Translation, adaptation, globalization: The Vietnam News

The Vietnam News is an English language daily newspaper produced on behalf of the Vietnamese Government, as part of its market reform policies. Drawing on an analysis of 100 translations from the Vietnamese press and their rewrites by the paper's foreign sub-editors, as well as on interviews with sub-editors and journalist-translators working at the Vietnam News, the article documents the translation and adaptation decisions that constitute the process of globalizing the discourse of the Vietnamese press in this particular instance. Three kinds of decisions are discussed in turn: translation decisions affecting the English used, translation/adaptation decisions affecting journalistic style, and translation/adaptation decisions affecting cultural and ideological references in the source texts. The article ends by asking whether the Vietnamese press is best served by closely following the Anglo-Australian model, as it does at present, or by developing its own distinct local style. Copyright © 2006 SAGE Publications