Como se reescreve um Papa? A tradução no campo jornalístico dos discursos pontifícios proferidos na Assembleia Geral da ONU

Abstract

In this research, our main goal is to contribute to the acknowledgement of a domain in Translation Studies in which is still lacking research: translation in the journalistic field. We propose a Portuguese concept for it, as well as a new methodology, hoping to demonstrate and attend to the complexity involved in such kind of translation acts. We present a possible theoretical and methodological apparatus, showing how both theories and methodologies can be interconnected and applied during the observation and the interpretation of the collected data. Our research is positioned in the interrelation of two main disciplines – Translation Studies and Media Studies –, but the work also relies on Religious Studies, for religion is the sphere to which belongs our source-agent: the Supreme Pontiff of the Catholic Church; on Discourse, given that it is through a critical discourse analysis that we discuss the target-texts, more precisely the rewritten versions produced by the Portuguese newspapers Diário de Notícias, Jornal de Notícias and Diário dos Açores from the official speeches of Popes Paul VI, John Paul II, Benedict XVI and Francis delivered at the United Nations General Assembly, in five moments in History, between 1965 and 2015; as well as on Cultural Studies, since we aim to realize whether the options taken in the reproduction of the pontifical speeches by the journalists expressed a pre-existent establishment of values (i.e., ideologies, according to Louis Althusser’s definition) both in the newsroom and in the society, specifically in what regards Portugal’s religious identity. We consider the process of rewriting as an act of translation, pursued in a circular logic: from the communication of the Popes’ vision of mankind to the world leaders of their time and then from the retransmission of their words in a non-official sociocultural context, in Portuguese, to an heterogenous and broad group of receivers and in conformity to the peculiar traits of the journalistic discursivity, which imply, for instance, the selection, the reorganization and the highlight of some arguments (disregarding others). In our study, we present a synchronic and diachronic comparison of the data, hoping to understand whether and how, in the same polysystem, different agents can produce and transmit specific reinterpretations of a text, especially when it is defined by the source-agent as an official truth. The result is a public knowledge necessarily differentiated about the historical events – in our case, about the role played by the leader of the Catholic Church in the international political scene.

Date of Award	24 Jun 2021
Original language	Portuguese
Awarding Institution	Universidade Católica Portuguesa
Supervisor	Alexandra Lopes (Supervisor) & Nelson Ribeiro (Co-Supervisor)