The role of news translations as a mediator of cultural diplomacy: The case of TRT World (English) and BBC Turkish service

The act of translation, used to improve mutual understanding between countries and appearing seemingly unrelated field though an important actor in the news production process, is an invisible process, often considered as news production and consumption, functionally implemented by the news media to serve as a bridge between cultures. This study aims to reveal the diplomacy aspect of the news translations regarding the reconciliation, peace and mediator culture regarding the Ukrainian-Russian conflict in TRTWorld and BBCTurkish news services and the analysis of intercultural awareness in the text, the semantic and structural transformations regarding the discourse in news translations applied in the translation of English and Turkish news in TRT World News and BBC Turkish in the intercultural background, and the translation tactics within the framework of Norman Fairclough's critical discourse analysis approach. TRT World and BBCTurkish, which apply various translation strategies such as adding, summarizing, changing, translating-editing in their news translations while trying to convey the news about the Ukraine-Russia conflict to the audience reveals that the act of translation actually represents an important covert soft power adopting the peaceful and conciliatory cultural approaches to the ongoing conflict between Russia and Ukrain while reporting the news. The analysis shows that the discourses are reproduced and reshaped in the context of power and ideology relations in the target texts. Transformations in the news production process affect the freedom areas in the process of creating the target text of the news translation, and institutional ideology and interventions in the news agency can restrict the translator's activity as well as new intellectual expansions.