News: Balance Bias with Critical Questions
ü Прочитайте текст. Выпишите все незнакомые слова и ключевые термины и переведите их. Ответьте на вопрос : “Is it possible for the reporter not to be subjective?”
One important point to remember is that objective reporting is a myth. Every reporter brings to the story his/her own biases and world view. Each reporter has to make choices in writing the story: what to include, what to leave out, what sources to use. A few well-placed adjectives, a few uses of "alleged" or "so- called" can cast a definite ideological twist.
Two reporters can see the same event very differently. I experienced this in a dramatic way when the pope visited Nicaragua in 1983. While many U.S. reporters, especially those arriving and departing with the pope, saw crowds "jeering and heckling" the pontiff, others saw a very different reality - poor Nicaraguans concerned at the continuing loss of their loved ones in the contra war and frustrated at what they felt was the Holy Father's refusal to respond to their pain.
The struggle to appear balanced can obscure "the truth," and it often rests on shaky assumptions. One is the principle that if two perspectives are totally opposed, the truth must lie somewhere in the middle. Another principle stresses that the media must never appear one-sided. Thus, much violence in Third World countries and elsewhere is presented as innocent civilians caught in the crossfire between two equally repugnant forces - even in the face of clear evidence of greater levels of abuse by one side.
Another version of the distorted idea of balance requires that every quote that contradicts previous norms, assumptions - or U.S. policies - must be countered by a quote from the administration or a "Western diplomat" or "high official source." This appearance of balance usually leaves the reader hopelessly lost.
The effort to appear objective frequently results in just the opposite, a weighted coverage favoring the current political "party line," or at least not challenging the conventional perspective. Even in domestic coverage, reliance on official sources and the distorting effect of prejudices and fears can lead to the kind of injustice that occurred in late l989 when William Bennett, a black, was arrested for a murder apparently committed by the white Charles Stuart. Stuart used fears about minority crime to avoid suspicion for the murder of his wife. The Boston media's dependence on police sources and automatic assumptions about racial tensions helped create a false picture.
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Many factors impede the transmission of accurate information, including changes taking place in the media itself, from more and more outlets owned by fewer and fewer corporations/conglomerates to TV coverage that focuses on the 30-second sound bite instead of description or analysis. In newspaper coverage, superficial, but very popular treatments such as the headline format developed by USA Today, work against critical analysis that could challenge official propaganda.
Also, reporters increase their access to sources when they write material that meets source approval, and lose it when they challenge the assumptions of those sources.
Less and less often do major networks or newspapers, let alone local media, station correspondents overseas for any length of time. So when an international story breaks, reporters fly in with no background on the issue, often without speaking the language or understanding anything of the area's history or culture. The result is a too-easy reliance on "official" sources.
The missing voices of activists and grass roots sources are a cause for great concern even when establishment bias is unintentional. But reporters' dependence on authorities makes them - and by extension media consumers - particularly vulnerable to deliberate attempts to mislead by governments and agencies. A case in point was the Office of Public Diplomacy, set up in the State Department during the Reagan administration to drum up support for the contras. Supervised by Oliver North, press releases were created that deliberately put out false information. In point of fact, reporters should consider the axes being ground by any government office of information, but all too often their accounts are taken at face value.
(by Patricia Hynds, Media&Values)
Messages Without Words
ü Выполните перевод текста посредством выборочного перевода.
Speech isn't always necessary to convey very specific messages to people around you. For instance, what do you "say" by the way you walk, sit, dress, or wear your hair?
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The importance of nonverbal messages cannot be ignored. Researchers report that from 65 to more than 90 percent of the messages communicated in a face-to-face encounter are carried on the "nonverbal" band.
Further, they tell us, when verbal and nonverbal messages coming from the same person are contradictory, nonverbal messages usually predominate in the interpretation of the person receiving the two sets of information.
These "silent" messages are very much part of photographs, slides, videotapes, and other visuals and must be monitored to be sure they are saying what we want them to say. Nonverbal information must reinforce (rather than contradict) verbal or written information.
One of the surest transmitters of nonverbal messages is the human body — its behavior and appearance. The fascinating study of these various elements is "kinesics" or "body language" A great deal of research in this area can be conveniently grouped into four categories: the face, the general shape of the body, touching, and posture and gesture.
Of the four, communicators most often must monitor posture and gesture when evaluating photos, illustrations, and other visuals.
As an example, a study by researcher Albert Mehrabian con-chided that people relax most with someone perceived to have a lower status, second-most with a peer, and least with someone perceived to have a higher status than their own.
Mehrabian also found that men remain more tense when with a disliked male than when with a disliked female. Perhaps this finding is evidence of an attitude of male superiority that is fast disappearing in modem organizations and society.
Another nonverbal message is conveyed by territory. An accepted behavior characteristic in most animals (including humans) is to lay claim to and defend particular areas as their own. Studies of this phenomenon conclude that a psychological advantage exists to being in one's own territory, not unlike the "home-field advantage" found in athletic competition.
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Three principles relate to territory and personal status in organizations: Persons with higher status will normally have more territory than persons with lower status, protect their territory better, and invade the territory of lower-status persons.
Roughly translated, these characteristics mean that the higher a person is in an organization, the more and better space that person will have, the better it will be protected, and the easier that person can move, uninvited, into the territory of lower-ranking employees.
These nonverbal elements of territory and body language are interpreted in visual communication by positioning. The person in the "primary" position is dominant, while the person in the "secondary" position is subordinate.
For example, the driver of a car is in the primary and controlling position (unless it's a chauffeur), and the passenger is in the secondary, passive position. When media most often present a male driver and a female passenger, they make a statement about sexual roles and abilities, based on positioning.
Do your visual messages depict persons of comparable levels or jobs equally? Do their postures and gestures suggest that they are equally at ease in the situation? Or is one person open and relaxed (indicating authority and dominance), while the other is rigid and motionless (suggesting inferiority and lack of power)?
For example, seeing a man seated at a desk while a woman stands at his side or in front of him signals the viewer that the man is probably dominant in the relationship. To alter this perception, simply show both of them seated or both of them standing.
( from Media& Values)
ü Выполните абзацно-фразовый перевод текста.
a. В глобальном тексте газеты и журнала преобладают тексты (краткие информационные сообщения, тематические статьи, объявления, интервью), основная цель которых - сообщить новые сведения. Эти сведения лишь на первый взгляд могут показаться объективно поданными, в реальности же они подаются под определенным углом зрения, читателю навязывается определенная позиция. Не случайно газеты и журналы часто использовались как мощное средство идеологического давления. В любом информационном сообщении, даже спортивном, можно уловить, на чьей стороне автор.
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b. В газетно-журнальном тексте, безусловно, содержится объективная когнитивная информация, выраженная независимыми от контекста языковыми средствами: это цифровые данные, имена собственные, названия фирм, организаций и учреждений. Однако их выбор, их место в тексте, порядок их следования уже обнаруживают определенную позицию. Ни на выбор данных, ни на их место в тексте переводчик повлиять не может. А вот достоверность передачи остальных средств оформления позиции автора - целиком в руках переводчика.
c. Специфику газетно-журнального варианта письменной литературной нормы составляют, прежде всего, клише и фразеологизмы. Переводчик рассматривает их как семантическое единство и пытается отыскать в языке перевода аналогичный фразеологизм, желательно с той же степенью семантической связанности. Если такого эквивалента в языке перевода не существует, он идет на то, чтобы понизить степень семантической спаянности, и заменяет идиому на фразеологическое единство, где образность сохраняется (если представить себе, что идиома «бить баклуши» в языке перевода отсутствует, то ее семантику мы сможем передать фразеологическим единством «маяться дурью»).
d. Существует такой феномен, как деформация и контаминация фразеологии. Самый простой вариант деформации - неполнота состава. «С кем поведешься ... » - так называется одна из статей на политическую тему; подразумевается пословица «С кем поведешься, от того и наберешься». Контаминация - переплетение двух фразеологизмов, вроде: «Не плюй в колодец, вылетит - не поймаешь » («Не плюй в колодец - пригодится воды напиться» и «Слово не воробей, вылетит - не поймаешь»). В переводе нужно отражать данные приемы.
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