Translating sarcastic political tweets for radio broadcast : challenges and strategies

• Main Author: Goh, Joo Leng
• Other Authors: Arista Kuo
• Format: Theses and Dissertations
• Language: English
• Published: 2019
• Subjects: Humanities::Language
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/10356/78878
• Institution: Nanyang Technological University

The increasing use of sarcasm in political rhetoric, particularly in social media, has brought about challenges for radio journalists who need to translate these text for audio delivery. While there is a need to develop knowledge in the translation of sarcastic and social media text, news translation research into both types of text has been largely unheard of. This study thus seeks to identify problems encountered by journalists during the process of translating sarcastic political tweets for radio broadcast, and possible strategies for resolving these problems. For the purpose of this study, an inter-disciplinary approach that encompassed translation and pragmatic theories was adopted. Using tweets posted by US President Donald Trump as the source text corpus, qualitative translation and feedback data was collected from radio news reporters, while an online survey was used to collect quantitative data to identify translation problems and assess the efficacy of strategies used. Analysis of the data revealed that replicating the ironic effects marked by irony markers is the main challenge faced by journalists working to translate sarcastic social media text, while a comprehensive strategy that considers the features of sarcasm, the form and function of radio news, unique features of text designed for audio delivery and audiences’ reception is necessary for the effective translation of such text. It is thus recommended that journalists look beyond text level semantic and syntactic features and adopt a holistic approach towards the translation of sarcastic political social media text.