HERMENEUTIC READING FOR TRANSLATING ENGLISH AND UZBEK NEWS HEADLINES

Abstract

Headline translation is difficult not because words are unknown, but because much of the intended meaning is implicit: agency can be backgrounded, evaluation can be smuggled in through metaphors, and culturally shared scripts do the rest of the work. This article develops a practical hermeneutic model for headline translation between English and Uzbek, grounded in a comparative analysis of online headlines from Reuters and Kun.uz (2024–2026). Building on philosophical hermeneutics and on pragmatic research about headline interpretation, the paper identifies three recurring translation risks: (1) mismatched presuppositions about institutions and authority, (2) shifts in news values when evaluation is lexicalized differently, and (3) divergent ‘economies of explicitness’ in agency and modality. The article then proposes a classroom-ready translation protocol aligned with UNESCO media and information literacy aims, and shows how multilingual language models can support training by clustering headline variants and surfacing hidden frames. The contribution is a method that is both interpretive and teachable: it operationalizes hermeneutic insights into repeatable translation decisions and learning tasks.