The US is maturing, changing for the better as we seek to .
fulfil our highest ideals of equality, freedom and . , ,
democracy. Old walls of segregation, division and ,
ignorance are being replaced by bridges built on hope and . ,
unity as people of all creeds, colours and backgrounds
accomplish more by doing things together. In this sense, . [A/EMPH]
Barack's victory is a truly redemptive moment.Dr King
would have celebrated Barack's victory. And just as surely .
he would have had us focus on finishing the unfinished
business. Dr King's last effort was to stand with garbage
workers in Memphis fighting for dignity and a union, and
to support the Poor People's Campaign, fighting to end a
war abroad (in Vietnam) and to end poverty at home.
292
Creating Narratives

Forty years after his death, we are still facing these

challenges; when Barack enters the Oval Office, the top
two issues on his desk will be to end the war in Iraq and
end the economic crisis at home.On Tuesday, it will be
high noon in our politics, yet it is midnight in our
economy. We and I mean all of us around the world are
embroiled in the worst economic crisis since the Great
Depression and there's no end in sight. The unbridled,
unregulated, unchecked greed and lust for profits
typifying industrial capitalism of the early 1900s has
found its twin in modernday financial capitalism. In the
US, we have a financial system choking on its own
excesses. Healthcare is broken. There's unaddressed and
catastrophic climate change. Gilded age inequality and
rising poverty abound. Infrastructure is collapsing. The
global economic strategy has failed. In the US, we export
jobs, manufacturing and capital while drugs and guns
come into our communities. The facts are daunting: 38
million people live in poverty, almost 13% of the
population in the wealthiest nation on Earth. Thirty per
cent of AfricanAmerican children are "officially" poor.
Some 45.7 million people are without health insurance.
We have globalised capital without globalising human
rights, workers' rights, children's rights or economic
rights. More than one million Americans have lost their
jobs in the last two months. It's a moral disgrace and it's
time for a change. It's time to wage a new war on poverty
here in the US and around the globe. I know you suffer
similar problems.
[P]
Our nation, and indeed the world, needs a Franklin
,
Roosevelt New Deal moment a Lyndon Johnson war on
1930.
poverty moment where big ideas lead to big action.
.
Barack now represents that moment for our time in
history. Amid this current global and domestic economic .[P]
crisis comes new opportunity to, as Dr King prophesied
and urged, "redeem the soul of America". In America, we [A].
must cultivate our promised land. Barack's economic
recovery plan must water the roots at the bottom, not just , ,
the leaves at the top. His plan is one that must develop , ,
our communities, rebuild our cities, educate our children, ,
provide healthcare for all, feed the hungry, shelter the [C].
homeless, protect the air we breathe and the environment , , [P].
in which we live and seek justice. We have to invest to .
make these changes. We cannot taxcut our way out of
this crisis.
Ordinary Americans want nothing more than

"Equanomics", which has at its heart fairness, racial , Equanomics.
equality and economic opportunity. Last summer, each of .
our countries watched our athletes compete in the Beijing
Olympics and we both saw our share of gold and silver
medals. The athletes succeeded because the playing field
was level. The 100 metres sprint was 100 metres long for
everyone. When the playing field is even on the economic
front, and the rules are public and the goals are clear, we
all have the opportunity to win. There is not a talent
deficit, there is a opportunity gap. Each of us needs a fair
chance at economic success.
, , .
This is not a retreat from work.
.
The promised land is not a resort spa or an endless .
vacation, it is a land of tough challenges and new ,
opportunity. So now, as Barack puts his hand on the Bible .
and makes his oath, it is not a time to rest. It's a time for
redemption and redevelopment. There is new hope that
an Obama administration will harness people power to
[A/M/REFRAMING]
rebuild bottom up and brick by brick the
infrastructure, laying the foundation to close the
inequality gaps and challenge poverty. Our quest is for
Equanomics in this new era.
Everyone has to be involved. That is what our coalition is .

about. Most poor Americans are not black. They are white, [P] .
. , .
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Creating Narratives

female and/or young. They are the working poor, the , , .
unemployed poor, the unskilled poor. They are the .
veterans who come home mentally disturbed. The new
economic recovery plan must bridge this canyon between .
rich and poor.
.
Barack will face myriad challenges. Hopes are high that he
,
will chart a new course for America's foreign policy and

role in the world; that he will reverse the policy of pre
emptive military strikes, of unilateral approach, of , [M/A]
violating international law under the guise of fighting the ,
war on terrorism. Hopes are high that the rhetoric of ,
division and fear will give way to meaningful initiatives to .
open up dialogue and rebuild alliances. Hopes are high ,
that Barack will end the war in Iraq and bring our troops [C] [M/A]
home, that he will pursue peaceful negotiations and an [C] .
end to the violence in the Middle East so that a Palestinian
state and Israel may coexist.It's high time for the US to ,
restore its international reputation, become once more a , [C/]
nation that leads through its values of democracy and .
freedom rather than through its military might. Around ,
the globe, people and governments are rallying to Barack .
and it's because he does not view the world through a

keyhole.So when Barack raises his hand and takes the
44 , :
oath as president, he will inherit both the garden and the
,
desert: the promised land and the bleak challenges that lie
. ,
ahead. For me, it will be a moment of unbridled joy at the

achievements of the campaign for civil rights. And if it can
[M]. ,
be done in the United States, why not in France, why not
, ,
in the UK, why not elsewhere? Walls that once limited
; ,
human potential based on race and gender are coming
,
down everywhere.20 January 2009 will be a grand
. 20 2009 .
celebration. For Americans, it will be a time to reflect on
,
our troubled past and to project new remedies to the

problems that face us. We'll put on our dancing shoes on
Tuesday and our running shoes on Wednesday to .[P]
continue the civil rights race. There's still unfinished
business. So at this great moment of history, I will be . , ,
mindful of the journey that we have been on and also the
journey that we still have to take. Hope is in the air and .
help is on the way. Keep hope alive. .[P] .

[C] . .

Summary of findings: Concepts and frames that emerge in this Target Text, show a distribution of conceptual, public and
master narratives. Specific lexical choices coupled with additions in the TT gave rise to specific conceptual frames in
relation to B. Obamas identity and to the expectations of the electoral body in terms of him. An interesting conceptual
frame that urges readers to interpret the TT differently in relation to the ST is the socalled FACILITATOR frame,
narrating B. Obama as someone who ensures a better situation in the Middle East. The lexical choice in the
sentence ,
,
, to translate the ST Hopes are high that Barack will end the war in Iraq and bring our troops home, that he will
pursue peaceful negotiations and an end to the violence in the Middle East so that a Palestinian state and Israel may coexist,
promotes the vision of B. Obama as facilitator. Lexical choices thus are a clear and sometimes powerful cue signifying an
underlying frame (Pan & Kosicki, 1993:63). The main thematic thread that transcends the text relies on the almost
nostalgic comparison of a tough past for USA imbued in racial separation and a future that is full of hope after the
Inauguration of B. Obama. The later henceforth is represented in the TT as someone from whom we await to take
initiative (TT: ) while the ST stirs the focus towards the public that
needs to project new remedies to the problems that face us.

1606 1095
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Creating Narratives

H K/January 25,2009

The age of responsibility [M]

WASHINGTON President Obama made a responsible
,
speech for a new era of responsibility that is set to include
[C]. [A]
a responsible withdrawal from Iraq. Standing at the west
front of the Capitol, he was not at his most uplifting, nor his ,
most inspiring, as he called in sober tones for a new spirit ,
of service that will renew America and, through it, the .
world.I sat 30 feet away and felt stirred but not transported.
Perhaps that was the point. Theres too much work to do for
high rhetorical flourish.
, .
The day was bright but freezing. The trombones of the .
Marine Band glinted in the unforgiving light. The sun , .
proceeded in its slow arc to noon, yet it seemed to grow
colder, as if nature itself were stilled.
A shivering crowd of more than one million stretched back

across the National Mall toward the Lincoln Memorial. But
the Great Liberator, freer of slaves in a terrible war, was
passed over in silence. So, too, was the throng.

The symbols, like the national catharsis, could speak for
themselves, just as the 21gun salute to an AfricanAmerican , , ,
president contained its own eloquence. This was a spare 21 [O]
inaugural speech, devoid of allusion to setting, almost . ,
disembodied.Still, there were powerful phrases and signals ,
that together amounted to an attempt to reimagine a nation .
in crisis.
,
The word peace appeared four times, as in America must [A/P] .
play its role in ushering in a new era of peace. His ,
predecessor did not like the word peace, which somehow . .
smacked to him of weakness. He rarely used it.
[M] ,
But engaged in two wars, its Treasury bare, the United , .
States has a pressing strategic interest in furthering peace [MISTRANS/A]
where it can. Hence Obamas little phrase to the Muslim , :
world that should echo in Tehran: We will extend a hand if , .
you are willing to unclench your fist.

The United States was defined anew as a nation of , .
Christians and Muslims, Jews and Hindus and [EMPH]
nonbelievers. A kind of Christian assumption has inhabited ,
American politics these past eight years from the ex ,
presidents bornagain hot line to God, through his ,
unfortunate talk of a crusade, to his fundamentalist
. [A]
positions on issues like stemcell research. Obamas allusion
,
to atheists returned religion to its proper station, as a
.
personal choice rather than political credo.

,

As for speaking of Muslims before Americas more , 11 .
numerous Jews, this seemed an appropriate political
gesture after the many slights since 9/11 toward Americas

Muslim community.

Another little phrase We will restore science to its
rightful place also appeared aimed at halting the [M]
religious invasion of public life and circumscribing the anti [M]
Darwinian lunacy of the extreme Christian right. .
As the Dow plunged another 400 points, or more than 4

percent, Obama spoke in far more guarded terms about the
free market than is typical from an American leader. Nor is
295
Creating Narratives

the question before us whether the market is a force for

good or ill, he said, calling for a watchful eye over the
marketplace.

This is an admission of facts: a huge state intervention has
occurred and an $825 billion stimulus package of tax cuts
and public works projects is coming. But it was also a signal
that a far less ideological United States will emerge under
Obama, one that will speak less of a global mission to spread
liberty, democracy and free markets. Call it the new
American humility.

Obama vowed to defeat those who seek to advance their , [P] .
aims by inducing terror. Note how terror has shifted here
from an amorphous jihadist ideology the war on terror
to an emotion (what you feel when a suicide bomber
detonates himself). We are not going to hear the phrase
global war on terror, or its awful GWOT acronym, too
often, if at all, from the Obama administration. There is no
point flattering Americas adversaries by inflating their vile
methods into an ideology and then declaring an unwinnable
war against it.America is returning to its Constitution: We
reject as false the choice between our safety and our ideals.
With that little sentence, Obama bade farewell to renditions,
torture, the trampling of habeas corpus, Guantnamo and
other stains on the nations conscience. This work will not
be complete until Guantnamo is closed and those wrongly

imprisoned, some for more than five years, are
compensated.The personal convictions of a constitutional

lawyer are allied to strategy here: Americas ideals remain
among the most powerful tools in its diplomatic arsenal. As
Obama said, Our power alone cannot protect us; nor does it
entitle us to do as we please. Rather, our security
emanates from the justness of our cause, the force of our
example, the tempering qualities of humility and
restraint.Responsibility, restraint, humility, peace: this is
not the habitual vocabulary of Americas heroic narrative. It
constitutes a new lexicon of American power. Are
Americans ready to die for responsibility? Perhaps not, but
they may well seek dialogue in its name. The world has
changed and we must change with it, Obama said. Even
change has changed now: no longer a clarion call, it is a
responsibility.

Summary of findings: Although, the main theme of the text seems to be the Inauguration of B. Obama judging from the
texts headline, yet translation shifts reveal an anchoring and creation of narratives in the TT. Lexical variation and
unforced selection of lexical units in the TT ultimately create a different image in relation to that painted in the ST. For
example the ST: Obama vowed to defeat those who seek to advance their aims by inducing terror, has been translated as
, . While
the ST verb induce carries a cause and effect relation and could be faithfully accommodated in the TT as , the
TT serves a different representation by introducing the lexicalization (invoking terror), that best translates
as appeal to something and seeking justification and excuse for one's actions.

845 385
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Creating Narratives

The Independent/February 23, 2008
/February 24, 2008
Obama: The Hawaii years
H [O/A]
The Democrat frontrunner spent his teens in Hawaii, the ,
Pineapple state which endorsed his candidacy for the White
House this week. But it wasn't all about surfing and high
achieving. David Usborne reports
Bob is fretting. The small steel thermometer he has dipped
into the smoking oil is telling him it's too hot to start
cooking the small blobs of batter that will soon be
malasadas. Burned malasadas the name Portuguese
immigrants to Hawaii gave to what are essentially
doughnuts don't taste so good.
His stall in Kapiolani Park on the edge of Waikiki soon

attracts a long queue of takers. But it is not just a good
appetite that is drawing them. Everyone in this corner of the
park this morning has come for another reason: to show
support for a local boy who may be about to do something
extraordinary; win the Democratic Party's nomination to be
the first black (and first surfer) American President.
"Hot Obamasadas!" exclaim two large signs strung over the

table where Bob is working. A lawn sign is planted in the
ground next to him with a lifesized blackandwhite
headshot of a middleaged AfricanAmerican guy with
familiar big ears and wide smile. A flower lei is hung around
the photograph above the words, written in bright feltpen
colours, "Hawaii's Native Son".
The remarkable early narrative of Obama's life the child of [A]

a white woman from Kansas and a Kenyan father who
abandoned the family when the boy was just two mostly ,
played out here in the Pineapple State, save for four years [O/A] ,[O]
between the ages of six and 10 in Indonesia. Hawaii imbued
in Obama the quality that may be the most compelling of his
candidacy. His promise to transcend racial and social .
differences. Few places better qualify as a true melting pot .
than Hawaii, its streets still teaming with a cosmopolitan , , ,
mix of whites, Asians, Chinese, Japanese and (a few) blacks. () .
"The opportunity that Hawaii offered to experience a
variety of cultures in a climate of mutual respect became
an integral part of my world view," Obama himself wrote in 1999 ,
the 1999 issue of the newsletter published by the elite .
Punahou School, where he was a pupil from the age of 10 ,
until college. Or as the US representative Neil Hargreaves, a :
close friend of Obama's parents, more pithily put it while
[A] ,
addressing the crowd of 100 supporters here in Kapiolani
.
Park: "Our diversity defines us, rather than divides us."

Obama's attachment to the archipelago survives. His surfing ,[O] .

and fishspearing days may be done, but he spends most ,
Christmases here. If he becomes President, Waikiki could be .
his Crawford, Texas. (Which would make for a tanned but , ,
sadly jetlagged White House press corps.) Yet not . ,
everything about Obama's formative years here ,[O]
particularly as one of only a few black students at Punahou, .
a cradle of academic privilege that led him to a financial , ,
scholarship were glorious. It's maybe why "Obamasada"
Bob resists being interviewed in any detail about his .
memories of the young Obama, even though they were .
friends who loved shooting hoops on the basketball courts
on the school campus. "I have been let down by the press,"
he says, refusing to reveal his last name.
,
"We've been told not to talk to reporters," volunteers John
Cheever, himself an old boy of Punahou and now a sociology . ,
teacher there. "He wasn't that much of a distinguished , ,
student but everyone will tell you he was a good guy, very .
popular, someone who was always comfortable with the
other kids."Cheever knows though that there are some not
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Creating Narratives

so comfortable memories for Obama from his Punahou . [O]
years, the kind of stuff that gets the media digging. In ,
searching for the 'real' younger Barack Obama or, as they ,
used to call him at school, "Barry O'Bomber" because of his , .
elegant hook shots on the basketball courts the murk is
more likely to be about drugs, including marijuana and
cocaine, and slipping grades.
.
Over a decade ago, however, Obama did something out of ,
the ordinary. Fresh out of Harvard Law School, he took time
off to write a book about his youth here, in Indonesia and ,
at colleges both in California and in New York. He was not , .
coy. What he revealed in Dreams From My Father about his . "Dreams of My Father"
Punahou years was greeted by many who knew him here ( )
with some shock. He wrote about the pain of reconciling the .
mythology that was spun around his father with the reality
that he had been ditched by him, about his struggles of self
identity as a black boy entering a school where one of his .
first experiences was being asked by another student if his
father "ate people". He wrote about the drugs too. He . . ,
recalled, for instance, standing in the freezer room of
grocery shop with a friend, Micky "my potential initiator" " .
and watching as he "pulled out the needle and the tubing" . .
before injecting. Obama described a feeling of panic . .
witnessing this. He did not partake. But there was, before he :
pulled himself out of it, a period of pot and then cocaine. .
"Junkie. Pothead. That's where I'd been headed: the final ".
fatal role of the young wouldbe black man. Except the highs
hadn't been about that, me trying to prove what a down
brother I was. Not by then, anyway. I got high for just the
opposite effect, something that could push questions of who .
I was out of my mind, something that could flatten out the . ,
landscapes of my heart, blur the edges of my memory." .
, "".
School press officer Laurel Husain, my guide around the
stately campus and once a Punahou student herself,
confirms what others have said: that none of Obama's .
teachers, many of whom are still teaching, knew of the :
turmoil he suffered. "They only found out from reading the , ,
book and were surprised. They did not see it. He was .
outgoing and friendly and wellliked and wasn't someone . .
sticking with cliques." As for the experimenting with drugs . ,[D/C]
as a student there, she points out that the Seventies were a 1970 .
particular time. "It would have been odd if he hadn't." .
,
Lawrence Tavares played with Obama on the school's .
basketball team, which went on to win the state . , .
championships. Now an inheritance planner at the First .
Bank of Hawaii, he too was taken aback by the book, he
confesses. "He just seemed a normal person," he said over
the weekend. "We didn't notice much, I guess. At school, he
just seemed one of the boys."
A boy, by all accounts, who when not in class dribbled a

basketball constantly and went to practise with pals on the
courts whenever he had the chance.
Obama was a jock, who, unusually, also cut something of a

literary figure on campus. Among poems submitted to the
school magazine, one began: "I saw an old forgotten
man/On an old, forgotten road". The man, seemingly a
reference to his grandfather is "staggering and numb" but
finally "pulls out forgotten dignity from under his flaking
coat/ And walks a straight line along the crooked world".
But what of the book, published in 1995? Was it wise of

Obama to write so candidly of his youthful indiscretions and
internal struggles? Maya SoetoroNg, his halfsister and 16
years his junior, who had been campaigning for him across
the Aloha islands, has no doubts. "I think he couldn't be a
politician if he couldn't be honest about who is and has
been," she said afterwards. "He wouldn't be able to do it.
Part of what makes him a leader is his courage. He is glad he
wrote it."
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Creating Narratives

Obama has also written that the restless ambition that
propelled him into the US Senate and his quest for the
presidency first struck him after leaving Hawaii, notably
while at Columbia University in New York. But Cheever, the
teacher, says Punahou may also have had a lot to do with it.
"The kids at the school see how others who graduated from
it did exceptional things. And they get to think, 'I am kind of
not doing anything'." (Graduates include the AOL founder
Steven Case and an astronaut.) Meanwhile, the unusual
challenges that the young Obama faced, he adds, surely also
helped form him.
Cheever, who is wearing a "Buff and Blue for Obama" badge

(the colours of Punahou) is talking not just about Obama's
struggles over his mixed race but also the shortfalls of his
home life. His father had vanished and his mother, Ann, was
still mostly absent, leaving her parents, Stanley and
Madelyn, to raise her son in their small Honolulu apartment
while she remained in Indonesia. Madelyn still lives in the
home, though at 84 years old is frail and has refused all
interviews. "Having a single mother and being raised by
your grandparents, that has to give a certain resiliency, the
power to overcome," he suggests.
But then there were the influences of his parents

themselves. Few knew them as well as Neil Abercrombie,
who, in particular, has memories of Obama's father, also
named Barack, that go much beyond the shorthand of his
once being a goatherd in his native Kenya. He came to study
in Hawaii after being singled out to help Kenya shed its
colonial past. At university he met Ann (who died of cancer
in 1995)."His father was truly a force of nature and a
brilliant intellectual," Abercrombie offers. "The intellectual
apple didn't fall far from the tree." Just as his father was
sometimes fiery, so his mother, Ann, he added, was calm and
contemplative. "He has the voice of his mother."
But Abercrombie, like so many of his supporters here, soon
returns to the multicultural, multiethnic influences of the
islands of his teenage years and the lessons of tolerance
they taught him. "The culture of Hawaii, the values of
Hawaii, these are things that shaped the foundations of his
life.

Summary of findings: Ontological narratives seem to prevail in this text and are instantiated by means of lexical
additions, additions to provide emphasis to the experiences that transcend Obamas life story in Hawaii. Namely, in the
following example:
,
, (ST: The remarkable early narrative of Obama's life the child of a white woman from Kansas
and a Kenyan father who abandoned the family when the boy was just two mostly played out here in the Pineapple State),
the storyline of B. Obama is emphasised in the beginning of the sentence by means of the addition . Later on the
sentence takes a sentimental turn since it translates the ST item the boy, as , making the reference more
personal. There also seems to be an orientation of the TT towards awarding emphasis to ST clauses in relation to B.
Obama's ontological narrativity or in order to award significance to a value/ideology to which B. Obama is affiliated. This
is evident in the TT sentence ,
: , , where
the part gives emphasis to diversity as a value to which B. Obama subscribes.

1663 808
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Creating Narratives

The Independent/August 6,2008
/August 17,2008

Cool guy, Barack. But could he be too cool for US [M]
voters?
The Democrat candidate can come across as cerebral and

fastidious, even supercilious ,
[A/RE
FRAMING]
[A]
We still have three months to go before Americans
[P]
cast a vote in one of the most important Presidential elections of
.
the modern era. But a gnawing unease assails Democrats across
the land. Why isn't Barack doing better? Everything, after all, is [P]
running their way. Polls show Democrats with a double digit lead . ;
over Republicans in terms of basic support. It would be .
astonishing if Obama's party did not make big gains in both the
Senate and House this autumn, in the congressional elections on .
the presidential undercard.If ever circumstances were propitious
to a Democratic White House landslide, it is this year: huge ,
economic insecurity, an unpopular war and an even more .
unpopular president, coupled with a philosophical shift away : ,
from the "markets know best[S]", deregulatory approach, that
marked the Republican era now approaching its end. Big
government is back in fashion. [S]
. .
The candidate, moreover, is fresh from a foreign tour that [C]

banished many doubts about Obama's command of foreign
policy. He made no gaffes indeed his Iraq withdrawal strategy .
was endorsed by prime minister Maliki himself. Passing a crucial
test, he looked and spoke like a president. And yet, despite .
everything, he leads John McCain in the polls by a whisker, if at [C]
all. Key swing states Ohio, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Florida, for . ,
instance are a tossup. And it's not as if McCain has been . ..,
playing a blinder. Yes, he's run a couple of effective ads, one , , , .
portraying Obama as a vacuous celebrity like Britney Spears and
Paris Hilton, the other a webonly production that mocks Obama . ,
as "The One" (as in messiah). McCain has also extracted more
political mileage, so to speak, from soaring petrol prices. But he .
remains a listless speaker, who sets no audiences on fire. More
than once, he's made slips that have you wondering about his .
greatest weakness, his age. .

: .

So what is happening? A clue to the answer came last week. ; ,
Obama was on Capitol Hill, at a closed meeting with senior , ,
Democrats in the House. He told them, according to accounts
afterwards, that the success of his trip had proved he was the US
leader that a world yearning to reembrace America was waiting . .
for.That's probably true. But such sentiments do not go down ,
well out in the heartland of his own country not, for instance, .., arleyDavidson
among the tens of thousands of HarleyDavidson devotees .
gathered for the annual bikers' jamboree in Sturgis, South
Dakota, whom McCain went courting on Monday evening.

At one level, the competing images tap into that hoary old dictum [CS]
about US presidential elections (one no less true for being hoary) [A]
that, all other things being equal, Americans tend to vote for the : ,
"regular guy", the candidate they'd rather have a beer or a coffee
, [P] ,
with. Measured by this standard, McCain versus Obama is
.
currently no contest. For all his recent conversion to Republican
.
orthodoxy, in the public mind the Arizona senator is still the
congenial maverick, gossipy and indiscreet, ruled by his heart, [P]
not his head.For that reason too, the press still love him, even as , ,
it wearies of its once unquestioning love affair with Obama, [C] .
complaining about the latter's hypercontrolling campaign staff, .
and the lack of access to the candidate. Much the same goes for
the legions of poorer white Democrats who once voted for [P]
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Creating Narratives

Hillary and still can't come to terms with the man who defeated .
her.

Obama is cool, maybe too cool. To the public as well as the media,
he can come across as cerebral and fastidious, even supercilious. cool, cool. [P]
As candidates must, he braves pancake houses and diners. But he
visibly disdains fast food and in a land where obesity is king , . [CS]
there is, according to his doctor, not an ounce of excess body fat , ,
on his body. "Too fit to be President?" ran the Wall Street Journal ,
headline. The question was by no means facetious. However . ;
famous his face, however much has been written about him, Wall Street Journal.
Obama remains largely a mystery. His life narrative is simply too . ,
exotic, too far from the mainstream. ,
. ,
However, if presidential campaigns seem to go on for ever, their .
very length has the redeeming virtue of allowing such
unfamiliarity to be removed. That is why these final three
months of the campaign are so important for Obama.

But Democrats shouldn't worry too much. This is a watershed
election, akin to 1932 which ushered in a Democratic era, and .
1980, when Ronald Reagan's victory opened the conservative era , 1932
that is now ending. On that occasion, Reagan and Carter were , 1980,
neck and neck until late in the day. Finally, though, the country
decided it could trust Reagan, and a Republican landslide .
followed. The same can happen this time for the Democrats and
Obama.

Summary of findings: The general textual intend carried over through translation from the ST is to narrate the race that
is played out on various levels in relation to the Presidential Elections, between the Democrat candidate B. Obama and his
Republican opponent J. Mc. Cain. Mediation of the newspaper starts early on, more specifically from the headline, where
the ST item: Cool guy, Barack. But could he be too cool for US voters? is rendered in the TT as
highlighting the race frame elaborated in translation. While the ST invokes doubt and questions to the ST
readers as it includes a rhetorical question, the TT creates an image that leaves no room for contestation. Also the ST
emphasizes the role of public opinion as it thematizes it such as in the sentences a)
or b) ,
, (ST: For all his recent conversion to Republican
orthodoxy, in the public mind the Arizona senator is still the congenial maverick, gossipy and indiscreet, ruled by his heart,
not his head).The obvious interpretation behind this thematization pattern is that there is an expectation in respect to the
TT audience to give importance to the public opinion, particularly before electoral times.
806 682

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Creating Narratives

The Guardian/August 10,2008 /August 12,2008

If the Democrats want Obama to win, they have to [M]
get rough
Obama may dislike mudslinging, but he needs his people to [C] ,

paint John McCain as nothing more than a slightly older
Bush.

This week Barack Obama is enjoying a brief respite from the
campaign madhouse on the beaches of Hawaii. But the , [C]
madness itself never pauses, of course. As Obama departed ,
for the state where he grew up, the Republican Party sent . , .
him off with a 'Travel Guide' mocking the upscale prep ,[O] ,
school Obama attended. A McCain campaign supporter ,
marvelled that Obama would be 'swimming' while , .
Americans grappled with high gas prices. And McCain sent
him off with a new round of attack ads focusing on Obama's ,
allegedly Paris Hiltonesque celebrity glow. 'Life in the . , [P]
spotlight must be grand,' explains one. 'But for the rest of us, , : ,
times are tough.' [CS] ,
. , .

,
Petty and churlish, perhaps, but a growing number of
Democrats suspect that relentless attacks by McCain and the
Republican party may be taking a toll on Obama. Indeed, . [CS]
despite the political tailwinds at Obama's back, and the ,
smooth execution of his vaunted overseas tour last month, , [P]
he maintains a conspicuously modest lead over his .
Republican rival. And even as the Obama brand
underperforms, the McCain brand is overperforming: The
Arizona senator is faring much better than one would
reasonably expect of a determined Iraq war supporter and

faithful ally of George Bush in the ugly sunset of the post
9/11 Republican era. When Obama and McCain head to

their parties' conventions this month, Obama must find a
way to change that dynamic, or risk seeing his fragile lead

slip away.

Ever since he dispatched Hillary Clinton, Obama has held
that steady but slim advantage over McCain. According to
the running average of major presidential polls, Obama now
leads McCain by 3.6 points. That is nothing to sneer at. , 3,6
Remember: George W Bush actually lost the popular vote in .
2000 and still took the presidency after winning more
electoral votes than Al Gore (with some help from the US
Supreme Court). And by most counts Obama enjoys a
substantial edge in the statebystate electoral count. He is,
by any measure, winning.

Yet as seen in another context the overall mood of the
electorate Obama's lead is decidedly underwhelming. , , ,
Asked to state their generic preference for Congressional ,
candidates, voters say they prefer Democrats to Republicans . , [C]
by a roughly 10point margin. In other words, Obama is , .
lagging behind his party's overall brand by about seven
points.
McCain, by contrast, runs ahead of his fellow Republicans by , , ,[P]

about five points. This most unusual situation gives . ,
Republicans an improbable glimmer of hope at a time when , ,
their party name is almost synonymous with incompetence
and corruption. .
Most striking, perhaps, is the gulf between how voters see [A/REFRAMING]
McCain and the Republican party's titular leader, Bush. The
President's approval ratings are now hovering just below 30
per cent, yet polls show McCain drawing an average of 43
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Creating Narratives

per cent.

This is too close for comfort. Conditions in Iraq are steadily
.
improving. The US economy may have hit bottom, and with
,
oil and gas prices dropping and even the dollar inching back

up, it's possible voter bitterness towards Republicans will

subside enough to let McCain sneak into office.
[C]
How can this be? One reason involves the familiar forces
dragging at Obama. He is relatively young and ;
inexperienced and, as you may have noticed, darkskinned
and bears a name not likely to be found in many small , ...
townAmerica phone books.
[A],
Less discussed are the reasons why McCain is faring so .
much better than his party. The answer lies in McCain's .
public identity. It is premised on his reputation as a ,[C] [EMPHJ
different kind of Republican a 'maverick', an independent [M] .
crusader willing to challenge his own party on principled 1990,
grounds. McCain deservedly earned this reputation in the ,
late '90s, when he battled Republican leaders on issues such
as tobacco regulation and campaign finance reform; and . ,
during his 2000 campaign, when he railed against Wall 2000,
Street and religiousright leaders. McCain once even cast .
himself as Luke Skywalker battling through the Death Star
his party's corrupt establishment.
But to win the Republican nomination, McCain has had to [P] [C]
recast his identity. He has embraced Bush's enormous tax .
cuts, which he once opposed. He has dropped his critiques , .
of religious leaders such as Jerry Falwell. He has largely .
abandoned his anticorporate rhetoric. On the Iraq war .
McCain has expressed only tactical differences with the , .
President. And during the 2004 campaign, McCain was a 2004,
crucial supporter of Bush. As McCain himself recently put it: .
'On the transcendent issues, the most important issues of
our day, I've been totally in agreement and support of
President Bush.'And yet many an American voter knows
little of this recent history. An admiring press spent far ,
more time building up McCain's image as an independent .
maverick than it has explaining his new Politburo persona.
. ,
Some Americans may simply admire McCain's past as a
Vietnam veteran and prisoner of war who valiantly refused [P/A],
early release from captivity. But to date the Democrats have . [A/CS]
been far too delicate about spotlighting McCain's political ,
mythology. To be fair, they have been preoccupied with the .
reasonable goal of introducing their unconventional
candidate to middle America. There was the television ad
noting Obama's white maternal family; the recent
recalibrations on issues such as domestic wiretapping and

gun control; and the big 'patriotism' speech assuring voters
(who may have seen otherwise on the internet) that, yes,
Obama loves America. [A/REFRAMING]
The Democratic national convention in Denver at the end of , ,

August is the moment to change this tone once and for all. , ,
As Jonathan Chait recently noted in the Los Angeles Times, .
John Kerry's team erred in 2004 by focusing his party's
convention almost exclusively around their candidate
without targeting Bush's weaknesses. While they command
America's attention in Denver, the Democrats should
hammer McCain with a new degree of vigour. The Obama
campaign finally began that process last week, with a pair of
negative ads tying McCain to Bush. But the counterattack
must be intensified. The goal must be to convince voters
that McCain really is just like any other Republican part of , .
the 30 per cent ghetto with Bush. During one debate with
Hillary Clinton, Obama memorably cracked that McCain's , ,
'Straight Talk Express' campaign bus had lost its wheels. .
This clever formulation should be a Democratic mantra.
They need to drive home that McCain is in line with his .
party on tax rates for the wealthy, on the size of , ,
government, on war in Iraq. That he has described the social .
security system as a 'disgrace', and supports a highly

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Creating Narratives

unpopular Republican plan to privatise the system. And
that, although he has spoken out against the fraud and
corruption of recent years, he is part and parcel of the
machine that enabled his party's perversions.Obama and
company will have to walk a tricky line, however. Party
conventions should be generally upbeat and focused around
the candidate's best qualities. And Obama himself looks best
floating above the muddy scrum and extolling his politics of
hope. Much of the dirty work will have to be left to
surrogates other prominent Democrats who can twist the
knife into McCain, preferably with a smile. Bill and Hillary
Clinton are fine candidates never mind that they may be
secretly rooting for Obama's defeat this autumn. (Hillary
2012!) Or perhaps members of the Kennedy family, who will
command particular attention for the tragic reason of
Senator Ted Kennedy's brain cancer, can implore America to
see McCain for what he truly is.

This effort will have to continue past Denver, of course.
.
Obama's task will be complicated by the absence of a strong

attackdog infrastructure of the sort other recent

presidential candidates have enjoyed. He actively

discouraged the work of independent, largely unregulated

groups which, in 2004, turned huge campaign contributions

into notoriously harsh national advertising. But without
,
them providing air support, Obama's team has no choice but
.
to fight a nastier ground war on their own.Obama has been

in this position before. Late in 2007, pundits and supporters

complained that he was not waging a tough enough
, 2007
campaign against Hillary Clinton. He first counselled
[P] [C]
patience, then sharpened his tone, and the rest is history.
The difference is that Obama was trailing then and is leading .
now. He may be tempted to cruise along at a high altitude ,
particularly given his personal disdain for negative politics. . , .
But the fact is that he can't afford to. When Democrats
arrive in Denver two weeks from now, they should be ready ,
to throw a party. But they must also be ready to throw some .
heavy punches. , , ,
.

Summary of findings: Comparative analysis of the ST and TT above provides fruitful results in relation to the narrative
that are reflected / constructed. As was the case with the previous text, in this one as well, the headline offers a different
representation altogether. While the ST headline is mild in putting forward the meaning intended setting a condition for
Obamas win, the TT attempts to battleframe the story (lexical unit BT: battle) and awards a timecritical
nature to the event by propelled through the item (: The time has come). The timecritical aspect is
present in other section of the TT as well, p.ex. in the sentence ,
. compared to its ST counterpart
Less discussed are the reasons why McCain is faring so much better than his party. Secondly, the TT creates meaning and
adds to the positiveoverrepresentation of B.Obama in the TT environment by means of deleting information available in
the ST. For example the ST item unconventional, from the ST sentence To be fair, they have been preoccupied with the
reasonable goal of introducing their unconventional candidate to middle America, has been deleted in the TT counterpart:
,
.Finally the TT attempts to remove any negative representations or representations of defeat in relation to B.
Obama by depersonalizing sentences when it comes to negative polls. For example the newspaper in the TT sentence:
, , selects the impersonal
item , while the ST counterpart links directly the negative polls to Obama himself: In other words, Obama is
lagging behind his party's overall brand by about seven points.
1449 861
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The Independent/August 28,2008 /August 31,2008
So is Obama the saviour of his party? [M]
Finally, the warm ups are over Ted Kennedy and his [EVALUATION],
farewell call to arms, the Clintons and the latest episode of ,
America's favourite political psychodrama. Even the
uncertainty about whether the engaging but irredeemably .
prolix Joe Biden can keep control of the word count will
have been resolved when this article appears. Here in ,
Denver, we've at last got around to the one thing that .
matters. Barack Obama.

Given the breathless build up that precedes them, and the
no less breathless analysis that follows them, you might
think convention speeches can decide presidential elections.
Almost always, however, they are instantly forgotten. But
the speech Obama delivers tonight may be the exception. An
angst hangs over the gathered representatives of the . :
Democratic party, as seemingly tangible as the Rocky
Mountains etched on the city's western horizon. Their [CS];
foreboding is simple: have we picked the wrong person
and is it possible we are going to lose the most winnable
election in a generation.

Every delegate can reel off the advantages that should make
[P]
their man a certainty to be behind the Oval Office desk come
: ,
next January: a desperately unpopular Republican
, ,
President, an unending war, a lousy economy, a gnawing
. [A/EMPH]
sense of national decline. Even Mother Nature may be about

to cooperate, by delivering a major hurricane in the Gulf of

Mexico in the midst of the Republicans' own convention
,
next week, almost three years to the day after Katrina. No
.
wonder in the "generic" polls that measure broad party

preference, Democrats have a huge lead, of 12 per cent or
12 .
more.

,
But when it comes to specifics, i.e. Barack Obama versus
, .
John McCain, their man is running only level. Now McCain
might be the best Republican option in this inauspicious [P]
year, but he's not exactly a superb campaigner. He's old, a , [C]
dismal public speaker, and distinctly gaffeprone. The . ,
reason he is holding his own is that people simply don't yet .
have confidence his untested young opponent is up to the ,
job. Tonight is an opportunity to overcome those doubts, in .
a prime time speech in which the candidate will have the
country's undivided attention. And rightly so. For not only : .
this convention, but this entire election, is now about one
thing only: Barack Obama.
Even the Clintons have been a sideshow. Hillary gave a .

magnificent speech, all that Obama could have asked for and ,
more. Yes, rumours persist about devious Clinton .
manoeuvres to bring about an Obama loss in 2008, setting 2008
her up for a second run in 2012. It has been noted too that, 2012.
however forthright her support, Hillary did not explicitly
state that her conqueror was qualified to take that famous
3am call in the White House. Bill for his part may skip
tonight's grand finale.
But ultimately, none of this matters. The nominee's speech .

will stand or fall on its own merits, whether or not Bill is
there to watch. And it is not up to Hillary to stipulate . . [C]
whether her former rival is fit to be commander in chief. It's
up to Obama. Nor does Hillary's endorsement alone .
guarantee that her diehard supporters will return to the .
fold. Obama must win them back. And he must do it not with .
symbols, but with specifics. If anything, in the case of Barack .
Obama, the country is suffering from symbolism overload. ,
Everyone knows the candidate's astonishing life story, and .
all that it represents. The very date of tonight's address, the , ,
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Creating Narratives

45th anniversary of Martin Luther King's I Have a Dream 45 I have a dream (,
speech, is yet another symbol. ) .
In retrospect, the Obama campaign early on was less a ,

candidacy than a movement, inspired by broad themes and [M].
soaring oratory. Much of the angst here stems from the fear
that it peaked too early. By the end, it was Hillary, not he, . .
who was on a roll. Inspirational mass rallies were out, and , ,
facts which she seemed to supply more of were in.
Moreover, since the end of the primary season the candidate .
has seemed curiously detached and devoid of passion.
If anything, external events have moved even further in the
Democrats' favour. But Obama himself has yet to articulate a
simple, specific, message. Part of the trouble is the style of
the man. The American political system has an inherent, and
sometimes very expensive weakness that the qualities
needed while campaigning for President tend to be the
those least suited to being President. During campaigns
everything is presented in stark black and white, and
George Bush the "decider" is proof of where an unadorned
good versus evil approach to the world can get you.One of
the most unusual and attractive features of candidate
Obama is that he visibly thinks before answering a question,
weighing the pros and cons of an argument. That is an
excellent quality for a President. But on the campaign trail it
can come across as a lack of urgency. Obama moreover faces [ .
an additional difficulty. All along, his candidacy was
presented as nonconfrontational, based on the premise that ,
he could bring Americans together. Stop thinking and start ,
fighting, worried Democrats now urge. For some, .
uncomfortable parallels come to mind. Jimmy Carter once ,
ran a campaign as clinically efficient as that of Obama, but , . .
probably was too nice to succeed as President. But ,
Democrats should not despair. Maybe, in those heady days
of January and February, Obama wasn't quite the miracle ]
worker he appeared. But now, by the same token, he is
probably a better candidate than he has seemed over the
last few weeks, as McCain has caught him up in the polls.
Angst obscures another truth, that Obama is a quite
remarkable politician. He has not only shown a relentless
single mindedness to win the crown. As his speech on race
after the Jeremiah Wright controversy proved, he can take
on the very biggest issues, as few others can.

Summary of findings: Confrontational representation and binary images seem to predominate this text reinforcing the
master narrative of binary thinking identified in the subcorpus. Once more, the newspaper To Vima, selects to translate
the ST headline which forms a rhetorical question: So Is Obama the Saviour of his Party? and therefore expects no specific
answer from readers, with a headline that represents an inescapable and stable reality:
. Also addressed in this article is conceptual narrativity; the conceptualization of game framing that is
much afforded by the Greek press. The translation of the reference superb campaigner as purports to
describe this discursive pattern.
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Creating Narratives

The Independent/September 7, 2008 /September 9, 2008

McCain is swimming against the tide

"I don't mind a good fight," John McCain told the Republican
[A/M/ REFRAMING]
faithful last week, "and for reasons known only to God I've

had quite a few tough ones in my life." But even for this

former prisoner of war in North Vietnam turned battle

seasoned Senator often at odds with his own party, no fight
. , ,
will be as tough as the one he faces over the next eight

weeks, if he is to defy every law of politics and win the
[A/M]
White House.Right now, you might not think so. After all, the

Republican convention in St Paul was at least as sucessful as

the Democrats' gathering in Denver. In terms of TV

audience, it even bested the Democrats, as the speeches of

McCain and Sarah Palin, his vicepresidential nominee and

America's latest celebrity sensation, both attracted more

than 40 million viewers. And who said Americans don't care

about politics? More people watched the climaxes of both

conventions than tuned in for the Oscars, the Olympics

opening ceremony, or even the latest edition of American

Idol.Nor is McCain significantly behind in the race itself as it

enters the final sprint to election day on 4 November.

Whatever "bounce" Barack Obama took from Denver seems

to have been cancelled out by St Paul. Basically, we're back

to where we were a fortnight ago. The Democrats, now as

then, are way ahead when it comes to broad party "generic"

vote, but Obama seems unable to cash in this advantage.

In the latest national tracking polls (which do not fully

reflect the impact of McCain's acceptance speech), he leads
15 .
by between 2 and 4 per cent. But as Al Gore can confirm, it's
[A]
not the national popular vote that decides American
elections, but the results in specific swing states. In Gore's (swing states).
case, of course, the state was Florida. This time there's a . 12
dozen of them, where local polls show the candidates :
effectively tied. , , , . [A]

Obama and McCain were campaigning in these states when
they went to their conventions, and went straight back to
them when the conventions were over. The keys to election
2008 can be judged from the candidates' schedules. Along
with his running mate, Joe Biden, Obama was in
Pennsylvania and Ohio on Friday, and campaigned in
Indiana yesterday. McCain and Palin went straight from St
Paul to Wisconsin, before spending yesterday in Colorado
and New Mexico, two western states narrowly carried by
George W Bush in 2004, but tossups this time around.But if
the numbers haven't budged, neither have the underlying
realities of this election year. Sarah Palin has made waves
first with her colourful family history, then with her slashing
attacks on Obama from the podium, and now with a
controvery over the talkshow host Oprah Winfrey, whose
support helped to put Obama on the map and who
apparently is refusing to have the Alaska Governor as a
guest. But the tide still flows powerfully the Democrats'
way.

For McCain, the next best thing about the convention after , [A]
Palin was that Hurricane Gustav kept the unloved President
Bush away from proceedings. In his speech, the candidate
did not once mention the incumbent Republican President ,
by name. To keep the White House in the hands of his party, .
he must run at arm's length from it. This makes for a
gripping political narrative. But it's hardly a recipe for
victory.

Everything else conspires against him, even the trumpeted
[C] .
success of the surge in Iraq, which McCain long supported.

The mess in Iraq was the key issue in the Democratic mid
term triumph in 2006. This time Iraq is barely mentioned. : []
Americans now have the general impression they're at last
winning the war which makes them less reluctant to .
entrust its conduct to an untried Democrat.To win, McCain
307
Creating Narratives

must keep things personal. If he manages to define the
election as a choice between two men, between an
iconoclastic war hero and a firstterm Senator with a most
unfamiliar background, voters may well choose him.But [C/A] .
even that is not certain. McCain makes sense as an American 80% [P]
Churchill or De Gaulle, someone summoned by his country .
to confront a lifeordeath national emergency. The . ,
challenge facing the US today, however, is different. People
yearn for change; an unprecedented 80 per cent of the . ,
population say their nation is on the wrong track. A .
conservative era is drawing to a close. Americans are
moving to the left, telling pollsters they want a more activist
government. In the weeks ahead even Sarah Palin will
probably be a sideshow. She may have galvanised a
Republican base that has never greatly trusted John McCain.
But presidential elections are about choosing a president,
not a vicepresident.Yes, McCain has a certain Churchillian
appeal with his reputation for defying party orthodoxy. But
no one ever identified the old British bulldog with a zest for
social change and innovative economic thinking. Back in
1992, amid a recession far less painful than the one facing
the US now, Bill Clinton defeated the first President Bush by
sticking to the message of "It's the economy, stupid", pinned
up in his campaign war room in Little Rock, Arkansas. In
2008, that strategy is doubly true.Barring a massive foreign
crisis, this election will be about domestic pocketbook ,
issues: jobs, wages and health coverage, how to pay for : ,
one's children at college, how to hang on to one's home. The , , ,
most significant event of the last fortnight was Friday's , .
government report showing that unemployment in August
jumped to 6.1 per cent, its highest level in five years, with
every prospect of worse to come. On all these issues,
Democrats have a huge advantage. Bush is not to blame for
America's economic woes (though Alan Greenspan's
policies at the Federal Reserve might well be). But the
President and his party are being blamed nonetheless. If
Obama can tie McCain to Bush, and keep the focus on the [C/A]
country's problems and what must be done to fix them, it is
[M/A]
hard to see how he can lose.McCain's best chance of what

the pundits call a "gamechanger" lies not in Palin, but in his
.
debates with Obama above all in the first and most

important of them, on 26 September at the University of

Mississippi. The subject will be domestic policy in other

words, the economy.The initial debate is the first
opportunity for voters to see the candidates square off, and
often has a vital bearing on the final result. In 2000, for
instance, Bush proved he could more or less hold his own
with Gore, who came across as disparaging and over
scornful of his opponent. Given the topic, Obama will be
expected to score a clear win this time. But if he does not, if
he fails to make the economic case for the Democrats, or
McCain somehow shifts the argument from issues to
personalities, all bets are off.But it will be a tall order. Here,
as everywhere, the old truism of elections applies:
oppositions don't win elections, governments lose them.
And Bush and the Republicans have done more than enough
to lose this one whatever the efforts of the indomitable
fighter John McCain.

Summary of findings: The surfacing of the game frame as a conceptual narrative and a mode of representing the
elections in the US, is the main finding in this TT. Hence, the TT attempts additions that landscape USA as an arena, i.e.
or represents Obama as the candidate with the most chances of
winning the elections race i.e . Selective appropriation of material is a key
framing strategy used by the TT newspaper to renegotiate meaning.

1192 374
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Creating Narratives

The Times/January 22, 2009 /January 27, 2009
Task No 1 for Barack Obama: reinvent capitalism [C]

The words Remaking America were splashed yesterday
[P] [P]
across the front pages of The New York Times, The
Washington Post, USA Today, Los Angeles Times and almost
every other paper in the US. This kind of unanimity in the .
press corps is not coincidental Remaking America was . [C]
the phrase the President's media machine wanted to
emphasise. Why?Remaking America is President Obama's : , .
riposte to the slogan of populist conservatism through the
ages: If it ain't broke, don't fix it. This donothing mentality .
was taken to its logical extreme by George W. Bush and his
doltish Administration, whose epitaph should be the
P.J.O'Rourke quip: The Republicans are a party who believe
that government doesn't work and get themselves elected to
prove it.

To have any hope of repairing the ruin left behind by the
Bush Administration, President Obama must first convince [C]
the 45 per cent of the population who voted against him ,
that America really is broke. Not only is the US trapped, as 45% ,
Mr Obama noted, in a geopolitical quagmire and the worst .
recession in living memory. But behind both of these
dreadful things lurks a horror even more existentially , [CS]
shocking: the entire politicoeconomic model of free :
enterprise, rugged individualism and small government on ,
which America built its global hegemony seems to have
broken down. How else can one describe a situation in .
which all of the country's main financial institutions and
many of its biggest industrial companies are effectively
bankrupt and on government lifesupport?

The crisis triggered by September's bankruptcy of Lehman Lehman rothers
Brothers appears to have discredited many of the ,
assumptions on which American prosperity and democracy
was founded. In this sense, it really is possible to compare .
the credit crunch, as Ed Miliband did last weekend, to the
fall of the Berlin Wall. In 1989 the world, from China and . 1989,
Russia to South Africa, India and Brazil, concluded that
there was no serious alternative to market forces as a . 2009
means of organising productive activity. In 2009 the whole ,
world seems to have reached the opposite conclusion that
free markets and financial incentives lead even the richest .
and most sophisticated societies to disaster.

There is, however, a crucial difference between these two
pivotal years and this brings us to the positive side of [P]
President Obama's message. Communism was a monolithic .
and inflexible system that worked against the grain of
human nature and had to be brutally imposed. Capitalism, . [M],
by contrast, is a constantly evolving and organic set of
human relationships. It advances by trial and error and .
takes a myriad different forms. Thus the demise of the post . , [P] 1989
1989 fundamentalist faith in market forces as the solution
to all social problems now offers Mr Obama the chance to ,
preside over a new evolution of American capitalism into a ,
more stable and ultimately more successful form. Creating ,
this new kind of capitalism will be the most important .
challenge of the Obama presidency and beyond.

But two features of this evolutionary process can already be
suggested. First, it is clear that America will continue to lead . ,
the world, not only as a military power and technological [C]
innovator but also as a model of economic management. The
idea that AngloAmerican capitalism will give way to a ,
European or Asian model is already crumbling, as Germany, ,
Japan and China discover that their economies are even .
more dependent on American (and British) consumers,
mortgage markets and financial institutions than the
Americans themselves. With the US likely to start recovering
this year, while Europe and Japan remain mired in
309
Creating Narratives

recession, American economic management will again be
seen as a model around the world, instead of a cautionary
tale.

Second, America's new leadership will encourage much ,
more pragmatic thinking around the world about when
market mechanisms are useful and when they are useless, [A/EMPH] ,
about the right balance between the profit motive and social
objectives, and about the relative efficiency of private and ,
public enterprises. This may sound abstract, but such a shift .
in US ideology will have profound practical effects. Once it is A ,
understood, for example, that financial markets often send .
perverse signals about values, whether of houses, , ,
mortgages or barrels of oil, new solutions to the credit crisis
will become possible. In America many homeowners will ,
have their mortgages reduced and guaranteed by .
government. Such mortgage writedowns have been
stridently opposed by bank lobbyists and Republicans for
ideological reasons, yet they are likely to save many banks .
from going bust. More generally, there is likely to be .
recognition that many problems demand nonmarket
solutions and that financial incentives are neither necessary
nor sufficient to achieve social ends.This doesn't mean,
however, that the State will necessarily grow. As President
Obama said on Tuesday: The question we ask today is not
whether our government is too big or too small, but
whether it works.

This injunction brought to mind Philanthrocapitalism, a
fascinating book by Matthew Bishop and Michael Green. It
describes the varying approaches of billionaires who spend ,
extraordinary sums of their own money to achieve social ,
ends, such as Bill Gates's campaign against malaria or .
George Soros's promotion of open societies in former
communist dictatorships. The book's main conclusion is that
these efforts could serve as models for broader , .
collaboration between government and private enterprise,
whether charitable or not.

As the book notes, the most important asset that these
handson philanthrocapitalists bring to their foundations is ,
not just money but a way of thinking, specifically that
society's biggest problems have to be addressed in a ,
businesslike way in the sense of a serious focus on results; ,
understanding where scarce resources have the most ,
impact; a determination quickly to scale up solutions that
work and a toughness in shutting down those that do not. .

Given that many of the people now joining the Obama . [P]
Administration, including the President, have spent large
parts of their careers in the nonprofit sectors, ,
philanthrocapitalism may well be an idea whose time has [C]
come for the new model of US capitalism that the President .,
must now invent.More generally, financial regulation and
macroeconomic management will surely now recognise that
naive theories about efficient financial markets and the ,
statistical models they spawned were a major cause of the .
entire financial disaster. It will still be capitalism, but
Obamanomics will not try to rebuild America on the
principle that markets are always right.

Summary of findings: This text exhibits an array of master, conceptual and public narrative that emerge through
translation. Lexical selection often leads to highlight the importance of the message underway as is the case with the item
in the TT: ,
which replaces the ST item crucial in the sentence: there is, however, a crucial difference between these two pivotal years.

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Creating Narratives

The NYT/February 25, 2009 /February 28, 2009

[M]
Disentangling Layers of a Loaded Term in Search

of a Thread of Peace

CAIRO If President Obama is serious about repairing
relations with the Arab world and reestablishing the United
States as an honest broker in Middle East peace talks, one [P]
step would be to bridge a chasm in perception that centers
, [A]
on one contentious word: terrorism.
[M]:
.

The recent fighting in Gaza offered a potent reminder of the [M]
challenge Washington faces in mediating a dispute when the
United States refuses to speak directly with some of the [CS],
main players, including Hamas and Hezbollah, which it calls
terrorist groups. Whether the United States has declined to , ,
speak with hostile groups because it considers them [M] .
terrorists, or whether it slaps the terrorist label on groups it [M]
wants to sanction or marginalize, a battle over the term
terrorist has become a proxy for the larger issues that .
divide Washington and the Arab public.

[P].

The perception gap, which grew wider when President , 2001
George W. Bush declared his war on terror in 2001, was ,[M/D]
blown even further apart in Gaza, when most Arabs came .[M]
away certain who the real terrorists were.

Public opinion views what happened in Gaza as a kind of
terrorism, said Muhammad Shaker, a former Egyptian
ambassador to Britain. And on the other side, they see
Hamas and other such organizations as groups who are
trying to liberate their countries.

Many here said they saw little distinction between Hamass
shooting rockets into civilian areas of Israel and Israels
shooting rockets into civilian areas of Gaza, even if Hamas
militants were operating there or just hiding out. Israelis
often focus on intent in drawing a distinction between Israel
and Hamas saying their forces kill civilians only as an
unfortunate consequence of war while Hamas aims attacks
at civilians. The Israeli military effort is to neutralize the
forces of aggression that have been used against its civilians,
and there sometimes can be collateral damage, said Dore
Gold, a former Israeli ambassador to the United Nations.
That happens in every war and every conflict.That
argument convinces no one here, where the public is
outraged that Hamas is labeled a terrorist organization by
the United States, while Israel is treated as a close friend.If
you are with the Americans, you are a legitimate fighter, you
are a hero, but if you are fighting against a country
supported by America then you are a terrorist, said Abdel
Bari Atwan, editor of the Palestinian newspaper Al Quds Al
Arabi.

President Obama told his envoy, George J. Mitchell, to go to [C]
the Middle East and listen. But when the United States refers .
to Hamas, or the Lebanese group Hezbollah, as a terrorist [CS/A]
organization, the popular view here is that Washington still
is not listening. .

The case may be even more tangled with Hezbollah, which ,
is credited across Lebanese factions with forcing Israel to [M]
abandon its 20year occupation of southern Lebanon, [M] [M]
defeating Israel in a 2006 war and placing its members in
20 . [A/EMPH/C]
Lebanons government and Parliament.
2006,

[P]
.

311
Creating Narratives

,
If Obama thinks these organizations are terrorists, there .
will never be peace, said Hany Hassan, 29, who was selling .
flowers from his uncles shop in the quiet Cairo suburb of
Maadi. Bin Laden, he is a terrorist. These organizations, if
[M] . [EMPH/M]
America thinks they are terrorists, they will have to
2001, ,
convince us.There are certain cases where there is a
, .
greater consensus over what is terrorism, such as the Sept.
[EMPH]
11 attacks by Al Qaeda, the attack on a school in Beslan,
Russia, bombings in Bali, Spain and London (though even [A] .
here, it is not unanimous). But in this region, for example,
the invasion of Iraq is often referred to as a terrorist act.

The issue of who is a terrorist often stirs strong emotions . ,
and fuels diplomatic conflicts. Iranian officials, for example, [P]
recently excoriated ambassadors from the European Union
for having removed the Peoples Mujahedeen Organization .
of Iran from the list of banned terrorist organizations. Iran ,
considers it a terrorist group committed to overthrowing .[M]
the state.

The Islamic Republic of Iran strongly condemns the double
standards of the European Union regarding the [A]
phenomenon of terrorism, Deputy Foreign Minister Mehdi .
Safari told the ambassadors in Tehran.Ron Pundak, director ,
of the Peres Center for Peace in Israel, said, I accept that ,
Hamas and Hezbollah are terrorist organizations, but I think .
we should speak with them to pursue our objectives. He
acknowledged his view was out of sync with Israeli public .
opinion.

,
What has happened, he and other regional analysts said, is
that the use of the term terrorist has become a simplistic
point, counterpoint offensive of its own, reflecting the [M/A] .
growing influence of radicalism on both sides. It is often ,
used to cloud issues, to avoid having to talk and to try to .
appear to take the moral high ground, they said.

Mr. Pundak said it was useful to recall, for example, that
while the United States and Israel recognized Mahmoud
Abbas of the Fatah faction as the legitimate leader of the ,
Palestinians, not long ago Fatah and its leader, Yasir Arafat,
were considered terrorists. He said that like the Irish .
Republican Army, Fatah was ultimately induced to be more [A/EMPH]
pragmatic by being brought into the political process, not by
being shunned and isolated.We are fuelling each others
paranoia by the simplistic discourse we are pursuing, Mr.
Pundak said. People interviewed in Egypt, Gaza, Saudi
Arabia and Lebanon said they saw nothing but hypocrisy in
the way the West applied the terrorist label a feeling tied
very closely to a belief that the West reserved the term for
Muslims. President Obama has tried to counter that
perception with his outreach to the Muslim world, but with
the memory of Gaza so fresh, and with Washington still
defining Hamas and Hezbollah as terrorist groups, opinions
have not shifted.You ask what we feel about this word, how
to define it, said Imad Jalal, 35, as he stood selling cellphone
chargers in Gaza City last week. First, let me tell you how
we perceive it when its used by Americans and Israelis. We
feel like you use it as another word for Muslim. In your
mind, every Muslim is a terrorist, and thats it. It has rarely
been used for anybody whos not Muslim, recently.In Cairo,
Wafaa Younis was seated on a curb, selling bread and green
onions and mint leaves, as goats ate trash strewn across the
street. She was asked what advice she would give Mr.
Obama as he tried to repair the Arab perception that
Washington was the enemy. You have to understand
everyones opinions and demands, and negotiate, she said.
There will be no peace without this.

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Creating Narratives

Summary of findings: This text makes visible, aspects of the reconstruction of the Master Narrative of Terrorism in the
Greek press. It starts off by selecting a headline that amplifies the riskcarrying potential of the TT i.e.
and continues by limitingup the value of the master narrative of terrorism which it glosses
instead of word in the sentence: TT

,
: . The TT newspaper also makes additions that create meaning and
alter the thematization of the sentence such as in the following example:

that replaces the ST: But when the United States refers to
Hamas, or the Lebanese group Hezbollah, as a terrorist organization, the popular view here is that Washington still is not
listening.
1104 629
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Creating Narratives

The NYT/August 30, 2008 T /September 6, 2008

Would Obamas Plan Be Faster, Fairer, Stronger? [M]

, [A/REFRAMING/M]

CLEARLY, there are major differences between the economic [P]
policies of Senators Barack Obama and John McCain. Mr. . .
McCain wants more tax cuts for the rich; Mr. Obama wants tax . .
cuts for the poor and middle class. The two men also disagree . ,
on health care, energy and many other topics. Such differences ,
are hardly surprising. Democrats and Republicans have . .
followed different approaches to the economy for as long as ,
there have been Democrats and Republicans. Longer, actually.
Remember Hamilton versus Jefferson? . ,
.

[A/REFRAMING/M]
Many Americans know that there are characteristic policy
differences between the two parties. But few are aware of two
important facts about the postWorld War II era, both of which .
are brilliantly delineated in a new book, Unequal Democracy,
by Larry M. Bartels, a professor of political science at Princeton. .
Understanding them might help voters see what could be at
stake, economically speaking, in November.I call the first fact Unequal Democracy (
the Great Partisan Growth Divide. Simply put, the United States ) . ,
economy has grown faster, on average, under Democratic .
presidents than under Republicans.

.
. ,

.

[A/REFRAMING]

The stark contrast between the whizbang Clinton years and
the dreary Bush years is familiar because it is so recent. But
while it is extreme, it is not atypical. Data for the whole period , . [A/M]
from 1948 to 2007, during which Republicans occupied the ,
White House for 34 years and Democrats for 26, show average . 1948 2007,
annual growth of real gross national product of 1.64 percent [P] 34
per capita under Republican presidents versus 2.78 percent 26,
under Democrats.That 1.14point difference, if maintained for
eight years, would yield 9.33 percent more income per person, 1,64% 2,78%
which is a lot more than almost anyone can expect from a tax . 1,14 ,
cut. ,
9,33%,

.

Such a large historical gap in economic performance between
the two parties is rather surprising, because presidents have ,
limited leverage over the nations economy. Most economists .
will tell you that Federal Reserve policy and oil prices, to name
just two influences, are far more powerful than fiscal policy. (Fed)
Furthermore, as those mutual fund prospectuses constantly
warn us, past results are no guarantee of future performance. , .
But statistical regularities, like facts, are stubborn things. You
bet against them at your peril.The second big historical fact,
which might be called the Great Partisan Inequality Divide, is .
the focus of Professor Bartelss work.It is well known that
income inequality in the United States has been on the rise for
about 30 years now an unsettling development that has [A/REFRAMING]
finally touched the public consciousness. But Professor Bartels
unearths a stunning statistical regularity: Over the entire 60
year period, income inequality trended substantially upward 30 . (
under Republican presidents but slightly downward under ).
314
Creating Narratives

Democrats, thus accounting for the widening income gaps over
all. And the bad news for Americas poor is that Republicans . 60
have won five of the seven elections going back to 1980.The ,
Great Partisan Inequality Divide is not limited to the poor. To
get a more granular look, Professor Bartels studied the postwar , .
history of income gains at five different places in the income
distribution.The 20th percentile is the income level at which 20
percent of all families have less income and 80 percent have 1980. .
more. It is thus a plausible dividing line between the poor and
the nonpoor. Similarly, the 40th percentile is the income level
at which 40 percent of the families are poorer and 60 percent ,
are richer. And similarly for the 60th, 80th, and 95th .
percentiles. The 95th percentile is the best dividing line
between the rich and the nonrich that the data permitted , [A/REFRAMING]
Professor Bartels to study. (That dividing line, by the way, is
well below the $5 million threshold John McCain has jokingly
used for defining the rich. Its closer to $180,000.)The ,
accompanying table, which is adapted from the book, tells a
remarkably consistent story. It shows that when Democrats , , .
were in the White House, lowerincome families experienced , .
slightly faster income growth than higherincome families ,
which means that incomes were equalizing. In stark contrast, it 20%
also shows much faster income growth for the betteroff when 3,5%
Republicans were in the White House thus widening the gap 23,2% .
in income. The table also shows that families at the 95th
percentile fared almost as well under Republican presidents as [A/REFRAMING]
under Democrats (1.90 percent growth per year, versus 2.12
percent), giving them little stake, economically, in election
outcomes. But the stakes were enormous for the less wellto
do. Families at the 20th percentile fared much worse under
Republicans than under Democrats (0.43 percent versus 2.64 .
percent). Eight years of growth at an annual rate of 0.43
percent increases a familys income by just 3.5 percent, while ,
eight years of growth at 2.64 percent raises it by 23.2 percent. . ,
,
The sources of such large differences make for a slightly . , ,
complicated story. In the early part of the period say, the
preReagan years the Great Partisan Growth Divide ,
accounted for most of the Great Partisan Inequality divide, . ,
because the poor do relatively better in a highgrowth ,
economy.Beginning with the Reagan presidency, however, .
growth differences are smaller and tax and transfer policies
have played a larger role. We know, for example, that
Republicans have typically favored large tax cuts for upper
income groups while Democrats have opposed them. In ,
addition, Democrats have been more willing to raise the ,
minimum wage, and Republicans have been more hostile []
toward unions. .

The two Great Partisan Divides combine to suggest that, if
history is a guide, an Obama victory in November would lead to
faster economic growth with less inequality, while a McCain
victory would lead to slower economic growth with more
inequality. Which part of the Obama menu dont you like?
Alan S. Blinder is a professor of economics and public affairs at
Princeton and former vice chairman of the Federal Reserve. He
has advised many Democratic politicians. There might be other
issues that Obama and his team would like to tackle first. But as
the carnage in Mumbai reminds us, terrorists don't wait their
turn.

Summary of findings: The translated version of the text shows signs of upgraded mediation from the part of the
newspaper Ta Nea, instantiated through the inclusion of multiple subheadings to constantly reframe the story underway.
Also although both texts talk about the same thing yet the representations differ at points and translation reflects long
established narratives. This is evident in the following example: ST: In stark contrast, it also shows much faster income
growth for the betteroff when Republicans were in the White House thus widening the gap in income. TT: ,
,
, . ,
. The lexicalization reflects a narrative available in the TT subordination and
315
Creating Narratives

allegiance to leadership. Headline translation also reveals once more the pattern in the Greek environment to conceal the
rhetorical question and ambivalence that exists in ST Would Obamas Plan Be Faster, Fairer, Stronger? since the translation
, accompanied by the subheading ,
provide a binary conception of reality.

985 786
316
Creating Narratives

The NYT/September 28, 2008 T /October 4, 2008

The 3 A.M. Call
[M]

O [A/RE
FRAMING/C]

3 , 2009,
Its 3 a.m., a few months into 2009, and the phone in the White . hedge funds
House rings. Several big hedge funds are about to fail, says the [C],
voice on the line, and theres likely to be chaos when the market .
opens. Whom do you trust to take that call? ;

Im not being melodramatic. The bailout plan released yesterday is .
a lot better than the proposal Henry Paulson first put out
sufficiently so to be worth passing. But its not what youd actually .
call a good plan, and it wont end the crisis. The odds are that the
next president will have to deal with some major financial
emergencies.So what do we know about the readiness of the two
men most likely to end up taking that call? Well, Barack Obama [P/A]
seems informed about matters economic and financial. John
McCain, on the other hand, scares me.
,[C]
;

,[C/A]

. ,
, .

About Mr. Obama: its a shame that he didnt show more . :
leadership in the debate over the bailout bill, choosing instead to
leave the issue in the hands of Congressional Democrats, especially ,
Chris Dodd and Barney Frank. But both Mr. Obama and the
. ,[A]
Congressional Democrats are surrounded by very knowledgeable,
.
clearheaded advisers, with experienced crisis managers like Paul
[P]
Volcker and Robert Rubin always close at hand.
. aul
Volcker,
Then theres the frightening Mr. McCain more frightening now
(FD)
than he was a few weeks ago.
, Robert Rubin.

[A/REFRAMING]

Weve known for a long time, of course, that Mr. McCain doesnt
. . .
know much about economics hes said so himself, although hes

also denied having said it. That wouldnt matter too much if he had
, ,
good taste in advisers but he doesnt.
. ,
.
Remember, his chief mentor on economics is Phil Gramm, the

archderegulator, who took special care in his Senate days to
, hil Gramm
prevent oversight of financial derivatives the very instruments
,
that sank Lehman and A.I.G., and brought the credit markets to the

edge of collapse. Mr. Gramm hasnt had an official role in the
,[C]
McCain campaign since he pronounced America a nation of
whiners, but hes still considered a likely choice as Treasury Lehman rothers G,
secretary.And last year, when the McCain campaign announced . . Gramm
that the candidate had assembled an impressive collection of [C]
economists, professors, and prominent conservative policy ,
leaders to advise him on economic policy, who was prominently
featured? Kevin Hassett, the coauthor of Dow 36,000. Enough .
said.
, . [A]

,
,
evin
assett,
36.000

Now, to a large extent the poor quality of Mr. McCains advisers [A/REFRAMING]
reflects the tattered intellectual state of his party. Has there ever
317
Creating Narratives

been a more pathetic economic proposal than the suggestion of [A]
House Republicans that we try to solve the financial crisis by
eliminating capital gains taxes? (Troubled financial institutions, by
definition, dont have capital gains to tax.) (

But even President Bush has, in the twilight of his administration, ).
turned to relatively sensible people to make economic decisions:
Im not a fan of Mr. Paulson, but hes a vast improvement over his
predecessor. At this point, one has the suspicion that a McCain
administration would have us longing for Bushera competence.

The real revelation of the last few weeks, however, has been just
how erratic Mr. McCains views on economics are. At any given . [P]
moment, he seems to have very strong opinions but a few days
later, he goes off in a completely different direction. Thus on Sept. ,
15 he declared for at least the 18th time this year that the . 15 18
fundamentals of our economy are strong. This was the day after .
Lehman failed and Merrill Lynch was taken over, and the financial Lehman rothers errill Lynch
crisis entered a new, even more dangerous stage. But three days .
later he declared that Americas financial markets have become a
casino, and said that hed fire the head of the Securities and
Exchange Commission which, by the way, isnt in the presidents
power. .

And then he found a new set of villains Fannie Mae and Freddie
Mac, the governmentsponsored lenders. (Despite some real . Fannie
scandals at Fannie and Freddie, they played little role in causing ae Freddie ac ( :
the crisis: most of the really bad lending came from private loan ).
originators.) And he moralistically accused other politicians, , .
including Mr. Obama, of being under Fannies and Freddies , Fannie ae
financial influence; it turns out that a firm owned by his own Freddie ac.
campaign manager was being paid by Freddie until just last month.
Freddie ac.

; [A/REFRAMING]
Then Mr. Paulson released his plan, and Mr. McCain weighed
vehemently into the debate. But he admitted, several days after the . .
Paulson plan was released, that he hadnt actually read the plan, .
which was only three pages long.
,
O.K., I think you get the picture. .

The modern economy, it turns out, is a dangerous place and its . ,
not the kind of danger you can deal with by talking tough and ,
denouncing evildoers. Does Mr. McCain have the judgment and
temperament to deal with that part of the job he seeks? . .

;

Summary of findings: Translational shifts in this text confirm findings that suggest a pattern in awarding a binary
representation of reality in the headline; this is also evident in the headline:
that stands in the place of the ST item The 3 AM Call. Furthermore, the TT brings forward
conceptual narratives that form the profile of B. Obama. In the following example he is portrayed as a winner in a battle O
. The TT is overpowered also by selective appropriation of material used in
particular as a framing strategy when new subheadings are added.
796 797
318
Creating Narratives

Washington Post/October 30, 2008 T /November 5, 2008

Intelligence Head Says Next President Faces ( )
Volatile Era

,

(

)

,

[A/REFRAMING]
The next U.S. president will govern in an era of increasing [P/A]: 20 2009
international instability, including a heightened risk of
terrorist attacks in the near future, longterm prospects of . [C/A]
regional conflicts and diminished U.S. dominance across the ,
globe, the nation's top intelligence officer said Thursday. ,[A]
,
.

Competition for energy, water and food will drive conflicts
between nations to a degree not seen in decades, and (Director of ational ntelligence), ,
climate change and global economic upheaval will amplify ,
the effects, Mike McConnell, the director of national
intelligence, said in a speech here. .

McConnell, who has given security briefings to both major
party presidential candidates, said the list of worries will . .
soon drown out the euphoria as the next occupant of the :
White House settles into the job.
[P].

,
"After the new presidentelect's excitement subsides after
winning the election, it is going to be dampened somewhat . .
when he begins to focus on the realities of the myriad of ,
changes and challenges," he said. e added that, besides the .
predictable conflicts and threats, "there is always surprise." ,
McConnell said that the first months of a new presidency
are a "period of most vulnerability," noting that major
terrorist attacks occurred during the first year of the .
administrations of George W. Bush and Bill Clinton. The ,
sobering assessment was in part a reflection of a months
long analysis McConnell's agency is preparing for the next .
administration, highlighting security challenges the country ,
will face in the next two decades. Elements of that forecast
have been described by intelligence officials in recent . .
weeks, and some highlights have been shared with the
presidential candidates in briefings that have occurred since

the August conventions.
In the near term, the focus remains largely on alQaeda and
its global network, which remains "very lethal" despite , ,
dramatic setbacks in Iraq and elsewhere, McConnell said. .
But in spite of progress against Osama bin Laden and his 20
followers, the terrorist threat is not likely to disappear in ,
the next 20 years. Instead, absent major economic and [M]
political improvements in the Middle East, "conditions will .
be right for growing radicalism and recruitment of youths ,
into terrorist groups," many of which will be descendants of
established movements such as alQaeda, he said. .
,
, ,
.
These groups will probably be more dangerous than their
predecessors, because new technology will place dangerous O . ,
weapons within their grasp, he warned. "One of our greatest
concerns continues to be that a terrorist group or some (..: )
other dangerous group might acquire and employ biological 11
319
Creating Narratives

agents or, less likely, a radiological device, to create 2001.
casualties greater than September 11," McConnell said.
Meanwhile, population growth will create instability by .
increasing the strain on natural resources not only energy
but also fresh water and food supplies, he said.

At the same time, large swaths of the planet will struggle to
find reliable supplies of fresh water, because of urbanization ,
and climate change. By 2025, 1.4 billion people in 36
countries will face water shortages, McConnell said. The . 1,4
scarcity of basic necessities will "create significant tensions
on the globe," he said. ,
.
Other intelligence officials in recent weeks have forecast

declining U.S. dominance in the near future, but McConnell
described the coming change in starker terms. Intelligence
analysts see China, India and perhaps Russia ascending to
new positions of power, a shift being driven by a massive
transfer of wealth and manufacturing capability from the
West to Eastern countries, particularly China.
"China is poised to have more impact on the world over the
next 20 years than any other country," he said. "China will
also start becoming a major military power by 2025 [and]
will likely be the world's largest importer of natural
resources and the largest contributor to pollution."

Summary of findings: The TT provides evidence of different conceptualizations in translation for both participants in
discourse (Osama Bin Laden) and political institutions i.e. ( ). As it
has been the case with other texts, in this one as well the TT newspaper proceeds to additions which add cohesion and
affect the theme structuring of clauses; this pattern in salient in the following example: : 20
2009
. ,
, ,
where there are two additions that emphasize a) certainty and
b) the Presidency of B. Obama that awards even more credit to his work.

610 526
320
Creating Narratives

The Economist/November 13, 2008 /November 16, 2008

Change.gov [M]

The transition to a new administration is already well under
way [C] ,
[M]
HAVING fought the longest election campaign in American

history, Barack Obama is now immersed in the most difficult , [C]
transition in living memory. He will inherit two wars and .
the worst economic crisis since the Depression. He needs to 1930.
ensure a smooth transfer of power from an incumbent who ,
is ideologically and temperamentally his polar opposite. He
also needs to translate his vague philosophy of hope and [A/M]. [C]
change into governance. Hearts are sure to be broken and .
enemies made. .
Mr Obama is bringing the same talent for organisation to the .

transition that he brought to his campaign. He has been .
quietly planning since the summer with John Podesta, a [D/C] ,
former White House chief of staff to Bill Clinton and the ,
head of a Clintonian thinktank, the Centre for American .
Progress, studying previous transitions and mulling over , ,
appointments. And he announced an expanded transition , , [D/C] ,
team the day after winning the election, adding Valerie . ,
Jarrett, a veteran Chicago insider, and Pete Rouse, his chief ,
of staff in the Senate. So far the troikas approach has been ,
thoroughly businesslike, with remarkably few leaks . . ,
(particularly for Democrats) and a firm focus on getting , .
things done quickly but not hastily. Mr Podesta has ,
suggested that, given the gravity of the countrys problems, , . ,
Mr Obama will try to announce several cabinet , , .
appointments, particularly the treasury secretary and the
national security team, before December. But rumours that
he would do so within days of the election proved to be
exaggerated. [A/REFRAMING]
[C]
Mr Obamas planners are heavily influenced by two
, 199293
previous transitionsBill Clintons in 199293 and Ronald
198081.
Reagans in 198081. They are determined to avoid
.
repeating the mistakes that Mr Clinton made and that many

of them lived through. He was slow off the mark, failing to
, .
make a single senior appointment for six weeks after he was

elected and indulging instead in endless waffle. He focused
.
on cabinet appointments rather than on the White House
staff (many of the White House staff were not announced

until just before Christmas). He was obsessed by questions
of diversity, needing three attempts to name an attorney
general, for example. He annoyed key figures on Capitol Hill.
And he became embroiled in a damaging argument about
gays in the military. Many Clinton veterans now claim that
this led inexorably to chaos in the White House, squabbles
with Democratic powerbrokers and the Republican
takeover of Congress in 1994.

They are determined instead to follow Reagans model. The
Reaganites not only grasped that the engine of power for the ' ,
administration is the White House staff rather than the .
cabinet. They also understood the importance of hitting the ,
ground running. Mr Obamas planners are even imitating , .
some of the fine details of Reagans approach: by
collaborating so closely with the Centre for American
Progress, they are echoing the way in which Mr Reagan
worked with the then relatively new Heritage Foundation.
This has allowed Mr Obama to get off to a decent start. Two ,

days after he announced his expanded transition team he
also made an important White House appointment: Rahm
321
Creating Narratives

Emanuel to be his chief of staff. This suggests a clear grasp .
of priorities. The chief of staff acts as the presidents gate
keeper and principal enforcer. He is also soon expected to
announce Robert Gibbs as his press secretary, the position
that comes with the biggest megaphone in Washington. . . .
,
Mr Obamas choice of his chief of staff is smart. Mr Emanuel : ,
has a remarkable combination of experience in both the 2006.
executive and the legislative branch: he was an adviser to
Mr Clinton as well as the mastermind behind the
Democratic takeover of Congress in 2006. He is also a hard
assan expletivespouting dynamo who can keep the trains
running on time and malcontents cowering in their caves
(he is nicknamed Rahmbo, and he once sent a dead fish to
somebody who crossed him).
. ,
The Republicans immediately objected that Mr Emanuels [MISTRANS]
appointment undermined Mr Obamas promise to bring a . , .
new kind of politics to Washington. But Mr Emanuels main , [P] .
job will be to keep his former colleagues on the Hill in line, ,
not to worry about the opposition. He is a Clintonian . ,
centrist who has championed welfare reform, free trade and ,
even a slightly flatter tax code. He has been close to his .
fellow Chicago pol for years. And he is the ideal bad cop to .
Mr Obamas good cop.
[A/REFRAMING]

, ,
,
To his credit, George Bush is also putting a lot of effort into
11 2001. ,
making the first transition since September 11th 2001 go as
.
smoothly as possible. He has created a coordinating

council populated by experts from both outside and inside
[A/EMPH]
the administration. He is requiring even thirdlevel staff to

prepare detailed briefing books. He has followed the 9/11
.
commission reports recommendations for streamlining the
labyrinthine process for new officials (and the FBI has

reportedly already been provided with around 100 names
for preapproval). The administration has already
provided an unusual degree of access to the Treasury and
other departments involved with stabilising the economy.
.
Mr Obama now has all the accoutrements of a presidentin ,
waiting. He has a secret service entourage and secret service .
codenames (renegade for him and renaissance for his , ,
wife). He gets the same daily intelligence briefing as Mr .
Bush. But beneath the smooth surface there is still plenty
that could go wrong.
For all the recent bonhomie there are lots of potential

strains with the current occupant of the White House. Mr
Obama is preparing to undo much of the Bush legacy, . [C]
starting with Guantnamo Bay. The Bush White Houseand , .
particularly the vicepresidents officeis notoriously . .
secretive. Many economic decisions cannot wait until [MISTRANS] . ,
January. But Mr Obama does not see eyetoeye with Mr . .
Bush, to put it mildly. He is also wary of attempts by Hank
Paulson, the treasury secretary, to turn him into a co .
owner of the administrations economic policies,
particularly on the Wall Street bailout.
There are also plenty of potential fissures in Obamaworld. .

Mr Obama enthused an army of supporters by promising ,
change. But he has already coopted several leading .
Clinton figures such as Mr Podesta. Some of the most , .
prominent candidates for top jobsLarry Summers for
Treasury, John Kerry for State and Al Gore for the ,
environment agencyare also ghosts from the past. .

,

. 7.000 ,
Then there is the problem that all transitions are
,
bureaucratic nightmares. The new president appoints over
.
7,000 people, including more than a thousand who need to
be confirmed by the Senate. Nominees endure an absurdly
322
Creating Narratives

long nomination process, filling in 60 pages of forms and

submitting themselves to extensive FBI vetting, during
which plods from the bureau inquire about their taste for
intoxicants and the legal status of their nannies. Mr Bush did
not have his deputy cabinet officials in place until spring
2001, and subcabinet officials until the summer, when al
Qaeda was about to strike. The new president might have
delivered no drama with Obama when he was running his
own campaign. Now he must deal with Washingtons [P], ,
gigantic and frequently doltish permanent establishment.
.

Summary of findings: The commonplace practice of modifying headlines of the ST in the TT environment is also evident
in this text. The neutral ST headline Change.gov has been translated as that
gives off a more incontestable view of reality by introducing the battle frame. Also the TT includes conceptual narratives
that modify the way B. Obama is represented in translation. The TT sentence: .
, in the place of the ST Mr Obama is preparing
to undo much of the Bush legacy, starting with Guantnamo Bay, constructs a more robust and powerful identity for B.
Obama.

1174 863
323
Creating Narratives

Washington Post/December 2, 2008 /December 3, 2008
A team in need of a plan

A concept that excludes nothing defines nothing. That's why [P] .
one of the most urgent tasks for Presidentelect Barack
Obama's "Team of Rivals" foreign policy brain trust is
coming up with a coherent intellectual framework and a [P]
winning battle plan for the globespanning asymmetrical
conflict that George W. Bush calls the "war on terror." [M].
Terrorism (for the umpteenth time) is a tactic, not , .

an enemy; Bush might as well declare war against flanking .
maneuvers or amphibious landings. Everyone knows what
Bush is trying to say, and no one can deny the potential of
terrorist attacks to destroy lives and change the world. Few
would doubt that a line can be drawn between the Sept. 11,
2001, terrorist attacks and last week's bloody rampage in
Mumbai. But is it a straight line or a zigzag? Is it bold or
faint? Continuous or dotted?

The Bush administration correctly takes the position that all .
terrorism is evil. But that blackandwhite view doesn't take .
you very far toward useful policy choices. Being firmly ,
opposed to rainy days won't keep you dry in a storm. .
The fact that all terrorism is evil doesn't mean that all
terrorism is alike. I'm confident that Obama understands
this distinction but not that he has worked through all its
implications.

At yesterday's news conference, Obama introduced his
proposed national security team: Hillary Clinton as the new
secretary of state, Robert Gates as the continuing secretary
of defense, retired Gen. James Jones as national security
adviser, Eric Holder as attorney general, Janet Napolitano as
secretary of homeland security and Susan Rice as

ambassador to the United Nations a remarkably diverse
group, including just two white men, that proved Obama's

intention to show a different American face to the world.

But then a reporter asked the presidentelect a particularly
inconvenient question: During the campaign, Obama [CS]
claimed the right for U.S. forces to go after terrorists inside . ; . ,
Pakistan. Does the Indian government which believes the
Mumbai killers launched their assault from Pakistan have . ;
the same right? Obama refused to answer, saying only that
he recognizes India's right to defend itself and supports the ;
government's efforts to track down those responsible for ;
the Mumbai atrocity. Soon, though, it will be Obama's .
responsibility and that of Clinton, as the new architect of
U.S. diplomacy to find a way out of this kind of logical cul . ,
desac. .

In his opening statement, Obama vowed to continue the
fight against "those who kill innocent individuals to advance
hateful extremism." Is that his definition of terrorism? Is any
onesizefitsall definition sufficiently flexible to allow U.S.
Special Forces to go after Osama bin Laden but also to keep
nucleararmed India out of nucleararmed Pakistan?
No one asked Obama about another of his campaign

promises to promptly close the Guantanamo prison camp,
where "war on terror" detainees have been held without
formal charges, adequate legal representation or any
meaningful right to prove their innocence. Holder has been
a vocal critic of the Bush administration on issues of torture
and indefinite detention. Soon, it will be his job to figure out
how to deal with the remaining detainees some of whom
may indeed be innocent, many of whom surely are not
within legal norms consistent with both the nation's honor
324
Creating Narratives

and its citizens' safety.
Holder will also be key in shaping any effort to investigate

possible abuses in the "war on terror" that have not yet
come to light. And he and Napolitano will be responsible for
surveying the newly redrawn line between privacy and
security and deciding whether the Bush administration
went too far in asserting the right to eavesdrop on private
communications and collect personal information.
For Gates, who said he felt it was his duty to stay on at the
Pentagon, winding down the occupation of Iraq might be the
easy part. Obama described Afghanistan as "where the war
on terror began and . . . where it must end." If Obama meant
to confine the "war on terror" to just this one theater, it was
a smart move. But U.S. military thinkers have yet to come up
with a workable plan for prevailing in Afghanistan, to say
nothing of the resources needed to make such a plan work.

Summary of findings: The TT produces and reflects, through translational shifts narratives that qualify as public
narratives in the sense that reflect a collective social behavior of the TT readership. The example below foregrounds
differences in the conceptualization of events that impact how the readership understands the message. The TT clause:

translates the
ST: That's why one of the most urgent tasks for Presidentelect Barack Obama's "Team of Rivals" foreign policy brain trust is
coming up with a coherent intellectual framework and a winning battle plan for the globespanning asymmetrical
conflict that George W. Bush calls the "war on terror. The translational shift is played out between the ST coming up with
and the TT . While coming up with narrates an out of the blue invention or making up of a concept while the item
narrates the story from a more stable perspective.

717 253
325
Creating Narratives

/January 21, 2009
The imes/January 20, 2009

Don't ask what Barack Obama can do for you, , [M]
ask...

On Sunday night I had a dream about Barack Obama. T .
Millions of people do. I was at some meeting, in which ,
activists and officials sat around a long rectangular table. ,
Everyone was dressed informally, and people were making . .
presentations to the group about the things we needed to .
do. Mr Obama was next to me on my left. He was tired. After . , .
a while he fell asleep, and his head rested on my shoulder.
Naturally: it was my dream, so it was my shoulder.

It's all wine and concerts right now. Then, later today, the
inauguration, and after that the presidency. Every lobby one
can imagine and not a few that one can't is rushing out
press releases advocating that the new president do the
particular thing it advocates. In an internet version of a
medieval petitioners' hall, lobbyists thrust requests and
remonstrances in what they hope is the direction of the
increasingly iconic Mr Obama. Woodrow Wilson, that great
internationalist and one of the few library cardcarrying
intellectuals to be elected to the highest office, spoke in his
first inaugural address in 1913 about the hardly perceived
forces that can underlie an election. The American nation,
he said, was seeking to use his victory to interpret a change
in its own plans and point of view.

Some old things with which we had grown familiar, and
which had begun to creep into the very habit of our thought
and of our lives, have altered their aspect as we have latterly
looked critically upon them, he said, while some new things
have come to look like the stuff of our own convictions. His
thoughts were largely domestic and concerned how
workingclass Americans and American consumers had
been denied even the most basic protection from the
depradations of unregulated corporations. But the thought
holds good, that one of the marvels of democracy is how it
allows old, almost tyrannical ways of thinking to be seen for
what they are, and new possibilities to be imagined. The
space is suddenly there. Perhaps the old Administration was
overcontent with an unfair world, complacent or querulous
in the face of possible environmental catastrophe,
sometimes unimaginative in dealing with threats to its
security.

The preceding Administration had to fight what we are no
longer, seven years on, allowed to call the War on Terror;
we can all imagine how it might have been done better, but
it was done. George W. Bush's dictum that he who is not
with me is against me may have clarified a certain moment
in that struggle, but at a cost. Arguably it helped to create
the circumstances in which torture was permitted and Abu
Ghraib allowed to happen, and certainly legitimised, and it
made easier a widespread antagonism towards the US. Mr
Obama's election now allows many around the world who
have become entrenched in their rejection of the Bushite
formulas to emerge from their bunkers and look at the
world again. It gives them space.

Mr Obama is temperamentally averse to creating polarities.
It was assumed by some that, after the imagined hard
power of Texan foreign policy, would come the antithetical
soft power of the fluffy Hawaiian, in which President
Ahmadinejad would be garlanded at JFK by a line of
hijabbed lei queens. No, said his Secretary of State
designate, Hillary Clinton, last week. We are for smart
power using, the full range of tools at our disposal
diplomatic, economic, military, political, legal, and cultural
picking the right tool, or combination of tools, for each
situation. With smart power, diplomacy will be the
vanguard of our foreign policy. What makes such a
326
Creating Narratives

transition psychologically possible for Mr Obama is his easy
admission of selfdoubt. It was there in his book Dreams
from My Father, when he recalled dealing with a pair of
whiteblaming Chicago pols in his community activist days.
Both Marty and Smalls, he wrote, knew that in politics,
like religion, power lay in certainty and that one man's
certainty threatens another's. I realised then that I was a
heretic. Or worse for even a heretic must believe in
something, if nothing more than the truth of his own doubt.
So Mr Obama doubted the truth of his own doubt, yet
obviously didn't find his uncertainty crippling. You seem
like you know what you're doing, another activist tells him.
He replies: I don't, Mona. I don't have a clue. That doubt
creates a space.

What does Mr Obama himself intend to do in office is,
naturally, everyone's first question. It is now a clich to say ...
that he must inevitably disappoint, and one as with the [C]. .
worst clichs, cannot transubstantiate or create life in the ,
Virgin's womb, then for his presidency to fulfil the rest of us, [P]
it requires something from the rest of us from those
around the world who imagine themselves friends of .
democracy, or who just want a better and safer life, or a
guarantee to our greatgreat grandchildren of any life at all.
In fact, it demands a response from all but the most
purblind, hatefilled or fanatical. What will we do a
coalition of the possibly willing with the room we now
have?

Obama may expend capital in a Middle East peace process,
but what might the opportunity of such a president permit, [P]
say Israel, to do or to offer that could give early hope to the , ,
majority of Palestinians? If Mr Obama works at getting
Congress to lift the Cuban embargo, what will Latin ;
American states do actively to encourage democracy in that
fascinating but unfree island?
What extra effort can the governments and political parties ;
of Germany and other recalcitrant Nato countries make to
persuade their peoples that Mr Obama's plea for increased [DELETION] [P]
help in Afghanistan should be met? What work are
statesmen of goodwill prepared to put in to reform ;
completely the UN, so that it reaches even Level One in its
ability to prevent genocide and uphold the most basic ,
human rights? If the US fully embraces the need for action
over climate change, can other countries not be more ;
flexible in their own attitude towards their responsibility ,
for emission controls? Before we all pile our own demands ;
on the new president's head perhaps our selfinjunction ,
should be, not to ask what Obama can do for us, but ask .
rather what we can do for Obama. After inauguration day, ,
the responsibility should be shared by as many of us as can .
do what is needed. And though it isn't important to anyone
but me, that is what I think the dream meant.

Summary of findings: Translational shifts identified while juxtaposing the ST and the TT point towards the emergence
of conceptual and public narratives in language in a text where the mediation degree in part of the newspaper Ta Nea is
amplified. The messianic frame, along with representations of mobilization of a passive crowd make their appearance in
the TT. Interestingly, selective appropriation here silences the item political parties ( ) in the TT
potentially to erase any link between the government and the political parties.

1115 313
327
Creating Narratives

/January 20, 2009
The ndependent/January 19, 2009

The first Blackberry President is here Blackberry

, ,
President Barack Hussein Obama, as he will be tomorrow, has
changed everything about America already not just by being . lackerry .
what he is but by being who he is. He is not just the first black
president. He is the first BlackBerry president.

When George W. Bush hit the campaign trail in 2000, the 2000,
precious possession he brought with him from home was his
feather pillow. The theme of the Bush years was obliviousness. . [EMPH]
The outgoing President was famously unavailable for debate. He .
was deaf to countervailing voices. He hit the sack early and .
always got a good night's sleep.

What the pillow was to Mr Bush the BlackBerry is to Mr Obama. , lackerry
Mr Bush couldn't wait to turn in; Mr Obama can't bear to tune .
out. It's richly symbolic that Mr Obama has been resisting the
security agencies' attempts to pry his fingers from around his ,
beloved electronic device. [P].

His fight to keep his BlackBerry shows how strongly he doesn't
want to be cut off. He wants to stay in touch with the advisers
and friends who can bypass the gatekeepers. (C u meet me at the
g8 fr coffee 2nite?)

It always seemed to me ironic that the McCain campaign kept
referring sneeringly to the young senator's meagre resum a
mere community organiser! before he entered electoral politics.
It was Mr Obama's experience as a community organiser that
proved such a killer application when he allied that skill to the
internet. Those 12 million volunteers were literally conjured out [C]
of the air. Not only could he deploy his web army to distribute his 12 [P].
leaflets, raise his funds and sell his policies, he could speak
,
directly to them whenever he hit a snag. When he accepted the

Democratic nomination in Mile High Stadium, tens of thousands
.
held up their glowing mobile phones like candles at a rock

concert. But Mr Obama was not just ahead of the curve in the
.
way he understood the web. He was also the harbinger of a
.
societal shift that is being played out before our eyes in the

economic meltdown. He understood instinctively that the old

structures in his case, the structures of politics had to be
.
broken down and reassembled if we are to compete in the new

world.

Would Mr Obama have been able to pull this off if he were white?
Seems unlikely. His literary prowess, preference for salads over
steaks and refined intelligence would have damned him as one of
the dreaded liberal elite. As President he can appoint a Cabinet of
overcredentialed brainiacs from Harvard.

At the same time, Mr Obama can say things to his African
American supporters that no white leader ever could. He listens
to JayZ on his iPod, dances without biting his lower lip and can
sink a threepoint basketball shot on the first try. His formidable
wife is unmistakably black. That makes it OK for him to declare
to a black voter: Brothers should pull up their pants. You are
walking by your mother, your grandmother, your underwear is
showing. What's wrong with that? Come on. It's in such personal
exchanges with his base that the Obama cultural shift is likely to
be most potent.

America is now besotted with the images of the Obama family,
those two enchanting little girls in their spicandspan dresses,
holding hands with their proud, statuesque mother and their
father. Michelle Obama may prove to be the most fully realised
First Lady ever. She seems to have resolved with Obamian grace
the torment of modern women: how to juggle work and family.
328
Creating Narratives

Unlike Hillary Clinton she doesn't strive to compete with her
husband because she doesn't have to. But unlike Nancy Reagan
or Laura Bush she leaves no doubt in anyone's mind that she can.
She's just chilling for a while until the kids find their feet. She
seems to be telling a nation of frazzled women: you're allowed to
breathe. ,
.
Sensible of the comparisons perhaps to Kennedy's Camelot that
promoted the arts at the White House, Mr Obama said in a TV
interview in December that he wants to highlight the diversity of
American culture, inviting jazz musicians and classical musicians .
and poets to perform for his guests. Historically, he mused, , ,
what has always brought us through hard times is that national , ,
character, that sense of optimism, that willingness to look ,
forward, that sense that better days are ahead. .

The whole world prays that that sense will be proved true. It has
a better chance now that President Barack Hussein Obama has
broken the dark spell of the Bush years and pledged to return
America to itself.
Summary of findings: This text brings forward an intense mediation in terms of the TT newspaper as there are
significant sections of the ST which have remained untranslated. The TT newspaper selectively appropriates larger
chunks of material to translate and the TT therefore is an abbreviated form of the ST. Translation shifts mainly refer to
public and conceptual narratives. Labelling proves a strategically powerfull framing tool.

779 318

Table 19 displays in numbers the STTT wordcount ratio across the three newspapers in the political subcorpus.
ST-TT Wordcount in Political Mini Corpus

10000
To Vima ST
9000
I Kathimerini ST 8250
7860
8000
7000 Ta Nea ST
I Kathimerini I Kathimerini ST
TT 6176
6000 I Kathimerini TT
4673 To Vima TT
4700 To Vima ST
5000
Ta Nea TT To Vima TT
3856
4000 Ta Nea ST
Ta Nea TT
3000
2000
1000
0
1
Newspapers

Table 19: STTT wordcount in Political Subcorpus
329
Creating Narratives

Appendix 2

Texts forming the biomedical samplecorpus48

International Herald Tribune /February 5, 2008
H K/February 10, 2008
A

[A/M/RE
FRAMING]
LAST month the Food and Drug Administration gave the green light
to food made from cloned cows, pigs and goats, with the agencys top ,
foodsafety expert, Dr. Stephen Sundlof, declaring, It is beyond our (FDA).[P]
imagination to even have a theory for why the food is unsafe.
, ,
Opponents of biotechnology immediately let out a collective groan of
, ,
disapproval among them Jerry Greenfield of Ben & Jerrys ice

cream (who has called cloning just weird). Cloning, after all, will
[A/CS]
now join genetically modified crops as yet another threat to organic
[A/M]. [M]
agriculture. I, too, let out a groan, but for a different reason.It was
,
because of the tone. It is beyond our imagination to even find a
, , .
theory .... The hubris here highlights the saddest aspect of our
[A/EMP] ,
perennial food wars. Like abortion and capital punishment,
,
biotechnology inspires kneejerk rhetorical passion rather than
. ,
rational debate. Dr. Sundlofs remark was the equivalent of an
.
uppercut to the antibiotech camp, one offering an open invitation to
[A] .
fight back.
. [A/C]
, ,
. ,
, [CS]
.

[M].
[A/REFRAMING]
One need look no further than the battle over genetically modified [CS]
crops starting in the 1990s to understand how this language
undermines the qualified benefits of biotech innovation. Without a , ,
hint of doubt, probiotech forces insisted that genetically modified 1990,
crops would end hunger and eliminate the need for pesticides. , .
Genetic modification was supposedly a harmless panacea that would
save the planet. Industry not only promoted this fiction, but it scoffed [A/EMPH]
at the prospects of product Labelling, insisting that it was the .
product, not the process, that mattered. , ,
.
,

.
This arrogant attitude spurred the antibiotech forces to promote [C]
48 Elaborations included in the Appendix 2 are meant to shed light to the quantitative view of narratives in each press item. Each shift identified has
been underlined and matched to its counterpart in the ST. In the TT, every shift has been indexed with a visual marker according to the narrative
category to which it pertains. Where applicable, next to the narrative category an A or D has been added to indicate that the translation shift is the
result of an Addition (A) or Deletion (D). Therefore, the indication P/A suggests that the shift underlined pertains to a public narrative and is the
result of an addition of linguistic material otherwise absent from the ST. All unforced translation shifts have been underlined, regardless of whether
they impose a different narrative meaning .Also, the visual marker [CS], stands for Cultural Shift, and tags to shifts which are strongly motivated by
cultural preferences of the TT environment and are not necessarily narrativerelevant. A small summary has been added below each target text to
describe the translational shifts available in the TT and to elaborate briefly on their importance. Obvious cases of mistranslations are identified by
the marker [MISTRANS]. The visual marker [A/EMPH] has been added next to items which have been added to the TT and upgrade emphasis
awarded to the sentence.. To account for and show the translational shifts that are related to a popularization of discourse the visual marker [POP ]
has been added to maker reference to an upgraded technical and scientific discourse and therefore a lessening of the popularization of discourse
and the marker [POP+] to indicate the opposite pattern of upgrading popularization and mitigating technicality.
330
Creating Narratives

their own distortions. Frankenfoods became the term of choice for ,
genetically modified crops. Chemical companies engaged in [A]
biopiracy; they were killers of monarch butterflies, engineers of [CS].
future superweeds, and according to Jeremy Rifkin, the prominent
biotech opponent, monopolizers of an insidious technology that ,
posed as serious a threat to the existence of life on the planet as the ,
bomb itself.

.
[A/REFRAMING]
[M]
,
Lost in this rhetorical battle was a quiet middle ground where the
benefits and drawbacks of genetically engineered crops were .[D/C] [P]
responsibly considered. What emerged from this investigation , ,
undertaken by population experts, plant biologists, farmers, .
conservationists, nonprofit foundations and agricultural scientists [A/COH]
was cautious optimism for a new technology. These specialists
recognized that such crops could reduce deforestation by increasing , , ,
crop yields on less land, moderate overuse of synthetic insecticides,
decrease dependence on irrigation through droughtresistant crops,
and greatly reduce soil erosion through notill farming. They also .
looked at the hundreds of studies finding that this technology was . [C]
relatively safe.
[P]
[P]
But the middle ground also confronted the dangers that could arise
, , [A] [P]
through genetically modified crops. Indeed, it is possible for cross

pollination to contaminate wild varieties of food, decreasing
biodiversity. Likewise, it is possible (if very unlikely) that animals fed [M] .
modified crops could pass genes to humans that render antibiotics
ineffective. .

.

[A/M/REFRAMING]
That patents of transgenic methods are controlled by a few deep
pocketed corporations is also unsettling. One need not be an anti
biotech radical to have problems with a terminator gene that [P] [D/P],
prevents crops from producing secondgeneration seed. Rather than . [A]
dismiss these concerns (as Monsanto does) or grossly overstate them
(as Greenpeace and Mr. Rifkin do), people like Per Pinstrup [POP+]
Andersen, the former director general of the International Food . , ,
Policy Research Institute, have asked a profoundly productive , Monsanto,
question: what are the limits of modern societys precautionary ( Greenpeace ),
principle? In other words, knowing that it is impossible to prove a , ,
negative, when should a society agree to accept a technology with
proven benefits and potential dangers? , :
;. ,
,

, ,
[M];
Dr. PinstrupAndersen, for one, decided that the benefits of modified
crops outweigh the drawbacks. The public, however, was distracted
by the rhetorical crossfire, which had no use for this reasoned, and
necessarily imperfect, response to a complex technology. . , ,

[A] .

[A/REFRAMING[
I hope that the same situation does not play out on cloning. After all,
our collective failure to grapple with genetic modification on its own
terms been accompanied by the equally unfortunate failure to bring [A]. , [P]
its benefits to cultures that might gain the most from it insect
resistant cassava or droughttolerant maize could be a boon to
subsistence farmers in Africa. Cloning technology, too, has many [C]
possible benefits. It has the potential to produce products that are .
331
Creating Narratives

safer, healthier and tastier bacon that has heartprotective Omega .
3s, say, or milk produced by cows that are stronger and thus need ,
fewer antibiotics. It might seem just weird, but cloning deserves a , ,
fair hearing, one in which impassioned language yields the floor to , 3
responsible discourse. , [P]

. ,
[CS]

[M].

Summary of findings: Crosstextual comparison produces fruitful results in terms of a) narratives that emerge through
translational shifts, b) shifts which are deemed to be culture bound, c) additions with motivations that range from ensuring and
improving cohesion of the TT to awarding emphasis and d) presence of shifts that point towards an upgraded interpersonal
function of the TT. Looking at ad in more detail the translated text it seems that narratives that emerge are master [M] that point
towards binary representations such as in the phrase: , ,
, ,
where danger is linked to pregnancy () two concepts which do not touch common ground.
Also the TT shows a preference for producing translational shifts motivated by a preference for appealing to logic inscribed in
the TT environment. Instantiations of this pattern are the TT like in the TT sentence that thematizes the logic appealing verbiage
in the sentence [CS]
,, or in the verbiage in the phrase "
. The interpersonal [IP] function relates to the discursive relationship that is
established between the reader and the text and is instantiated via lexical and syntactical choices. The IP functions that lurks in
translation comes forward in the TT sentence , , where the
thematized position of the lexical item , lessens the distance between text, author and reader. Finally the TT assists the
construction of public narratives [P]. The strategic decision to delete the ST adjectival item deeppocketed in the translation "
,
suggests links with the narrative of deification of science, by means of removing sponsorrelated information
which could assist the understanding of medical companies engulfed in economic interests. Additions [A] are identified in
subheadings and offer renew the framing of each paragraph.

741 923

332
Creating Narratives

Internaltional Herald Tribune/December 31, 2008 /February, 15 2009
... [A]
Blood Sugar Control Linked to Memory Decline, Study Says

[A/REFRAMING]

Spikes in blood sugar can take a toll on memory by affecting the dentate
gyrus, an area of the brain within the hippocampus that helps form ,
memories, a new study reports. (dentate gyrus), [A/CS]
( ) [P]
Researchers said the effects can be seen even when levels of blood , [CS] .
sugar, or glucose, are only moderately elevated, a finding that may help
explain normal agerelated cognitive decline, since glucose regulation [P]
worsens with age.The study, by researchers at Columbia University ()
Medical Center and funded in part by the National Institute on Aging, . [CS]
was published in the December issue of Annals of Neurology.
,
[P]
.
, [P]

Annal of Neurology.

If we conclude this is underlying normal agerelated cognitive decline,
, ,
then it affects all of us, said lead investigator Dr. Scott Small, associate
[P]. Scott Small,
professor of neurology at Columbia University Medical Center. The

ability to regulate glucose starts deteriorating by the third or fourth
.
decade of life, he added.
,
[P].

[A/REFRAMING]

[CS]
Since glucose regulation is improved with physical activity, Dr. Small , Small, [A/CS]
said, We have a behavioral recommendation physical exercise.In . ,
the study, researchers used highresolution functional magnetic
resonance imaging to map brain regions in 240 elderly subjects. They (MRI), ,
found a correlation between elevated blood glucose levels and reduced 240
cerebral blood volume, or blood flow, in the dentate gyrus, an indication . ,[A/CS]
of reduced metabolic activity and function in that region of the brain.
,
By looking at blood sugar levels in mice and monkeys, researchers said, ,
they tried to confirm a causeandeffect relationship between the [MISTRANS]
glucose spikes and the reduced blood volume, Dr. Small said. . ,[A/M]

,

( )
, Small.

,[A/M] Bruce c Ewen,
Bruce S. McEwen, who heads the neuroendocrinology lab at Rockefeller Rockfeller
University in New York and was not involved in the research, said the , ,
studys findings were compelling, with important implications not just
for the elderly but for the growing number of overweight children and ,
teens at risk of Type 2 diabetes. [/]
2.
When we think about diabetes, we think about heart disease and all
the consequences for the rest of the body, but we usually dont think [A/REFRAMING]
about the brain, he said. This is something weve got to be really
worried about. We need to think about their ultimate risks not only for
,
cardiovascular disease and metabolic disorders, but also about their
[] ,
cognitive skills, and whether they will be able to keep up with the
,
demands of education and a fastpaced complex society. Thats the part
[A/EMPH].
that scares the heck out of me.
.
,
Previous observational studies have shown that physical activity
reduces the risk of cognitive decline, and studies have also found that
diabetes increases the risk of dementia. Earlier studies had also found a .
link between Type 2 diabetes and dysfunction in the dentate gyrus.
333
Creating Narratives

.
Sheri ColbergOchs, an associate professor of exercise science at Old
Dominion University in Norfolk, Va., said her research has found that
regular exercise, even light physical activity, can offset the potentially
negative effects of Type 2 diabetes on cognitive function. It is not clear
what the mechanism is, she said, but may have something to do with the
effect of insulin.
This new study is interesting in that it allows for a greater

understanding of which region of the hippocampus is likely most
affected by poorly controlled diabetes, she said.
But the elevations in blood glucose seen in the new study are more
subtle and would not be considered a disease state, Dr. Small said.
Its part of the normal process of aging, much like wrinkling of skin, he
said. It happens to all of us inexorably, and it worsens progressively
across the life span.

Summary of findings: The construction of a public narrative that favours processoriented (dynamic) descriptions of health issues
in relation to effectoriented (static) ones is identified in the TT. The manifestations of this pattern are mainly lexical choices i.e.,
or .... or . These
lexicalizations assist the surfacing of actions that are more sustained in time in relation to lexical items with more momentous
orientation in the ST. The second public [P] narrative that surfaces in translation talks about the Deification of Science in the sense
that it avoids creating direct links between science and funding. This narrative is brought to light in the text by means of the
optional choice to translate the verb funded with instead of choosing its potential accurate semantic equivalent
. n any case a subsidy () is associated with granting or donating funds whereas a direct funding
raises suspicions in terms of biases in research. The TT is also rich in translational shifts that are motivated by the culturebound
tendency for appealing to reason. This cultural shift [CS] is brought forward in the TT by means of lexical items such as
(in the place of the ST item finding) or other connectives such as or . Finally the TT headline
adds the dots (.) which are a visual marker of the IP function in the sense that they establish a relationship
with readers since they challenge them to deduct meaning by themselves and interpret an implied meaning.

582 476
334
Creating Narratives

The New York Times/October 1 2, 2008 /October, 19 2008
C [M]
,
[A/MREFRAMING]
Many people gobble big doses of vitamin C in hopes of boosting their C

immune system and warding off illness. But new research shows that [P]
in people with cancer, the vitamin may do more harm than good. [P] . , ,
Researchers at Memorial SloanKettering Cancer Center in New York C
studied the effects of vitamin C on cancer cells. As it turns out, the , .
vitamin seems to protect not just healthy cells, but cancer cells, too. Memorial SloanKettering
The findings were published today in the journal Cancer Research. [P] C
[A/CS]
.
Journal of
Cancer Research.
The use of vitamin C supplements could have the potential to reduce C

the ability of patients to respond to therapy, said Dr. Mark Heaney,
an associate attending physician at the cancer center, in a press [A/P] Mark Heaney,
release.Dr. Heaney and his colleagues tested five different . Heaney
chemotherapy drugs on cancer cells in the laboratory. Some of the
cells were first treated with vitamin C. In every case, including a test .
of the powerful new cancer drug Gleevec, chemotherapy did not C. ,
work as well if cells had been exposed to vitamin C. The
chemotherapy agents killed 30 to 70 percent fewer cancer cells when Gleevec,
the cells were treated with the vitamin.A second set of experiments C.
implanted cancer cells in mice. They found that the tumors grew .
more rapidly in mice that were given cancer cells pretreated with [POP]
vitamin C. ,
C.
The researchers found that just like healthy cells, cancer cells also [A/MREFRAMING]
benefit from vitamin C. The vitamin appeared to repair a cancer cells
damaged mitochondria, the energy center of cells. When the C
mitochondria is injured, it sends signals that force the cell to die, but
vitamin C interrupts that process.Vitamin C appears to protect the Heaney
mitochondria from extensive damage, thus saving the cell, Dr.
Heaney said. And whether directly or not, all anticancer drugs work . Heaney [POP+]
to disrupt the mitochondria to push cell death.Dr. Heaney measured C C
the buildup of vitamin C levels in cells and said that the levels of ,
vitamin C used in the experiments were similar to those that would
result if a patient took large doses of the vitamin in supplement form. C .
Earlier research at the cancer center showed that vitamin C seems to C
accumulate within cancer cells more than in normal cells.
. [P]
C,
[P] Heaney, C

.
Patients should eat a healthy diet that includes foods rich in vitamin
C, Dr. Heaney said, but its the large doses of vitamin C in tablet form
that are worrisome.

Summary of findings: A collection of public and master narratives seem to dominate the TT. In terms of the public narratives
these again relate to the preference towards process. For example the verbial selection in the place of ward
off portrays an action that is stretched and extended in time, thus shows relevance to a process orientation assumed by the TT.
The same goes with the selection of the verb in the following TT sentence
C, Heaney, C
, that replaces the verb eat in the ST. An accurate
translational alternative for eat would be , or , in which case the item would have
had the same effect. The text also brings to surface the creation of binary discursive structures that highlight the sick/well
335
Creating Narratives

dichotomy. This is detected in the following sentence: C
,.where the item , (in the
place of its ST equivalent normal) comes in direct opposition with the item .

398 357
336
Creating Narratives

The New York Times/January 9, 2009 /Fabruary, 8 2009

Major Flu Strain Found Resistant to Leading Drug, Puzzling [P]
Scientists
[A/POP] [A/M]
Tamiflu,
[A/MREFRAMING]
Virtually all the dominant strain of flu in the United States this season is

resistant to the leading antiviral drug Tamiflu, and scientists and health
[CS]
officials are trying to figure out why.
Tamiflu [A/CS]
.

[A/EMPH]
The problem is not yet a public health crisis because this has been a
[A/M] ,
belowaverage flu season so far, and because the Tamifluresistant strain,
one of three circulating, is still susceptible to other drugs. But infectious
disease specialists are worried nonetheless. ,
[M].
Last winter, about 11 percent of the throat swabs from patients with the
most common type of flu that were sent to the Centers for Disease , 11% ,
Control and Prevention for genetic typing showed a Tamifluresistant [A/POP] ,
strain. This season, 99 percent do. [A]
(CDC),

Tamiflu. 99%(!)
.

Kent A. Sepkowitz,
''It's quite shocking,'' said Dr. Kent A. Sepkowitz, director of infection
Memorial
control at Memorial SloanKettering Cancer Center in New York. ''We've
SloanKettering Cancer Center .
never lost an antimicrobial this fast. It blew me away.''
...
The single mutation that creates Tamiflu resistance appears to be
,
spontaneous, and not a reaction to overuse of the drug. It may have
Tamiflu [M]
occurred in Asia, and it was widespread in Europe last year. In response,

the disease control agency issued new guidelines two weeks ago. They
. [P]
urged doctors to test suspected flu cases as quickly as possible to see if

they are influenza A or influenza B, and if they are A, whether they are H1

or H3 viruses.
(influenza) A B
, 1 3.

[A/REFRAMING]
The only Tamifluresistant strain is an H1N1. Its resistance mutation
could fade out, an agency scientist said, or a different flu strain could
[A/POP]
overtake H1N1 in importance, but right now it causes almost all flu cases
amiflu
in the country, except in a few mountain states, where H3N2 is prevalent.
11
, 32.
Complicating the problem, antiviral drugs work only if taken within the
first 48 hours of infection. A patient with severe flu could be given the
[A/CS]
wrong drug and die of pneumonia before test results come in. So the new

guidelines suggest that doctors check with their state health departments
48 . [A/CS]
to see which strains are most common locally and treat for them.

[M] ..
''We're a fancy hospital, and we can't even do the A versus B test in a .
timely fashion,'' Dr. Sepkowitz said. ''I have no idea what a doctor in an
unfancy office without that lab backup can do.''
.

E [M]
If a Tamifluresistant strain is suspected, the disease control agency Tamiflu,
suggests using a similar drug, Relenza. But Relenza is harder to take; it is , Relenza.
a powder that must be inhaled and can cause lung spasms, and it is not Relenza , [A/CS]
recommended for children under 7. [A/POP] ,

. [A/CS]
7 .
Relenza, made by GlaxoSmithKline, is known generically as zanamivir.
Tamiflu, made by Roche, is known generically as oseltamivir. Relenza [D/P] Zanamivir,
[A/M] o amiflu [D/P]

oseltamivir.
Alternatively, patients who have trouble inhaling Relenza can take a
,
mixture of Tamiflu and rimantadine, an older generic drug that the
337
Creating Narratives

agency stopped recommending two years ago because so many flu Relenza Tamiflu
strains were resistant to it. By chance, the new Tamifluresistant H1N1 rimantadine, [A]
strain is not.

.
[A/REFRAMING]
''The bottom line is that we should have more antiviral drugs,'' said Dr. [CS]
Arnold S. Monto, a flu expert at the University of Michigan's School of [A/M]
Public Health. ''And we should be looking into multidrug combinations.'' ,
[P] . Arnold S. Monto, ,
New York City had tested only two flu samples as of Jan. 6, and both were .
Tamifluresistant, said Dr. Annie Fine, an epidemiologist at the city's
health department. Flu cases in the city are only ''here and there,'' Dr. amiflu,
Fine said, and there have been no outbreaks in nursing homes. Elderly [P] Annie Fine,
patients and those with the AIDS virus or on cancer therapy are most at . [A/POP]
risk. , ,

.
But, she added, because of the resistance problem, the city is speeding its [M]
laboratory procedures so it can do both crucial tests in one day. ''And we [A/C]
strongly suggest that people get a flu shot,'' Dr. Fine said. ''There's plenty AIDS [P] .
of time and plenty of vaccine.'' , ,
, [P]

.
,
Fine,
.
Exactly how the Tamifluresistant strain emerged is a mystery, several [A/REFRAMING]

experts said. Resistance appeared several years ago in Japan, which uses
more Tamiflu than any other country, and experts feared it would [A]
spread. But the Japanese strains were found only in patients already Tamiflu , ,
treated with Tamiflu, and they were ''weak'' that is, they did not . [P]
transmit to other people. Tamiflu

.

Tamiflu
''This looks like a spontaneous development of resistance in the most
.
unlikely places possibly in Norway, which doesn't use antivirals at all,''
Dr. Monto said

,
, Monto.

... [A/REFRAMING]
Dr. Henry L. Niman, a biochemist in Pittsburgh who runs
recombinomics.com, a Web site that tracks the genetics of flu cases
worldwide, has been warning for months that Tamiflu resistance in O Henry L. Niman, ,
H1N1 was spreading. recombinomics.com,

,
Dr. Niman argues that it started in China, where Tamiflu use is rare, was
[A/POP] 11 amiflu
seen last year in Norway, France and Russia, then moved to South Africa
. Niman ,
(where winter is June to September), and back to the Northern
Tamiflu .
Hemisphere in November.
,
.
The mutation conferring resistance to Tamiflu, known in the shorthand
of genetics as H274Y on the N gene, was actually, Dr. Niman said, ''just a

passenger, totally unrelated to Tamiflu usage, but hitchhiking on another
change.''

The other mutation, he said, known as A193T on the H gene, made the
virus better at infecting people.
Furthermore, Dr. Niman blamed mismatched flu vaccines for helping the
A193T mutation spread. Flu vaccines typically protect against three flu
strains, but none have contained protections against the A193T
mutation.

Dr. Joseph S. Bresee, chief of flu prevention at the disease control agency,
said he thought Dr. Niman was ''probably right'' about the resistance
338
Creating Narratives

having innocently piggybacked on a mutation on the H gene which

creates the spike on the outside of the virus that lets it break into human
cells. But Dr. Bresee said he doubted that last year's flu vaccine was to
blame, since the H1 strain in it protected ''not perfectly, but relatively
well'' against H1N1 infection.
[P]
Dr. Niman said he was worried about two aspects of the new resistance [C] Tamiflu.
to Tamiflu. Preliminary data out of Norway, he said, suggested that the , ,
new strain was more likely to cause pneumonia.
.

,
[P], 36.000
The flu typically kills about 36,000 Americans a year, the C.D.C. estimates,
.
most of them the elderly or the very young, or people with problems like

asthma or heart disease; pneumonia is usually the fatal complication.
, .
And while seasonal flu is relatively mild, the Tamiflu resistance could
.
transfer onto the H5N1 bird flu circulating in Asia and Egypt, which has
killed millions of birds and about 250 people since 2003. Although H5N1
has not turned into a pandemic strain, as many experts recently feared it ,
would, it still could and Tamiflu resistance in that case would be a Tamiflu 51
disaster
250
2003. 51

H5N1 amiflu
.

Summary of findings: The public narrative of the Deification of Science takes many forms in the translational shifts in this TT.
First, the TT headline changes the view from the ST that talks about scientists being puzzled by the flu, and narrates a quest, a
search, for a potent drug against he flu. The fronting of the item in the TT, passes on to the readers a narrative of
scientific research as the ultimate truth, while there is a romantic and nostalgic intertextual reference to M. Prousts la
Reserche du Temps Perdu, reminiscent of what it means to try and find for something that is always elusive. Apart from that the
TT exhibits a preference for creating and establishing causal links between sentences and appeal to the reason of readers. This is
an indication of the distinction between HIGH and LOW context CULTURES. Moreover, the pattern of removing in the TT any
links between the research process and outcome to medical companies is also relevant here as the TT newspaper decides to
delete the name of the company GlaxoSmithKline (present in the ST) from the TT sentence Relenza
Zanamivir, o amiflu oseltamivir. Also, the ST attempts to personify and glorify the role of New
York City. This is evindent in two points: a) New York City had tested only two flu samples as of Jan. 6, and both were Tamiflu
resistant, said Dr. Annie Fine, an epidemiologist at the city's health department. that translates as
amiflu, awarding emphasis to sampling, b)
But, she added, because of the resistance problem, the city is speeding its laboratory procedures so it can do both crucial tests in
one day, which translates as , , ,
, which emphasizes the
role of scientists instead of that of the city. The TT points to constructions about the world epidemic of AIDS. The phrase "
AIDS
has been used to translate the ST phrase Elderly patients and those with the AIDS virus or on cancer
therapy are most at risk. The translational construction offered in the TT however is different than that of the ST, in that thrusts
readers into visualising people as infected with AIDS, while the ST has not integrated such a view. Moreover, the TT brings about
a construction of patients as actedupon, as being subjects to treatment. This view is elaborated in the translation of the ST
phrase But the Japanese strains were found only in patients already treated with Tamiflu, and they were ''weak'' that is, they did
not transmit to other people, with the TT
Tamiflu .

339
Creating Narratives

Finally, the provides more evidence of how selective appropriation creates a narrative in the TT, and equally silences one in the
ST. The deletion in the TT, of the private companies Roche and GlaxoSmithKline in the sentence Relenza, made by
GlaxoSmithKline, is known generically as zanamivir. Tamiflu, made by Roche, is known generically as oseltamivir further attests to
the low tolerance of the Greek environment for privatizing health.

1098 967

340
Creating Narratives

he New York Times /February 2, 2009 H K/March 1, 2009

Telling Food Allergies From False Alarms A [M]
[A/RE
FRAMING]
For Ingelisa Keeling, a Houston mother of three children with multiple
allergies, mealtime was a struggle. Nuts, eggs, wheat, beef, peas and rice . .. ,
were all off limits banned by the childrens allergist.But recently, Mrs. . ,
Keeling learned that her familys diet need not be so restrictive. Although , , ,
her children do have real allergies to peanuts, milk and eggs, among . ,
other foods extensive testing at a major allergy center showed that ,
they were not in fact allergic to many of the foods they had been
avoiding. Her 2yearold son, who had been living on a diet primarily of .
potatoes, fruit and hypoallergenic formula, has resumed eating wheat, [P] [A/CS]
bananas, beef, peas, rice and corn. ,

,
. ,
,
[A/CS] ,
, , , ,
.
His diet had become so, so restricted that nutrition had become a real
,
concern, said Mrs. Keeling, who traveled to specialists at National Jewish
, . ..,
Health in Denver last summer for answers about her childrens diet and
eczema problems. Among other findings, she learned that neither of her [A/CS]
,
younger children was really allergic to wheat.

. ,
Thats the big one, she said. Wheat is in everything, so it makes life a

whole lot easier.
.
[A/REFRAMING]

Doctors say that misdiagnosed food allergies appear to be on the rise,

and countless families are needlessly avoiding certain foods and
,
spending hundreds of dollars on costly nonallergenic supplements. In
,
extreme cases, misdiagnosed allergies have put children at risk for
. ,
malnutrition.
,
! ,
And avoiding food in the mistaken fear of allergy may be making the 11 ,
overall problem worse by making children more sensitive to certain , ,
foods when they finally do eat them. , ,
. H
More than 11 million Americans, including 3 million children, are 18% ,
estimated to have food allergies, most commonly to milk, eggs, peanuts
and soy. The prevalence among children has risen 18 percent in the past (CDC)
decade, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. ,
While the increase appears to be real, so does the increase in .
misdiagnosis.
[A/P]
The culprit appears to be the widespread use of simple blood tests for [EMPH]
antibodies that could signal a reaction to food. The tests have emerged as
a quick, convenient alternative to uncomfortable skin testing and time .
consuming food challenge tests, which measure a childs reaction to ,
eating certain foods under a doctors supervision.

,

[A] .
While the blood tests can help doctors identify potentially risky foods,
they arent always reliable. A 2007 issue of The Annals of Asthma, Allergy ,
& Immunology reported on research at Johns Hopkins Childrens Center, [A/CS] . , [A/CS]
finding that blood allergy tests could both under and overestimate the (2007) The Annals of Asthma, Allergy
bodys immune response. A 2003 report in Pediatrics said a positive and Immunology
result on a blood allergy test correlated with a realworld food allergy in Johns Hopkins, [P]
fewer than half the cases.
[POP] .
The only true test of whether youre allergic to a food or not is whether [P]
you can eat it and not react to it, said Dr. David Fleischer, an assistant
341
Creating Narratives

professor of pediatrics at National Jewish Health. In one recent case ' ,
there, doctors treated a young boy who had been given a feeding tube David Fleischer,
because blood tests indicated he was allergic to virtually every food. . [P]
Food challenge testing allowed doctors to quickly reintroduce 20 foods
into his diet, and they expect more to be added. , '

.
20
Blood tests may be unreliable because they fail to distinguish between ,
similar proteins in different foods. A child who is allergic to peanuts, for .
instance, might test positive for allergies to soy, green beans, peas and
kidney beans. Children with milk allergies may test positive for beef
allergy. ,
[P]
The most important question in diagnosing food allergy is whether the .
child has tolerated the food in the past, Dr. Fleischer says. While some
severe allergies are obvious, parents given a positive blood test result ' ,
should seek advice from an experienced allergist who performs David Fleischer.
medically supervised food challenge testing.Even when a food allergy has
been confirmed, parents should have children retested, because many
allergies are outgrown, particularly in the cases of milk, eggs, soy and
wheat. Doctors groups are also starting to acknowledge that some of
their own policies may have contributed to overtesting and
misdiagnoses. A committee for the American Academy of Asthma Allergy
and Immunology is considering revised guidelines recommending earlier
introduction of foods like eggs, peanuts and shellfish, which in the past
have been delayed until age 2 or 3. A 2008 study of 10,000 British
children, reported in The Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology,
found that early exposure to peanuts lowered allergy risk.Just as an
allergy indicates oversensitivity to certain foods, it may be that doctors
and parents have become oversensitive to food allergies. In an essay in
The British Medical Journal in December, Dr. Nicholas A. Christakis, a
professor at Harvard Medical School, argues that an overreaction to
allergy is leading to unnecessary testing and false positives.If the kid has
been doing fine, I would advise parents not to get allergy testing, because
the results are more likely to be false positives than true positives, Dr.
Christakis said in an interview. If they do think they need allergy testing,
be extremely measured and go to reputable people.

Summary of findings: This text presents a different kind of science journalism in relation to previous texts as it deals with a
less lifethreatening medical case i.e. allergies. Thus it ranks low in the criticalness and risk factors that could be inscribed in both
ST and TT. Crosstextual juxtaposition revealed that translator mediation ranked lower than in other texts where issues were
either more riskhigh i.e. cancer, or concerned research in uncharted territories i.e. stem cells. Therefore, large part of the text
that has been transferred shows little variation. Shifts mainly concern: a) headline framing to construct binary relationship with
reality (A ), b) cultural shifts that are motivated by a constrastcreating preference in the TT
( , [A/CS]
) and are materialized through additions.

842 594
342
Creating Narratives

he Economist/January 29 2009 H K/March 1, 2009
[M]
American attitudes to stemcell therapies are
changing fast

[A/M/REFRAMING]
FOR the past eight years, Americas government has declined to
fund new research into one of the worlds most promising ,
medical technologies: the use of human embryonic stem cells to [P]
repair or replace damaged tissue in the diseased and injured. : [P] ,
Embryonic stem cells are special for two reasons, one scientific
and one ethical. The scientific reason is that they can turn into .
any of the bodys myriad cell types, which is why they might be ,
used in this way. The ethical reason is that, at the moment, .
harvesting them usually involves killing human embryos. The [EMPH]
embryos in question have no future anyway (they are usually .
spares from in vitro fertilisation procedures). But it was this
destruction of potential human life that disturbed George Bush [EMPH]
and his supporters. .
( [M] in vitro
). A
Barack Obama has promised to reverse the ban. When that
[M]
happens, American academics will no longer have to watch
enviously from the sidelines as their colleagues in Australia, [C] [A]
Britain, China, the Czech Republic, Israel, Singapore and South . ,
Korea push ahead. But though the legislative wheels have yet to
start turning, the mood has already shifted. , , ,
, ,
.
One sign of this shift came on January 23rd when the countrys [P]
Food and Drug Administration (FDA) granted permission for FDA ( )
the first clinical trial of a therapy based on human embryonic Geron
stem cells to Geron, a firm based in Menlo Park, California. .
Geron was able to ask for permission, and the FDA was able to
grant it, because the ban does not apply to privately financed
research. America, it seems, is back in the stemcell business.

Off we go [A/P/REFRAMING]
Gerons trial is of a treatment for paralysis caused by damage to Geron

the spinal cord. Between eight and ten patients with severe .
spinalcord injuries will be recruited to test this treatment for [P]
safety. At the same time both the researchers and the patients 810
will be looking for signs of improvement in the condition. If the . ,
trial is successful, larger ones will follow.
.
[P].
The trick that Gerons researchers have learned is how to turn [D/P] Geron
embryonic stem cells into cells called oligodendrocytes. These,
in turn, generate a structure called the myelin sheath, which . ,
insulates nerves against leakage of the electrical signals that ,
carry their messages around. Geron plans to inject its
oligodendrocytes into the damaged spines of patients between . Geron [P]
one and two weeks after their injury. [A/P]
,
.
Tests in rats, using human cells, have shown that

oligodendrocytes injected this way can indeed help repair ,
myelin sheaths and restore the ability of nerve cells to carry
signals. The hope is that the same will happen in people. The
nerve cells themselves will not be replaced, so even in principle . [P]
such treatment could not help everyone with a spinal injury.
Many observers do, however, see this research as a step along
the road to reconnecting the brains and limbs of those with
severed spinal cords, by growing new nerve cells to bridge the , ,
gap. .
All new medical procedures need to be tested for safety, of
343
Creating Narratives

course. With stem cells, the main risk is not the sort of chemical .
toxicity associated with a drug; rather it is of an unusual type of
tumour called a teratoma. Teratomas are more or less normal ,
bodily structureseyes or teeth, for examplethat are [POP], .
growing in the wrong place. They are a special risk with stem
cells precisely because such cells can turn into any other sort. If [A] .
the wrong genetic switch is flicked, the wrong sort of tissue
results. .
.
Another risk, though, is immune rejection. Introducing stem
:
cells into a body is a bit like transplanting an organ: the

recipients immune system might throw a wobbly and try to
. O Geron [P]
destroy the intruder. Gerons patients will therefore have to
,
spend two months taking antirejection drugs. Other people,

though, think they may be able to get round this difficulty. The

International Stem Cell Corporation (ISCo), in Oceanside,
.
California, for one, reckons it can do so and, at the same time,

deal with the ethical issue of embryo destruction.

ISCo has found a way of producing embryoniclike stem cells
from unfertilised eggs. The egg is chemically stimulated to
create a group of cells that form a nonviable (and unfertilised)
embryo. This, explains Kenneth Aldrich, the firms boss, is
something that could not be implanted into a womans womb
and produce a child. Nonetheless, the cells it contains have the
same characteristics as stem cells.
Besides any ethical advantages this procedure may have, it

could also have medical ones. Because lines of stem cells
created in this way have only one parent, they are
immunologically simpler than normal embryonic cellsin
other words they have a smaller variety of the proteins that
trigger rejection. That lack of variety, says Dr Aldrich, means it
might be feasible to create a bank of stemcell lines that could
be matched to every immune type in the human population,
rather as a blood bank carries blood of all the different groups
(A, B, O and so on). Replacement stem cells might then be
ordered off the shelf.
Nor are spinalcord injuries the only condition lined up for

treatment. Both ISCo and Advanced Cell Technology, of Los
Angeles, are trying to create stem cells that could stopand
possibly reversea process called macular degeneration, which
leads to blindness. ISCo says it hopes to start human trials later
this year. Using embryonic stem cells in this way is regarded as
a particularly promising route because a similar form of
treatment that employs stem cells recovered from stillborn
children is already known to work.
Try, try, try again
The true potential of this approach is unknowable. It might yet

prove too difficult to use as widely as its supporters hope. Stem
cell therapy has been suggested as a way of dealing with
arthritis, angina and Parkinsons disease, as well as spinalcord
injury and blindnessa range of conditions that makes it look
like a panacea. That risks disappointment and overreaction if
things go wrong. But the only way to find out is to try.
Michael West, the founder of Geron and now head of BioTime,
another biotechnology company, says the existing legislation
has affected privately financed research as well as the public
sort. Investors have been frightened off by the political debate.
Once it is gone, the full brunt of Americas innovative know
how, academic and private, could transform the subject, as
other countries may soon find out

344
Creating Narratives

Summary of findings: In this text, in which as the word count shows only approximately half of it has been translated, public
narratives that give prominence to the role of scientist are interwoven with other translational shifts with different discursive
and narrative results. Once, more the headline has been framed in such a way so as to give off a binary nuance i.e.
. Also, the TT has opted for lexical choices that may not 'betray' the ST yet are more emphatic
and create a different view of the participant. For example the TT item
, has been used to translate the phrase Barack Obama has promised to reverse the ban. The choice of in
the place of promised () creates links with the power frame, elaborated under the conceptual narratives section in
chapter 4. Moreover, the TT presents shifts that point towards the public narrative of the Deification of Science as in the sentence
" Geron
, where the ST Geron,
has been replaced by the phrase Geron that emphasizes scientific research in relation to the
company behind it.

1067 590
345
Creating Narratives

The New York Times/March 29,2009 /April 18,2009

Cholesterol Drugs May Reduce Risk of Clots [P]
50% 43%
[A/REFRAMING]

New results from a large study suggest that the drugs known as
statins may help lowering cholesterol: reducing the risk of
developing blood clots in the veins. The study, published on the (A/P)
Web site of The New England Journal of Medicine and presented , [A/CS]
Sunday at an American College of Cardiology convention, found .
that relatively healthy people who took a potent statin were 43
percent less likely than those who took a placebo to get a blood The New England Journal of Medicine
clot known as venous thromboembolism.

43%
[P] ,
,
.
The clots, which often develop in the legs, can be fatal if they travel
to the lungs. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention , ,
estimates that up to 600,000 Americans get venous clots each year .. .
and that at least 100,000 die from them. The risk of suffering
blood clots increases with age, and people who are obese, have (CDC), 600.000
certain genetic abnormalities or have been inactive because of
surgery or injury are more prone to develop them. 100.000 .

.

Jupiter,
The results are from a large study called Jupiter, led by Brigham
researchers at Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston, that .
looked into the effects of statins on people without high
cholesterol or histories of heart disease. It involved 17,802 people 17.802 26
men 50 and older and women 60 and older in 26 countries , 50 60
who took either a statin or a placebo. .
.

[A/P/REFRAMING]

Jupiter
The main Jupiter findings, published in November, were that the
statin lowered the risk of heart attack by more than half and 50%,
significantly lowered the risk of stroke, angioplasty, bypass . ,
surgery and death. As a result, national medical panels are
considering broadening guidelines on who should be taking .
statins.

Studying blood clots was a secondary goal, said Jupiter's lead ,
investigator, Dr. Paul M. Ridker, the director of the Center for Paul M. Ridker,
Cardiovascular Disease at Brigham and Women's Hospital. With Brigham .
the relatively healthy people in the study, the number of clots was ,
small 94 total but the placebo group developed 60 of them, o 94
compared with 34 for those taking the statin.
60 34
.
Dr. Ridker said common treatments for people who have had Ridker
blood clots, usually several months of anticoagulants like warfarin
or heparin, can cause hemorrhaging and require frequent , warfarin
monitoring. But blood clot reduction in the study ''came without
risk of hemorrhage at all,'' he said. .

, .
Jupiter is the first clinical trial to consider the effect of statins on
346
Creating Narratives

blood clots in randomly selected people, although smaller studies
Jupiter
have suggested similar results, including a 2008 review at Albert

Einstein Medical Center in New York of the records of cancer
, [P]
patients who took statins. Dr. Ridker says he has begun
.
prescribing statins, in addition to anticoagulants, to patients who
2008
have had a previous venous blood clot. Some experts, however,
Albert Einstein
said more proof was needed.
. Ridker

''I can't imagine that you would be treating people prophylactically

yet,'' said Dr. Timothy J. Gardner, the president of the American
. , ,
Heart Association. ''The dilemma is we don't want to put patients
.
on medications that they don't need, especially if we're putting
them on medications for life or for long term.''

[A/M/REFRAMING]
The statin used in the Jupiter study is the most potent on the
Jupiter
market, rosuvastatin, sold as Crestor and made by AstraZeneca,
.
which sponsored the study. Some consumer health advocates say
rosuvastatin, Crestor
Crestor raises the risks of side effects like muscle deterioration
and kidney problems. These were not problems in the Jupiter trial, [D/P]
although there was a small increase in diabetes. While it is unclear ,
whether every statin would have the same effect as Crestor, most . , ,
experts believe statins produce similar results, depending on the Jupiter,
dose. .

Crestor,
,
.

CRP[A/M/REFRAMING]
At the cardiology convention and on the Web site of the journal
The Lancet, Dr. Ridker will present another set of results from the
Jupiter study looking at the role of highsensitivity Creactive
protein, or CRP, which indicates inflammation in the body. While Lancet, [A/P] Paul
people chosen for the study did not have high L.D.L., or bad, Ridker
cholesterol, they did have high levels of CRP. Jupiter, [P] C
CRP,
.

LDL ,
CRP.
After an average of less than two years, Dr. Ridker found that the
people taking the statin who had the lowest risk of heart attack,
, Ridker
stroke and other problems were those who wound up not only

with very low cholesterol but also very low CRP levels. Dr. Ridker
,
said the findings indicated that people with high CRP levels should
..
be taking statins, a recommendation that the national medical
,
panels are considering. And he said that inflammation, and not just
CRP. O Ridker ,
high cholesterol, appeared to cause heart problems, rather than
, CRP
merely being an indicator of problems. ''This does in my mind add
,
strength to the hypothesis that inflammation is causal,'' said Dr.
.
Ridker, who helped invent a CRP test.
, [A/P]
,
Not all experts agree.
.

''Whether this study confirms that inflammation increases risk of , Ridker,
heart attack remains to be determined,'' said Dr. Daniel J. Rader, a
heart researcher at the School of Medicine at the University of
CRP[A/P].
Pennsylvania. ''Many people would say it simply proves that CRP
is a marker of risk.''
, .

Dr. Rader and others said they were not convinced that patients
, ,
taking statins should be tested to see whether their CRP levels,
Daniel J. Rader,
and not just their cholesterol, had dropped. If the CRP levels
,
stayed high but other indicators improved, they said, that might
CRP .
not mean the statin was failing or should be increased.

If ''L.D.L. is down but CRP continues to remain elevated, would
increasing the statin further provide additional benefit?'' said
Sidney Smith, a professor of medicine at the University of North
Carolina and a past president of the American Heart Association.
''This doesn't answer that question. My approach would be to
work on getting the patient to stop smoking, and other lifestyle
factors.''

347
Creating Narratives

Summary of findings: The thematic thread that governs this STTT pair and that is deemed to be relevant with the nature of
narratives that emerge is treating blood clots to avoid cardiac disease. This disease seems to entail different conceptual
perspectives than those inscribed in the thematic thread of cancer disease. On this issue, Sontag (1978) asserts that the
mythologies and public fantasies concerning cancer narrate patients as gradually being overcome by the disease that takes
over their body yet death by heart conditions has a condition that strikes suddenly. What translation shows in this case is that
although the narrative of heart disease striking spontaneously is inscribed in language (The study, published on the Web site of
The New England Journal of Medicine and presented Sunday at an American College of Cardiology convention, found that
relatively healthy people who took a potent statin were 43 percent less likely than those who took a placebo to get a blood clot
known as venous thromboembolism) the TT favours a processoriented narration, that is sustained in time and more prolonged
( The New England Journal of Medicine

43% ,
, ).

940 858
348
Creating Narratives

/ September 6, 2008
Science News/ September 4, 2008

[C]
[M]

[A/REFRAMING]

. [A]
WASHINGTON (AP) Scientists have mapped the cascade of [M/POP+]
genetic changes that turn normal cells in the brain and pancreas ,
into two of the most lethal cancers. The result points to a new .
approach for fighting tumors and maybe even catching them [POP]
sooner.

[C]

.

[A/P]
Genes blamed for one person's brain tumor were different from
the culprits for the next patient, making the puzzle of cancer
genetics even more complicated.
But Friday's research also found that clusters of seemingly [A/M]. [A/P]
disparate genes all work along the same pathways. So instead of [POP+],
today's hunt for drugs that target a single gene, the idea is to
target entire pathways that most patients share. Think of [A/M].
delivering the mail to a single box at the end of the culdesac
instead of at every doorstep. .

...
[P] ,
The three studies, published in the journals Science and Nature,
mark a milestone in cancer genetics.
[A/C] .
"This is the next wave," said Dr. Phillip Febbo of Duke University's ,
Institute for Genome Sciences and Policy, who was not involved ,
with the new research. "What's really important is that finding Science ature,
those common elements within the landscape suggests there are .
therapeutic interventions that can help the whole group."

Despite 30 years of laborious work, scientists until now have
found only a fraction of the genetic alterations required to cause
any of the 200 diseases that collectively are called cancer.
Different tumors require a different domino effect of genetic
changes to arise, and to determine their severity and even which
treatments will work.

The new maps do not include just mutated genes. They cite [P/A]
missing ones, extra ones, and overactive or underactive ones, too, .
in the most comprehensive look ever at human tumors. , ,
.
[P/A]
.

[A/P]
Teams led by Johns Hopkins University examined more than
20,000 genes in tumors taken from 24 pancreatic cancer patients 20.000 24
and 22 patients with the most dangerous brain tumor, called , 22
glioblastoma multiforme. Separately, The Cancer Genome Atlas [M] ,
project a governmentfunded network of 18 medical centers . 18
analyzed 600 genes in glioblastomas from 206 patients. The
Hopkins teams found hundreds of genetic changes, including a
particularly intriguing gene named IDH1. Twelve percent of Cancer Genome tlas ( )
glioblastoma patients, mostly young ones, had a mutated version 600
that brought longer survival: a median of 3.8 years compared with 206 [C]. [A/P]
the 1.1 years for patients without the mutation.

If additional study proves that effect, doctors soon might use an D1. , [A] 12%
IDH1 test to help determine prognosis, said Hopkins' Dr. Victor , , [C].
349
Creating Narratives

Velculescu, who led the glioblastoma work. If so, the next question : 3,8
is whether certain drugs work better in those patients as well. 1,1
.

The bigger discovery involved cancer's genetic chaos. No tumors [A/CS]
were identical. The typical pancreatic cancer contained 63 genetic [A/EMPH]
alterations and the average brain tumor 60, Hopkins researchers .[A] ,
reported in Science.
12
Fortunately, "genes don't work alone," said Hopkin's Dr. Kenneth ,
Kinzler, who led the pancreatic work. Figure out which genes ,
cluster in which pathways and "a simpler picture emerges." [A/EMPH] .

The Hopkins team identified 12 core pathways that were
abnormal in most pancreatic tumors. In Nature, The Cancer
Genome Atlas researchers reported three core pathways at work
in most glioblastomas.

The pathways do different things. Some allow damaged DNA to
escape repair. Some switched off protective factors meant to
suppress tumors.

Finding drugs that block those pathways will not be easy, said Dr.
Bert Vogelstein of Hopkins and the Howard Hughes Medical
Institute, who oversaw the research. They also may cause more
side effects than current "targeted therapies" that work against
only a specific gene defect.

But companies already are researching drugs to block a particular
enzyme pathway implicated in the studies.

Also, pathway blockers should work in larger groups of patients,
Vogelstein said. One particular pancreatic cancer pathway
contains a variety of genes mutated in only a few people, but
regardless of which gene ran amok, the whole pathway was
broken in every tumor studied. "Even though it sounds complex,
it's actually allowing us to simplify the complex into pathways that
will allow us, I think, to truly understand cancer for the first time
and take a much more rational approach to treatment," said Dr.
Anna Barker of the National Cancer Institute, who codirects the
cancer atlas project. "I'm more optimistic."

Moreover, the work suggests possible ways to catch cancer earlier,
by tracing mutant DNA floating through the bloodstream well
before tumors themselves start to spread, Vogelstein added. "I
don't think that's any longer science fiction."

Summary of findings: Observable translational shifts in the TT point towards: a) a high degree of mediation in part of the
TT newspaper as larger parts (in relation to the newspaper I Kathimerini) have been left out while others have been added, b)
persistence of the public narrative of Deification of Science which is instantiated by means of thematizing scientific information
or putting emphasis by means of ending a phrase with scientific relevance at the end of the sentence. The following TT
sentence is indicative of such patterns
. , ,
.
.

732 480
350
Creating Narratives

/ December 16, 2008
The Telegraph/December 14, 2008

[c]
Scientists may be able to stop cancer spreading round the
[P0P]
body

Scientists have discovered how cancer spreads round the body raising
the possibility it could be stopped. E arts and he London
[POP]
.
[P]
Researchers in London said the breakthrough is 'exciting' and if a drug ,
could be found to stop cancer spreading it would mean it would 'stop [M] .
cancer killing people'.

The work is in the early stages but the team have found an enzyme that is
necessary for breast cancer cells to spread around the body.

When the enzyme was blocked, the cancer could not spread.

[P] LCg1
Professor Marco Falasca and his team of researchers at Barts and The
. , [CS]
London School of Medicine and Dentistry have been investigating the

role of an enzyme called PLCg1 in breast cancer. They found that when
[POP+]. [P]
they stopped breast cancer cells from making this enzyme it prevented
,
metastasis the ability of cancer cells to migrate from the original
.
tumour to other parts of the body. This spreading around the body is
,
what kills cancer patients as the internal organs become overcome by

tumours.Professor Falasca said: "Our work not only identifies a molecule

that plays a crucial part in the spread of cancer; it also shows how this
.
process might be halted. "We have discovered this using a model system:
.
the next big challenge is to show that this also happens in patients."
.

The study was funded by the Association for International Cancer

Research.Scientific Adviser, Dr Mark Matfield said: "This is a really

exciting piece of research. The simple fact is that if you stop metastasis,

you stop cancer from killing people. We now need to focus on developing

drugs that can block PLCg1."

The research was carried out in mice and the findings are published ,
today in the journal Cancer Research.
Cancer Research, [A]
. LCg1
It is likely that the results will take years to translate to humans and also

a drug needs to be found that could be used safely in cancer patients to
,
block the enyzme. Dr Joanna Peak, Cancer Research UK's cancer
.
information officer, said: "Tackling the spread of cancer remains one of
the biggest challenges in successful treatment but this study may provide
the key to unlock this complex process. Provided these promising lab
results can be reproduced in human cancers, this knowledge could be
used to develop drugs to block cancer spread in the future."
The team were able to stop breast cancer cells from migrating into the
lungs of mice but it had little effect on the primary tumour.
Samples taken from human breast cancer patients showed that levels of
PLCg1 were higher in their secondary tumours than in the primary breast
tumour in 50 per cent of cases.In the research paper Prof Falasca said: "In
conclusion, our data strongly suggest that PLCg1 inhibitors may have
potential therapeutic applications for the clinicaltreatment of tumour
metastasis. At present, no specific PLCg1 inhibitors are available, and
therefore, there is a stringent need to develop novelspecific PLCg1
inhibitors."
351
Creating Narratives

Summary of findings: A high degree of mediation which is instantiated by reshuffling the position of information is
evident in this text. Translational shifts again point towards the intensification of the role of scientists (Public Narrative
of Deification of Science). The ST phrase "When the enzyme was blocked, the cancer could not spread which gives no
indication whatsoever on who will be blocking the enzyme, is translated with the phrase "
, . Also the TT shows evidence of the process
orientation in translation, as the ST item could be found is translated with the verb that reveals an action
extended and spread in time.In this text too the TT hides the funding relevant information in the ST The study was
funded by the Association for International Cancer Research.

487 209
352
Creating Narratives

/ January 13, 2009
New Scientist/January 11, 2009

[A/M]
,
.

,
[A/REFRAMING]

[P]
Implants that sit in the body and reprogram a person's
immune cells could be used to treat a range of infectious
diseases and even cancer. In a trial on mice with an [P]
aggressive melanoma that usually kills within 25 days, the .
new treatment saved 90% of the group. [P] ,
25 ,
[M] 90%
.
.

Because cancer cells originate within the body, the immune [CS] [C]
system usually leaves them alone. Therapies exist that ,
involve removing immune cells from the body before [M]
priming them to attack malignant tissue and injecting them [M/A] .
back into a patient.Results are not encouraging, though
more than 90% of reinjected cells die before they can have ,
any effect, says David Mooney of Harvard University.
.

90%

[P] .
Mooney and colleagues have now developed a technique
that directs the immune system from within the body a
method that is more efficient and potentially cheaper too. , [A/ P]

, [M/A ]

.

Search and destroy

Their breakthrough involves implanting cylinders of an [A/P]
FDAapproved biodegradable polymer into the body. The
implants release a particular variety of the cellsignalling
molecules called cytokines a sort of molecular perfume (FD).
that is irresistible to a certain kind of immunesystem [POP+]
messenger cell.

.

These dendritic cells are attracted into the pores of
Mooney's implant, where they are exposed to antigens the .
molecular signatures of the cancer, bacterium or virus being
treated and a dangersignal chemical derived from [CS]
bacterial DNA. , ,

This alert signal makes the dendritic cells flee to the nearest .
lymph node, where they meet up with the immune system's
"killer" Tcells and program them to hunt down the invading ,
cells.
. [M ]

353
Creating Narratives

Strength in numbers
[P],
8,5
In tests, the researchers implanted cylinders with a

diameter of 8.5 millimetres into mice and two weeks later
. , [CS]
injected the animals with highly aggressive melanoma

cells.Mice implanted with 'blanks' cylinders lacking any
chemical additives developed large tumours within 18 [C]
days and had to be euthanised. However, 90% of the mice
given the full treatment were cured."There have not been 18 .
any reports of the traditional [external] dendritic cell
activation having survival rates at the levels we find with . ,
our materials for the cancer model we used," says Mooney.

.

He suspects this is because the implants can recruit and

activate very large numbers of dendritic cells. "It is a

continuous process dendritic cells are attracted to the

device, take up the [cancer] antigen and [the warning signal]

and then they can leave," says Mooney. "New cells are

continuously arriving while activated cells are leaving."
[P]
[A/P]
The team thinks modified versions of the material could be

effective against a range of cancers and infectious diseases.
, .
These might also help reprogram the immune system to

combat autoimmune diseases such as type 1 diabetes,

caused by immune cells destroying insulinproducing cells
,
in the pancreas.
1[POP+].

Summary of findings: The TT here highlights certain aspects in terms of scientific research and discursively
empowers scientists. It also emphasizes the polemical and militarized version of disease and conceptualizes the human
body as a battlefield where disease and health fight for their own place. The battle frame that emerges is salient in the
following example
where lexical items (enemies) and are associated to military
discourse and are not present in the ST. Also the TT emphasizes research and the act of searching for results; The TT
uses the phrase ,
,
that privileges search while the ST is more neutral in
tone.


455 516

354
Creating Narratives

/23 2009
The Independent/April 22, 2009

Fertility expert: 'I can clone a human being'

,
[A/REFRAMING]

A controversial fertility doctor claimed yesterday to have
cloned 14 human embryos and transferred 11 of them into O ,
the wombs of four women who had been prepared to give , 2003
birth to cloned babies. 14 ,
[D/M] 11
The cloning was recorded by an independent documentary . ,
filmmaker who has testified to The Independent that the , ,
cloning had taken place and that the women were genuinely ,
hoping to become pregnant with the first cloned embryos .
specifically created for the purposes of human
reproduction.Panayiotis Zavos has broken the ultimate
taboo of transferring cloned embryos into the human womb,
a procedure that is a criminal offence in Britain and illegal in
many other countries. He carried out the work at a secret
laboratory, probably located in the Middle East where .
there is no cloning ban. Dr Zavos, a naturalised American, ,
also has fertility clinics in Kentucky and Cyprus, where he .
was born. His patients three married couples and a single
woman came from Britain, the United States and an ,
unspecified country in the Middle East.
.
None of the embryo transfers led to a viable pregnancy but
Dr Zavos said yesterday that this was just the "first chapter" Discovery
in his ongoing and serious attempts at producing a baby Channel.
cloned from the skin cells of its "parent".

.

. ,

ndependent ,

. ,
.

.
"There is absolutely no doubt about it, and I may not be the

one that does it, but the cloned child is coming. There is

absolutely no way that it will not happen," Dr Zavos said in
. :
an interview yesterday with The Independent.

.
"If we intensify our efforts we can have a cloned baby within
a year or two, but I don't know whether we can intensify our ,
efforts to that extent. We're not really under pressure to .
deliver a cloned baby to this world. What we are under
pressure to do is to deliver a cloned baby that is a healthy .
one," he said.
His claims are certain to be denounced by mainstream .
fertility scientists who in 2004 tried to gag Dr Zavos by
imploring the British media not to give him the oxygen of [P]
publicity without him providing evidence to back up his ,
statements. Despite a lower profile over the past five years, . [C]
scores of couples have now approached Dr Zavos hoping ,
that he will help them to overcome their infertility by using
the same cloning technique that was used to create Dolly the
sheep in 1996. 1996.
"I get enquiries every day. To date we have had over 100
enquiries and every enquiry is serious. The criteria is that . 100
they have to consider human reproductive cloning as the .
355
Creating Narratives

only option available to them after they have exhausted
everything else," Dr Zavos said.
.
"We are not interested in cloning the Michael Jordans and :
the Michael Jacksons of this world. The rich and the famous
don't participate in this."
.

.
It took 277 attempts to create Dolly but since then the 277 ,
cloning procedure in animals has been refined and it has
now become more efficient, although most experts in the .
field believe that it is still too dangerous to be allowed as a ,
form of human fertility treatment. Dr Zavos dismissed these
fears saying that many of the problems related to animal [M]
cloning such as congenital defects and oversized offspring [POP+].
have been minimised. .
,
..
.

, .
"In the future, when we get serious about executing things .
correctly, this thing will be very easy to do," he said. "If we
find out that this technique does not work, I don't intend to
step on dead bodies to achieve something because I don't , ,
have that kind of ambition. My ambition is to help people." ,
.
Dr Zavos also revealed that he has produced cloned
embryos of three dead people, including a 10yearold child
called Cady, who died in a car crash. He did so after being
asked by grieving relatives if he could create biological
clones of their loved ones.

Dr Zavos fused cells taken from these corpses not with
human eggs but with eggs taken from cows that had their
own genetic material removed. He did this to create a
humananimal hybrid "model" that would allow him to
study the cloning procedure.

Dr Zavos emphasised that it was never his intention to
transfer any of these hybrid embryos into the wombs of
women, despite Cady's mother saying she would sanction
this if there was any hope of her child's clone being born.
"I would not transfer those embryos. We never did this in
order to transfer those embryos," Dr Zavos said. "The hybrid
model is the thing that saved us. It's a model for us to learn.
First you develop a model and then you go on to the target.
We did not want to experiment on human embryos, which is
why we developed the hybrid model."

Dr Zavos is collaborating with Karl Illmensee, who has a
long track record in cloning experiments dating back to

pioneering studies in the early 1980s. They are about to
recruit 10 younger couples in need of fertility treatment for
the next chapter in his attempts at producing cloned babies.

"I think we know why we did not have a pregnancy," said Dr
Zavos. "I think that the circumstances were not as ideal as
we'd like them to be. We've done the four couples so far
under the kind of limitations that we were working under. .
.
"We think we know why those four transfers didn't take. I .
think with better subjects and there are hundreds of .
people out there who want to do this if we choose 10 . 10 ,
couples, I think we will get some to carry a pregnancy." ,
.
All the cloning attempts, which date back to 2003, were
filmed by Peter Williams, a distinguished documentary
maker, for the Discovery Channel, which will show the
programme tonight at 9pm.
356
Creating Narratives

Williams said that he was present at the secret laboratory
when the cloning was carried out by Dr Illmensee. "There's
never been any question of concealment, because we'd have
known about it," Williams said.
The little girl who could 'live' again
Little Cady died aged 10 in a car crash in the US. Her blood
cells were frozen and sent to Dr Zavos, who fused them with
cow eggs to create cloned humananimal hybrid embryos.

These hybrid embryos were developed in the test tube and
used to study the cloning process, but were not transferred
into a human womb, despite Cady's mother saying she
would sanction this if there was a chance the clone of her
little girl could be born. Dr Zavos said he would never
transfer hybrid animal clones into the human womb.
However, cells from Cady's "embryo" could in the future be
extracted from the frozen hybrid embryo and fused with an
empty human egg with its nucleus removed. This double
cloning process could produce a human embryo that Dr
Zavos said could be transferred into the womb to produce
Cady's clone.

Frontiers of fertility: The key questions

Q. What does he claim to have done?

A. Panayiotis Zavos says he has created 14 human embryos
and transferred 11 of them into the wombs of four women.
Some of these embryos only developed to the fourcell stage
before being transferred, but some developed to the 32cell
stage, called a morula. He also claims to have created
humanbovine hybrid clones by transferring the cells of
dead people into the empty eggs of cows. However, these
hybrid embryos were used for research purposes and were
not transferred to the womb.

Q. How does this compare to scientists' previous
achievements?

A. Other scientists have created humancloned embryos but
not for the purposes of transferring them to wombs in order
for women to give birth to babies. Those researchers
created cloned human embryos in the test tube to extract
stem cells for research. Dr Zavos has gone further (and
broken a taboo) by creating embryos specifically for human
reproduction, and he has attempted to create a viable
pregnancy by transferring the cloned embryos into women.

Q. Hasn't he made similar claims before?

A. In 2004, Dr Zavos claimed to have transferred a cloned
human embryo into a woman's womb but did not produce
hard evidence. He has now produced more cloned human
embryos, some at an advanced stage, and transferred them
into the wombs of three more women. An independent
documentary maker vouches for him.

Q. Why is this such a controversial thing to do?

A. Studies on animal cloning have shown time and time
again that it is unsafe. The cloned animals suffer a higher
thannormal risk of severe developmental problems and the
pregnancies often end in miscarriage. Mainstream scientists
believe cloning is too dangerous to be used on humans.

Q. How likely is it that he will succeed?

A. He is determined to succeed and has a long line of people
eager to sign up to his cloning programme, at a cost of
between $45,000 and $75,000. Cloning attempts in other
species, including primates, suggest there is no insuperable
barrier to cloning humans.

357
Creating Narratives

Summary of findings: Judging from the wordcount the TT in this case seems to be an abbreviated version of the ST.
The TT newspaper has proceeded to rearrangements of linguistic material and information identified in one place in
the ST have been moved to another in the TT, or deleted. This pattern points towards an upgraded mediation role on
behalf of the TT newspaper. In terms of specific translational shifts the TT creates variant images by means of lexical
choice. In the following instance the TT newspaper avoids to use the item womb () in the TT and creates a more
scientific image of the fertlization process i.e. : " 11
. Also the TT adopts lexical items that reinforce permanence and stability of results as is the case
with the item in the following example "
, . [C]
,
1996 that translates the sentence His claims are
certain to be denounced by mainstream fertility scientists who in 2004 tried to gag Dr Zavos by imploring the British media
not to give him the oxygen of publicity without him providing evidence to back up his statements. Despite a lower profile
over the past five years, scores of couples have now approached Dr Zavos hoping that he will help them to overcome their
infertility by using the same cloning technique that was used to create Dolly the sheep in 1996. Also meaningful is the
choice of the verb that constructs a more vivid image in relation to the item approached in the ST.

1497 625
358
Creating Narratives

The Times /April 28 2009 /29 2009

Deadly strain of swine flu gets under radar of the
[M]
immune system

[A/REFRAMING/M]

Flu is always a moving target for medicine because of its
ability to reinvent itself to evade the bodys natural defences
and vaccines and drugs.
[A]
[CS]
.

Because the virus mutates at a high rate, the flu strains that [CS]
circulate every winter are slightly different from those of ,
the previous year. This process, called antigenic drift, .
requires the issue of fresh flu vaccines every year to protect [P]
against the latest strains. [P]
.

.
It does not, however, carry a pandemic threat: the genetic
changes involved are minor, so people who have already
been exposed to flu generally retain a measure of immunity. .
New strains created this way can spread, and sometimes kill
the young, old and infirm, but they do not sweep through
entire populations. ,
[DEL/POP+],
What virologists fear is a different process, called antigenic .
shift or reassortment, which has driven previous .
pandemics. It is this that appears to have created the
Mexican swine flu.

Antigenic shift allows flu to acquire much larger genetic
changes very quickly, creating new strains to which the ,
human immune system is entirely naive. These can make it [C] . ,
much more dangerous because the body cannot
immediately defend itself. .

Flu mutates this way when two different strains infect the
same host at the same time, which allows them to exchange ,
whole sections of their genetic code. .

A flu viruss genome is split into eight segments, each of ,
which is copied separately inside host cells, before being
reassembled into daughter viruses and released to infect
other cells. When two viruses are present their segments .
can get jumbled up, creating reassorted daughter viruses .
with genetic material from both strains. That is what
appears to have happened here, said Wendy Barclay, ,
Professor of Influenza Virology at Imperial College, London. mperial College . ,
From looking at the sequences, two viruses at least have .
come together.

In the case of the swine flu the original strains appear both
to have been pig viruses, which have swapped genetic
material in an infected pig to create an entirely new strain .
that infects humans easily. Curiously, the new virus does not
seem to cause disease in pigs. When the swine flu virus was .
identified as belonging to the H1N1 family it raised hope [A/EMPH]
that humans might have some residual immunity to it, .
which might contain its pandemic potential. H1N1 viruses 11,
commonly infect humans and one was included in this
years seasonal flu vaccine. . [A/CS]
11

.

359
Creating Narratives

Genetic analysis, however, has now indicated that the H1N1

swine flu is too different from human H1N1 for previous

vaccinations or flu infections to offer much protection.
[POP+]
.
The homology [similarity] is very low, 70 per cent or less,
Professor Barclay said. There is very little similarity, and , 70%
you would expect there to be very little protection from .
antibodies to H1 human strains.
1.

[A/REFRAMING]
One encouraging discovery about swine flu is that analysis
of its neuraminidase protein the N of H1N1 indicates
that it should be sensitive to the antiviral drugs Tamiflu and
Relenza, which target this protein. This bears out clinical 11 [P]
experience so far, which suggests that patients respond well amiflu Relenza (
to the drugs. However, Professor Barclay said that viruses ).
with N1 neuraminidase were more likely than other strains ,
to develop resistance to antivirals. .
1
Peter Lachmann, Emeritus Professor of Immunology at the
University of Cambridge, said: Tamiflu resistance is .
extraordinarily widespread, and develops very quickly. We
would be very lucky if this virus does not develop
resistance.

It remains unclear why the virus has killed so many young, ,
healthy adults a concern because this is characteristic of
pandemic strains. One possibility is that the virus triggers a .
massive immune reaction called a cytokine storm, which is
worse in fit people with a strong immune system.
[M] .
This is thought to have been the chief cause of death during
the Spanish Flu of 191819, which was caused by an H1N1 19181919,
strain. 11.

Summary of findings: A fear invoking headline ( ), that relates to the master
narrative of fear, steers the reading of the remaining text. The metaphorical collocation point
towards a conceptualization that rewrites the ST headline portraying the disease as featuring a deadly mechanism, an
invisible, viral apparatus that is much more sophisticated and potentially dangerous from a simple flu. Again the
association of research with creation is underscored in the TT as translation of the ST sentence This process, called
antigenic drift, requires the issue of fresh flu vaccines every year to protect against the latest strains, translates as

. The selection of the item (creation) constitutes an
unforced translational choice as the ST item issue could have been translated as , Researchers are
portrayed then as creators. An interesting shift which triggers a different conceptualization of the diseased human body
lurks in the following TT: " ,
. Which translates
the ST equivalent: Antigenic shift allows flu to acquire much larger genetic changes very quickly, creating new strains to
which the human immune system is entirely nave. While the TT portrays the body as victim under attach that has to
detect and identify unknown and therefore alien invaders the ST does not victimize the suffering human body but
rather glosses it as nave.

640 677
360
Creating Narratives

/June 26, 2009
C/June 24, 2009

[M]
New cancer drug 'shows promise'

olaparib

[A/M/RE
FRAMING]

[A] [M]
Researchers say a new type of cancer treatment has
produced highly promising results in preliminary drug . olaparib [A/P]
trials. 19
,
Olaparib was given to 19 patients with inherited forms of
advanced breast, ovarian and prostate cancers caused by RC1 RC2. 12
mutations of the BRCA1 and BRCA2 genes. .
[A/EMPH]
In 12 of the patients none of whom had responded to other ,
therapies tumours shrank or stabilised. , ew ngland
Journal of edicine.
The study, led by the Institute of Cancer Research, features
in the New England Journal of Medicine olaparib,
,[P] R,
[P]
One of the first patients to be given the treatment is still in [A/C] .
remission after two years.

Olaparib a member of a new class of drug called PARP .
inhibitors targets cancer cells, but leaves healthy cells
relatively unscathed.

The researchers, working with the pharmaceutical company
AstraZeneca, found that patients experienced very few side
effects, and some reported the treatment was "much easier
than chemotherapy".

Researcher Dr Johann de Bono said the drug should now be
tested in larger trials

He said: "This drug showed very impressive results in
shrinking patients' tumours.

"It's giving patients who have already tried many
conventional treatments long periods of remission, free
from the symptoms of cancer or major sideeffects."

Olaparib is the first successfulexample of a new type of
personalised medicine using a technique called "synthetic
lethality" a subtle way of exploiting the body's own
molecular weaknesses for positive effect.

In this case the drug takes advantage of the fact that while [C] ,
normal cells have several different ways of repairing
damage to their DNA, one of these pathways is disabled by D ,
the BRCA mutations in tumour cells. Olaparib blocks one of
the repair pathways by shutting down a key enzyme called RC . olaparib
PARP.This does not affect normal cells because they can call ,
on an alternative repair mechanism, controlled by their ,
healthy BRCA genes. But in tumours cells, where the BRCA R. [A/COH]
pathway is disabled by genetic mutation, there is no ,
alternative repair mechanism, and the cells die.
D.
Cancer cells with the BRCA1 or BRCA2 mutations are the
first to be shown to be sensitive to PARP inhibitors. .

But there is evidence that olaparib will also be effective in
other cancers with different defects in the repair of DNA.
.
,
Professor Stan Kaye, who also worked on the study, said:
.
"The next step is to test this drug on other more common

types of ovarian and breast cancers where we hope it will be
361
Creating Narratives

just as effective." The researchers say the process of drug
evaluation and registration may have to be revamped to .
take consideration of the fact that new generation cancer
drugs target specific molecular defects, rather than types of * ,
cancer. Dr Peter Sneddon, of the charity Cancer Research
UK, said: "It is very encouraging to see the development of
'personalised treatment', tailored to the requirements of the
individual patient, becoming a reality as it offers the . , ,
opportunity to design new drugs that are truly selective.

"Although development of this drug is in its early stages, it is
very exciting to see that it has the potential to work when
other treatment options have failed.

Summary of findings: Consistent with the pattern of translation assisting the emergence of the narrative of Deification
of Science, this text also provides evidence of such constructions. The TT " olaparib
19 ,
ab initio introduces the phrase (by researchers) which justifies the
administration of the drug. Also, the TT newspaper decides not to translate the item drug by its semantic equivalent i.e.
but use the more general item .

512 278
362
Creating Narratives

/October, 6 2009
The Times/October 5, 2009

HIV vaccine possibility after scientists rebuild : V
camouflage mechanism []

[/REFRAMING]
A critical camouflage mechanism that allows HIV to hide
from the bodys defences and foil immunisations has been [C] V
rebuilt in the laboratory in research that could transform DS
the prospects for an effective Aids vaccine, The Times has ,
learnt. [/P]. [A/EMPH]
,
DS.

The advance by British scientists should allow them to turn
one of the viruss great strengths into its Achilles heel,
promising a first vaccine that offers strong protection , [A/P] [M]
against HIV.
[A/M]
If offers a way of overcoming HIVs remarkable capacity to
shapeshift so that it becomes unrecognisable to the human V.
immune system, which has so far thwarted efforts to create
a workable vaccine. ,
, [A/P]

.

By making synthetic versions of the viruss camouflage
jacket and injecting them into patients, scientists believe [M] V.
that it should be possible to teach the immune system to
recognise and neutralise HIV.

Candidate vaccines based on the new approach are already
being evaluated in animal studies and the first human trials [CS]
could potentially begin in two years. The research, led by [A/M]
Ben Davis, Professor of Organic Chemistry at the University .
of Oxford, is the latest in a series of recent milestones in the
search for an Aids vaccine. .

Last month the worlds largest trial of a candidate vaccine, [M] .
in Thailand, suggested that an agent called RV144 could
reduce the chances of HIV infection by almost a third.
Though the results were only just statistically significant
and the effect was small, they have offered the best
indication yet that it might be possible to immunise people
against the virus.Further hope has been raised by another
study published last month, which identified two new
antibodies that neutralise a broad range of HIV strains. This
has provided important clues to the design of vaccines that
are more effective than RV144.Professor Daviss research,
which has been supported with almost $1 million
(600,000) from the International Aids Vaccine Initiative
(IAVI), now offers another method of creating better
vaccines against HIV. It is an example of the new field of
synthetic biology, in which scientists seek to rebuild
natural molecules with subtle modifications that make them
medically useful.

HIV binds to Tcells of the human immune system to infect [A/M] V
them using a surface molecule called glycoprotein 120 (GP
120). While most elements of GP120 mutate rapidly to 120 (G120).
escape the immune system, one feature called the silent G120
face always remains the same, making it a prime target for
antibodies that could be raised by a vaccine.This silent face, , , ,
however, is generally invisible to the human immune . ...
system because it is coated with sugars that are difficult for
antibodies to recognise and grab. The virus uses this trick
to decorate itself with what is effectively camouflage, .
Professor Davis told The Times. It has a cloak of invisibility,
363
Creating Narratives

as it were. imes.

Most people who become infected with HIV do not produce V
antibodies against the silent face, but one such antibody, .
2G12, has been discovered in one unknown patient. This , 2G12,
tells us that nature can find a way of finding this apparently .
invisible target, which we might be able to exploit to make a 2G12 ,
vaccine, Professor Davis said.His team has manufactured
synthetic versions of the sugars that camouflage HIVs silent .
face, which have been slightly modified to make them easier
for the immune system to recognise. In laboratory tests the
2G12 antibody binds to these artificial molecules,
suggesting that they should prime the body to produce such
antibodies when used in immunisations.

Weve done the whole thing with chemistry, he said.
Weve built constructs that look like the silent face, but .
which the body recognises as being unnatural. We hope it
will create an immune response. Were turning the viruss .
shield into its Achilles heel. If we can build something that .
elicits antibodies towards the silent face, we could have a
vaccine against HIV. ,
V
About 30 slightly different synthetic versions of the silent .
face molecule are being tested in rabbits to determine
whether they can promote the production of antibodies. The 30
first results are expected in three to six months.

Any of the candidate vaccines that elicit antibodies are then .
likely to progress quickly to clinical trials. IAVI would then .
move immediately towards filing with the FDA [the US Food
and Drug Administration] for a human trial, Professor ,
Davis said. As soon as one shows neutralising properties, .
we hope within two years we could see it in people.

Summary of findings: The main feature that emerges from the juxtaposition of the ST with the TT is the highlighting in
the TT version of the master narrative of optimism and hope about scientific research. This is evident from the headline
where the TT fortifies the view of hope for finding a vaccine against AIDS. The lexicalization
HIV narrates a process of coming out of the dark and gives hope for the future of research. Also the TT repositions
discursively HIV; while the ST talks about a mechanism that allows HIV to hide, the TT rewrites this view and talks
about HIV using a mechanism. Hope is also inscribed in the TT sentence:
,

V.


727 546

364
Creating Narratives

The Independent/June 19,2008 / June 20,2008

Skin cancer patient 'cured' using his own blood
cells [M]
:
[A/M/REFRAMING]

A 52yearold man with advanced melanoma, the lethal [POP]
form of skin cancer, has been successfully treated using just , [M].
his own blood.

The development has been hailed by British experts as an , [A/M]
"exciting advance" in the use of cancer immunotherapy, .
which harnesses the body's immune system to fight the
disease.

Researchers in the US who were treating the patient
extracted white blood cells, the key component of the
immune system, and grew one type the infectionfighting
CD4+ T cells in the laboratory. The cloned T cells, which
had been vastly expanded, were then reinfused to the
patient to fight the cancer.

O
The man was diagnosed with stage four melanoma, when ,[A/M]
death normally occurs within months. The cancer, triggered . ,
by sunburn, started in a mole on the skin and had spread to . ,
a lymph node in his groin and to his lungs. But, two months
after the Tcell treatment, scans revealed no tumour. Two . , ,
years later, when he was last checked, the man remained , .
free of the disease. He had previously had surgery and drug , .
treatment without any response. ,
, .
Melanoma is the deadliest form of skin cancer, causing
1,800 deaths a year in the UK. It is the fastest rising cancer,
with cases up 40 per cent in the past decade. The cancer is
caused by intermittent, intense exposure to the sun. The
typical victim is the office worker who spends two weeks
broiling on a beach each summer. Adults with fair skin who
suffered severe sunburn before the age of 15 are at highest
risk.

Cassian Yee, who carried out the experimental treatment Fred
with colleagues at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research utchinson [P]
Centre in Seattle, said that one in four latestage melanoma 52 :
patients had the same type of immune system and tumour , o CD4+ ,
antigen as the patient, for whom the therapy could be .
effective. But he warned that they had only proved its , .
success in one patient. "We were surprised by the anti ,
tumour effect of these CD4+ T cells and its duration of
response. For this patient we were successful, but we would .
need to confirm the effectiveness of the therapy in a larger
study." 5 ,
.
The findings are published in The New England Journal of .
Medicine, which describes them in a commentary as a
"novel strategy" which points to a "feasible new direction" CD4+ , .
for treatment.
,
Louis Weiner, the author of the commentary and director of , . [A/P]
the Lombardi Comprehensive Cancer Centre in Washington,
said that although it was too early to be sure of the ew ngland Journal of edicine,
significance of this one case, the indications were that it will
give a substantial boost to the technique of cancer . [A/P]
immunotherapy. "I suspect that if the destination is not yet , ,
at hand, it is in sight. The endgame has begun," he said.
,
Cancer immunotherapy is a growing area of research which ,
has proved successful in some other cancers, including , .
kidney cancer. The aim is to developless toxic treatments

365
Creating Narratives

which are at least as effective as chemotherapy and
radiation.
[A/REFRAMING]
Ed Yong, a health information manager at Cancer Research
UK, said: "While it's always good news when anyone with
cancer gets the allclear, this treatment will need to be 52 .
tested in large clinical trials to work out how widely it could
be used." .

Professor Peter Johnson, Cancer Research UK's chief , ,
clinician and a consultant in Southampton, said: "Although 25%
the technique is complex and difficult to use for all but a few ,
patients, the principle that someone's own immune cells can 52.
be made to work in this way is very encouraging."

.

How immunotherapy works
,
.
* Cancer immunotherapy is the technique of harnessing the
,
body's immune system to attack the cancer.

.
* The immune system normally responds to threats to the

body by distinguishing between itself and foreign invaders.

* In the case of cancer, this is difficult because most tumours .
consist of the body's own cells growing out of control.
,
* However, many cancer cells display unusual antigens or
receptors on their surface that allows them to be identified. .

* Antibodies and cancer vaccines to stimulate the immune ,
system are being developed to attack these tumour cells. .

Summary of findings: This TT develops along the lines of the ST and while some sections have been left
untranslated yet those which have undergone translation seem to have been accurately rendered into
Greek. The TT at points avoids risk intense visualizations and euphemizes the construction. This is evident
in the TT : ,
that translates the ST A 52yearold man with advanced melanoma, the lethal form
of skin cancer, has been successfully treated using just his own blood. The TT avoids integrating the
collocation lethal form and uses the expression that does not create
immediate associations to death.

684 569
366
Creating Narratives

The Independent/July 17,2008
/July 18, 2009
The future of fertility
100yearold women giving birth; IVF cycles available for 100 [M]
50; gestation in artificial wombs... it will all be possible in
the next 30 years, say the world's leading fertility experts :
[A
REFRAMING]
Thirty years ago the birth of Louise Brown, the world's first
testtube baby, marked a genuine medical breakthrough
one of the few that deserves the title. Until then, the limited 100 ,
treatments on offer surgery and hormone therapy could 63
help only some of the millions of infertile couples .
devastated by the discovery that they were unable to create ; . [A/P]
a family.
.
On 25 July 1978 they learnt they had another option that , ,
could deliver a baby and a future. Early fears about the .
safety and morality of the procedure were swept aside in
the rush to take advantage of it. Today, some four million
babies have been born by IVF worldwide. In Britain it is ,
estimated that every primary school has at least one IVF
child. Yet as quickly as it has solved problems, the new .
science of fertility has created them. No area of medicine
has seen more spectacular advances, but no area has ,
thrown up more ethical conundrums
. 25
1978, , ,
At the time of Louise Brown's birth, doctors were able to ,
treat barely half of the infertile couples one in seven of the .
population who came to them for help. Surgery for
blocked fallopian tubes and hormone treatment to stimulate , ,
egg production were the only available treatments for .
women. There was nothing available for men. 4

Today, in a special report published by the journal Nature, .
scientists make some extraordinary predictions about the
future of fertility treatment. They forecast an end to ature,
infertility with the potential for any person of any age from
one to 100 to have children. In place of a normal pregnancy,
gestation might take place in an artificial womb, with
embryos selected and genetically manipulated to ensure .
they were free of disease.
100
Lowcost IVF might be made available at 50 a cycle, putting
it in reach of some parts of the developing world. Cloned , ,
babies, though banned in this country and many others, are
likely to become a reality, scientists say. . ,

Thirty years ago these claims would have been treated as
science fiction. Today they seem entirely realistic, beside the .
advances we have already seen. Who would have predicted .
in 1978 that male infertility would be successfully treated , , ,
by injecting individual sperm directly into the egg? The 100 .
technique, known as intra cytoplasmic sperm injection 30 .
(ICSI), first introduced in 1992, is now used in more than
half of all IVF treatments in the UK. [M/A/REFRAMING]

Who would have predicted that embryos would be selected,
by sex or by genetic markers for almost 200 diseases using .
the technique of preimplantation diagnosis, so that only 1950.
healthy ones were replaced in the womb? 40
.
Today we have saviour siblings (babies created to provide a ,
sick older sibling with matching tissue) and animalhuman ,
hybrids (created by placing human cell nuclei into the eggs . ;
of cows or rabbits to create embryos that are 99 per cent .
human and are used for research up to 14 days because of 63
the shortage of human eggs). The most exciting area is stem .
cell research using embryos and ordinary adult skin cells , ,
treated to behave like embryonic stem cells, called induced
pluripotent stem cells (iPS) from which it is hoped new .
tissue can be grown for the treatment of conditions ,
367
Creating Narratives

including Alzheimer's , Parkinson's and similar conditions.
This is the new scientific frontier on which, 30 years on , .
from Louise Brown's birth, researchers now stand. Work on
embryos which was exclusively focused on developing new (),
treatments for infertility has now expanded to include the
search for cures for disease. With an updated Bill due to be ,
passed into law later this year, which gives legal sanction to 63 .
these techniques, the stage is set for further advance and
further controversy. ;

See www.nature.com

Looking ahead: how the news may be made , ,

100yearold gives birth .
,
Davor Solter, a developmental biologist at the Institute of .
Medical Biology in Singapore ,
.
I think IVF has gone about as far as it can. Next I expect that , .
germ cells sperm and eggs will be derived from induced ,
pluripotent stem (iPS) cells [cells that have the potential to .
develop into any of the body's cell types]. It will be possible
to make iPS cells from skin cells, to make germ cells from .
these, and then combine them to make human embryos. It .
means every person, regardless of age, will be able to have
children: newborn children could have children and 100
yearolds could have children. It could easily happen in the .
next 30 years. I have no idea if the technique will be used,
but it means you could have millions of gametes that could , ,
be combined at will. I have no idea what kind of moral value
or rights we would give to those embryos. We'll probably go .
through the same agonising we did with IVF. It could be
terrible to begin with, but then it'll become a fact of life. .
Maybe 20 to 30 years from now we'll read that someone
made 20,000 embryos and studied their development, and
we'll decide it's OK. ;
; ,
Cost of IVF falls to 50
, ,
.
Alan Trounson, an IVF pioneer and director of the California

Institute for Regenerative Medicine in San Francisco
.

IVF was a gigantic step. We didn't realise it at the time;
.
people didn't think it would work that well. We never
, .
envisaged that it would expand so dramatically around the
,
world. Ethics keeps moving. What was once seen as
.
dangerous goes on to be seen as within the confines of

acceptable risk. Probably the major development in the field

will come from something we've never thought about. I
think there will be a further expansion of lowcost IVF,
especially for women in developing countries who
experience social discrimination with infertility. If you
remove all the expensive stuff and use lowcost drugs (such
as clomiphene) and remove just one or two eggs, and only
transfer one embryo, it can be done for less than US$100
(50).
First cloned baby born
Miodrag Stojkovic, stemcell biologist at the Prince Philip

Centre of Investigation in Valencia, Spain
Will we see a cloned baby? It could happen any day because

of a lack of regulation [in some countries]. People are
already trying to do reproductive cloning. The only problem
is getting hold of enough viable human oocytes [eggs]. If we
can make human oocytes from stem cells, it might be easier.
There is no medical need to clone a human. The future is not
about reproductive cloning, that's a very, very detrimental
technique.
Scott Gelfand, director of the Ethics Centre at Oklahoma State
368
Creating Narratives

University in Stillwater
There is some research aiming to increase embryo survival.

There are also people who are working on the other end at
the moment babies can only survive from about 22 weeks.
Someone could join these two advances together and we
could have complete ectogenesis in which the foetus
develops outside the body in an artificial uterus. I find it
interesting and scary. Even in terms of insurance: if it
became economically competitive with other forms of
gestation, insurers might compel a person to use it to avoid
premature birth or foetal alcohol syndrome. It's something
that really needs to be talked about. Will it happen? Dolly
was a complete surprise to everybody...
Parents can choose favourite embryo
Susannah Baruch, director of reproductive genetics at the

Genetics and Public Policy Centre at Johns Hopkins University
in Washington DC
There's speculation that people will have designer babies,

but I don't think the data is there to support that. No single
gene predicts blondness or thinness or height or whatever
the 'perfect baby' looks like. You might find genetic
contributors, but there are so many environmental factors
too. More likely is that you'll have a set of embryos and
you'll know every single thing about every gene in every
embryo. For example, one embryo will have three genes
associated with tallness, two for weakness, three for poor
vision and some for disease; and the second embryo will
have some other set. None of us is a perfect specimen and
none of our embryos will be, either. I think you'll end up
with a lot of information but it's less obvious how useful
that information will be and how many parents will want it.
Will people choose IVF to get that genetic option? The old
fashioned way is cheaper and more fun and that won't
change in 30 years.
Infertility is history
Zev Rosenwaks, director of the Centre for Reproductive

Medicine and Infertility in New YorkI see the technology
going towards possible eradication of infertility altogether.
With nucleartransfer technology or cell modification, I
think we'll be able to generate sperm and eggs for anybody.

Summary of findings: This translated text exhibits an increased degree of information rearrangement
from the ST to the TT which in essence makes the latter a new text that feeds on the information of the
source text. The master narrative of binary structures emerges in this text. Selective appropriation then is a
key framing strategy in this text.

1080 766
369
Creating Narratives

The Independent/ July23,2008 / July 23,2008

Prostate cancer drug gives hope to 'untreatable'
patients

Scientists have unveiled a new drug for prostate cancer
[P] ,
which they say could help up to 80 per cent of patients with
[P] 80%
the aggressive and previously untreatable form of the
disease. , , .

O
Prostate cancer is the most common cancer in men, with
10.000
35,000 new cases and 10,000 deaths a year. Unlike breast
.
cancer, there has been no significant advance in drug
treatment for many years. , [A] ,

.

The new drug, abiraterone, works in a different way from , , [P]
existing treatments, shrinking the tumours of those with ,
advanced forms of the disease. Taken orally as a pill, it has [A/M]
few side effects and has led to dramatic falls in prostate
specific antigen (PSA), a blood marker for the cancer. . ,
However, experts warned that the research was at an early
stage and had not yet shown that the drug extends survival. . , [P]

.

Yesterday's announcement was triggered by the publication

of the first clinical trial of abiraterone in 21 patients with
21 .
advanced prostate cancer by the Institute for Cancer

Research and the Royal Marsden Hospital in London. The
Royal arsden .
small trial, known as a phase 1 study, was intended to test
, 1 ,
the safety of the drug but the results showed it was
,
"spectacularly active", according to Johann de Bono, who led
,
the research, published in the Journal of Clinical Oncology.
,
"This drug is highly effective," he said. "The tumours shrink,
.
the pain goes away and the PSA levels fall. Some patients at
, . ,
the Royal Marsden have been on it for up to two years and
.
eight months and are still doing well." All the men in the
2 8 ,
study had very aggressive prostate cancer which was
.
"exceptionally difficult to treat" and had an expected

survival of about a year, said Dr de Bono, a consultant

oncologist. They had been treated with surgery,
.
radiotherapy or chemotherapy which had failed. "We hope
, ,
that abiraterone will eventually offer them real hope of an
, .
effective way of managing their condition and prolonging
250
their lives," he added. A total of 250 patients have been
70% 80%.
treated worldwide, including 100 at the Royal Marsden,
2 3 ,
with similar response rates of 70 to 80 per cent. "We hope
.
this drug will be approved in two to three years," Dr de

Bono said. "There is no doubt in my mind that it is effective."

The drug is believed to work by inhibiting an enzyme which
[POP]
is critical to the production of the male hormone

testosterone. Prostate cancer is known to be driven by
.
testosterone and conventional treatment has been targeted

at preventing its production in the testicles, as a chemical
.
alternative to castration. Despite this, some men have had
,
"hormoneresistant" cancers. The key discovery was that
.
the cancers depend on testosterone manufactured by the

tumour itself, not by the testicles. Abiraterone blocks the
[C] [C]
process by switching off an oncogene, called ERG.
,
RG.
John Neate, chief executive of the Prostate Cancer Charity,

said the discovery was an "exciting development" but

needed confirming in larger trials.

'My symptoms virtually disappeared'
370
Creating Narratives

Simon Bush, former banker, 50

, 50 ,
After being diagnosed with advanced prostate cancer in
August 2005, Simon Bush had a course of intense
radiotherapy and began three monthly injections of the 2005.
antitestosterone drug, Zoladex. A year later, the news was .
grim. The cancer had spread to a number of sites in his .
skeleton and was starting to cause excruciating pain. He
[C] .
began a sixmonth course of chemotherapy but it failed to
.
halt the cancer. Aged 48, married with two teenage children,
[M]
he had been forced to give up his career as a banker and was

told that life expectancy for patients such as him was about

two years.

In April 2007, he was referred to the Royal Marsden from
2007 [D/P].
University College Hospital in London and started on

abiraterone. "Within a week my PSA [prostate specific
. .
antigen] had dropped; within a month I had stopped taking
. 2006
painkillers. My symptoms virtually disappeared. In August
24 . , , 24
2006, I was told I had 24 months well, my 24 months are
.
up in three weeks and I am standing here feeling pretty fit. It
15
has been absolutely phenomenal." Mr Bush celebrated his
. .
50th birthday in April and his wife bought him a drum kit.

"It is the worst thing possible for the bones, the back and the

ribs. That is how much better I feel," he said "I have had 15

months of near normality thanks to the drug. I have no

doubt this drug gives hope to prostate cancer sufferers. My

message to men is get checked out."

Summary of findings: This text is the first to have integrated a firstaccount patient health story and in that sense it
appropriates on an ontological narrative of a patient. The optimism and hope frame surfaces in this text as well but
with milder tones and more discretely. For example the phrase: " , ,
,
translates the ST sentence : The new drug,
abiraterone, works in a different way from existing treatments, shrinking the tumours of those with advanced forms of the
disease. The verbal expression highlights the potential of the drug to shrink tumors.

794 547
371
Creating Narratives

The Independent/July 24, 2009 / July 25, 2009

Forget Dolly, there's an easier way to clone and
it works

Scientists use skin cells to create fertile mice which go on to
have their own babies

A new cloning technique has passed the ultimate scientific
test showing that it is possible to generate healthy animals
from single skin cells without the need for sexual [M]
reproduction. .

Scientists have shown that these clones grow into healthy
adults capable of producing their own offspring by normal
breeding.The technique, highlighted by The Independent .
last year and radically different from the cloning method
used more than 10 years ago to produce Dolly the sheep, 10
opens up the possibility of producing stem cells from a [C] .
patient's skin to generate human tissue and possibly organs
for transplant medicine. It also raises the prospect of it ( )
being used as a reproductive technique to help endangered
species produce cloned offspring in captivity. But scientists . [M]
have warned that it would be unethical and illegal in
Britain to contemplate adapting the method to help
infertile couples have their own biological children. .

.
Two teams of Chinese scientists working independently said
yesterday that they had produced live mice by genetically
modifying mouse skin cells to convert them into embryonic
like cells called induced pluripotent stem cells (iPS cells).
They both used a "gold standard" method to prove that the
iPS cells were truly "pluripotent", meaning that they were ( iS).
capable of developing into complete adult animals.Such iPS [P] iS
cells have already been shown to be capable of developing ,
into the many different specialised tissues of the body but .
the two studies, to be published in the journals Nature and iS
Cell Stem Cell went further by showing that the iPS cells
could produce adult mice clones of the mice that provided , ,
the original skin cells. ature Cell
Stem Cell,
iS
.
One of the groups, led by Professor Qi Zhou of the State Key
Laboratory of Reproductive Biology in Beijing, used the ,
technique to produce 27 cloned mice which went on to
produce more than 300 second and thirdgeneration , 27
offspring by normal sexual reproduction.The other group,
led by Shaorong Gao of the Chinese National Institute of 300
Biological Sciences in Beijing produced just one cloned .
embryo that survived to adulthood. Both groups used
"tetraploid" embryos which cannot develop on their own
into viable foetuses to prove that the iPS cells could
produce healthy clones.It would be unethical and illegal in ,
Britain to use tetraploid human embryos to demonstrate the
pluripotency of human iPS cells, says Professor Robin ,
LovellBadge, a stem cell scientist at the MRC Institute for RC
Medical Research in Mill Hill, north London.

"This work is important as it demonstrates that the
reprogramming methods applied to mouse cells can give
truly pluripotent cells, but it has to be stressed that it is not
directly applicable to similar work with human cells," he
said.

However, Robert Lanza, the chief scientific officer at the ,
American biotechnology company Advanced Cell dvanced Cell echnology

372
Creating Narratives

Technology, said that there was little doubt that the same
sorts of techniques could be applied to human cells to ,
produce cloned children or "designer" babies, created by iS
inserting iPS cells into an IVF embryo."In the excitement .
surrounding the generation of iPS cells, a number of serious
scientific and ethical ramifications have been overlooked,"
he said.

Summary of findings: The text presents a high degree of semantic accuracy. Translational shifts indentified in the TT
remind of the preference to translate science and research relative verbs with the verb . good example is
the TT sentence
where the verb
replaces the ST to generate that could have been translated as . Also unlike the pattern
identified in previous texts, mainly from I Kathimerini, to hide company relative information, in this text however the
TT prefers to leave it unchanged as in the sentence ,
dvanced Cell echnology.
531 402
373
Creating Narratives

The New York Times/ September 22,2008 / September 24,2008

[M]
Shorter Radiation for Cancer of the Breast

Three weeks of radiation treatment work just as well as the
usual course of five weeks or more for women with early , ,
stage breast cancers, Canadian researchers have reported, ,
after monitoring a large group of patients for 12 years. ,

The results, presented Monday at a conference in Boston, 12 .
provide some of the strongest evidence yet that radiation
schedules can safely be shortened to make life easier for
patients and to let clinics reduce their waiting lists and treat . ,
more women without buying more machines. ,
,
Experts say the new findings, from a respected study, could .
change the standard of care in the United States. The typical
schedule now involves five to seven weeks of daily
treatments, and most women would welcome a chance to
get it over with faster especially those who work, have
small children or live far from the clinic.

About 180,000 women a year develop breast cancer in the
United States, and most need radiation. From 30 percent to
40 percent may be candidates for the type of treatment
given in the study.

Some centers in this country already offer shorter courses
of treatment, but they are more widely available in Canada
and parts of Europe.

Weve really got to give it serious consideration in the ,
United States, said Dr. Anthony L. Zietman, a radiation , ,
oncologist at Harvard Medical School and the Massachusetts .
General Hospital Cancer Center, and presidentelect of the
American Society for Therapeutic Radiology and Oncology.
He was not involved in the Canadian study. ,
. ,
But Dr. Zietman cautioned that the results applied only to .
women with early cancers like those in the study, which
were removed by lumpectomy and had not spread to the
lymph nodes. Often, women with such early cancers do not
need chemotherapy. [A/M/REFRAMING]

Other major changes in radiation are also in the works. , [P]
Doctors are experimenting with ways to treat just part of ,
the breast rather than all of it, and to make the treatment
safer, they are trying to avoid exposing the heart and lungs .
to radiation. ,
,
The purpose of radiation is to keep cancer from coming .
back in the same breast where it first occurred, by killing
any tumor cells that may have evaded surgery and
chemotherapy. Cancer cells are more vulnerable to
radiation than are normal ones, and the treatment has
always been a balancing act between giving enough
radiation to destroy the tumor cells but not enough to cause
serious damage to healthy tissue and organs.

The changes now being made result in part from the overall
success in treating early breast cancers, Dr. Zietman said.
Survival rates have climbed so high 98 percent of women
with earlystage cancers survive at least five years that it
is now considered reasonable to step back, look at womens
quality of life and try modifying the regimens to make
treatment less onerous.

Its a bit of a change in our thinking, Dr. Zietman said.

Researchers also hope that faster treatment will help make
radiation available to more women. Currently, about 20 to

374
Creating Narratives

30 percent of women in North American who need it skip it.
And some women who could have lumpectomy plus ,
radiation choose mastectomy instead, simply to avoid ,
radiation, because they live too far from a clinic to travel ,
back and forth for all the treatments. .

Not all medical centers offer the newer techniques, and they 30 ,
are not right for every woman. But for many women, there , 12 .
are choices now where none existed before though it may [A] 1.234
take some effort to find out about them. 1993
1996. ,
Patients have to speak up, Dr. Zietman said. 25 35 (
5 ) 16
If the standard regimen is recommended, he said, a woman 22 . 10 ,
should ask: Does it have to be that way? Am I one of the .
people who could be treated with partial breast irradiation, 67%
or, if I need the whole breast treated, could it be done in , 70%,
some more abbreviated fashion?He added, Maybe they ,
can, maybe they cant.Some radiation oncologists may , .
resist change, fearful of giving up the tried and true
formulas they were taught, Dr. Zietman said. He noted that
the standard treatment had 30 years of evidence to back it
up, whereas the newer approach had less than half that. But
still, the field is moving ahead. You dont give all women
with breast cancer the same treatment, he said. You base it
on what they have, and who they are.
Canadian researchers decided to study the shorter courses

because doctors there and in England had begun using them
without a formal trial, to make the most of a limited number
of radiation machines.
The study included 1,234 women who started treatment at

one of eight hospitals from 1993 to 1996. Half of the women
received the standard regimen of 25 treatments in 35 days
(five treatments a week for five weeks). The other half had
16 treatments in 22 days. The shorter course used slightly
higher daily doses of radiation, but the total cumulative
dose was slightly lower.
There were concerns that the lower overall dose would

allow recurrences, or that over time the higher daily doses
might damage the breast tissue, heart or lungs. Radiation
injuries can take years or even a decade or more to show up.

Summary of findings: The TT frames with more optimism the main text in relation to its ST counterpart and via the
subheading " "which has been added. The text presents an upgraded mediation from the part of the TT
newspaper which is revealed by means of selectively picking the parts to translate. The word count overwhelmingly
points towards a shortening of the TT in relation to the ST.
871 532
375
Creating Narratives

The Times/ February 2,2008 / 4 ,2008

And next the contact lens that lets email

really get in your face [M]

The days of picking up a mobile phone to read a text .
message are numbered. In the future, all youll have to do is , ,
stare intently at a projected image in front of your eyes.
[P]
,
,
.
Researchers at the University of Washington have

developed a contact lens with the potential to project a [P]
telephone display directly on to the retina. The technology .
could allow any highresolution image to be displayed in
front of the eye. Eventually, games, documents and music
collections could all be displayed in a users field of vision. ,
We realised that we could make really tiny functional ,
devices that can be incorporated into a contact lens to do a ihone , ,
lot more than just improve vision, Babak Parviz, Professor
of Electrical Engineering at the University of Washington, .
told The Times. Our goal is to integrate a display which can
do everything that an iPhone or computer does now but in ,
front of your eye. A user could manipulate the document by .
blinking or by using his voice.

By incorporating metal circuitry and lightemitting diodes .
into a polymerbased lens, the researchers created a
functional circuit that is biologically compatible with the
eye. Ultrathin antennas, a few nanometres thick, are used [A/REFRAMING]
to transmit information wirelessly to the outside world.

The lens, which is as thin and as comfortable to wear as an
ordinary hard contact lens, was created with two purposes , ,
in mind, its creator said.

One is to let users live in an augmented reality. Computer .
images superimposed on to the field of vision could give
soldiers and doctors realtime information about their .
environment, as well as allowing civilians to browse
through their music collection. The lenses other purpose is ,
more controversial. , ,
.
Were looking at using the lens as a sensor to monitor ,
chemical levels in the body, Professor Parviz said.
.
The cells on the eye are in direct contact with blood serum,
making [the lens] perfect as a continuous health monitoring
device.
If a users blood sugar level drops below a certain level the

device could be set up to flash red and direct him to the
nearest hospital.
Professor Parviz said that there were valid privacy

concerns. Any data communication is susceptible to
hacking.
A spokesperson at the Information Commission in London

said: Were not aware of this technology, but it is always
important for safeguards to be put in place to protect
personal information.
Professor Parviz added: Its going to take some time to get

to any of these possibilities [safeguarding data].
But theres nothing in the physics or engineering that

would make this impossible. The systems embryonic state
376
Creating Narratives

has not prevented big corporations, or the American
military, taking the Washington project very seriously.
Professor Parviz has received financial backing from both.

Were even looking at installing an infrared camera so
soldiers can see in the dark, he said.
The next step for the Washington team is to address safety

concerns.
The researchers placed the lens in a rabbits eye for 20

minutes and found no adverse effects. But they did not turn
the system on. We have to be careful, Professor Parviz
said. Its a functioning circuit. It could generate some heat.
We need to take all the possible precautions to make sure
this is safe. A spokesman for the Royal College of Surgeons
said: New technology is constantly advancing surgical
practice but any new methods must be rigorously tested
and assessed for their benefit to patients before use.
Looking to the future
The lens produced by the University of Washington, above,

could revolutionise surgery. Detailed information on
patients could be superimposed on to a surgeons field of
vision. Doctors could then zoom in on a body to see details
that would be invisible to the naked eye Other devices
employing augmented reality are coming on the market. At
least 15 worldwide patents have been submitted this year
These include a headset for training firemen, which

superimposes smoke and fire on to normal vision, and a
virtual mirror that projects an image of an internal organ
on to the outer layer of a patients skin Source: University of
Washington

Summary of findings: The thematic thread that governs this text orbits around science doing miracles
with technology. It does not narrate a lifethreatening disease but it constructs representations that glorify
science as it is shown in the example:
. , ,
Again, as is the case with previous
texts from the newspaper Ta Nea the word count reveals a greater degree of selectively appropriating the
information that is going to undergo translation.

696 306
377
Creating Narratives

The Times/ November 5,2009 / November 6,2009

New Attack on Cancer with Nano Weapon [P/A]

2010
[AREFRAMING]

A nanotechnology therapy that targets cancer with a stealth [A/P]
smart bomb is to begin patient trials next year in the first
clinical test of a pioneering approach to medicine. 2010.

The nanoparticle, which targets tumour cells while evading [P/A]
the bodys immune system, promises to deliver larger and ,
more effective doses of drugs to cancers, while . [A/CS]
simultaneously sparing patients many of the distressing
sideeffects of chemotherapy.Animal studies have indicated .
that the treatment can shrink tumours essentially to zero,
while being better tolerated than conventional cancer . 25
treatments. Final toxicology studies are about to begin. . ,
A trial involving about 25 cancer patients is scheduled to
start within a year. If successful, it could lead to a licensed .
drug within five years. Although the therapy was originally ,
designed for prostate cancer, it is expected to be effective ,
against other solid tumours, such as forms of breast, lung , .
and brain cancer. Patients with some of these cancers, as
well as prostate cancer, may be included in the first trial. D iosciences,
.
The technology, developed by BIND Biosciences, a company ,
based in Cambridge, Massachusetts, should also be suitable ,
for delivering drugs for treating other conditions, as well as .
for the chemotherapy agents that it has been set up to carry.
, , .
This should be the first targeted nanoparticle delivering a
chemotherapeutic to enter clinical trials, Jeff Hrkach, the
companys vicepresident of pharmaceutical sciences, said.
Were then looking to develop this as a broad platform that
could also be used to treat cardiovascular disease, , [P[ D 014,
inflammation, even infectious disease. :

The nanoparticle, known as BIND 014, is designed to solve ,
three of the major challenges in drug delivery: how to
ensure therapeutic molecules get to the right place in the .
body, how to release them slowly over several days, and
how to keep the bodys immune system from recognising
them as foreign and destroying them. ()
, D
It does this by packing drugs inside a special delivery iosciences.
parcel developed by Robert Langer, of the Massachusetts
Institute of Technology, and Omid Farokhzad, of Harvard 1.000 [A/REFRAMING]
University, who founded BIND Biosciences.
1.000
HOW IT WORKS
( 100
This nanoparticles diameter is 1000 times smaller than that ).
of a human hair, measuring about 100 nanometres or one : ,
tenmillionth of a metre across. It has four elements, the , docetaxel taxotere docetaxel
first of which is its payload, a common chemotherapy drug
called docetaxel or Taxotere. The docetaxel molecules are ,
enclosed in a matrix made of a biodegradable polymer
known as polylactic acid, which breaks down slowly over
several days so that the drug is released gradually. This
means that a single injection of nanoparticles can have a .
longlasting effect. ,
,
This drugfilled warhead is then covered with a stealth .
coating of polyethylene glycol, which helps the particle to ( S),
hide so that it is not attacked by elements of the bodys
immune system such as antibodies and macrophage cells. .
Normally, nanoparticles for drug delivery risk being , , .
recognised by the immune system and destroyed. , .

378
Creating Narratives

Regular nanoparticles struggle to get through to tumours,
Professor Langer said. They get eaten by macrophages. By
containing the drug within this molecule, we can avoid the
macrophages.

The final element of the particle is its smart targeting
system, in the form of special enzymes attached to the outer
coating known as targeting ligands. These are designed to
bind to a molecule found on prostate cancer cells called
prostatespecific membrane antigen (PSMA), so that the
particles accumulate at the site of tumours before releasing
their drugs.

Its an anchor, rather than a homing beacon, Dr Hrkach
said. If we do things right and get it to the tumour, when
the particles get there they stay there.

Whats different about this delivery system is that we
believe we can very explicitly target the disease site, while
also protecting the nanoparticle from the bodys immune
system. You can get a high concentration at the site of the
tumour and a lower concentration everywhere else.

By virtue of doing that youre not exposing the body to the
sideeffects of chemotherapy so much, while at the same
time getting larger doses of drug to the tumour.

Professor Langer said, Weve created a nanoparticle
decorated with two molecules, one of which helps it to
dodge the immune system, while the other helps it to target
cancer cells.

The drug has been successfully tested against human
prostate tumours grown under the skin of mice, in studies
that have shown both that the drug accumulates around
tumours and reduces them in size. Its shrunk tumours in
animals essentially to zero, Professor Langer said.
As the PMSA molecule targeted by the nanoparticle is also
found in the blood vessels grown by many other solid
tumours, it should be suitable for treating other cancers.
We think that going after that same target with that same
drug, we can not only go after prostate cancer but a
considerably long list of other solid tumours, Dr Hrkach
said. The plan is to start clinical trials in the third quarter of
next year. Were now transferring our efforts to
manufacturing enough material for a clinical study.

Summary of findings: This textual pair demonstrates a tendency for accuracy, and translational shifts identified glorify
technology and technological innovation. The addition of the item (pioneering) in the following
sentence [A/P]
2010" portrays science and technology as a
successful solution to disease treating. Also the TT sentence " , [P[ D 014,
carries a heightened sense of newness
instantiated through the item in relation to the ST sentence "The nanoparticle, known as BIND 014,
is designed to solve three of the major challenges in drug delivery.

836 463

379
Creating Narratives

Table 20 displays in numbers the STTT wordcount ratio across the three newspapers in the biomedical sub
corpus.
ST-TT Wordcount in Biomedical Mini Corpus

10000
9000
8000
7000
I Kathimerini ST I Kathimerini I Kathimerini ST
5668 TT To Vima ST Ta Nea ST
6000 I Kathimerini TT
4593 5050 5492
To Vima ST
5000
To Vima TT
To Vima TT Ta Nea TT
4000 3475 3425 Ta Nea ST
Ta Nea TT
3000
2000
1000
0
1
Newspapers
Table 20: STTT Wordcount in Biomedical Subcorpus
380
Appendix 3: Detailed display of the wide corpus
ST Newspaper Date Source text title Target text title Date TT Wordcount
Newspaper
International March 13 2007 Hungary chooses Gazprom over EU January 14, 2007 H 414
Herald Tribune
The Economist March 3, 2007 Dashing Hopes in Myanmar March 10, 2007 H 723
The Washington March 14, 2007 Clinton says she would keep some troops in Iraq beyond March 16, 2007 H 407
Post 09
The New York January 27,2008 A President Like My Father February 3, 2008 H 602
Times
I/H/T February 5, 2008 A February 10, 2008 917

I/H/T December 31,2008 February, 15 2008 469
Blood sugar control Linked to Memory Decline, Study
says
The Guardian March 11, 2008 Ordinary Rendition March 16, 2008 H 636
The Guardian May 27, 2008 Crisis talks on global food prices June 1, 2008 H 476
The Economist July 16, 2008 Looking Abroad O July 20, 2008 H 997
The NYT July 22, 2008 A New Openness to Talks With That Axis of Evil July 27, 2008 H 717
The NYT September 10, 2008 Bush Said to Give Orders Allowing Raids in Pakistan September 12, 2008 H 464
The New York September 15, 2008 September 21, 2008 H 654
Presidential Candidates Positions on Science Issues
Times

The Guardian September 24 2008 Israel asked US for green light to bomb nuclear sites in September 27 2008 H 326
Iran
The NYT October 1 2, 2008 C October, 19 2008 351

The NYT January 15, 2009 War on Hamas Saps Its Palestinian Rival January 16, 2009 H 531

EnglishGreek News Creating Narratives Appendix 3

Newspaper
The New York January 21, 2009 Nations Many Faces in Extended First Family January 25, 2009 H 485
Times
The New York January 18, 2009 From Books, New President Found Voice January 25, 2009 H 545
Times
The Observer January 18, 2009 Hands that picked cotton now pick presidents. It's a new January 25, 2009 H 1095
day for the US
The New York January 21, 2009 The age of responsibility January 25, 2009 H 385
Times
The NYT January 9, 2009 February 10, 2009 827
Major Flu Strain Found Resistant to Leading Drug,

Puzzling Scientists
The Washington Febrruary, 22 2009 A ThreePronged Bet on 'AFPAK' February, 23 2009 H 797
Post
The NYT Febrruary, 22 2009 Fresh paint and flowers for Abu Ghraib prison March 1, 2009 H 421
The NYT A March 1, 2009 585

February 2, 2009 Telling Food Allergies From False Alarms

he Economist January 29, 2009 March 1, 2009 580
American attitudes to stemcell therapies are changing

fast
The Economist February, 24 2009 A Persian Puzzle March 1, 2009 H 835

The NYT March 29,2009 April 18, 2009 864
Cholesterol Drugs May Reduce Risk of Clots
The Washington October 4, 2009 Chaos in Pakistan October 12, 2009 H 1480
Post
The Independent February 23, 2008 Obama: The Hawaii years February 24, 2008 808
The Independent June 12, 2008 Obama: the preferred candidate around the world: Poll June 13, 2008 To 754
382

Newspaper
The Guardian August 10,2008 If the Democrats want Obama to win, they have to get August 12,2008 861
rough
The Independent August 9, 2008 August 17, 2008 To 758
John McCain: the comeback kid

The Independent September 7, 2008 McCain is swimming against the tide September 9, 2008 374
The Independent August 6, 2008 Cool guy, Barack. But could he be too cool for US voters? August 17,2008 682
The Independent August 28,2008 So is Obama the Saviour of his party? 'E August 31,2008 598
Science News September 4,2008 September 6, 2008 473


The Independent June 9, 2008 Calling Obama black is an insult to his mother June 10, 2008 To 632
The Times October 9, 2008 Could Obama be the new Roosevelt? October 9, 2008 To 822
;

The Telegraph December 14, 2008 December 16, 2008 330
Scientists may be able to stop cancer spreading round

the body

New Scientist January 11, 2009 January 13, 2009 483
The NYT January 13, 2009 Israels Goals in Gaza? ; January 16, 2009 To 540
The Times January 22, 2009 Task No 1 for Barack Obama: reinvent capitalism January 27, 2009 748
The New York February 25, 2009 Disentangling Layers of a Loaded Term in Search of a February 28, 2009 629
Times Thread of Peace
The NYT March 6, 2009 March 22, 2009 To 1091
Troops glimpse real path out of Iraq
The Independent April 23,2009 April 23,2009 627
Fertility expert:'I can clone a human being'.

The Times April 28, 2009 April 29, 2009 666
Deadly strain of swine flu gets under radar of the

immune system
The Independent May 19, 2009 Rise of Europe's Extreme Politics May 24, 2009 To 548
383

Newspaper
BBC June 24, 2009 June 26, 2009 362

New cancer drug shows promise

The Independent July 2, 2009 July 7, 2009 To 615
Felipe Gonzalez takes on Blair for EU presidency

The NYT July 3, 2009 August 9, 2009 To 582
A Pentagon Trailblazer, Rethinking U.S. Defense

The Times October 5, 2009 : V October, 6 2009 534
HIV vaccine possibility after scientists rebuild

camouflage mechanism
The NYT November 28, 2009 December 6, 2009 To 1040
To Prepare for War, G.I.s Get a Dress Rehearsal

The NYT December 6 ,2009 US surge will only prolong Afghan war December 13 ,2009 To 789
The Independent December 5, 2009 O December 18, 2009 To 1113

From now on this is Obama's war
The Times December 14 ,2009 December 20 ,2009 To 647

Binyamin Netanyahu must decide whether to strike
Irans nuclear facilities
The Times February 2, 2008 February 4, 2008 305

And next the contact lens that lets email really get in
your face
The independent February 2, 2008 February 9, 2008 523
High spirits in cognac
The Independent October 2, 2008 To " October 3, 2008 537

Spike Lee film opens war wounds in Italy

The Independent June 19,2008 " June 20, 2008 566
Skin cancer patient cured' using his own blood cells

384

Newspaper
The independent July 5, 2008 July 10, 2008 385
Church in the lurch

The Independent 100 July 18, 2008 766
July 17, 2008 The future of fertility
The Independent July 23, 2008 589

July 23, 2008 Prostate Cancer drug gives hope to untreatable patients
The Independent July 25, 2008 402

July 24, 2009 Forget Dolly, theres an easier way to cloneand it works
The NYT September 22, 2008 September 24, 2008 344

Shorter radiation for Cancer of the Breast
The New York August 30, 2008 Would Obamas Plan Be Faster, Fairer, Stronger? September 6, 2008 786
Times
The New York September 28, 2008 The 3 A.M. Call October 4, 2008 797
Times
Washington Post October 30, 2008 Intelligence Head Says Next President Faces Volatile Era ( ) November 5, 2008 526
The Economist November 13, 2008 Change.gov November 16, 2008 863
Washington Post December 2, 2008 A team in need of a plan December 3, 2008 253
The Independent January 19, 2009 The first BlackBerry president is here Blackberry January 20, 2009 318
The imes January 20, 2009 Don't ask what Barack Obama can do for you, ask... v, January 21, 2009 313
The NYT February 21, 2009 February 21, 2009 305

What We Dont Know Will Hurt Us
The NYT February 22, 2009 February 24, 2009 293

Banking on the Brink

385

Newspaper
The independent April 8, 2009 April 11, 2009 263
Can Obama turn rhetoric into the reality of peace with
the Muslim world?
The independent April 21, 2009 April 28, 2009 301
Gorbachev: the model for the Obama doctrine

The NYT May 24, 2009 Have we Already Lost Iran? May 25, 2009 564
The NYT June 3, 2009 Obama on Obama H June 4, 2009 416
The Sunday Times July 13, 2009 President George W Bush backs Israeli plan for strike on July 14, 2009 386
Iran
The Times July 16, 2009 July 17, 2009 283
No easy choices as Israel ponders strike on Irans nuclear
facilities
Foreign Policy September 25, 2009 The Iran nuclear revelation September 28, 2009 567
Magazine
The Times November 5, 2009 November 6, 2009 463

New Attack on Cancer with Nano Weapon
CBC News November 11, 2009 Karzai wins as Afghan runoff cancelled , November 22, 2009 764
386

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CHAPTER 5: Renarrating health and science in the Greek press ...........157

How can narrative theory, operating within the social

1.4. Overview of chapters

2.2. Media discourse

2.3. Translation and news discourse

Figure 1: Trends in TS during the past decades

2.4.1. On critical discourse analysis and translation

9 i.e. feminist approach or postcolonial one.

2.5.1. History to Narrative Analysis

2.5.2.1. On features of narratives

2.5.2.2. On framing strategies

2.5.3. Using narratives in this dissertation: Why and How

January 25, 2009

3.4.1. Models in Translation Studies

Figure 6: Comparative model adapted Williams and Chesterman (2002)

4.2. US 2008 Presidential Elections and aim of this chapter

4.3. A narrative approach to the Obama/election data

26 Concept that formed the main slogan in B. Obamas 2008 campaign.

4.4.1. Narrating stability

4.4.3. Authoritative group actions

as it does not form part of a narrative.

4.4.5. Afterthought on public narratives

4.5.1. Narrating leadership

Furthermore, linguistic manoeuvring constructed a different frame in translation in relation to

4.5.3. Afterthought on conceptual narratives

Observing the translational manipulation of the master narrative of terrorism in Greek

4.6.2. The binary thinking narrative

ST Headline /Newspaper TT Headline /Newspaper Items implying conflict

4.6.3. Afterthought on master narratives

ntological Connection to departed for the state where he , Labelling

Binary Thinking Disentangling Layers of a Loaded Labelling

4.7.1. Narratives: common ground and narrative interaction

4.7.2. Narratives in newspapers

32 [O] Ontological, [P] Public, [C] Conceptual and [M] Master

5.4. A narrative approach to health stories

The future of fertility The Independent, July 17 2008

Ultimately, pairs ST19/TT19ST22/TT22 elucidate aspects of translation discursively

New cancer drug shows promise BBC, June 24 2009

5.4.4. Variation across newspapers

High popularization High (+) Low () Low ()

I Kathimerini Low () Low () High (+) Maintaining terminology and

Treatment and Spikes in blood sugar can take a Labelling

The statin used in the Jupiter Selective

Deification of Genes blamed for one person's Repositioning of

Conceptual Body as carrier mostly young ones, had a mutated , Labelling

5.4.5. Afterthought on biomedical narratives in news translation

Table 17: Distribution of narrative shifts across newspapers

overall rhetorical purpose.

6.3.1. Profiling Greek newspapers

42 For example the subheadings: (Gap between rich and poor)

within the framework of a behavioural and interviewbased research.

Figure 15: Crossnewspaper patterns of framing and narratives

Concluding remarks and further research

44 A metaphor used in postcolonial studies and has been appropriated by TS

Sometimes it takes a while to recognize that someone has a special ability

Most of us would prefer to base our voting decision on policy differences.

Mr Obama responded this week with a speech on foreign policy, in .

Their responses show clear areas of agreement on such

SPACE Both candidates say they want to revitalize space :

WASHINGTON The presidents elderly stepgrandmother [O]

When President Barack Obama was sworn in on Tuesday, he was