Transcreation as an Instance of Journalistic Transediting: A Case Study on Metaphors, Multi-word Ad hoc Neologisms and Headlines in Students’ Target Texts

This chapter argues that specific parts of journalistic transediting require transcreation strategies in order to appeal to local readers as consumers of foreign news. In line with the literature on transcreation, we argue that three distinctive features justify a transcreation approach to interlingual transfer of news, which may be distinguished from translation practice as a broader domain and which feature in a strategy of news translation as acculturation. These features are (i) an enhanced level of creativity, (ii) linguistic productivity in generating new constructions or words, and (iii) fully rewritten text, including selecting new, local content. Drawing on data from the translation classroom, these features are identified in students’ translations from English into Dutch of three articles on the subjects of Scottish devolution, Muslim attacks in Europe, and medicine. They focus on the following challenges in the source texts: (i) culture-specific metaphors, (ii) multi-word ad hoc word formations or neologisms and, in perhaps the clearest instance of journalistic transcreation, (iii) newspaper headlines. The general findings for the three cases indicate that only a minority of the students opted for creative and truly localised target text solutions. We believe that this can be addressed in didactic terms by scaffolding from translation to specific transcreation strategies.