Translating Ideologies in Arabic News: Textual Alterations in Al-Arabiya and Aljazeera’s Discourses

This article explores how the institutional and ideological practices of news media can impact on translating news articles by focusing on the ideological representations in media discourse. It tests the hypothesis that hidden ideologies in news texts are changed/re-presented in the process of reformulation, taking into account the translation practices followed by news institutions. The study applies a Critical Discourse Analysis model to analyse issues relayed to representing people and events in a range of media texts. To do this, it uses a corpus of 63 news articles collated from Aljazeera and Al-Arabiya websites to identify the textual, ideological, and institutional representations and alterations happening through translation. It shows that it is possible for a news translator to carry out minor or major alterations to a news story under translation for the purpose of ideologically reorienting their message or text-focus.