1. Introduction

When we talk about translation and media, the first thing which may come to our mind as a kind of media is news. However, nowadays the way in which news are grasped and understood is much different from the traditional viewpoint. In contrast to the past, today people do not solely get the news from TV, rather they may hear or read about it on the Internet or any other new different way. In other words, news is no longer limited to the television screen and every day, every second we are all surrounded by dozens of news published everywhere in the world.

Whether the news is published through television, newspaper, or social media, it does not make a difference in the fact that they are all labeled as one thing called ‘news’. Also considering the word translation, when it comes to its merge with news and generally the news translation, varied factors can be turned into a possible area of study. In this paper, we aimed at exploring the differences between published news about a same event in English, from the Skopos theory viewpoint.

2. Review of Literature

2.1. Skopos Theory

Translation of a text can be studied beyond its textual and grammatical levels. Instead of just focusing on points like translational equivalence or problems, you can go further than it and consider and study things like contexts surrounding that text. By context it does not mean the textual context, rather, this goes beyond the text and regards things like cultural, social, political, and other contextual dimensions.

Here is where the Skopos theory comes. Skopos theory is an approach to translation which was developed in Germany in the late 1970s, and which reflects a general shift from predominantly linguistic to a more functionally and socio-culturally oriented concept of translation”Invalid source specified.. Passing the equivalence stage of a text between two different languages, according to the Skopos theory, the focus shifts toward the concept of ‘purpose’ behind each text. Function is yet another term that refers to what a text means.

Another related term to Skopos is intention which is regarded as an aim- oriented plan of action on the part of both the sender and the receiver” (Kadhim Jabir, 2006, p. 38). Each text in any language serves a purpose and function. Depending on societies’ norms and conventions, there are some guidelines for the production and distribution of texts whether published as a hard copy or in an electronic format.

The top-ranking rule is the “Skopos rule”, “the end justifies the means”. Vermeer explained the Skopos rule as follows: Translate/interpret/speak/write in a way that enables your text/translation to function in the situation in which it is used and with the people who want to use it and precisely in the way they want it to function.Invalid source specified.

According to the aforementioned points, it can be said that through the lens of Skopos theory, it is the target society which determines how and in which way and with what features a source text should be translated or generally transmitted. In a simpler view, consider news published in Iran in Persian and now it is going to be translated in English (a target culture). According to Skopos theory, target culture and society in which the language is English, dictate how Persian news should be translated. That is to say, which parts of the source text (Persian news) must be eliminated or even be bolded.

The reverse is true if English news is going to be translated into Persian, it is the Persian society which decides for the translational features to be considered while doing the translation. In this paper, in translation of news from one language (source) to another (target), the focus is not on translational action in its linguistic definition (e.g., which words are exactly or freely translated from language A to language B).

The aim of this paper is to emphasize on transport, transmission, and conveyance of news from a source language (Persian) to a target language (English). Thus, it could be better to use the word transfer rather than translate since the purpose is to study the similarities and differences of news of a same event occurred in Iran in Persian and English news agency websites which have covered that specific news.

2.2. Skopos theory research in Iran

Some researchers have worked on the theoretical aspect of the Skopos theory like a study (as an example) in which the researcher has worked on this theory and studied some of its aspects along with studying Jean-René Ladmiral theory (Zendebudi, 2012).

As the second area in the Skopos theory research in Iran, a work is done by Haji Abdollahi and Athaari Nik Azm. They have used the Skopos theory to study the translation of a movie subtitles. They have analyzed the Persian subtitles of a French movie called ‘Class’. Among important criteria for the quality of a subtitle, they assumed that the coordination of picture and voice, conciseness, clarity and simplicity of the sentence structures, are the most important features (Athaari Nik Azm & Haji Abdollahi, 2015).

The next study belongs to Afzali and Shahbazi, who have worked on the use of Skopos theory on assessing a translation of Quran by Ali Maleki. This study has been carried as a case study on the Al Modasser sura. In this study, based on an analytical-descriptive method, they have studied the translation of the aforementioned sura from the book: ‘The Holy Quran, readable translation of the Holy Quran in an interpretive way for adults and young adults’. Then, they have applied the Skopos theory in order to show the degree of the translator’s success in achieving the purpose of the translation based on the Skopos theory. The findings showed that the translator has not been loyal to the ST in some considerable aspects; however, he has produced a very coherent and comprehensive translation (Afzali & Shahbazi, 2022).

Mahdavi Ara and Noori Keyzghani have used the Skopos theory on studying Ghesas Al Hayvan translation for children and young adults. They have studied the functionality of the Skopos theory in children and young adults’ literature translation, and have studied Ghesas Al Hayvan Persian translation with a critical approach based on the Skopos theory (Mahdavi Ara & Noori Keyzghani, 2022).

The above-mentioned names and research studies are included as a very short list of how and in which areas the Skopos theory has been studied and worked on by Iranian researchers. It is clear that this short list is not all-inclusive at all and there might be more studies done with an interest in Skopos theory. But the thing which is apparent in these examples is that they mainly have focused on the translational aspects of one work (whether a movie or a book) and considered the role, aspects, and representation of the Skopos theory in them.

In the above-mentioned short list, no study has compared two different languages (news in two different languages; one language as a source and the other as the target) in order to find the similarities and differences existing in them based on the Skopos theory.

3. Method

The current paper aimed at studying news (from an Iranian incident) published on late spring 1401 in Iran; the collapse of Metropol building in the south of Iran, Abadan. For this paper, some news of this event was randomly chosen from news agency websites (see the appendix). Five random English language and five random Persian news agency websites were chosen. The common feature between the Persian and English news agencies was only the period of time during which the news was published. It was tried to consider the time period from the late spring 2022 (based on Persian calendar; from Khordad 1401 until Aban 1401) until the beginning of the autumn 2022.

From the five random English news agencies and five random Persian news agency, the body of the news was studied in order to find the similarities and differences between the Persian news which is considered as the source text and the English news which is the target text (target in a way that the English news agencies were considered responsible as a communicational channel and tool for conveyance of that specific Iranian incident to the foreigners and other nations and countries so that they would be noticed about the Metropol building collapse through the English version of the news). These two languages were compared and the unit of comparison was a sentence. The sentence unit was considered as a separate sentence wherever there existed a dot.

For a better understanding of the aim of the current study; which focuses on showing the similarities and differences between two languages of Persian and English used in news agency websites for the coverage of the Metropol building collapse occurred in Iran in late spring 2022, some sentences of each of five English and five Persian news agency websites are extracted and put in separate tables which will be presented in the following sections. Similar parts of the news in both languages are bolded. These similar parts are not exactly similar (like a translational equivalence), rather, they both convey approximately the same aspects of the Metropol building collapse.

The dissimilar parts are in italics. These dissimilarities are mainly chosen in order to highlight the differences of two languages in the way of reporting and representing the Metropol news based on the Skopos theory that determines how the news should be published on websites due to norms and regulations of each society. In the following section, first, five English news tables are given with their extracted sentences. Then, five Persian news tables with their extracted sentences are provided.

4. Results and discussion

In this section the results of the analysis will be presented and the similarities and differences between the source and target versions of the news will be revealed.

4.1. Similarities

As the boldened parts in both languages show, there are some similarities between the news agency websites in their news coverage. Both of the languages have referred to the following points:

1. Number of the dead and injured people;
2. Reason of the collapse due to the neglect of supervisors and related authorities to the warnings;
3. Low quality of the materials used in the building;
4. Arrested suspected people;
5. Ongoing work of rescue teams.

4.2. Dissimilarities

The dissimilarities between the English and Persian news agency websites which are in italics can be summarized into the following points. The English websites have referred to the points which were not seen in the five chosen Persian news websites:

1. Unknown number of people being trapped;
2. Continuous crisis and disaster of building collapse in Iran;
3. Metropol reminding of Plasco building collapse and other recent similar building catastrophes in Iran;

4. Metropol news as a “top breaking-news topic” beyond the Iranian borders;

1. Blaming of Iranian building construction standards;
2. Repetition of building collapses in Iran;
3. Lack of care of authorities toward such incidents;
4. Naming some reasons for Metropol collapse;

1. Increase of population and high cost of houses
2. Inflation in Iran
3. High price of building construction materials
4. Preference of low quality but cheap materials
5. Low quality materials resulting in death of people and money making for constructors

1. Putting in danger the life of citizens;
2. Criticisms and protests and shouting of people due to such building constructions;
3. Unequipped and weak rescue teams;
4. mentioning death of two policeman;
5. 80 people being still trapped;
6. Numerous equipment being sent from other cities to help rescue teams in Abadan (naming them with detail);
7. Some people watching the process of rescue team “in horror and desperation”;
8. English news agency (number 5) giving warning and safety advises.

Now consider the dissimilarities of the five Persian news websites in comparison to the five English websites:

1. Applause of rescue teams and asking for their appreciation;
2. Asking people to remain calm and not to attend at the incident site;

3. Naming some students killed at this incident;
4. Mentioning specifically the students’ names;

1. Condolences for the death of mentioned students;
2. Naming the owner of Metropol building and referring to his unclear news of death;
3. Naming Khatam Al Anbia as being designated for destruction of the remained building;
4. Naming Khatam Al Anbia as a self-considered responsible organization for safety of people;
5. Five months after the collapse and a re-collapse of the remained building;
6. Mourning and gathering of people in memory of the dead ones;
7. Mentioning the sentence and verdict of the court for the accused people;
8. Fast and high-speed process of investigations;
9. Putting emphasis on the speedy process of investigations;
10. Personal visit of the attorney general from the victims and asking for their needs and promising to meet their needs.

One point should be mentioned here that among the five Persian agency news websites, only one of them (Persian news number 4) has only mentioned this incident as a catastrophe (فاجعه) and has blamed and criticized heavily (in comparison to other Persian websites) the related authorities or organizations and it also has referred to the protest of people. These parts have been underlined in the table related to Persian news number 4.

Going back to comparing the similarities and differences between these two languages in news websites, first we discuss the similar points. As the bolded parts in tables and numbered bullet points show, these similarities in both Persian and English news websites are quite near to each other in terms of representing the general aspects and coverage of the Metropol building collapse.

But the dissimilarities in both languages are not that much general and they refer to more specific aspects of the Metropol news. For instance, in five English news, the aim is to shed more light on the lack of responsibility and weakness of the Iranian authorities, weak equipment of the rescue team, and the rage and wrath of people and their protests. On the contrary, the five Persian news websites (except an exceptional part in Persian news number 4 which was mentioned above) have covered points which are more relevant to a domestic receiver of the Metropol collapse news rather than a foreigner one. For instance, an Iranian news reader would be more interested in following the final verdict of the court in comparison with a foreign person who lives miles away from this incident. The Persian news has appreciated the efforts and works of the rescue teams and has emphasized on the fast speed of the investigation process.

From these similarities and dissimilarities, it can be understood that the dissimilar parts can clearly show the policy and guidelines of each country’s news agency websites. The policies of an English news agency dictate to write the news in a way to represent a positive or negative picture from another country based on their political stance and relations with that foreign country (whether Iran or any other countries).

On the other side, the Iranian news agency has to report the situation in a way to both cover the news and also to try to control the turbulent atmosphere of the country. So if the domestic news agency emphasized on issues including lack of proper speed or weak equipment, or try to repeatedly criticize the related authorities and organizations, it would provoke and inflame people’s wrath which might result in more chaos and disorder especially near the collapsed building zone.

Considering the guidelines and preferences of news agency websites of each language, these are what have been the focus and core point in Skopos theory. As mentioned in previous parts of this paper, it is the Skopos of each society and purpose of it which dictate the translator, news writer, content developer, or any other person who is responsible in producing information for the audience. In this paper, the English news websites are the communicational channel (in some way translational but in terms of transmitting the news) through which the target people (foreign people of other countries) become informed about what has happened in another country (Iran).

So according to the Skopos theory, “the prime principle determining any translation [or information transmitting] process is the purpose (Skopos) of the overall translational [communicational] action” Invalid source specified. that is the target society which tell how the source text has to be transferred into the target language. The culture, the politics, and many other factors of the target society are important in using Skopos guidelines.

Generally speaking, whenever there is news published somewhere on this planet, when it comes to its transference among different countries, each country covers that news in accordance with its political relations with the source language society and interpret that news for its people in the way that the purpose or Skopos of that country dictates to it. So it can be understood that this is a trend and reoccurring tendency in the sphere of news publishing; each country should obey norms, rules, and conventions which are given to it from its own society.

5. Conclusion

The Skopos theory is one of those theories which can be used as a tool in studying target societies guidelines which are applied and obeyed in the process of translating or transferring the information or news from a source society to a target society. For instance, if we are going to study a text and go beyond the grammatical and lexical levels and go through its cultural context and focus on the purpose behind publishing that specific text in the target society, we can use the Skopos theory as a useful tool. In this sense, the Skopos theory tells us about what the target society and culture impose based on its political, cultural, sociological, and other existing norms and conventions. As long as these features does not distort the originality of the news and what has really happened, there will be no problem However, if they cause a radical change in the nature of the news and distort it in a way resulting in a totally radical different interpretation of that news on the part of the news readers, there will be undesirable consequences.

Conflict of interest

The author(s) certify/certifies that they have no affiliations with or involvement in any organization or entity with any financial interest (such as honoraria; educational grants; participation in speakers’ bureaus; membership, employment, consultancies, stock ownership, or other equity interest; and expert testimony or patent-licensing arrangements), or non-financial interest (such as personal or professional relationships, affiliations, knowledge or beliefs) in the subject matter or materials discussed in the present research paper.