This study analyzes the English translations of Arabic news headlines covering Palestinian events on the Al-Monitor news website, which is a well-known multilingual platform that features reporting and analyses on the Middle East. Using a corpus of news headlines on Palestinian events published on Al-Monitor between October and December 2019, the study examines the translation procedures used in translating Arabic news headlines into English and their textual realizations. Drawing on the taxonomy of translation procedures, mainly Vinay and Darbelnet’s (1995), the analysis shows that addition, deletion, modulation, and adaptation procedures were heavily drawn upon in the translation of news headlines into English. The target text translators frequently added, adapted, deleted, or altered the source text headlines to appropriate a preferred version of reality to their target audiences. The textual analysis further illustrates how texts work ideologically through a process of making accessible, certain aspects of reality and downplaying or excluding other aspects of it. The study argues that translators’ interventions are not simply an inevitable part of headline translation, but they can be seen in the context of the critical, mediatory role of news translation as a process of rewriting and reframing events. Thus, translators contribute to the appropriation of a specific representation of political reality congruent with the ideological, political, and institutional considerations within which translators operate and make sense of the world.
The latest Israeli onslaught on Gaza in May 2021 demonstrated the pivotal role of the international media as an influential source of knowledge-gaining, agenda setting, and opinion shaping for various social groups and audiences. Based on theoretical constructs and analytical tools drawn from Critical Discourse Analysis (Fairclough, 1992, 1995), this study aims to analyze how the New York Times and the BBC covered the Israeli onslaught on Gaza during May 2021. I examine the main topics and key linguistic structures the two influential media outlets use in constructing Palestinian and Israeli actors and their violent actions and how such coverage contributes to the construction of a particular ideological representation of the events. The results show that the two media outlets mainly served Israel’s justifications and interests at the expense of Palestinian narrative and rights through the conflation of two main topics in their representation of the Israeli onslaught on Gaza. The Israeli war was constructed as a war against Hamas, and not against the Palestinian people. They depict the onslaught as a retaliation to Hamas’s rockets. Furthermore, the human and material losses inflicted by Israel on Gaza were framed along the lines of “there are victims on both sides”. The two topics reduce Israel’s moral and political responsibility for the massive losses in human life and destruction inflicted upon the Palestinians in Gaza. This study shows the potent role of news media in framing, legitimizing, or delegitimizing political actors and their actions and maintaining power asymmetries between different political groups.
This paper analyzes the opinions, arguments, and topics in the writings of a diverse group of Arab intellectuals contributed to the Al Jazeera website during the period preceding the Arab uprisings of 2011. The intellectuals addressed prevalent social, economic and political problems in the Arab world and responded to dichotomies such as democracy versus authoritarianism, the Arab world versus the West, and revivalist versus moderate interpretations of Islam. Based on a Critical Discourse Analysis approach (Fairclough & Wodak, 1997; Reisigl & Wodak, 2009), a corpus of 57 articles published between 2008 and 2010 was compiled. The analysis shows that four topics underpinned these writings and provided a programmatic agenda for change. Lamenting the abysmal conditions in the Arab world, criticizing Western hegemony over the region, calling for democracy, and advocating a moderate form of Islam loomed large in their writings. This paper emphasizes the disruptive and transformative power of online media through which these reformist writers acted as drivers of change seeking reform and change in the Arab world.
George Orwell’s 1984 is a challenging literary text where manipulating the language is an integral part of the novel’s theme. Orwell invents a new form of English, changes the writing style of the main character, and uses intentional incorrect grammatical structures in dialogues. This study examines the translations of neologisms in George Orwell’s well-known novel 1984. Drawing on Vinay and Darbelnet’s (1995) seven translation procedures, the researchers analyzed the strategies used by Ash-Shami and An-Nabhan in their translations of neologisms in Orwell’s 1984 and offered translations where necessary to provide examples for the possible ways to tackle language manipulations. The results show that in translating neologisms, Ash-Shami used Explicitation the most (24%), but An-Nabhan used Literal Translation and Adaptation (27% each). They both had a preference for domesticating neologisms to the Arabic reader, which was not always successful. The researchers’ suggested translations are intended to intrigue the ideas of the translators and researchers in this field such that the standard language is used when necessary, and other variations are also used when the ST demands it. Translators should always consider the purposeful changes in the language of the text they translate and develop strategies that tackle them in line with the purpose and context of the text.
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