Journalism

Copyright © 2006 SAGE Publications

(London, Thousand Oaks, CA and New Delhi)
Vol. 7(2): 217–237 DOI: 10.1177/1464884906062606

ARTICLE

Translation, adaptation,
globalization
The Vietnam News

 Theo van Leeuwen

University of Technology, Sydney, Australia

ABSTRACT

The Vietnam News is an English language daily newspaper produced on behalf of the
Vietnamese Government, as part of its market reform policies. Drawing on an analysis
of 100 translations from the Vietnamese press and their rewrites by the paper’s foreign
sub-editors, as well as on interviews with sub-editors and journalist-translators working
at the Vietnam News, the article documents the translation and adaptation decisions
that constitute the process of globalizing the discourse of the Vietnamese press in this
particular instance. Three kinds of decisions are discussed in turn: translation decisions
affecting the English used, translation/adaptation decisions affecting journalistic style,
and translation/adaptation decisions affecting cultural and ideological references in the
source texts. The article ends by asking whether the Vietnamese press is best served by
closely following the Anglo-Australian model, as it does at present, or by developing its
own distinct local style.
KEY WORDS  attribution  censorship  journalistic style  leads
 localization  nominalization  sub-editing  Vietnamese press

Introduction

When large Anglo-American publishing empires seek to open new markets for
their newspapers and magazines, they must consider whether (and to which
degree) to localize their publications, and how to balance the interests of their
global identity with local requirements. Such globalizers enter a territory from
without, opening it up to the world. But the globalization process can also be
initiated from within. A territory can also open itself up as a market. The
market reforms currently taking place in a range of communist countries,
including Vietnam, are one instance of this. In newspapers like the Vietnam

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218 Journalism 7(2)

News, the paper on which we will focus here, the local must be globalized,
rather than the global localized – the local, Vietnamese language must be
translated into the global English language, the local Vietnamese newspaper
style transposed into global ‘journalese’ and local cultural and ideological
references transformed into globally understandable and acceptable versions.
The problem is how to safeguard specific local interests while catering to the
new, globally oriented readership.
The Vietnam News is a 28-page tabloid-size newspaper entirely in English,
published every day. It comprises translations of selected articles from the
Vietnamese press, together with English-language stories from the inter-
national wire services, and occasional reportage by Vietnamese journalists in
English. Started in June 1991 by the Ministry of Culture and Information as
part of Vietnam’s doi moi (market reform),1 its intended readership is foreigners
in Vietnam, whether short-term tourists or expatriates. Vietnamese learners of
English are also occasional readers. However, the paper has another readership
as well, the diplomatic community and the newspaper’s ministerial overseers.
Front page coverage is skewed towards diplomatic ‘handshake’ stories which
send coded messages to the embassies. At the Ministry of Culture and Informa-
tion, the newspaper is re-read the next day with a fine-tooth comb, and
deviations from the Party line are brought to the editor’s attention in no
uncertain terms.
The staff of the Vietnam News consists of 40 translators who double as
proofreaders (and occasionally write their own stories as well), working to-
gether with 6 to 8 foreign sub-editors who correct the translated English and
write headlines and captions. The policies and practices of these sub-editors
rest on their own interpretations of how Anglo-Australian journalistic prac-
tices should be adapted for the purposes of the Vietnam News, and on
continuing negotiation with, on the one hand the editor-in-chief, and on the
other hand their Vietnamese colleagues. This article draws on an analysis of
100 translations by the Vietnamese translator/reporters and their rewrites by
foreign sub-editors, as well as on interviews with the staff of the Vietnam News
conducted in December–January 2001–2. Its principal aim is to document the
kind of translation and adaptation decisions that constitute the process of
globalizing the discourse of the Vietnamese press in this particular instance. I
will first give a brief overview of the newspaper’s structure, and then discuss
the process of globalizing Vietnamese press discourse in three steps, looking
first at translation decisions affecting the English used, then at translation/
adaptation decisions affecting journalistic style, and finally at translation/
adaptation decisions affecting the cultural and ideological references in the
source text.

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 van Leeuwen Translation, adaptation, globalization 219

Structure of the Vietnam News

As already mentioned, the Vietnam News is a 28-page tabloid-style newspaper.

The Monday–Saturday editions follow the format of a standard daily news-
paper, while the Sunday edition is magazine-style, although still on tabloid
newsprint.
The front page usually focuses on stories in which Vietnamese leaders
meet overseas leaders, whether in Vietnam or abroad, on important economic
stories, normally with a positive slant, and on the lead international news
story of the day. Pages 2 and 3 continue the pattern with industry stories,
infrastructure stories, and meetings between lesser overseas dignitaries and
their Vietnamese counterparts.
Page 4 and 5 contain features, focusing for the most part on social affairs
and agriculture. These are almost the only opportunity in the paper for
journalists to write their own stories, rather than simply translating approved
stories from the Vietnamese press. Page 6 contains interviews and opinion
pieces translated from the Vietnamese press.
Pages 7–14 focus on regional and international issues, News stories are
taken from Reuters and Agence France-Presse, and coverage is edited by
Vietnamese Government censors, though usually not heavily. Stories about
Cambodia, Laos and China are rare. Features stories are taken either from the
wires or from other English language Asian newspapers such as Thailand’s The
Nation, The Korea Herald and the Singapore Straits Times, with which the
Vietnam News has a copy-sharing agreement.
Page 15–19 focus on local and international business news (a mixture of
translation and reportage), and page 20–22 on the arts and lifestyle, with local
stories about concerts and art exhibitions, mostly reported, albeit often with
heavy reliance on press releases.
The remaining pages are devoted to science, environment and human-
interest stories, to cartoons and crossword puzzles (all syndicated from the
USA), and to sports. Locally reported sports stories are for the most part about
Vietnamese football.
Although the local translator/reporters were told that ‘foreign readers
aren’t very interested in hearing about how good a particular product is, or a
company, or your family members and friends, or the Communist Party’
(training notes written by the foreign sub-editors), one of the ways in which
the Vietnam News remains determinedly ‘local’ is in its front page emphasis on
(1) positive news, and (2) dry and procedural recounts of Government activ-
ities and statements. From the point of view of globalizing the discourse of
Vietnamese journalism this presents a problem. But from the point of view of
a conventional Vietnamese journalist such ‘positive news’ is a key value:

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220 Journalism 7(2)

‘Today’s journalists are not struggling for the country’s liberty, but for its
development, for its people’s good’ (Tran Lam, quoted in Vietnam News, 28
December 2001).

Translation issues

An important part of the work of the foreign staff is the correction of the
translated English. The excerpt in Figure 1 exemplifies some common prob-
lems. The text in the left-hand column is a Vietnamese translator/reporter’s
translation, the text in the right-hand column the version corrected and edited
by a foreign sub-editor.

(1a) Overall planning should be (1b) The Government will thus have
developed nationwide not only in to look at the bigger picture,
major cities. (2b) including setting up the Tay
(2a) The Government has decided to Bac University in the north, building
established the Tay Bac University in new medical and teacher training
the north, and the medical and colleges in the south, and
teachers’ training universities in the expanding the Tay Nguyen (Central
south and widen the Tay Nguyen Highlands) University.
(the Central Highlands) University. (3b) Khiem said more than 500
(3a) He said more than 500 young young nurses and doctors had been
nurseries and doctors have been sent to remote mountainous areas,
sent to remote mountainous areas backed by VND5 billion from the
with VND5 billion from the State State budget.
budget. (4b) This programme would not
(4a) This was the Government’s only benefit the target regions, he
effort to help young generation suggested, but also help young
understand their duties to people in people remember their obligations
mountainous areas. towards the less well-off.
(5a) The Deputy Prime Minister said Fighting social evils
that the fight against drug and (5b) The Deputy PM said the fight
prostitution is taking place very against drugs and prostitution
complicated making new challenges required sophisticated strategies for
not only in Vietnam, but also the dealing with a complex and evolving
region and the world. set of challenges.
(6a) The fight must be constant. It’s (6b) He affirmed that the campaign
not a seasonal campaign. Co- should be constant, and required
ordination is not close enough close co-ordination between relevant
among relevant organisations in the bodies and organisations.
fight and it leads to inefficient
results.

Figure 1 Translation problems

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 van Leeuwen Translation, adaptation, globalization 221

Some of the problems are relatively straightforward, problems with pre-

positions or articles, for instance. Paragraph 4a illustrates the Vietnamese
translator’s struggle with English articles (‘This was the Government’s effort to
help young generation understand . . . ’). The Vietnamese language has no
articles. It uses ‘one’ where English uses the indefinite article, and demon-
stratives (‘this’ and ‘that’) where English uses the definite article. In the
absence of such determiners, reference will be generic. But there is also a
difference in what counts as generic. To give just one example, uncountable
nouns are considered to be generic – hence the translation ‘young generation’
instead of ‘the young generation’.
Journalistic English has its own conventions for the use of articles, and
this poses further problems. As an example of journalists’ tendency to drop
articles, the Vietnamese Foreign Ministry has a single (much-quoted) spokes-
woman, and a Vietnamese translator would write ‘ . . . said the Foreign
Ministry spokeswoman, Phan Thuy Thanh’. This is grammatically correct, but
a Western journalist would write ‘ . . . said Foreign Ministry spokeswoman
Phan Thuy Thanh’. Another common error involves ‘bridging reference’
(Martin, 1992) in implied relative clauses: the translator writes, for example: ‘A
severe drought that is affecting northern Vietnam has destroyed 100,000ha of
crops’, using the indefinite article (‘ . . . a severe drought . . . ’), but a Western
journalist would use the definite article and write ‘The severe drought affecting
northern Vietnam has destroyed . . . ’. The rule the Vietnamese translator is
following is that of ‘anaphoric reference’: use an indefinite article when
introducing a nominal group, then switch to a definite article (‘There was an
old man. The old man was singing’). But because in ‘bridging reference’ the
non-yet-introduced nominal group is immediately followed by something
already introduced (or otherwise assumed known), journalism (and English
generally) kicks off with a definite article.

Tense and attribution

The problem of tense in indirect speech (e.g. paragraph 2a in Figure 1) can be

more complex. In Vietnamese, present and simple past are unmarked. They
would be inferred from the context or indicated circumstantially (e.g. ‘today’,
‘yesterday’). Perfect and future are marked by a particle at the start of the
clause (ã for ‘past’, and sě for ‘future’). There is no need for concord, so that,
for instance, ‘he said he would go’ would become ‘yesterday he says he will
go’). As a result the Vietnamese translator/reporters will write, ‘He said [report-
ing clause] more than 500 . . . have been sent [reported clause]’ rather than
‘Khiem said more than 500 . . . had been sent’. This becomes particularly
problematic when free indirect speech is used, as it frequently is in conveying

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222 Journalism 7(2)

the pronouncements of Government officials. In free indirect speech all

reporting clauses are deleted, so that tense becomes the only marker of
attribution. Without this marker all sense of attribution is lost and the piece
will read as if the Government is directly addressing the reader, rather than
having its words reported by a journalist.

Nominalization and conciseness

Journalistic accounts of good writing always include an emphasis on the

active voice: ‘Vigorous, economical writing requires a preference for sen-
tences in the active voice’ (Evans, 1972: 23). Training notes written by the
foreign sub-editors for the Vietnamese translator/reporters also emphasize the
point: ‘Journalism differs from nearly all other forms of writing as it uses
short, snappy sentences and the active voice to convey its information.’
However, journalism does not always represent actions as actions. It is in fact
more accurately represented as a hybrid genre, a mixture of ‘narrative’ and
‘expository’ prose (Longacre, 1983), or, in Walter Benjamin’s words, ‘story
telling shot through with interpretation’ (1980: 391). As such it cannot avoid
some of the key characteristics of ‘expository’ prose (cf. e.g. Halliday, 1985a;
Halliday and Martin, 1993; Longacre,1983): nominalization (turning actions
and events into ‘issues’ by changing verbs into nouns); the thematization
(initial placement in the sentence) of ‘issues’, ‘phenomena’, etc., rather than
people; a preference for ‘static’, relational clauses with verbs such as ‘have’,
‘be’, ‘mean’, etc., rather than verbs denoting actions and events; and a high
‘lexical density’, i.e. a high percentage of ‘content words’ versus ‘grammatical
words’ (cf. Halliday, 1985b). As it happens, these linguistic characteristics of
expository prose are also key resources for condensing information into tight,
information-packed sentences and paragraphs. Evans’ sentence above is a
prime example. Both the act of ‘writing’ and the mental act of ‘preferring’
have been nominalized, and thereby deprived of their subject, object, setting
and so on. Restoring these subjects and objects to the text would require a
large number of additional words.
For such reasons, the foreign Vietnam News sub-editors often nominalize
active elements in the Vietnamese translator/reporters’ writing (see Figure 2).
The Vietnamese translator/reporters, on the other hand, often make mistakes
with nominalization. In English, nominalization can be achieved in a number
of ways, principally by using infinitives, participles (the ‘gerund’) and suffixes
(e.g. ‘-ation’ as in the word ‘nominalization’ itself). In Vietnamese the same
word can readily be used as either a verb or a noun, and there are no
equivalents for the English forms of nominalization, so that they appear
interchangeable and difficult to choose from. Hence mistakes like:

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 van Leeuwen Translation, adaptation, globalization 223

despite the fact that the despite Government expenditure

Government spends Deputy Prime Minister Nguyen
Deputy Prime Minister Nguyen Manh Cam has flagged Vietnam’s
Manh Cam has affirmed that desire to deepen and broaden its
Vietnam wishes to further promote ties. . .
multi-faceted co-operation. . . Social stability was pivotal to
Urgent social problems will be ensuring political security and social
settled . . .ensuring political security order
and social order

Figure 2 Nominalizing active elements

The targets are:

• to streamlining the efficiency of State-owned Enterprises
• firmly ensure security and national defence in all circumstances . . .

Non-finite clauses

In English the same non-finite verb forms (infinitives and gerunds) can be
used for nominalization and adverbially, to ‘circumstantialize’ (Halliday,
1985a) information (cf. 2a in Figure 1):
Setting up new universities is part of overall planning [nominalization]
The Government will engage in new developments, setting up new Universities
(etc.) [circumstantialization]

or infinitives:
To set up new universities is a good way of planning [nominalization]
The Government sets up new Universities to develop the regions [circumstantial-
ization]

In Vietnamese, gerund-based circumstantialization could be achieved in this

way only by using a subordinate clause, and it is simpler to begin a new
sentence. There is a similar sentence structure to infinitive-based circum-
stantialization, although the result is usually a more complex sentence (from
an English speaker’s perspective) than the English equivalent. Sub-editors are
thus the point in the process at which circumstantialization gets introduced,
as non-finite clauses allow more information to be packed in without creating
complex clauses (e.g. 2a-b in Figure 1; Figure 3).

Vocabulary and idiom

The Vietnamese translator/reporters often misunderstand the meaning chan-

ges created by various English suffixes, sometimes with unintended comic

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224 Journalism 7(2)

Co-operation between more and . . .necessitating domestic and

more domestic drug criminals with international drug squads to work
foreign ones has become a global together
issue The Vietnamese traditionally set
While Vietnamese people set great great store by a university
store by learning, there is a education, with vocational training
tendency to accord higher priority having second-order status
to university training and lower
status to vocational training

Figure 3 Circulstantializing active clauses

effect – e.g. ‘nurseries’ instead of ‘nurses’, ‘air conditional system’, ‘more than
half of the rural people will be accessible to safe water’, ‘the Vietnamese
footballers started the match confidentially’. This is because, in Vietnamese,
the meanings of suffixes and prefixes are not integrated within words (e.g.
instead of ‘confidentially’, Vietnamese would use the equivalent of ‘in a
confidential manner’). However, many other mistakes result from a keen
interest in playing with words and a genuine attempt to sound authentic and
idiomatic, sometimes, again, with unintended comic effect:
‘To occupy the market-share of the lion, Vietnam businesses must compete
drastically’, Lan Ahn confessed.

But sometimes with something like real feeling, indeed a desire for poetry,
shining through:
Combat to write and write to combat
They did not sign their names in the nation’s history. Instead they penned other
people’s names and victories in the history.
Armed with a rifle plus a pen, or a camera, they fought and recorded moments in
time.
Following the same sacred mission, those gone-away were honoured heroes of
the heart by the survivors

This kind of writing betrays the lingering influence of the French education
system, which sought to have the Vietnamese speak French as perfectly as the
French themselves. From the point of view of the Vietnamese, there are two
rules about English: ‘don’t translate’ and ‘speak simply’. In their view the
English don’t appreciate poetry, flowery language and exotic adjectives. As
English language teaching in Vietnam is mostly concerned with writing, there
is a certain emphasis on these ‘exotic adjectives’, and as a result writers and
translators are always on the lookout for opportunities to use them. From an
English perspective, on the other hand, this can lead to overly ‘florid’ and
‘rhetorical’ language.

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 van Leeuwen Translation, adaptation, globalization 225

The foreign sub-editors therefore try to make the story sound more natural
and more familiar to English readers. Most of the idiom and conversational
usage will be based on British English and American idiom is often taken out.
This is a function of the newspaper’s preference for British English (and for
non-American sub-editors). The headline and journalism style is also very
Anglo-Australian, and the Indian sub-editors working on the paper also follow
this style. Americans frequently favour a somewhat wordier lead paragraph,
often beginning with a subordinate clause (for example, ‘In a bid to increase
growth, the Government is planning to ramp up spending’, as opposed to the
Anglo-Australian, ‘The Government is planning to ramp up spending, in a bid
to increase growth’). There is a similar trait in headline writing (‘In Cuba,
chaos reigns supreme’ vs ‘Chaos reigns supreme in Cuba’). The Americans also
use two-sentence lead paragraphs (uncommon in Britain and Australia), and
more often start ‘hard’ news stories with a ‘soft’ (feature-like) lead.

A Vietnamese accent?

Some of the foreign Vietnam News sub-editors favour retaining something of

the ‘voice’ of the Vietnamese reporter. Making editing decisions along these
lines means nothing less than helping to bring about a new variety of English,
a new local ‘accent’ of the global style of English journalistic writing. Much of
the voice of the Vietnamese journalist is of course already lost as many of the
translator/reporters are not very confident in English. Yet, distinct ‘voices’ can
be discerned, even in the translations, and especially in items such as ‘Talk
Around Town’, a personal opinion column. And while some of the foreign
editors simply rewrite this column in their own style, others try to stay faithful
to the kinds of expression and vocabulary the writers use. However, mitigating
against this is the fact that rewriting a story in one’s own style takes less time,
and time is often in short supply. Also, retaining and refining the Vietnamese
writers’ style becomes more difficult as their English becomes weaker. Finally,
many of the translator/reporters themselves prefer to see their thoughts
rendered in good ‘global’ English, even if that entails some slippage of voice
and thereby perhaps also of meaning. It is thus often the foreign sub-editors,
rather than the locals who favour (re)creating a local ‘accent’.
Is such insistence on a local accent the romantic idealization of a ‘stigma-
tized’ form? I will return to this question in the conclusion of this article. For
now let me look at one more example of Vietnamese written English, a
translation of the introduction to a book of photographs by Hanoi photogra-
pher Nguyen Hoai Linh:

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226 Journalism 7(2)

At a moment of time, I hear in the noisiness of Hanoi streets, a serene sound.

At a moment of time, I see on the strange faces passing by streets in the
afternoon, a familiar smile.
At a moment of time, I find in the crushed space of the Old quarter, a softly
fragrance.
And at a moment of time, I am deep in confusion of not knowing how to fully
love my hometown.
At that moment of time, I take a photograph.

This piece contains many of the grammatical mistakes and odd choices of
word I have discussed in this article. Yet its strong rhythm and its grammatical
and semantic parallelism, stylistic virtues that transfer well between languages,
somehow suggest difference rather than deficiency. Perhaps the ‘mistakes’
create new meanings that would be difficult to convey in ‘correct’ English –
e.g. that ‘at a moment in time’, or that ‘passing by streets’, in which the streets
become a participant in the event, rather than a location. Perhaps English is
renewed and reinvigorated here by what are, for the English reader, new ways
of meaning and new ways of feeling. It is often said, especially in relation to
‘language death’, that globalization increases linguistic homogenization and
decreases diversity, and thereby our stock of resources for change and renewal
(e.g. Crystal, 2000; Nettle and Romaine, 2000; Phillipson, 1992; Skuttnab-
Kangas and Phillipson, 1994). But could the kind of globalization envisaged
here not also decrease homogenization, and increase variety in a new and
different way?

Issues of stylistic adaptation

Translating the Vietnam News also involves adapting the local Vietnamese
journalistic style to a more global Anglo-Australian style. In this section I will
discuss some aspects of that adaptation.

Leads

Vietnamese articles often load up the front of the story with background and
statistics. This is obviously the complete opposite of the Western ‘inverted
pyramid’ structure. Although many of the Vietnamese translator/reporters are
now quite familiar with this style and will do much of the restructuring
themselves, further restructuring may be required, and a different lead, or
emphasis, may be chosen by the foreign sub-editor, in consultation with the
translator. But if this lead is too aggressive or controversial, it may later be
toned down or reversed by the editor-in-chief. The Vietnam News must read

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 van Leeuwen Translation, adaptation, globalization 227

like a Western newspaper to attract its foreign readership, but not to the extent
that it offends local values and interests.
Figure 4 illustrates a very common editing task. The long list of names of
VIPs with which this piece opens is moved to lower down in the story. However,
in deference to Party etiquette, such changes by the foreign sub-editors may
later be reversed by the editor-in-chief, especially in front page stories.

(1a) The 10th session of the National (1b) Economic restructuring, export
Assembly heard major socio- promotion and the search for
economic targets for next year investment capital are among the
delivered by the Government on its key planks of next year’s socio-
opening day yesterday. economic plan, Prime minister Phan
(2a) The year end session of the Van Khai revealed yesterday.
National Assembly was attended by (2b) He told the opening day of the
Party General Secretary Nong Duc National Assembly’s 10th session that
Manh; President Tran Duc Luong; the plan’s top priorities were to
Prime Minister Phan Van Khai, and maintain the tempo of economic
National Assembly Chairman growth, sharpen the country’s
Nguyen Van An. competitive edge, streamline State-
(3a) Former advisors to the Party owned enterprises and resolve
Central Committee Do Muoi and Le pressing social problems.
Duc Anh and former Party General (3b) The PM outlined the plan to
Secretary Le Kha Phieu were also the assembled NA deputies and top
present on the opening day of the national leaders including Party
session. General Secretary Nong Duc Manh,
(4a) Prime Minister Phan Van Khai President Tran Duc Luong and
read a report mapping out major National Assembly Chairman
socio-economic targets for next year. Nguyen Van An
(5a) They are: (23 further paragraphs)
(27b) Former advisors to the Party
– To maintain a high and
Central Committee Do Muoi and Le
sustainable economic growth
Duc Anh and former Party General
rate
Secretary Le Kha Phieu were also
– To sharpen competitive edge
present at the NA session yesterday.
– Production restructuring
– To streamlining, developing and
raising the efficiency of state
owned enterprises
– To effectively settle a number of
urgent social problems
– Firmly ensure security and
national defence in all
circumstances
(etc)

Figure 4 Moving detail towards the end

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228 Journalism 7(2)

Figure 4 (2a) also illustrates a further point. To the poetic impulse I noted
in the previous section, corresponds an equally strong tendency towards dry
bureaucratic prose, as if the two, public information and private self expres-
sion, are further apart here than we are accustomed to in our Western world of
Government advertising and edutainment. Many of the translated stories
sound like official documents, aid organization reports or diplomatic commu-
niqués. Such stories often contain long lists, whether in the form of bullet
points, as in Figure 4 (5a), or in the form of the extremely long sentences in
which the Vietnamese language seems to specialize. The task of rewriting them
consists in turning these lists into shorter sentences and paragraphs, reducing
the amount of passive voice where possible, and removing the official-
sounding words, of which there are many. Figure 5 gives another example.

The Government has issued Decision The Government has launched a

22/2001/PD-NQ which sets out new new attack on the drugs trade,
punishments for drug traffickers setting much tougher penalties for
even the smallest drug smuggling
offences.

Figure 5 De-bureaucratizing the language

However, in diplomatic stories such changes often prove impossible with-

out changing the meaning, and many of these end up sounding somewhat un-
journalistic. Again, the paper must compromise between the in some respects
overlapping but in other respects quite distinct local interests and values (here
those of the Communist Government) and global interests and values.

Accuracy

The foreign sub-editors follow the typical Western practice of querying incon-
sistencies such as numbers that do not add up. Stories in the Vietnamese press
often contain self-contradictory or inconsistent statistics, which the
translator/reporters tend to translate unquestioningly. The usual response
when the sub-editor queries these is to simply delete the numbers. Translators
only occasionally want to perform the journalistic task of ringing up to check
the facts. Apart from the fact that statistics collection is weak and badly
coordinated, it is not clear why the Vietnamese press is unable to sort out these
problems, or why they are not picked up, or at least queried, by the translators.
Figure 6 provides a brief example.

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 van Leeuwen Translation, adaptation, globalization 229

By mid this year Vietnam had (these paragraphs were deleted)

13,980 prostitutes, a decrease of 1.4
per cent compared with the time by
the end of last December
An estimated 38,100 prostitutes
have been found nation-wide since
early this year, down by 11 per cent
compared with last year. They
spread along with urbanisation

Figure 6 Removing self-contradictory or inconsistent statistics

Attribution

The foreign sub-editors recommend the use of quotes to liven up stories. This
leads to an interesting problem when quotes are translated from Vietnamese –
how much can they be changed? It is a sanctified rule of journalism that one
never interferes with direct quotes. But because the quotes already lose their
exact meaning in translation, the foreign sub-editors tend to tidy them up and
make them sound like someone might actually have said them.
However, in stories involving leading officials (the Party Leader, Prime
Minister, President and Deputy Prime Ministers), the powers that be worry that
this tendency will distort the exact meanings the leaders are trying to convey.
For this reason, such stories cannot contain direct quotes and must rely on
reported speech. This creates its own stylistic problem. Without direct quotes
it is hard to avoid starting each sentence with ‘He said that . . . ’. There are
various options. One can write out a sentence from the statement, then put
‘ . . . he said’ at the end. One can vary the saying verb (‘urged’, ‘called on’,
‘noted’, etc.), but this can introduce comment where neutral reporting is most
urgently required (e.g. with verbs like ‘claimed’, ‘asserted’, etc.). One can swap
pronouns for variety (‘Khai’, ‘he’, ‘the PM’) or use passive voice to make the
subject of the PM’s sentence into the subject of the news sentence (‘Social evils
would be tackled in several ways, including higher fines and new supervision
procedures’). As already mentioned in the previous section, tense then be-
comes the only, rather implicit, marker of attribution.
In the eyes of Western journalists, this makes stories of this kind quite
unreadable. But the Vietnamese staff do not appear to be bothered. As far as
they are concerned, this particular story is designed with only one reader in
mind, the Ideology Commission of the Ministry of Information who will read
it with a fine-tooth comb the next day for any signs of deviance, and, if there
is an embassy involved, the political attaché who will read the story to glean
official Party policy towards their country or that issue.

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230 Journalism 7(2)

Feature leads

One of the hardest things for the Vietnamese journalist to learn is feature
writing. Sometimes the translator/reporters will choose their own lead, some-
times the foreign sub-editors will scour the story looking for something to lead
it. Choosing a lead is again a case in which journalistic writing combines
‘narrative’ and ‘expository’ elements. As explained by the paper’s sub-editors
in their training course for the Vietnamese translator/reporters, features must
‘tell a story’ and ‘interest the reader’. Such ‘interest’ comes about through the
choice of a ‘theme’, the ‘idea or point you want to explain in your story’ (note
the term ‘explain’). In Vietnam News features the to-be-interested reader is of
course a foreign reader, so that the Vietnamese translator/reporters must
understand Western journalism’s way of leading a ‘story’ with an ‘explanation’
and the foreign reader’s interests. In Figure 7 the Vietnamese writer has used an
entirely narrative, ‘explanation’-free approach to the beginning of the story,
the kind of ‘scene setting’ approach which was also common in 19th-century
English and American journalism and is still used in more literary types of
journalism, e.g. American ‘New Journalism’ (cf. Bell and Van Leeuwen, 1994).
But the sub-editor changed this, providing a more general theme, ‘respect for
teachers’, no doubt on the basis of the assumption that this forms part of the
ideas Westerners have about the ‘Orient’.
Still, however important the feature lead is for grabbing the interest of the
Western reader, some of the foreign sub-editors do attempt to encourage a
‘local’ accent in this respect as well, and may retain a feature lead chosen by a
reporter even if they themselves would have chosen a different one. However,
the Vietnamese reporters often want to learn from the foreigners and happily
defer to their authority, in which case the story will be rewritten by the sub-
editor and the local ‘accent’ lost.

Issues of cultural and ideological adaptation

Translating Vietnamese journalistic discourse involves not only language

correction and stylistic adaptation, but also a ‘repositioning’ of the reader.
The foreign sub-editors play a crucial role in this process, acting as cultural
interpreters in a way that the Vietnamese themselves can perhaps not (or not
yet) provide. Their stories are usually written from a local perspective, or at
least from the perspective of someone who is well acquainted with the
country and its culture. Globalizing this local perspective means pulling it
back to that of an outsider. This entails not only the unpacking of Vietnam-
ese concepts and terminology (for instance the Vietnamese use of ‘equitiza-

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 van Leeuwen Translation, adaptation, globalization 231

(1a) We came to visit the old (1b) Vietnam is a country that

teacher Bui Van Huyen, at Dong respects and admires its teachers.
Thai Commune, Ba Vi District, Ha But some teachers deserve that
Tay Province. It was a small straw admiration in especially generous
house with a newly built portico doses.
bearing the Chinese character (2b) Bui Van Huyen, 84, lives in a
“Heart” humble abode in Dong Thai
(2a) The class room was a 20 sq.m. Commune, located in Ha Tay
house with beaten earth walls on Province’s Ba Vi District.
which were hung many pictures of (3b) Not only has he devoted his
leaders and Dong Ho paintings. whole life to teaching, but for the
(3a) Everything in the house was last three decades his work has been
made of wood and bamboo. The entirely voluntary,
most precious assets were an old TV (4b) Physically frail and sight-
set and a radio transistor impaired, nothing has stood in the
(4a) Though already 84 years old way of his determination to bring
the teacher was still alert. He moved literacy to underprivileged children.
through the desks to give instruction (5b) These days, he teaches in his
to one pupil or to help another 20 sq.m hut with beaten earth walls,
write properly. The pupils’ pens were on which are hung many pictures of
made of bamboo, because the leaders and Dong Ho paintings.
teacher did not want his pupils to (6b) Everything in the classroom is
use ball pens. made of wood and bamboo – there
(5a) I asked him: “Do you teach is nothing more valuable than an
every day?” He answered: “Yes, for old TV set and a radio transistor.
already 30 years, since 1971.” (7b) He may be old, but he is still
(6a) Then he told me his story firm of purpose, moving along the
desks to offer advice to his pupils or
help them with their writing
technique.
(8b) The students all use pens made
of bamboo, which he prefers to ball-
point

Figure 7 Providing an angle for the foreign reader

tion’ instead of ‘privatization’), but also the backgrounding or deletion of

Communist terminology. ‘Cadres’ become ‘officials’, ‘the fight’ becomes ‘a
campaign’, ‘State control’ becomes ‘supervision’, ‘being enlightened’ becomes
‘being converted to the Communist cause’, and so on. The fact that Vietnam,
market reform notwithstanding, is still a Communist country is watered
down for foreign consumption. But not hidden – enough Communist terms
(e.g. ‘revisionists’, ‘social evils’, ‘a firm political orientation’, ‘tendencies
contrary to Party guidelines’) remain to provide couleur locale in this respect.
Figure 8 gives a fairly typical example.

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232 Journalism 7(2)

Trong told them that he shared his During the talks, Trong conveyed his
sympathy at losses caused by the country’s sympathies over the losses
Michelle storm to Cuban people and Cuba suffered during the severe
expressed his admiration toward the hurricane Michelle, and expressed his
Cuban people’s hard work and firm admiration for the Cuban people’s
revolutionary spirit so as to step by hard work and firm revolutionary
step leading their country overcome spirit
the special period, obtaining an
economic growth and brokening the
enemy’s scheme to stifle their
revolutionary fruits

Figure 8 Removing communist jargon

Feature leads play a crucial part in this process of cultural adaptation. As

we have seen, they must, above all, arouse the interest of the foreign readers.
Often this is done by means of reference to a theme with which they are
judged to be familiar. And that means that the foreign sub-editors must
envisage a global cultural frame of reference, a set of cultural markers and
comparisons shared by all Western foreigners. It also means that the Vietnam-
ese translator/reporters must learn to distance themselves from themselves, to
explain things that would normally go without saying, to see interest in things
they would normally take for granted, and to refer to themselves as ‘others’
(e.g. ‘the Vietnamese people’, as in Figure 9 [1b]). Quite a few stories start with
a Vietnamese saying, introduced as new information, e.g. ‘In Vietnam, it is
said that because one weds only once, the wedding should give no cause for
regret or complaint’.
Preconceptions about Vietnam, or, more generally the ‘Orient’ (as in the
example of the admired teacher in Figure 7) are one kind of theme considered
familiar and interesting to the reader. Comparisons between Vietnamese and
Western traditions or practices are another. The example in Figure 9 explicitly
envisages the global readership (‘Ascot to Melbourne, Hong Kong to Dubai’)
and contains information that would be known to all Vietnamese (e.g. the
region where the ethnic minorities mentioned live). Specific cultural detail is
deleted or generalized, although a few details are retained for the sake of
couleur locale, in a judicious mixture of the exotic and the familiar (and as it
happens also the local and the global).
In Figure 10 the description of a landscape is rewritten to bring it closer to
Western travel journalism in terms of style and content. Note how the deletion
of the ‘house roofs’ and the ‘fishing hamlet’ make the landscape more
‘unspoilt’ and Edenic.

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 van Leeuwen Translation, adaptation, globalization 233

(1a) Horse racing has become the (1b) Ask most Vietnamese people
festivity of many ethnic groups such what their favourite sport is, and the
as Taa, Dao, Mong. answer is sure to be football – it’s a
(2a) When there is news about a national passion, almost a religion,
horse racing the village is filled with and nobody is immune.
pleasure. (2b) But just because Vietnam’s
(3a) The girls from Mong and Dao number one sport is the “global
ethnic minorities prepare their best game” doesn’t mean the country
clothes for the occasion. doesn’t have a few national sports of
(4a) The young men prepare good its own.
young grass for their horses. (3b) They may not have the high
(5a) They even give their horses profile of soccer, tennis or the
earth jingsen and other herbs to martial arts, but they are still
drink. considered an integral part of the
(6a) They are massaged according nation’s traditional culture.
to the traditional method so that (4b) Unsurprisingly, these sports
they can gallop well in the aren’t totally unfamiliar. most sports
competition. all round the world tend to use bats,
balls, boats or animals, and they
basically either pit people against
each other in a race, or in a head-
to-head skills contest.
(5b) But it’s the local flavour that
makes each country’s version of
these games unique.
(6b) Take horse racing, for example.
It’s practised everywhere from Ascot
to Melbourne, Hong Kong to Dubai
(7b) But head up into the northern
mountains of Vietnam, and you’ll
find the Taa, Dao and Mong doing
it too.
(8b) A whole village will hum with
excitement when a horse race is in
the offing. The younger villagers can
hardly conceal their joy, and
preparations are frenzied.
(9b) The girls from the Mong and
Dao ethnic minorities prepare their
best clothes for the occasion.
(10b) The young men prepare top-
notch fodder for their horses. They
even give their horses ginseng and
other herbs to drink and traditional
massages to improve their
performance.

Figure 9 Cultural adaptation (sport)

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234 Journalism 7(2)

Amidst the deep blue colour of the It’s everything you’ve ever imagined
sea and sky, a dazzling white sand of paradise: coconut trees and the
belt comes into sight with a sound of water lapping at the hulls
coconut-tree grove interspersed with of small fishing boats.
house roofs while by the sea-side lie
nonchalantly a dozen of boats
belonging to a quiet fishing hamlet
nearby. Lang Co is really a precious
nature-given gift!

Figure 10 Cultural adaptation (tourism)

Apart from the Vietnamese proverbs, four kinds of themes are favoured in
the leads and hence thought of as of interest to the foreign readers of the
Vietnam News:
1 themes oriented to tourism, such as ancient monuments, ‘sun, surf and sand’
locations (as in the example above), local festivals, and local crafts, music and
dance;
2 themes oriented to business and technology: e.g. the internet, mobile phones,
branding, courses in business English, women entrepreneurs, and stories of
enterprising individuals working their way up;
3 Western perceptions of the Orient, and developing countries generally. Positive themes
of this kind include the respect for teachers already exemplified, and reaching
extremely high age due to a healthy village life in an unspoilt part of the world.
Negative themes include poverty and HIV-Aids orphans;
3 universal themes, e.g. sport as a universal human pastime (see Figure 9), weddings,
and simple everyday things like deciding what to eat today.

It should be remembered here, that the sub-editors do not impose such

themes. The Vietnamese themselves select these stories for foreigners’ con-
sumption. Still, the question of what is or is not of interest to foreigners often
leads to vigorous debates between the foreign and the Vietnamese editors.

Conclusion

As a result of the localization practices of (mostly American) multinational

corporations, the terms ‘translation’ and ‘localization’ have become near
synonymous. In this article, however, I have looked at a globalizing form of
translation, the translation of local Vietnamese journalistic writing into global
English journalistic writing. It should of course be remembered that Vietnam-
ese journalistic writing has its roots in the multi-local and interconnected
history of the development of national newspapers generally, and the national
newspapers of Communist countries specifically.

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 van Leeuwen Translation, adaptation, globalization 235

I have shown that this process involves not only translation, but also two
forms of adaptation: adaptation to one of two global conceptions of English
journalism, the Anglo-Australian one, and adaptation to a global cultural and
ideological frame of reference, and I have stressed that this globalization
process is initiated locally, by Vietnam itself, with the crucial help of foreign
sub-editors.
One of the basic issues in translation theory is the issue of target-oriented
versus source-oriented translation. In the case of the Vietnam News the overall
process is very much target-oriented. But target orientation and source
orientation are not mutually exclusive categories. While the Vietnam News
approach is decidedly target-oriented in its insistence on global news lead
priorities, global practices of attribution, accuracy, etc., there is also an
interest in allowing and further developing a local ‘accent’, a distinct voice
for English language Vietnamese journalism, and perhaps for English lan-
guage Vietnamese writing generally. Thus ‘foreignizing’ and ‘domesticating’
tendencies compete.
A local accent, if properly nurtured and refined, could be both enriching
for the local writers, whose work would gain a distinct identity, and for
journalism, and the English language generally. But this view needs to be
qualified. The value of languages and ‘accents’ is not just cultural, but also
economical, and economic value often prevails over ‘cultural identity’ value,
as De Swaan (2001: 124) has shown, for instance, in relation to African
languages. Local ‘accents’ will need to acquire economic value, not only as
touristic curiosities, but also as the equals of other varieties of written English,
this is so that they will be accepted, for instance, by the dominant publishing
companies (including academic publishers!). Until this is the case, local writers
are better off investing in learning the practices of Western journalists, even if
that entails a certain loss of ‘voice’. However, that such acceptance of local
accents is possible, at least in principle, is shown by the example of English
speech. Today large broadcasting organizations like the BBC already allow
their announcers and on-camera reporters a much greater freedom in terms of
spoken accents than they used to. The same has not occurred with respect to
written language. Here, English is still tightly regulated by house-style manuals
and editing and proofreading practices. Most of the sub-editors at the Vietnam
News and other such papers rigorously uphold the rules of ‘the Queen’s
English’. On the other hand, in countries where English is more widely spoken
and written than in Vietnam (Malaysia, Singapore, India), English language
journalism is already becoming more heterogeneous, as a look at any Indian
newspaper online will confirm. Such heterogeneity manifests itself mostly at
the lexical level, through the uses to which words are put, and through
surprising concepts and turns of phrases, rather than at the grammatical level.

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236 Journalism 7(2)

Some sub-editors use this as a criterion in their attempts at retaining some-

thing of a local accent, so that they would, for instance, correct Nguyen Hoai
Linh’s (2001) phrase ‘strange faces passing by streets’ quoted above, but
perhaps (if they had time) look for a novel (and equivalent) way of saying
‘bustling streets’. With spoken English things are different, of course. Even
Westerners in Vietnam soon find themselves speaking English in grammat-
ically unfamiliar ways, e.g. by dropping articles and tenses, as the Vietnamese
do in their writing.
Meanwhile in the distant and unglamorous newsroom of the Vietnam
News (and in others like it) lowly paid sub-editors are asking themselves just
what it is they are doing. Are they helping a local accent to be developed and
accepted? Or are they putting the Vietnamese local accent into the straitjacket
of Western cultural norms and values? If the Vietnamese did not need sub-
editors to correct their work, would they have greater freedom to develop their
local style, like the photographer in his book intro? It is easy to assert the
potential of a local accent from the comfortable distance of abstract theoriz-
ing. At the level of day by day editorial decision making there are no easy
answers. There is just a gradual trial and error learning process But although
the end result is as yet difficult to predict, it is certainly not out of the question
that it will lie in the direction of a greater variety of journalistic Englishes

Acknowledgements
The research for this paper was part of the ‘Language and Global Communication’
research programme of the Centre for Language and Communication Research,
Cardiff University. This programme is funded by a grant from The Leverhulme Trust.
Special thanks must go to Hans van Leeuwen and Emily Pettafor, without whose
experience as Vietnam News subeditors and journalistic insight this article could not
have been written.

Notes

1 For further information about Vietnam’s market reform, see e.g. Beresford and
Dang Phong (2001); Boothroyd and Xuam Nam Pham (2000).

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Biographical notes

Theo van Leeuwen is Professor of Media and Communication and Dean of the
Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences at the University of Technology, Sydney.
His recent publications include Speech, Music, Sound; Multimodal Discourse – The
Modes and Media of Contemporary Communication (with Gunther Kress); the edited
volume Handbook of Visual Analysis (with Carey Jewitt), and Introducing Social
Semiotics.
Address: Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, University of Technology,
Sydney, PO Box 123, Broadway NSW 2007, Australia. [email: theo.vanleeuwen@
uts.edu.au]

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