Errors or Routine Translation Practices? Distortions in the Hungarian Rendition of Romanian News

The translation of Romanian-language news into Hungarian is essential for supplying content to Hungarian online news portals in Romania.In the present study, we focus on news texts, as they emerge on the website of Romania’s national news agency Agerpres, and their translation into Hungarian. News texts are typically precise, accurate, and factual, which requires that their content usually employ a neutral and objective style. The question we aim to answer is whether the distortions, inaccuracies, and the other phenomena that can be spotted are translation errors or the natural ingredients of news translation that have been found in the research carried out in other countries (Bielsa–Bassnett 2009; Valdeón 2005, 2008; etc.). We do not intend to accomplish quantitative research but rather to carry out a qualitative analysis based on a case study in order to identify tendencies and observe translation practices in the field of news rendering. We intend to continue our investigation by forthcoming steps and scrutiny. The shifts, distortions, and alterations we have identified in our corpus include summarizing, reordering, adding, explicitations and suppressing information, omissions, and calque translations, all of which echo the findings of more complex research.