Perspectives Of Sabc News Bulletin Readers At Thobela Fm Radio Station: Insights Into The Challenges Of News Translation

Abstract

The article reports on the perspectives of News bulletins’ readers regarding translation challenges plaguing South African Broadcasting Corporation (SABC) at Thobela FM radio station. Despite a deluge of literature in this area, there is a gap on in media regarding how news are translated particularly when it comes to indigenous SA languages. Thus, a perspective harvesting activity through one on one interviews was carried out with eight (8) SABC journalists reading the News bulletins at Thobela FM , one (2) News bulletin Editors and one (1) Regional Editor were also interviewed. This was an exploratory qualitative study. An in-depth interviews were carried out to explore translation challenges as viewed by the News readers and Editors themselves. Interpretational analysis was then adopted as a data analysis framework were recurring themes were the focus. Among the findings was the absence of a specific adopted translation model specifically for the news process at Thobela FM, lack of adequate monitoring of translation work by the news editors. Also unsurprising was the lack of specifically hired linguist to help in the decoding of the English meaning of the news and also to help with translation of those news .Lack of sufficient dictionaries and glossaries in N Sotho. Unpredicted finding was that of the lack of knowledge regarding word formation processes on the part of news bulletin readers. In addition, the study found lack of support on the part of SABC to provide in-service training to news bulletin readers as a contributing factor. This article underscores the importance of reflective research as a source of information for innovative enhancement strategies to improve performance in a workplace. The findings may inform translation strategies in news production and help anticipate problems in news translation as a transformational tool. It proposes that journalism curricular in institutions of higher learning should comprise among other things a linguistics and translation modules.