PROCEDURES OF PRODUCING CORRESPONDING ARABIC TEXTS FROM BBC POLITICAL NEWS

Malaysia, ID CLEaR2015-208 (plenary)

This article has examined the procedures of producing corresponding Arabic texts from English BBC political news.  Comparing, matching and paring methods have been used. Using various defining characteristics that are gleaned from various definitions of translation, we pair or match these defining characteristic against  the corresponding Arabic text in terms of transferring or translating strategy, style and content of the message. Eight different ST and TT have been examined to exemplify eight different procedures of transferring or translating strategies, and the effect they have on styles and messages. It is found that the translators have been able to employ these eight different  translating strategies on eight different English BBC-news texts,  namely  the semantic translating strategy, communicative translating strategy, functional translating strategy, literal translating strategy, naturalization translating strategy, free translating strategy, word for word translating strategy and cultural translating strategy. Not only  has the translator been able to employ all the eight different translating strategies, but he also seems to have been able to execute these different strategies on different texts (with different styles and messages) as well as having done so eclectically; that is, his choice of any one of these strategies seems to be dependent on the following: (a) The nature of the ST (sentences, clauses, phrases, words) at hand; (b) The availability of finding corresponding equivalents (sentences, clauses, phrases and words) in the TT; (c) The possibility of expressing the content of the ST in a TT that is congruent with the socio-linguistic and cultural contexts of the Arabic readers.

With respect to translating strategies in general,  all the above strategies seem to have been able to manage and sustain the message when used in translating ST news into Arabic corresponding texts. Between the translating or transferring strategies, translation styles and translation objectives, the procedures of transferring/ translating a ST to a corresponding TT seem to have been multi-linearly ordered in the sense that the translator seems to be able to commence his work in any one of these three and moving back and forth. Having considered them (strategies, styles and objectives), then he will produce a translation output.

Keywords: translation, political text, style, message and strategies