News translation as collaboration in multilingual community radio stations in South Africa

Abstract

This article discusses the collaborative nature of news translation, specifically in the case of community radio in South Africa. It starts with a short overview of community radio in South Africa, emphasising the participatory and interactive nature thereof. The following section provides a short overview of journalistic translation highlighting the multi-source and multiple-author realities of this form of translation. These characteristics of news translation are linked to the literature on collaborative translation with the argument that translation is not a solitary, but rather a collaborative act. The final sections of the article include one on the qualitative ethnographic research methods, and another presenting and describing the data collected from two community radio stations in South Africa. In conclusion, the article will show that in the translation of community radio news, there are multiple role-players involved in various collaborative news translation practices.