Conflict in Translation: Online News Coverage of the Arab World With Special Reference to Selected Post 9/11 Events

Abstract

The present study attempts a scrutiny and an evaluation of the online news coverage of the Arab world in Western online news institutions. It aims to identify the strategies which are employed by the translators and their news institutions in rendering the religious and political references while tackling the Arab events. The current descriptive analytical study, also, attempts to explore whether the meanings of the Arabic references are transferred accurately in the English texts or not. It aims to show the effect of Western online news institutions and their political stances on the translated texts. It is divided into three chapters and a conclusion. In the first chapter, the researcher deals with the methodology of research; in chapters two and three, the practical analysis is introduced and the conclusion sums up the research findings. For the purpose of the thesis, the researcher selected certain religious and political references in Saddam Hussein’s speeches/letters and Arab writers’ articles during the Iraq war (Jan. – Dec. 2003) and tackled the way they are translated in some Western online news institutions, namely, the NY Times and the Guardian, and the think tank MEMRI. The selected religious and political references are analyzed in the light of Mona Baker's narrative theory, Lawrence Venuti's notions of domestication and foreignization and Javier Aixelá's strategies. The analysis reveals that the Iraqis and the Iraq war are misrepresented in the selected online news institutions. The selected translators swung between the domesticating and foreignizing methods through using Aixelá's strategies. The selected religious and political references, which stress comparisons made by Hussein and the Arab writers between the Iraqis and the invaders are either deleted or distorted, in many cases. The narratives of difference, of homogeneity and terrorism regarding the Iraqis are formed in the target texts and articles, to justify the Iraq invasion.