With all the media attention that has been going out to the American presidential election and the Trump administration, newspapers and TV broadcasters in the Netherlands repeatedly come across...Show moreWith all the media attention that has been going out to the American presidential election and the Trump administration, newspapers and TV broadcasters in the Netherlands repeatedly come across language related to the political media circus surrounding Donald Trump. For concepts that are culturally and politically specific to the U.S., a translator would need to possess a certain cultural and historical understanding of the source culture, as there is ultimately no preferred model for translating political terminology and jargon. Therefore, this thesis analyses the Dutch translations of political terminology and words uniquely related to Trump (i.e. Trumpisms) in Michael Wolff’s Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House and its official Dutch translation, Vuur en Woede: In het Witte Huis van Trump. By using Pedersen’s taxonomy of translation strategies and Mark and McCutcheon’s six political language categories, the results of the case study show that most findings (total: 862) belong to the categories ‘Terminology’ (269), ‘Personalities’ (134), and ‘Expressions’ (182). The Dutch translators adhered to both a source-oriented and a target oriented approach, making use of generalisations (target-oriented, 22,66%), direct translations (source-oriented, 21,86%), retentions (source-oriented, 18,12%), and cultural substitutions (target-oriented, 12,98%). As generalisation was the most common strategy, one could argue that to convey the meaning of a word or phrase was ultimately more important than preserving its original form. This also applies to the direct translations, as the translators preferred to use these literal or close to word-for-word translations when a generalisation was deemed too neutral or simplistic. Retentions and cultural substitutions filled the gaps when both direct translations and generalisations were not appropriate. Through this, Fire and Fury’s Dutch translation preserved some of its original American subtexts.Show less
