News translation past and present: Silent witness and invisible intruder

Abstract

This article explores the relationship between news translation and culture through linguistic analysis. It is based on two corpora of translated news texts, each consisting of c. 237,000 words. One corpus represents the translation carried out by international news agencies in the contemporary news industry, whereas the other corpus represents the first two centuries of periodical news in French (1631–1789). Through the analysis of the lexis of translated news, I show that translation in the press can be considered both a silent witness to the relationships between peoples and also a channel for innovation in cultural systems.