Causal shifts in news reporting: English vs Greek press

Abstract Persuasion strategies often involve the expression of cause‐and‐effect relationships between discourse segments. Since persuasion strategies often vary cross‐culturally, relationships in discourse may also be subject to cross‐cultural variation. A 12,000 word sample of translated articles in Greek newspapers was contrasted to the longer source versions in the English‐speaking press. In some cases explicit cause‐and‐effect relationships were transferred in the target text, but in others the Creek translator interfered with the implicit cause‐and‐effect relations: at points of evaluation and estimation, the Greek translator tended to explicitate the cause‐and‐effect relationships. It is assumed that this intervention is prompted by a belief that the Greek target readership has a different social role. Awareness of cross‐cultural differences in this type of cohesive tie is of interest to translation studies because it supports the view that communicative equivalence involves adoption of different di...