Mátyás Bánhegyi

Political Non-partiality in the Translation Classroom: The Simplified Political Bias Screener

With the increasing internationalisation of political discourse, international news gets translated into Hungarian and Hungarian news gets translated into English in growing numbers. News is oftentimes translated for political purposes and the translator is a key agent and actor in potentially reproducing politically manipulative content in newspieces. For this reason, this paper argues that translator training needs to address the issue of political manipulation in translated newspaper articles.

By introducing the Political Bias Screener (Bánhegyi 2011a, 2011b, 2012a, 2012b, 2012c, 2013, and 2017) in its simplified version designed for classroom use, the paper will provide a text linguistic – more precisely, a primarily Critical Discourse Analysis and political mass communication – based analytical tool that can be used for pinpointing bias in translated newspaper articles.

The Simplified Political Bias Screener can effortlessly be introduced to future translators of political newspieces and translation students can easily be trained in its use in classroom environments.

Through the use of the Screener, translators will be provided with some data concerning how biased their translated text is (as compared to the original newspaper articles for translation, and even without making this comparison) and thus the Screener may well provide valuable feedback for translator trainees. Apart from feedback, such training also raises translator trainees’ awareness of their own politically biased text production in translated texts through the analysis of translator trainees’ texts in the scope of either pair or group discussions.

As a result, it is eventually hoped that, among the translators of political newspieces, the use of the Screener can potentially contribute to the creation of a civic engagement promoting the production of non-biased translated newspaper articles.

References:

Bánhegyi, Mátyás. 2011a. “Politikai szövegek and fordítástudomány 2. rész: Szövegnyelvészeti trendek a politikai diskurzuselemzés fordítástudományi megközelítése terén [Political Texts and Translation Studies, Part 2: Text Linguistic Trends in Political Discourse Analysis from the Perspective of Translation Studies]”. Fordítástudomány 12 (2): 24–41.

Bánhegyi, Mátyás. 2011b. “Politikai szövegek és fordítástudomány 3. rész: Van Dijk kritikai diskurzuselemzés modellje és a fordításközpontú diskurzus-társadalom hatásmodell [Political Texts and Translation Studies, Part 3: Van Dijk’s Critical Discourse Analysis Model and the Translation-centred Discourse-Society Interface Model]”. Fordítástudomány 13 (1): 22–39.

Bánhegyi, Mátyás. 2012a. “A fordításközpontú diskurzus-társadalom hatásmodell gyakorlati alkalmazása 1. rész [The Application of the Translation-centred Discourse-Society Interface Model: Part 1]”. Fordítástudomány 13 (2): 37–55.

Bánhegyi, Mátyás. 2012b. “A fordításközpontú diskurzus-társadalom hatásmodell gyakorlati alkalmazása 2. rész [The Application of the Translation-centred Discourse-Society Interface Model: Part 2]”. Fordítástudomány 14 (1): 69–81.

Bánhegyi, Mátyás. 2012c. “A politikai manipuláció fordítástudományi kutatása európai kontextusban: a fordításközpontú politikai tömegkommunikációs modell [The Translation Studies Oriented Research of Political Manipulation in a European Context]”. In Studia Caroliensia 2011, ed. by Sepsi Enikő, 177–192. Budapest: Károli Gáspár University of the Reformed Church in Hungary.

Bánhegyi, Mátyás. 2013. “Exposing Political Manipulation and Bias in Mediatised Translations. The Translation-centred Political Mass Communication Model”. Intralinea 15. http://www.intralinea.org/archive/article/exposing_political_manipulation_and_bias_in_mediatised_translations.

Bánhegyi, Mátyás. 2017. Identifying Political and Ideological Bias in Translated Newspaper Articles: the Political Bias Screener. Forum 15 (1): 1–26.

Mátyás Bánhegyi (PhD) is a full time associate professor at the Language Department of Finance and Accountancy (Faculty of Finance and Accountancy of Budapest Business School University of Applied Sciences), who currently offers language practice and ESP classes, and has an extensive employment history of teaching methodology and Translation Studies courses. His research interests include the discourse analytical study of the relationship between ideology, politics and translation; and he also deals with diverse aspects of literary translation. Apart from numerous Hungarian language studies appearing mostly in Fordítástudomány, he has published in several translation journals including the Hungarian Academy Publishing managed Across Languages and Cultures, the DeGruyter listed Acta Universitatis Sapientiae Philologica, and the John Benjamins managed Forum.