The ideological construction of solidarity in translated newspaper commentaries: Context models and inter-subjective positioning

Abstract

This article utilizes Van Dijk’s socio-cognitive approach as a theoretical framework to demonstrate how news translators ideologically construe solidarity in translated newspaper commentaries about the Economic Cooperation Framework Agreement (ECFA) signing between Taiwan and China. Using a corpus of 26 Chinese commentaries from the Liberty Times in Taiwan and their English translations from the Taipei Times as data, this article (1) compares the context models, together with relevant ideological forces, constructed by the news translators and the original writers and (2) investigates how contextual variations guide the translators to make inter-subjective positioning shifts through engagement resources. The results reveal that the shifts identified in the translated headlines and arguments (including the change in dialogic nature and the notable addition of dialogically expansive expressions) were performed by the translators to establish presumably appropriate solidarity relations (i.e. tolerance-based solidarity) and to align the writers and the potentially diverse target audience, at whom the translated pieces are aimed. In this way, the translators can achieve the goals of translating commentaries while adequately responding to the pro-independence ideology of the Taipei Times and the professional ideology of the news translators as media practitioners.