Translation as Rewriting: A Case Study of Al-Monitor News Headlines on Palestine

Abstract

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.

A Rhetorical Content Analysis of Moroccan Regional Agronomic Abstracts: Textual Practices of Plurilingual Science Communication

“…When applied to multilanguage data sets, past content analyses have focused primarily on translations and translanguaging. Amer (2022), for instance, demonstrated the influence of ideological frameworks on Arabic-English translations of news headlines, and Windsor et al (2019) used content analysis to evaluate the feasibility of machine translations of text corpora for research use. Content analysis allows for the flexible generation and implementation of coding categories, and researchers generally deploy coding taxonomies derived from literature related to study aims; Amer (2022), for example, coded differences between languages based on previously outlined translation procedures.…”

“…Amer (2022), for instance, demonstrated the influence of ideological frameworks on Arabic-English translations of news headlines, and Windsor et al (2019) used content analysis to evaluate the feasibility of machine translations of text corpora for research use. Content analysis allows for the flexible generation and implementation of coding categories, and researchers generally deploy coding taxonomies derived from literature related to study aims; Amer (2022), for example, coded differences between languages based on previously outlined translation procedures. To suit the exploratory nature of this case study, I opted for emergent coding and latent analysis, which “involves interpreting the underlying meaning of the text” in order to “expose previously masked themes, meanings, and cultural values” therein (Thayer et al, 2007, p. 270).…”

Analysis of Errors Made by a Sample of Omani Students in Translating English News Headlines into Arabic

“…However, the direction of translation in both studies is the same, and the subfield of translation which is media translation is the same in both studies. Amer (2022) conducted a study on the English translations of Arabic news headlines about Palestine with an eye to identifying the procedures employed in translating the headlines into English. The researcher used a corpus of headlines and examined the English translations in order to achieve the main objectives of his study.…”

“…This translation subfield or sub-discipline is media translation. As this subfield is making its way into the translation discipline and giving translation other dimensions and aspects, translation scholars have started exploring it and examining topics related to it so as to learn more about this relatively nascent subfield and enrich it (e.g., Liu, 2023;Al-Awawdeh, 2022;Amer, 2022;Guo & Chen, 2021;Jiang, 2019;Rasul, 2018;Al-Falahy, 2017;Zhang, 2013).…”