Clem Robyns Belgian National Fund for Scientific Research, K.U.Leuven The internationalisation of social and cultural values: On the homogenization and localization strategies of The Reader's Digest Folia Translatologica 3, 1994, pp. 83-91 Translation studies have generally been based on the binary opposition between source and target text. For some time now, it has also become generally accepted that those texts have to be seen within their social, cultural, institutional context: the source versus target text dichotomy is linked to the opposition between source and target system, literature, culture, and so on. This framework is based on a specific presupposition: namely that translators, and other instances involved in the production of translated texts, belong to a target community of which they share dominant or less dominant values. Even if they are part of an elite with a more international viewpoint, their acts still have to be seen as strategies within a target community. This hypothesis has proved of great interest in a number of more traditional cultural situations. However, it is not as self-evident as some system theorists tend to see it . I quote a recent paper by Gideon Toury: "In view of all this, an orientation towards the target system, where all these interdependencies [of translation process, product and function] have their place, is but a natural consequence; with respect to the study of translation in all cultural domains, and not literary translation alone, where target-oriented approaches have so far found their main application." (1991:184). Contemporary mass communication is such a situation in which the binary opposition of source and target cultures doesn't seem to apply anymore. This is not a necessary feature of mass communication itself. Indeed, the means and producers of mass communication can be locally controlled and thereby function wholly within an identifiable target culture. However, the internationalisation of contemporary societies, to which mass communication has of course contributed a great deal, has led to a situation in which translation in mass communication is no longer a matter of transfering a text from one culture into another. As José Lambert made clear in a recent article (1989), today a limited number of international entities produce texts addressed to "the masses" in a variety of local communities. So what happens is a split between on the one hand the systems of discourse production, which are international and centralized, and on the other hand the systems of discourse reception, which are still local but present varying degrees of openness to the import of non-local messages. In other words, in such a situation the source system deals with the production of both the original text and its translations, and the target system deals with their reception. This does not mean that contemporary mass communication discourse in translation simply neglects local values and needs. There is certainly an interaction between both types of systems. However, whereas the traditional opposition between source and target culture presupposes that the target community determines which texts and text models it wishes to import, in this new situation the target community is not more than being taken into account by the international production system. In some recent texts (1992 and forthcoming), Anthony Pym also criticizes the source - target opposition. He proposes that communities of translators would be considered and studied as intercultural entities rather than as parts of a target culture. What I said before seems to go into the same direction. However, from a system-theoretic point of view, an important question remains. That is: are the social, cultural and institutional links between the constituents of such an intercultural entity strong enough to take it as the focal point of our study? In other words, what is most useful: to see translators as functioning within a target system which controls both production and reception of translations, or to see translators as functioning within an international system of text production and translation? In the main part of this paper I would like to discuss a case where the second alternative is the most useful. Indeed, Reader's Digest is a mass medium spread all over the world. Its production is centralized in the highest degree, but happens in interaction with the local reception systems. In this paper, I will not go into the concrete translation and adaptation strategies . The phenomenon of condensation as a form of translation has hardly ever been studied. For a descriptive frame and a case study on narrative condensations, see Robyns 1990., but limit myself to the role the Digest plays in intercultural value transfer. Let me first give some factual information on Reader's Digest. It is the bestselling magazine in the world . This makes it even more amazing that Reader's Digest never has been studied in a scholarly way. I know only of some journalistic studies. Bainbridge 1945 is very critical but not very well-informed nor systematic. Wood 1958 is the authorized Digest hagiography. Schreiner 1977, written by a former Digest editor, is moderately critical and rather well-informed, but never aims at any scientific qualification. I have sometimes used information from these sources if it was confirmed by all three books and by interviews with Digest editors. Recently, two MA dissertations have been written at the K.U.Leuven on the Reader's Digest Condensed Books Club (Bruffaerts 1992 and Flipkens 1992).: it sells over 28 million copies in 41 editions in 17 languages, distributed in 162 countries. The estimated readership is about 100 million. Reader's Digest was founded in the United States in 1922. It sold 7.000 copies by the end of 1922, and nearly one and a half million 15 years later. In 1938 the British edition was founded, and between 1942 and 1950, 18 different foreign editions in 12 languages were started. Several of them have become the largest selling periodical in that language. Since 1991 there are also 2 Eastern-European editions, in Russian and Hungarian. In contradistinction to its rather old-fashioned image, Reader's Digest is also one of the most professionally made magazines in the world. I give just one example. In every article, every single "fact" mentioned is verified by a research department employing more than 80 full time staff members. They work on special forms on which they have to indicate the at least two different sources which they have used. This professionalism is important because it allows for a very high degree of control. Every step in the process of selecting, condensing and translating articles is performed several times by different editors, and controlled by an elaborate editorial hierarchy, which guarantees that the final product is fully integrated into the specific Reader's Digest discourse. This discourse can be characterized as follows. It is highly homogeneous, and articulates a very specific set of conservative values, some of which are important aspects of the dominant representation of American society. Secondly, this model is introduced all over the world, but without being presented as "American". The local Reader's Digest editions quite consistently attempt to create ambiguity about the American, international or local character of the magazine. I will consecutively deal with the strategies of homogenization and localization, and with the specific world view of the Digest. The quest for homogenization of the Reader's Digest discourse goes very far. First of all, every issue has the same structure. There is always one survival story (called "Drama in Real Life": How I Was Saved Out Of An Alligator's Mouth), at least one individual achievement story, a medical article, several moralizing stories on getting along well with your fellow man, several articles with practical advice, and several crusader stories in which various injustices of bureaucracy, communism, crime, labor unions, radical ideologies and smoking are exposed. The internal structure of those articles also corresponds to an elaborate and fixed model. The survival stories, for instance, have a blurb presenting the drama in medias res, then return in time with an elaborate description of the initial situation. Unlike what you would expect, rescue doesn't come at the very last paragraph: there is always time to restore the initial peace and formulate a lesson. The last sentences always either thank the Lord or mention the medals awarded by the story's heroes. Homogenization also dominates the editorial procedures. The Digest features three types of texts. A first group are the articles condensed from other magazines. Both their selection and condensation are done by two independently working editors, checked by a third, and approved or corrected by at least two senior editors. The same goes for articles written exclusively for the Digest: authors are asked to write articles of normal length, which then pass through the same condensation and editing procedures as other articles. Finally, the Reader's Digest has a policy of what is called "planting" articles. It commissions articles it would like to reprint, donates them for free to other magazines for integral publication, and then publishes a condensed version itself. Thus even what is presented as non - Reader's Digest is controlled, or, in other words, the target system produces its own source texts. This practice of "pseudo-reprint" seems to serve exactly the same goal as pseudo-translations in general: it makes it possible to "innocentize" messages by attributing them to another instance. However, this strategy gets a specific significance in the Reader's Digest. Indeed, it seems that the Digest makes conscious attempts to present itself as a faithful representation of legitimate public discourse, as the truthful incarnation of generally accepted Western civil values. Firstly, although for decades the condensations from other magazines constitute not more than 30  40 % of the editorial pages, the Digest continues to present itself as a reprint magazine, as an overview of journalistic discourse in the United States and abroad. Secondly, Reader's Digest consistently de-historicizes its own discourse and values: every article in the Digest is by definition presented as being "of lasting interest". It avoids printing articles which risk to be outdated after a year or so, and even very specific events are described as instances of general situations and features of society and mankind. And thirdly, the Digest never acknowledges that society is divided in often conflicting interest groups: it always defends the citizen, the nation, mankind and morality in general against specific groups dividing and threatening them, thus imposing its specific viewpoints by transforming them into transcendental values. A second basic strategy with which the Reader's Digest constructs itself as representative of mankind as a whole is the ambiguity about its American, international or local character. In reality, its 40 foreign editions, which account for about 50 % of its trade volume, are all controlled from the US headquarters. Except for 2 or 3 articles in every issue, they are entirely composed of articles taken from the US edition. The local editorial boards comprise only a handful of people. They make a selection from the US edition, which however has to be approved by the American office. Those articles are then translated by local translators, and the translations are edited by the local editors to make it match the obligatory "well-educated informal" style of the American edition. However, every significant change in the article has to be approved by the US editors. Still, the foreign editions also comprise a limited number of local articles. But again, whether written for the Digest or taken from local magazines, the selection of those texts has to be approved. They are then all translated into English, condensed and edited in the American office, and retranslated into their original language. On the other hand, conscious attempts are made to give the foreign editions a local look, or to hide the American origin. For instance, all editions have the table of contents on the front cover. Whereas the American edition, however, mentions the authors of the articles or the (American) publications they have been taken from, the foreign editions only mention the titles. Also important is that the publicity in the foreign editions is entirely managed by the local staff and therefore refers at a high degree to local products or situations. But there are more elaborate ways. Many American articles are integrated within the local context. For instance, in an article on air travel, Kennedy Airport will be replaced by Heathrow or Brussels, data on American Airlines by information on local companies. Local statistics may be added, currencies and measures will be adapted. Local names, quotes or pictures of local sights will sometimes replace the original ones. All those operations are called "localization" by the Digest editors: they are performed by the local editors according to general central rules but without specific US control. Other interventions are more far-reaching: they aim at adapting a text completely to the local situation. For instance, recently a quite popular goose-game-like quiz on American national history has been adapted by various foreign editions. The questions were replaced by questions on local history. However the structure of the game was maintained, and questions had to be of the same type (politics, sports, etc.) and of the same degree of difficulty. These kinds of adaptations are performed in close collaboration with the American staff. Another, similar intervention is to complement the numerous sections featuring short anecdotes (such as Quotable Quotes, Points to Ponder, Humor in Uniform etc.) with local anecdotes . Some local editions (such as the German, and until recently the Belgian ones) substitute initials for the names of the American readers who contributed such stories and who are always mentioned, and write only the names of local contributors in full.. An easy way to give the foreign editions a local touch is to select articles from the American edition which deal with phenomena in the receiving culture - the French edition may for instance reproduce an American article on French impressionist paintings, or the Dutch edition will reprint an article on the Dutch dike constructions. Local editions also avoid reprinting articles which may hurt sensitive spots in the receiving culture - for instance, the Italian edition will not select articles which are critical of Catholicism. In general, the local editions will also avoid to select texts which are too closely linked to very specific American situations. On the other hand, the few articles written by local authors always deal with local topics. Still, if we examine a typical Belgian Reader's Digest issue as a whole, we see that one third of the articles are not localizable, and that in about 25 % the location is not indispensable for the story. About 10% of the topics are specifically American, and another 10% can really be labeled local. The other articles refer to various places on the globe. So we can say that Reader's Digest constructs an international, or better, a general world, cut loose from specific historical constellations. This world is based on a very specific, unacknowledged set of Western, even American values, but is given a local surface representation. I will be quite brief about the world view Reader's Digest propagates. The most important factor here is again that it is extremely homogeneous and permeates every single article. Let me just mention some keywords. 1: individual achievement. Digest characters are always struggling, against bad luck, against systems and regulations, against diseases, and their only weapons are their own courage, cooperation between individuals, and an occasional helping hand of God. 2: optimism. Most Digest stories have happy ends. There is only one other case: the article may acknowledge in the end that there are still many difficulties to overcome, and give advice. 3: moral conservatism. Though the Digest has from the beginning written very openly on sexuality, it has always been emphatically in favor of traditional mariage, loyalty to your country, discipline and charity, and against feminism, free sex, positive discrimination. 4: free market economy. In almost every issue, the magazine fights taxes, government regulations, budget deficits, labor unions, and especially the Communist system. All these ideologemes fit into a rather elaborate and consciously reproduced doctrine. Except the triumphant stories of the Digest itself on the thousands of reactions it receives from readers, there is little or no information on the behaviour of the target, or better the reception systems. I only have some information from independent surveys on the Belgian reader's profile . Media reserach bureau Doxométrie, 1955-56, and C.I.M. (Belgian Center for Information on the Media), 1991.. The average Digest reader is middle-aged, middle class or upper middle class, received higher education and has a lower or middle rank executive job. Between 1955 and 1991, this profile hasn't changed very much, except that the Diges thas become less popular among people who received higher education. More revealing is that Digest readers spend double as much time reading an issue than readers of other magazines, and reread articles more often. 75% keeps the issue after having read it. This may serve as a first indication that Reader's Digest does have some impact on its public indeed. These are only some of the most conspicuous aspects of the Reader's Digest doctrine. All articles are carefully selected and edited with this doctrine in mind. But it is not as much the doctrine in itself which is important, as the way it is presented to the world. Let me summarize. The Digest constructs a homogeneous, de-historicized and de-contextualized world in which people from all over the globe act and think the same. This discourse is itself de-historicized and de-contextualized by its claimed timelessness, the blurring of its American origins, and the adaptation of surface information to local situations. If we consider Reader's Digest itself as the source system, it is this source system which controls both the production and the translation of its messages. This is not the same as a target system presenting what is called a "source-oriented attitude" towards translation. What we see here is an institutionalized control by the source system on all aspects of the target texts. So if Reader's Digest in some respects meets the idea of translators as intercultural instances, in this case the translators or adaptators certainly don't float freely between source and target cultures, as Anthony Pym seems to suggest. It therefore seems useful to consider on the one hand Reader's Digest as a production system responsible for original texts, adaptations and translations, and on the other hand the target culture as a reception system, in which the local edition occupies a certain position. I do not want to return to a "source-oriented" translation studies": whoever decides, the target text still aims at a target audience. What has changed in internationalized mass media is the location of decision power, and therefore of (at least part of) translational norms and strategies. In any case, this (provisional and hypothetical) switch from an opposition between source system and target system, to one between international production system and local reception system, demands that the hypotheses of systems-oriented translation studies are reexamined. References. Bainbridge, John, 1945: Little Wonder. Or, The Reader's Digest and how it grew, New York: Reynal & Hitchcock. Bruffaerts, Marc, 1992: Après le crayon rouge. Techniques de condensation dans Sélection du Livre de Reader's Digest, MA dissertation at the K.U.Leuven. Flipkens, Stefan, 1992: Langs wegen van tekstbewerking: een descriptief-functionele analyse van een aantal samenvattingen uit de "Het Beste Boek"-serie van Reader's Digest, MA dissertation at the K.U.Leuven Lambert, José, 1989: "La traduction, les langues et la communication de masse. Les ambiguïtés du discours international", Target 1:2, 215-237. Lambert, José & Clem Robyns, 1993: "Translation", in Roland Posner, Klaus Robering & Thomas A. Sebeok (eds.): Semiotics. A Handbook on the Sign-Theoretic Foundations of Nature and Culture, Berlin/New York: Mouton De Gruyter. Pym, Anthony, 1992: "Why translation conventions should be intercultural rather than culture-specific. An alternative basic-link model", paper presented at the International Congress Translation Studies: An Interdiscipline", Vienna, September 20-22, 1992. Pym, Anthony, forthcoming: "Shortcomings in the historiography of translation", Babel. Robyns, Clem, 1990: "The Normative Model of Twentieth Century Belles Infidèles. Detective Novels in French Translation", Target 2:1, pp. 23-42. Robyns, Clem, 1992: "Towards a Sociosemiotics of Translation", Romanistische Zeitschrift für Literaturgeschichte 1/2, pp. 211-226. Schreiner, Samuel A., 1977: The Condensed World of the Reader's Digest, New York: Stein and Day. Toury, Gideon, 1991: "What are descriptive studies into translation likely to yield apart from isolated descriptions?", in Kitty M. van Leuven-Zwart & Ton Naaijkens (eds.): Translation Studies: The State of the Art, Amsterdam/ Atlanta: Rodopi, pp. 179-192. Wood, James Playsted, 1958: Of Lasting Interest: The Story of the Reader's Digest, Westport Connecticut: Greenwood Press.