Globalising and localising translation strategies from rhetorical perspective: Rendering English headlines into Ukrainian

Abstract

The paper develops an idea of globalising and localising strategies of media text translation in the framework of the rhetorical canons of invention, concerning selection of arguments; disposition, dealing with their arrangement; elocution, aimed at the choice of linguistic units; performance, underlying the formation of different kinds of discourse. The globalising strategy of translation renders the international content into the target language with minor changes in disposition or elocution while the localising strategy adjusts the global content to the worldview of the local readership changing text organisation at particular rhetorical levels. The article discusses the application of the globalising and localising strategies to the translation of the BBC’s English online headlines into Ukrainian with respect to their three structural positions: attracting attention by foregrounded units, keeping it by predicative groups, nudging the reader towards the text body in the final position. It is found that Ukrainian translations of English headlines intensify the globalising strategy extending the nudging utterances which compel the reader to turn to the text while the localising strategy is implemented by the techniques of specification or perspectivation altering the disposition of the original headline by foregrounding references to the entities important for the local audience.