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. doi: 10.26034/cm.jostrans.2022.103
Main files (1)
Article (Published version)
Identifiers
Additional URL for this publicationhttps://www.jostrans.org/issue37/art_davier.php
Journal ISSN1740-357X
791views
705downloads

Technical informations

Creation04/02/2022 10:55:00
First validation04/02/2022 10:55:00
Update time06/01/2026 13:33:18
Status update06/01/2026 13:33:18
Last indexation06/01/2026 13:37:26
All rights reserved by Archive ouverte UNIGE and the University of GenevaunigeBlack