This essay deals with the question of translation of quotation in journalistic news articles. Using the translation theory of Peter Newmark as a point of departure for functional genre classification and translation analysis in a comparative study of French polyphonic news articles and their Swedish translation, the essay discusses the choice of translation method in relation to genre; the differences in genre between French and Swedish use of quotation in news articles, as well as the conflicts that arises from the choice of translation method in relation to genre function and text adaption. The study argues that the polyphonic news article, through the use of quotation, is essentially bi-functional, meeting both the informative and expressive needs of the genre, not only as a whole, but also on the level of direct speech, since the direct speech itself serves both as a source of expressive content, and as an informative transmission of actual events. This leads to the conclusion that, the translation of polyphonic news articles calls for two methods: the “communicative” method for the text attributed to the journalist and the “semantic” method for the quotations of direct speech. As regards to the differences in genre between the French and Swedish polyphonic news articles, the study concludes that the most important difference in use of quotation is the predominance of direct speech in the French news genre, whereas the Swedish genre divides equally the use of direct and indirect speech. Furthermore, the French genre more frequently use hybrid forms combining direct and indirect speech, forms that are used to a very little extent in the Swedish counterpart. Finally, on the subject of translation method-related conflicts that arise from the use of the “semantic” method in the adaptation of the text to a Swedish context, the study concludes that there are several ways of satisfying both informative and expressive needs. Most fruitful in this regard, is the combined use of the journalist’s and the quoted text parts. However, the abandonment of the expressive to favour the informative by transposing direct speech into indirect speech, can be considered as a last resource.