The Evolution of Digital Genres: Original Genres, Derivative Genres and Remediation

If you have a printed product catalogue and you are moving it to a website, the job sounds simple: take the text, translate it, publish it. In practice this approach almost always falls short, because the genre itself changes along with the medium.

Contents

The evolution of digital genres is the framework that describes this change. As a genre moves into the digital medium it gains new sections, new interactions and new expectations. If your translation plan was built around the old genre, neither your volume estimate nor your scope will hold.

This article looks at how genres are born, how they change and how that change works its way into your localisation projects.

Why and how does the evolution of digital genres work?

Genre evolution is fed from two sources: technological developments and changes in the communities that use the genre. The literature notes that genres evolve in order to adapt to new social needs, changing audiences, new media and shifting public attitudes (Luzón and Pérez-Llantada 2019, p. 11).

This means genre decisions cannot be taken once and then put on a shelf. The content template you prepared five years ago may no longer meet today’s user expectations. Localisation projects therefore need to be reviewed at regular intervals.

Nor does the change run in only one direction. While the move from paper to screen continues, some printed genres disappear altogether. The spread of online banking and the arrival of banks that operate digitally only is the visible example of this.

For you the conclusion is this: knowing which genre you are working in is not enough, you also need to track the direction in which that genre is evolving.

The distinction between original and existing genres

Digital genres fall into two groups according to the way they came into being (Crowston and Williams 1997; Shepherd and Watters 1998). Original genres were born directly in the digital medium: search engines, short posts, wiki pages. They have no printed predecessor.

Existing genres, on the other hand, were already there and have been adapted to the digital medium: online newspapers, encyclopaedias, open online courses. The basic difference is the extent to which the genre owes its existence to the new medium (Shepherd and Watters 1998, pp. 99–100).

The practical value of the distinction is this: with original genres there is no printed tradition for you to work from. You have to learn the conventions, the form of address and the expected length from existing examples in the target market. Fidelity to the source text is not on its own a sufficient criterion here.

With existing genres the trap runs the other way: the established printed tradition of that genre in the target market steers the translation. A translator who does not know the local journalistic or publishing tradition produces a text that is correct but reads as foreign.

Replicated genres and derivative genres

Existing genres divide in turn into two. Replicated genres are presented online with no adaptation at all; a book read on screen is one of them. Derivative genres, by contrast, gain interactive and multimedia features as they move into the digital medium, and turn into a different genre.

Genre group	Definition	Effect on the translation plan
Original genre	Born directly in digital, no printed predecessor	Conventions are learned from the target market
Replicated genre	Content presented online without adaptation	Volume estimates usually hold
Derivative genre	A genre transformed by gaining interaction in digital	Additional text items have to be planned

An online newspaper is not the printed newspaper moved onto a screen. It contains video, a live comment feed, archive links and a subscription flow. Every one of these is a separate text item, and none of them shows up in an estimate made by looking at the printed page.

Volume should therefore be estimated from the list of sections in the target product, not from the printed source. On most projects the difference is too large to shrug off.

The distinction also raises a question of responsibility. In a replicated genre the translation team sees the whole text and can check it. In a derivative genre the text is scattered through the interface; unless it is written down at the outset who checks what, the interaction texts end up being nobody’s responsibility.

Remediation: how an old genre changes in a new medium

The logic by which new media reshape the forms of earlier media is called remediation (Bolter and Grusin 1999, p. 273). The concept may look abstract, but its consequences are very concrete.

An e-book can hold links to supplementary documents, videos or images. An online encyclopaedia entry contains source links and multimedia presentations. In open online courses, a video recording, a transcript, a presentation, an assignment and a test all sit together.

Social networks went through the same process. On the common account, the largest social network was born as the online counterpart of a university yearbook and turned into an entirely different genre once users were able to produce and share content.

The lesson for localisation is this: do not plan by looking at the printed ancestor of the source product. Remediation multiplies the text items to be translated, and most of those items are short, context-free and critical.

Another consequence is that texts become interwoven with visual and auditory elements. Video subtitles, audio transcripts and the words written on an image all become part of the same genre. Treating them as separate projects leads to the same term being translated differently in different media.

Seven features digital genres share

Original and derivative genres share a set of features that increase user interaction compared with their printed predecessors. The list below offers a framework you can transfer straight into your translation brief.

1. They are more dynamic and more hybrid in structure; they have no fixed form.
2. They are woven together with links yet still have a conventionalised structure.
3. They are multimedia: they contain sound, music, images, video and animation.
4. They are produced to address wider audiences.
5. They are usually shorter, more direct and plainer.
6. They use particular linguistic strategies to hold attention.
7. They are more interactive; they contain direct questions and forms of address.

Items five and six are the ones most often missed in translation. If the source text has been simplified for the screen, the target text has to stay simple too. As Turkish renderings grow longer this feature disappears of its own accord; shortening has to be a deliberate decision.

Item seven is bound up with the decision on how to address the user. If an interface that asks direct questions does not create the same closeness in the target language, its promise of interaction comes to nothing.

Which genres is the move from paper to screen changing?

The trend towards paperless working is accelerating the replacement of printed genres by their digital counterparts. This transition does not advance at the same speed in every genre; in some it is complete within a few years, in others it takes decades.

The hardest part of the transition for translation is the interim period. While the same content is published in both a printed and a digital version, two different genre expectations have to be met at once. Holding the same text in two forms is one of the most common causes of inconsistency.

This is a frequent sight in corporate content. The text of the printed brochure is moved onto the site as it stands, and then the site text is updated separately. Six months later the gap between the two becomes a problem in which the translation team cannot tell which one to treat as authoritative.

The solution is to designate a single source. Fix in writing which version is the master and derive the other from it. When that decision is not taken, the translation team takes it on your behalf, and takes it differently every time.

What evolution costs your translation processes

Genre evolution turns translation from a one-off delivery into continuous maintenance. As new sections are added and forms of interaction change, the text changes with them. Fixed-price, one-off contracts do not fit that reality.

The second item on the bill is terminology management. In derivative genres new concepts arrive quickly. If their renderings are not recorded the moment they are first used, six months later the same concept goes by three different names.

The third is the problem of measurement. In a printed genre, quality is measured by the text itself. In a digital genre, quality is measured by whether the user completes their task. Testing localisation quality by linguistic review alone is therefore misleading.

We set out in detail how to organise the work for content that flows continuously in the articles in our knowledge centre.

The Türkiye context

In Türkiye the move from paper to screen has advanced quickly in some areas. Invoices, tickets and many official documents are now produced digitally in the first instance. The texts of these genres are short, formulaic and tied to regulation; the freedom available in translation is low.

The text requirements of derivative genres, by contrast, are frequently underestimated in the local market. A manufacturer with a printed catalogue moving to a website has only the product descriptions translated; the shipping, returns, order tracking and notification texts are remembered later.

The suffixing structure of Turkish conflicts from time to time with the plainness digital genres expect. Writing a short, direct piece of interface text takes more effort in Turkish than in the source language. Projects that leave that effort out of their pricing end up with crowded, tiring interfaces.

What does this mean for you?

Following genre evolution makes your translation plan realistic. Looking at current digital examples instead of the printed ancestor corrects both your volume estimate and your scope decision.

In concrete terms, do this: list every text item in the product before translation begins. Notifications, empty state screens, error messages, confirmation messages and email templates all belong on that list. These items are not in your printed source, but they are in the product.

Once the list is ready, drawing up a realistic budget becomes easier. If you share your item list through our quote form, we can settle the volume and timeline estimates together.

Frequently asked questions

What is the difference between an original genre and an existing genre?

Original genres were born directly in the digital medium and have no printed counterpart; a search engine or a short post is an example. Existing genres were already there and have been carried into the digital medium; an online newspaper or an encyclopaedia falls into this group.

What does remediation mean?

Remediation is the name given to the way a new medium reshapes the forms of the media that came before it. Adding video, links and tests to the online version of a printed textbook is a typical example of the process. What comes out at the end is a different genre.

What is the difference between a derivative genre and a replicated genre?

Replicated genres are content presented online with no adaptation at all, like a book read on screen. Derivative genres gain interactive and multimedia features as they move into the digital medium and turn into a different genre.

How does genre evolution affect a translation budget?

In derivative genres the text to be translated is not merely the text of the printed counterpart. Interaction elements, explanations, warnings and navigation labels are added to it. Volume estimates based on the printed source therefore come out short on a regular basis.

References

• Jiménez-Crespo, M. A. (2024). Localization in Translation. Routledge, pp. 134–138.
• Bolter, J. D. and Grusin, R. (1999). Remediation: Understanding New Media. MIT Press, p. 273.
• Shepherd, M. and Watters, C. (1998). The evolution of cybergenres. Proceedings of the 31st Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences, pp. 97–109.