ABSTRACT
Human rights discourse is an under-researched topic in translation studies, especially in the context of the Arab World. Since the so-called Arab Spring of 2011, human rights discourse has gained momentum in Saudi Arabia, among other Arab countries. One human rights case that has been at the centre of controversy is that of Raif Badawi. This case has been used by various national and international political actors, including news agencies, for different ideological reasons.
The corpus used in this study contains news reports both in Arabic and English on the case obtained from two ideologically conflicting news agencies, namely: Al Arabiya (from Saudi Arabia); and Al-Alam (from Iran). The selected methodological framework used in this study is a modified version of Fairclough’s three-dimensional model of Critical Discourse Analysis (1989, 1992, 1995). The study poses the question of ideological influence at different levels of analysis, including the translation shifts and editing that occur at the lexical and grammatical levels; the visual semiotics; the historical, social and political contexts; and the discursive strategies.
This chapter sets out to extend our knowledge of the current issues in news translation in the Arab World. It also attempts to provide a different way of studying cross-linguistic news reports as representations rather than translations. This chapter helps to enhance our understanding of the influence of ideology on the media discourse and the way it is used for political purposes.
