Translating stable sources in times of economic recession

Abstract

This paper examines the translation of economic texts authored by Nobel Prize winner Paul Krugman, published originally by The New York Times in both their printed and Internet editions, and in Spanish by El País. It comprises a small parallel corpus of eighteen original columns and their equivalent Spanish versions, a total of 31,196 words. The article will consider the translation of stable sources (Hernández Guerrero 2009) within the narrative of the economic recession that started in early 2010s. It will use Nord’s functional model (2005) to analyse the texts. The objectives of the study are: (1) to establish whether translators opt for instrumental or documentary translation, and (2) to consider whether stable sources such as the opinion columns written by prominent figures can be regarded as closed sources that do not accept major shifts during the translational process. I will look at extratextual factors such as time, space and motivation, as well as intratextual features such as linking devices, thematic organization, markers of text composition and lexis. In the final section, I will attempt to provide an interpretation from the perspective of communication studies, which might inform translation research as well. For the discussion I will draw on Castells’ proposal for the study of media discourse and its connection with the political power (2009).