Agenda-setting and journalistic translation: The New York Times in English, Spanish and Chinese

Abstract

Drawing on the concepts of agenda-setting and framing, this article aims to examine the role played by translation in the selection of articles of the New York Times for the Spanish and Chinese versions. It analyses whether the three versions focus on similar topics and therefore follow a similar agenda, identifies the topics that receive more salience via translation, and how these are complemented with texts specifically written for the translated/foreign language versions, as well as the framing mechanisms used by the writers and/or translators to create, suppress or accentuate ideological positionings. For that purpose, a constructed week methodology was used in order to collect a total of seventy articles per language. The analysis, based on Baker's adaptation of narrative theory and Kress and van Leeuwen's study of non-verbal signs, shows that the three versions of the New York Times vary in terms of format and content. Thus, while the English and Chinese versions focus on political and economic issues, the Spanish version undergoes a process of tabloidization.