ABSTRACT
In times of conflict, translators often play the role of activists, exposing their viewpoints in their work, despite their best attempts at neutrality. In December 2016, many online English newspapers and magazines reported on the displacement of civilians from Aleppo. After a bloody fight, which had raged since 2012, the armed Syrian opposition and regime forces signed a truce providing for a ceasefire. Upon hearing of this truce, civilians went into the streets, and sprayed the city’s walls with messages to the effect that they had been condemned to leave the city by force. Banned by Assad from covering the war, media outlets depended on social media and activist translators for information and data from Syria. In the absence of more, and better, translations concerning these events, photos and images took the place of words. In this chapter, I argue that the use of images as translations omits rich layers of meaning, and confounds attempts ‘to bring back a cultural other as the same’ (Lawrence Venuti, The Translator’s Invisibility: A History of Translation, 1995: 18; London: Routledge). Such substitution invariably overlooks the essential meaning and intention of the writing, captions and images themselves, while preventing the original utterance from being recognised as a conscious act.
