Dubbing and journalistic translation: misinformiming the public

Abstract

The mass media playa fundamental role in today's world, particularly in the western hemisphere. It would be hardly imaginable to deprive this brave new world of the presence of the press, television, radio and cinema. And translators serve as a bridge between the information and the audience. Translation is, thus, the basis of either information or misinformation, since the majority of news, films, television series or documentaries that are shown in the West are produced in English-speaking countries, notably the US and Britain, or else come through international agencies, whose main language is English. Therefore national newspapers, magazines, television channels, radio programmes and film theatres depend on translation into the mother tongue of the recipients, if we take apart the notorious case of our neighbouring Portugal, which, however, provides its audiences with Portuguese subtitles. In consequence, we could speak of two main types of translating activities in the media: the obvious one, that is, the dubbing of films, series and documentaries, and the less obvious one: translation of news which originate in English-speaking countries or which are received through intemational news agencies, and which might seem to have been originally written in Spanish. In this paper we will be examining both problems through the Spanish versions provided by translators and how some of these versions clearly show a lack of interest, weak command of one of the two languages or even a certain degree of negligence