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.