What is the role of culture in news translation? A materialist approach

Three approaches have characterized the study of news translation, but none have given a satisfactory account of the role of culture. The first, drawn from political economy, asks how and where news travels. The second, from linguistics, asks how journalists deal with lexical or stylistic concerns. The third, from sociology and cultural studies, asks how journalists understand their role in society. All three, however, employ terms such as ‘culture’, not to mention ‘news’ and ‘translation’, differently. This article proposes an approach grounded in a materialist philosophy of language that clarifies the relationship between political economy, linguistics, and sociology/cultural studies, by locating culture in the tension between the political economic world of exchange and negotiation, the social world of shared meaning, and the subjective world of individual expression.