Data Compartmentalisation

The manual investigation is carried out on this corpus in order to classify the selected connective devices according to meaning and function. This is then extended to an analogical comparison that allows the further extraction of material which was then analysed

automatically. The ST-TT segments in the corpus are manually encoded in two stages. In the first stage, each ST is compared to its correspondence in the TL in order to determine where the two texts differ semantically and/ or syntactically. When the ST-TT segments are identified, they are inserted into the Excel spreadsheet manually. Since there is no one-to-one correspondence usually, translators adopt strategies such as borrowing, deletion, addition, literal translation. These strategies may, in turn, may lead to translational shifts, syntactically and semantically. In the second stage, thus, the ST-TT segments are classified in terms of the translation strategies used and the types of shift they caused. The aim is to establish significant trends and patterns. At this stage, the data categorisation needs also to include the strategy level in terms of word level and above word level. This allows the addition of another column considering the data in terms of nouns, verbs, expressions, and so forth. After the manual data insertion, including segmentation and categorisation, into Excel is completed, the Excel spreadsheet is manipulated for the data arrangement in rows and columns of a grid and used in calculation.

The manual and systematically computer-based data categorisation is based on the aims and the questions this study seeks to answer. Since this study aims to identify which patterns and trends develop from the corpus analysis, the data analysed needs to be described in accordance with certain criteria. The selected corpus is dependent on wide ranging external and internal scrutiny (Saldanha and O’Brien 2013, p. 71; Zanettin 2012, p. 152). The selection criteria result from the investigation of the communicative function of the texts and are external criteria, while those which reflect details of the language of the texts are internal criteria. Quite regardless of what the textual content of the articles is, the external criteria reveal the sort of articles that people are writing and reading. In other words, it encompasses the corpus size, ST and TT publishers with the date of their publications, genre of publication, ST-TT authors and translators respectively and so forth. Based on external criteria, internal criteria reveals the contents of the corpus of this study with regard to the utilised language in terms of topic manifestation that is certainly found in the used vocabularies. In other words, it refers to ST-TT segments, back translations (BT), mistranslations, translation strategies, and translational shifts. As the corpus takes shape on the basis of internal and external criteria, it maintains comparison between the actual dimensions of the material and the original plan leads to retrieve evidence

This chapter has illustrated the overall approach to the research process and the detailed description about the corpus design of the available data in this study. It also shed light on the fact that subjectivity cannot be entirely avoided despite the developed methodology which is based on the objective criteria of deletion, addition and borrowing strategies used by the translators. A triangulation of methods is adapted in order to provide an intelligible scrutiny of mediation at diverse levels: lexico-grammatical, textual, and contextual. Toury’s Descriptive Translation Studies (DTS) model is borrowed and adapted as a common-ground analytical framework to show the interconnection between all the selected models operating at different stages in this study. Along with Chesterman’s concept of norms, they function as complementary models in order to describe the type of norms operating within the context of Kurdish media translation. The socio-cognitive and functional parameters parallel to van Dijk’s and Fairclough’s critical discourse analysis of textual analysis serve as a micro- and macro- level device for the close examination of texts in their socio-political contexts. At the macro- level, Baker’s model of Narrative Theory accounts for the impact of the correlation between power enactment and discourse production in a more profound manner.

Chapter Four

Translation in Practice I:

Text-Selection Policies and Stylistic Framing in Kurdish Media

Translation

4.0 Introduction

The previous chapter addressed the corpus in terms of its structure as a representative entity by both qualitative and quantitative means with the methodology on which the research of this study is based. This chapter investigates and compares the corpus components drawing on methodology in order to address the aims and answer the questions of the study. It explores the interplay between stylistic shifts and socio-political ideology by examining the way that the strategies of borrowing can be manipulated at lexical level to distort translations, and is informed by (and actively informs) the ideologies of both the translators and major newspaper agencies.

The chapter starts with an overview of the four selected Kurdish media agencies, their text-selection policy for translation, and the hierarchy of the translational strategies used in the translation of English geopolitical commentary texts into Kurdish. The focus will be on the functional translation strategy that led to stylistic shifts in the corpus of this study and it discusses the lexical choices with regard to borrowing strategy in the media from two perspectives, at word level and above word level. The choices include parts of speech, acronyms, expressions and names. In addition, the chapter investigates the role of the four Kurdish media agencies, translators, and socio-political factors in the occurrence of such lexical choices when translated from English into Kurdish. Based on the results of the aggregated data of the comparative study, this chapter endeavours to answer the questions raised in the course of this study. It argues that lexical borrowing is the prevalent translation strategy that leads to stylistic shifts. The chapter questions the possible underlying motivations behind the outcomes of the choices on the part of the translators in Kurdish media translation. The aim is to find out if they are driven by ideology and to show the prevailing tendencies that lead to the identification of the current translational norms in the study corpus.