Article Corresponding author: Tom Cheesman, Department of German, School of Arts, University of Wales Swansea, Swansea SA2 8PP, UK Email: t.cheesman@swansea.ac.uk Many voices, one BBC World Service? The 2008 US elections, gatekeeping and trans-editing Tom Cheesman Swansea University, UK Arnd-Michael Nohl Helmut Schmidt-Universität/Universität der Bundeswehr, Hamburg, Germany BBC WS US Elections Study Group 1 Abstract This article concerns the trans-editing (simultaneous translation and editing) of coverage of the 2008 US presidential elections on BBC World Service websites. We investigate how English-language source texts were reworked in Arabic, Persian, Tamil, and Turkish, with a detailed analysis of the structuring, content, and rhetoric of a sample text in English and in these other languages. This analysis shows that, while the BBC’s corporate aim is to provide a univocal service across its multilingual output, this aim is in tension with widely differing journalistic norms, and differing assumptions about audience knowledge and needs, in each of the World Service’s language departments. The ‘melody’ remains essentially the same, but it is orchestrated differently by each department. Keywords BBC World Service, comparison, gatekeeping, international media, linguistic analysis, localization, news coverage, trans-editing, translation The BBC World Service (BBC WS) is one of the prominent international broadcasters which provide multi-lingual news services to many parts of the world. Currently it broadcasts – and offers web services – in 32 languages, as well as English, reaching not only prosperous global cities but also places where people are generally poor, and places where the media are not free. Journalists from all over the world work in the numerous Journalism 12(2) 217–233 © The Author(s) 2011 Reprints and permission: sagepub. co.uk/journalsPermissions.nav DOI: 10.1177/1464884910388589 jou.sagepub.com at Swansea University on April 3, 2015 jou.sagepub.com Downloaded from