Translation workers who work in media occupations spend a great deal of time talking about “doing the right thing.” Nevertheless, it is not rare that we, as readers or viewers of these disseminators of news, information, and entertainment find that there is something wrong with the “ethics” of their actions. What has led the purveyors of mass communication to believe and act the way they do? Are they obliged to adhere to special ethical norms that ordinary citizens are not, or, vice versa, they rely on a special waiver of the basic moral tenets that the rest of us must observe so that we may have access to a “free marketplace of ideas”? These are the questions we must ask ourselves if we are to be moral agents of the mass media.
This series of articles aims to inform bilingual professionals about the tools needed to make fair and moral decisions regarding the use of mass media, both as users of the media “products” and journalists or other media workers. We are sure that new Chinese Translation workers, Polish Translation and Arabic Translation workers who will be working on Medical Translation and Legal Translation issues will find a lot of useful information in this article. This text, however, is not instructional – you will not find any rules regarding what is “right” to do when handling situations. Here we will try to give you some suggestions of what you can do in a given situation. In doing so, we pay special attention as to the subject and why the action might be most appropriate. We have put a great effort in answering the numerous questions of our blog readers. Moreover, we fully explain each one at length.
As one Vietnamese Translation worker who was a contributor in this article said, it will finally be your responsibility to draw your own conclusions as regards the answers that you find acceptable. We hope that you will realize to a greater extent that to make a moral decision is not an easy task. At the very least, you will be required to construct a personal benchmark by which to measure your decisions.
So, this series of articles will deal with news media, advertising, and public relations. While the investigation of entertainment media, for example television and the movie industry, are more attractive for translation workers, the above three are the most popular choices for college graduates who have majors both in Translation studies and Journalism or Communication. The experience gained by translation and interpretation workers in these three fields can be used in other forms of communication, information based or otherwise. In addition, one of our Polish Translation workers has provided a lot of information related to the entertainment industry and its effect on world culture. And, of course, volumes have been written to oppose the condition state of contemporary journalism in various societies. However, advertising, and especially, public relations, are often given cursory attention or – which is worse – compared with journalism, taking for granted that the moral postulates of the one will be valid for the other. Since that is rarely so, the purpose of this book is to explain the specific features of each of these three practices and thus enhance the development of reasonable and concrete guidelines that can be used for their analysis according to their specific functions within our society. In the end, the principle of truth and the least harm should be the general rule for all mass media, but in differing doses and for definitely different reasons.
