Scientific article
OA Policy
English

'People have probably offered to buy me a dictionary 20 times since I've been here': Risk management within a community of journalists in francophone Canada

ContributorsDavier, Lucileorcid
Published inThe journal of specialised translation, vol. 37, no. Communities of practice and translation, p. 35-54
Publication date2022-01-31
Abstract

Gathering and writing news in a bilingual context increases the complexity of a practice already characterised by multitasking. Does this situation create particular risks? How do journalists deal with hazards? This article discusses the strategies of risk management that reporters develop as a community of practice and investigates what these strategies reveal about reporters' conception of language. To discover these strategies, I carried out fieldwork in a newsroom situated in Canada's National Capital Region: Ici Radio-Canada Ottawa–Gatineau, which is the francophone public service broadcaster that publishes multimodal content in French on various platforms (radio, television, a website and social media). I conducted semi-structured interviews, sessions of non-participant observation and gathered documents in the field. Participants are especially concerned by the risk of linguistic interference (Anglicisms) because they align with Ici-Radio Canada's model of linguistic prestige and, therefore, fear complaints from their audience. They mainly share these risks with their direct French-speaking colleagues on an ongoing basis and with the speech community of educated French speakers in a context where French is seen as a minority language and English is seen as a threat.

Keywords
  • Communities of practice
  • Collaborative translation
  • News translation
  • Audiovisual translation
  • Risk management
  • Ethnographic approach
  • Non-professional translation
Citation (ISO format)
DAVIER, Lucile. “People have probably offered to buy me a dictionary 20 times since I’ve been here”: Risk management within a community of journalists in francophone Canada. In: The journal of specialised translation, 2022, vol. 37, p. 35–54.
Main files (1)
Article (Published version)
Identifiers
  • PID : unige:158820
ISSN of the journal1740-357X
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104downloads

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Creation02/04/2022 10:55:00 AM
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