ALGHAMDI, ABDULLAH A., Ph.D., August 2019 Modern and Classical Language Studies

IDEOLOGICAL SHIFTS IN NEWSPAPER TRANSLATIONS IN THE ARAB GULF REGION (171

PP.)

Dissertation Advisor: Brian James Baer

The role played by news outlets in shaping and influencing public opinion is undeniable. This role is doubly important in any volatile region in the world that is in constant conflict. The political rivals in the Arab Gulf region use news media to serve their own agendas and express their own narratives and ideologies in the region. This research project investigates how ideology is promoted explicitly or implicitly in editorials and commentary articles translated and published in three news outlets in the Arab Gulf region with different affiliations. It attempts to answer three questions: how is translation used by online news outlets to shape public opinion in the Gulf Region? what shifts do the translations investigated undergo to promote or suppress a certain ideological position? and how are paratexts surrounding the translated texts exploited by online news outlets to shape the ideology of the translated text? To answer these questions, twenty translated articles published in 2017 were collected from each of the three news outlets investigated: Saudi based and aligned Al Eqtisadiah, London based and Saudi owned Asharq Al-Awsat, and

London based and Qatari funded Arabi21. The texts were then analyzed in comparison to their source articles. The analysis model used in this research project comprises a textual analysis and a paratextual analysis. The textual analysis involves locating any shifts in the translated texts compared to their source texts based on textual elements drawn from the linguistic toolkit established by Critical Discourse Analysis. These are shifts in lexical choice, deletion of source text content, addition or explicitation of information, and shifts in sentence structure. The paratextual analysis involves investigating elements surrounding the source and target texts in the data set. The paratextual features investigated include selection strategies, headlines, and the use of photographs in the translated texts. The results of these analyses are discussed in light of the Narrative Theory as introduced into

Translation Studies by Mona Baker (2006, 2007, 2010, 2014). The findings of this research project show that news outlets in the Arab Gulf region do indeed use translation to express certain narratives and promote affiliated ideologies.

Keywords: Ideology, Translation Shifts, News Translation, Critical Discourse Analysis,

Narrative Theory

IDEOLOGICAL SHIFTS IN NEWSPAPER TRANSLATIONS IN THE ARAB GULF REGION

A Dissertation Submitted

to Kent State University in Partial

Fulfillment of the Requirements for the

Degree of Doctor of Philosophy

Abdullah A. AlGhamdi

August 2019

Except for previously published materials

Dissertation written by

Abdullah A. AlGhamdi

BA, King Saud University, 2006

MA, University of Manchester, 2008

Ph.D., Kent State University, 2019

Approved by

Brian James Baer______, Chair, Doctoral Dissertation Committee

Judy Wakabayashi______, Members, Doctoral Dissertation Committee

Richard Kelly Washbourne______,

Babacar M'Baye______,

Andrew Barnes______,

Accepted by

Keiran Dunne______, Chair, Department of Modern and Classical Language Studies

James L. Blank______, Dean, College of Arts and Sciences

Table of Contents

TABLE OF CONTENTS ...... V

LIST OF TABLES AND FIGURES ...... IX

DEDICATION ...... X

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ...... XI

CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION ...... 1

OVERVIEW ...... 1

1.1 HISTORY OF THE REGION ...... 2

1.1.1 The Saudi-Iranian relationship ...... 6

1.1.2 The Saudi-Qatari relationship ...... 8

1.2 RESEARCH PROBLEM ...... 9

1.3 RESEARCH QUESTIONS ...... 11

1.4 SIGNIFICANCE OF THE RESEARCH ...... 12

1.5 RESEARCH METHOD ...... 14

1.6 ORGANIZATION OF THE DISSERTATION ...... 15

CHAPTER 2: LITERATURE REVIEW ...... 17

OVERVIEW ...... 17

2.1 HISTORY OF NEWS AND TRANSLATION ...... 18

2.2 NEWS TRANSLATION RESEARCH ...... 22

2.3 NEWS TRANSLATION IN TRANSLATION STUDIES...... 26

2.3.1 The Nature of News Translation ...... 27

2.3.2 News Translation and Traditional Concepts in Translation Studies ...... 28

2.3.3 Transediting ...... 32

2.4 IDEOLOGY AND TRANSLATION ...... 37

2.4.1 Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) ...... 39

2.4.2 Narrative Theory and Framing ...... 43

2.4 CONCLUSION ...... 48

CHAPTER 3: METHODOLOGY ...... 49

OVERVIEW ...... 49

3.1 DATA SOURCES ...... 49

3.2 DATA SETS ...... 54

3.2.1 Al Eqtisadiah’s Data Set ...... 56

3.2.2 Asharq Al-Awsat’s Data Set ...... 57

3.2.3 Arabi21’s Data Set ...... 58

3.3 ANALYSIS MODEL ...... 59

3.3.1 Textual Analysis ...... 59

3.3.2 Paratextual Analysis ...... 64

3.3.3 Discussion...... 68

3.4 CONCLUSION ...... 69

CHAPTER 4: AL EQTISADIAH: DATA ANALYSIS AND DISCUSSION ...... 70

OVERVIEW ...... 70

4.1 TEXTUAL ANALYSIS ...... 70

4.1.1 Lexical choice ...... 71

4.1.2 Deletion ...... 78

4.1.3 Addition ...... 83

4.1.4 Sentence structure ...... 85

4.2 PARATEXTUAL ANALYSIS ...... 86

4.2.1 Selection strategies ...... 86

4.2.2 Headlines ...... 89

4.2.3 Photographs ...... 92

4.3 DISCUSSION ...... 94

CHAPTER 5: ASHARQ AL-AWSAT: DATA ANALYSIS AND DISCUSSION ...... 98

OVERVIEW ...... 98

5.1 TEXTUAL ANALYSIS ...... 98

5.1.1 Lexical choice ...... 99

5.1.2 Deletion ...... 103

5.1.3 Addition ...... 109

5.1.4 Sentence Structure ...... 111

5.2 PARATEXTUAL ANALYSIS ...... 112

5.2.1 Selection strategies ...... 112

5.2.2 Headlines ...... 116

5.2.3 Photographs ...... 118

5.3 DISCUSSION ...... 119

CHAPTER 6: ARABI21: DATA ANALYSIS AND DISCUSSION ...... 122

OVERVIEW ...... 122

6.1 TEXTUAL ANALYSIS ...... 123

6.1.1 Lexical choice ...... 123

6.1.2 Deletion ...... 128

6.1.3 Addition ...... 134

6.1.4 Sentence structure ...... 138

6.2 PARATEXTUAL ANALYSIS ...... 140

6.2.1 Selection strategies ...... 140

6.2.2 Headlines ...... 144

6.2.3 Photographs ...... 147

vii

6.3 DISCUSSION ...... 149

CHAPTER 7: CONCLUSION ...... 152

OVERVIEW ...... 152

7.1 SUMMARY OF FINDINGS ...... 152

7.2 LIMITATIONS AND FUTURE RESEARCH OPPORTUNITIES ...... 156

REFERENCES ...... 158

APPENDICIES ...... 172

APPENDIX 1: AL EQTISADIAH DATA SET ...... 172

APPENDIX 2: ASHARQ AL-AWSAT DATA SET ...... 175

APPENDIX 3: ARABI21 DATA SET ...... 178

viii

List of Tables and Figures

Table 1: Deletion of single lexical items in the translations of Al Eqtisadiah ...... 78 Table 2: Number of articles translated per topic in Al Eqtisadiah ...... 87 Figure 1 Left: Photograph used in XS03. Right: Photograph used in XT03 ...... 93 Figure 2 Left: Photograph used in XS05. Right: Photograph used in XT05...... 94 Figure 3 Opinion pages in the printed version of Asharq Al-Awsat ...... 109 Table 3: Number of translated articles per topic in Asharq Al-Awsat ...... 113 Table 4: Number of translated articles per topic in Arabi21 ...... 143 Figure 4 Left: photograph used in ZS02. Right: photograph used in ZT02 ...... 147 Figure 5 Left: photograph used in ZS05. Right: photograph used in ZT05 ...... 148

Dedication

احلمدهلل أوال وآخرا، ظاهرا وابطنا. احلمدهلل ملء السموات واألرض. احلمدهلل عدد ماكان وعدد ماهو كائن وماسيكون.

لوالديت رمحها هللا ولوالدي أطال هللا بقائه

لزوجيت وأطفايل

Acknowledgements

First, I would like to extend my deepest appreciation to my advisor Dr. Brian Baer for his endless support and guidance that made this journey much more productive and less stressful. I cannot begin to express how his encouragement and inspiration helped me complete this dissertation. I’m also grateful to my committee members Dr. Judy

Wakabayashi, Dr. Richard Kelly Washbourne, Dr. Babacar M'Baye and Dr. Andrew Barnes for their insights and valuable feedback.

I’m also grateful to my wife Reham for her endless support and patience throughout this major project. I’m indebted to her and my two children for making my life much easier and making life in a foreign country more tolerable.

I’m also thankful to my friends and colleagues here for creating a great support community for each other. The support and advice I received from each and every one of them made this long journey go past quickly and easily. I wish them great success in their academic and personal lives.

CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION

Overview

Political conflict is fought both on the ground and in the media. News media, particularly, play a crucial role in the dissemination of narratives from all sides of the conflict.

This role is increasingly important in the age of the internet where news travels from one half of the world to the other in mere seconds. This gives news media outlets such as newspapers and television channels a great influence over shaping local and international opinion around the conflict and its parties. The coverage and analysis of these outlets shape the way readers view and interact with the world.

Political institutions around the world realize this truth and are working constantly to take advantage of it. News outlets are used as a tool to serve the agenda of the political institutions they are affiliated with and to express these institutions’ narratives and ideologies. Therefore, it is important to study this phenomenon in order to understand how ideology is promoted explicitly or implicitly in news articles. This, of course, presents the field of Translation Studies with an opportunity to contribute to studying this phenomenon since news production involves a great deal of translation. It also presents researchers with a wealth of resources for research on ideology in translation, since some of the source articles that are translated might not correspond with the ideological inclination of the translating and publishing outlet.

This research project investigates newspaper translation of opinion and analysis reporting in the Arab Gulf region as related to the conflicts in the region. The project

1 investigates three news outlets that regularly translate opinion pieces from English sources into Arabic. The articles translated discuss various regional issues involving the major political stakeholders in the region. The investigation comprises a textual analysis and a paratextual analysis. The textual analysis will investigate textual shifts in the translated articles while the paratextual analysis will study the elements surrounding those translated articles. This project attempts to find out how textual and paratextual shifts in news translation contribute to the promotion or subversion of narratives about the conflicts in the region.

1.1 History of the Region

The recent history of the Arab Gulf region is characterized by many cataclysmic events. Events like the Iran revolution, the Iraq-Iran war, the invasion of Kuwait by Iraq, the

9/11 terrorist attacks, the invasion of Iraq by the United States, and finally the Arab Spring revolutions have all strained the region’s relations and intensified its divisions, emphasizing the religious, sectarian, and ethnic differences among the peoples of the region. These events were a result of the region’s long history of conflict and power shifts. To better understand the tense political climate in the region, it is essential to review the history of the region from the formation of its modern states to its current conflicts as well as the major players in these current conflicts.

In the relatively recent history of the modern world, the Arabian Gulf region has been of vital importance to many foreign and domestic powers. The British were among those interested in the Gulf during and before the nineteenth century since its shipping lanes connected Britain to India through Aleppo in Syria and Basra in Iraq (Onley, 2009, p. 4). The raiding of the shipping lanes in the Gulf compelled the British Empire to impose an anti-

2 piracy treaty in 1820 after mounting a number of campaigns on the small emirates and states of the region that now comprise the United Arab Emirates (p. 4). This was later followed by other agreements that provided these states with British protection in exchange for maritime peace and exclusive British influence in the Eastern region of the Arabian

Peninsula. Those agreements were also extended to include Bahrain in 1861, Kuwait in 1899, and Qatar in 1916 (pp. 6–9). Oman also enjoyed such protection, although only informally since it was never admitted to the maritime truce of 1835 (p. 9). The British maintained their dominance over the Gulf from the late eighteenth century until the interwar years (Cleveland

& Bunton, 2016, p. 231). 1

A major power shift in the region started in the few years before and after the First

World War. After the decline of the Ottoman Empire, which controlled most of the Arab- speaking region, and the weakening of the Qajar Empire in Iran, many of the region’s peoples rose to reclaim and defend their lands against the ambitions of the European powers and others who tried to seize control in these territories (Anderson, 2016, p. 200). In Iran, Reza

Shah led the rebels to take power and eliminate the Qajar dynasty in 1926, granting himself the title “shah-in-shah” (p. 215). He used authoritarian methods to consolidate his power over the country by the mid-1930s (p. 217) and to weaken the influence of the Shia clerics

(pp. 217-218) while managing to decrease British and Soviet influence in his country (p.

215).

In the Arabian Peninsula, Abdulaziz Ibn Abdulrahman Al Saud, known in the Western world as Ibn Saud, managed to reclaim Riyadh from the Ottoman-backed ruler of Hail known

1 The interwar years refers to the period between the end of the First World War and the beginning of the Second World War. 3 as Ibn Rashid in 1901 (Wynbrandt, 2014, pp. 169–170). He reclaimed the central region of

Najd by 1904 (p. 170) and the Eastern Providence of the Arabian Peninsula, which was controlled by the Ottomans, in 1913 (p. 172). At this point, the Ottoman’s only presence in the region was on the Western shore of the peninsula known as Hijaz where Sharif Husain

Ibn Ali was the Emir of Makkah.2 The region was of vital importance to any Muslim ruler since it contains the two holiest Muslim cities, Makkah and Madinah. When the First World

War started and the Ottoman Empire decided to join the German side, Sharif Husain was convinced by the British high commissioner in Egypt, Sir Henry McMahon, to join the British side and declare a revolt against the Ottoman Empire, now known as the Arab Revolt of 1916

(Cleveland & Bunton, 2016, pp. 158–160). Although Husain was promised an independent

Arab state to rule after the war, Britain ignored its own promises and, together with France, instead carved up the Arab territory in what is known as the Sykes-Picot Agreement of 1916

(Cleveland & Bunton, 2016, p. 163; Wynbrandt, 2014, p. 180). In return, Husain was given a state that lies under British and French control (Cleveland & Bunton, 2016, p. 163) and his sons were installed as monarchs in Iraq and Jordan (p. 232).

Sharif Husain also sought to control Najd by bribing its tribes to join his cause or imposing taxes on other tribes, which ignited a conflict with Abdulaziz in 1919 and 1920 resulting in a number of skirmishes on the borders of each territory (Wynbrandt, 2014, p.

180). These skirmishes, along with Husain’s mismanagement of the two holy cities, led

Abdulaziz to launch a campaign in 1924 that eventually seized Hijaz from the Sharif’s control by the end of 1925 (pp. 182–183). Britain recognized the independence of the territories controlled by Abdulaziz in 1927 by signing the Treaty of Jeddah (p. 186). In 1932, the

2 Sharif is a title given to those who are descendants of the Prophet Mohammed. 4 territories of Najd and Hijaz were merged into the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (p. 187), and

Abdulaziz took the title of the King instead of the previous title of King of Hijaz and Sultan of

Najd (p. 183). Other modern states in the Middle East, such as Iraq, Syria, Egypt, Lebanon, and Jordan, also emerged around this time, between 1918 and the mid-1920s (Anderson,

2016, p. 199).

The region was also embroiled in the conflicts of the Second World War, although less significantly than in the First World War (Anderson, 2016, p. 281). Most of the territories in the region remained far from the actual fighting, except for Egypt and Iraq, in addition to the invasion of Iran (p, 281). After Reza Shah hesitated to join the allies’ side of the war, Iran was invaded in 1941 by British and Soviet forces in order to maintain the oil supply from Iran’s oil wells and to open a channel for the United States’ aid to the Soviets through Iran (p. 281).

Three weeks later, the Shah abdicated and was replaced by his son Mohammad Reza Shah

(p. 281).

Although Saudi Arabia remained neutral in the conflict, only declaring war on

Germany in 1945, King Abdulaziz announced his support for the British as early as 1940

(Cleveland & Bunton, 2016, p. 233). The United States, which was attempting to maintain oil supplies during the war, turned its attention to Saudi Arabia. While President Franklin

Roosevelt saw the kingdom as ‘vital to the defense of the United States,’ King Abdulaziz also saw the United States as a ‘counterbalance to British regional influence’ (Wynbrandt, 2014, p. 196), This relationship was highlighted in 1945 when the two leaders met aboard the USS

Quincy (p. 197). The relationship endured despite multiple setbacks, such as the issue of

Palestine (p. 197), the Baghdad Pact (p. 214), the Soviet-leaning United Arab Republic (p.

218), and the oil embargo following the Arab-Israeli war of 1973 (pp. 231–232).

In order to familiarize the reader with the events discussed in the datasets in this research project, it is essential to review the more recent history of the relationship between the three parties mentioned in the translated texts. The following subsection will introduce the more recent history of the Saudi-Iranian relationship leading up to the current state. The next subsection will introduce the more recent history of the Saudi-Qatari relationship before the current Saudi boycott of Qatar.

1.1.1 The Saudi-Iranian relationship

Up until the Islamic revolution of 1978 in Iran, Saudi Arabia and Iran enjoyed a normal and improving diplomatic relationship (Kamrava, 2011, p. 16). Tension, however, escalated between the two countries, mainly due to Iran's Islamic revolution (p. 16), its expansionist policies and its exporting of "revolutionary religious extremism" (p. 10). The

Shia minorities in some of the Arab Gulf monarchies were inspired to emulate the Iranian revolutionary model, which lead to the eruption of disturbances in these countries in the year following the Islamic revolution (Barnett & Gause, 1998, p. 170). This eventually led to the establishment of the Gulf Cooperation Council in 1981 to protect against Iran’s revolutionary policies (Baabood, 2019, p. 162). This was later exacerbated by Saudi Arabia and other Gulf countries' support for Iraq in the Iraq-Iran (1980-1988) war and by Iran's involvement in multiple attempts to destabilize these countries, such as the riots in Makkah during the holy Hajj pilgrimage in 1981 and 1982, the unsuccessful coup attempt in Bahrain in 1981, and the attempted assassination of the Kuwaiti Emir in 1985 (Kamrava, 2011, p.

10). Iran also targeted Saudi and Kuwaiti oil tankers transporting Iraqi oil in 1987, which led to the United States' military involvement in the region, further escalating the tension (p.

16).

This political climate, however, was reevaluated in 1991 as a result of Iraq's invasion of Kuwait. Saudi Arabia and Iran reinstated their diplomatic missions and the relationship between the two became warmer and less hostile (p. 17). The relationship grew stronger during the presidency of Mohammad Khatami, who was elected in 1997. Crown Prince

Abdullah and President Khatami signed an agreement in 2001 that involved security cooperation between the two countries (p. 17). By that time, the main points of contention in the region were Iran's nuclear ambitions (p. 10) and Saudi Arabia's security policy, which sees the United States' presence in the region as crucial to its stability (p. 19).

Despite these issues, the two countries were still growing closer up until the United

States’ invasion of Iraq, which transformed the relationship to a rivalry over regional power and influence (Soltaninejad, 2019, p. 108). The subsequent Israeli invasions of Lebanon in

2006 and Gaza in 2008, Iran’s sponsorship of the Palestinian Islamic Resistance Movement known as Hamas and the Lebanese Shia militant party known as Hezbollah and the creation of the “Axis of resistance,”3 the Arab revolutions known as the Arab Spring that started in

2011, and the wars in Syria (2011) and Yemen (2015) further complicated this relationship

(p. 108). These developments “securitized politics in the Persian Gulf and placed Iran and

Saudi Arabia in completely adversarial positions in Syria, Bahrain, and Yemen” (p. 108). It is this persistent rivalry that might provide readers of this research project with sufficient data to understand the role of news translation in the expression or suppression of ideological narratives.

3 This is a political designation used by Iran and its militias and allies in Lebanon and Syria in reference to their own perceived role as “the resistance front” against Israel and the United States. 7

1.1.2 The Saudi-Qatari relationship

The Gulf Cooperation Council was established to address threats facing the six member countries from various parties such as the Soviet Union and Israel (Ramazani, 1988, p. 1) but more specifically to counter the spread of the Iranian revolution (p. 60). In its early years, however, the council was not free of disputes among the six countries, mostly regarding borderlines, with the tensest dispute taking place in 1995 between Bahrain and

Qatar regarding sovereignty over a number of islands (Çetinoğlu, 2010, p. 93). Despite these minor disputes, the council members successfully worked together with remarkable “speed and unanimity” during their first test when Iraqi forces invaded Kuwait in 1990 (Barnett &

Gause, 1998, p. 180).

Yet the most volatile dispute facing the GCC countries came in 2017 with three members, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, and the United Arab Emirates, cutting off all ties to Qatar after the Emir of Qatar praised the role of Iran in the region, which goes against the GCC’s public policy. This incident, however, was not the first time these three countries cut diplomatic ties with Qatar. The first incident started in 2014 when these three countries withdrew their ambassadors from Qatar (Hassan, 2014, p. 80). This was the first incident of its kind in the region and came as a result of Qatar’s non-compliance with an agreement signed in 2014 (p. 80). The agreement called for a “policy of non-interference in the internal affairs of any other member state, either directly or indirectly, as well as a policy of non- support for any party, organisation or individual seeking to threaten the security and stability of any of the GCC states, whether through direct action, political influence, or by supporting hostile media” (p. 80). This was mainly an attempt by the GCC countries to unite against the Arab Spring’s wave of revolutions that swept across the Arab world, which was

8 supported by Qatar and its media arm Al Jazeera (pp. 80–81). Despite the situation being resolved eight months later with the signing of a supplementary agreement (p. 81), the incident probably still contributed to the current more aggressive boycott of Qatar (Bianco

& Stansfield, 2018, p. 613).

The recent events, however, were sparked by a statement published on Qatar’s national news agency’s (QNA) twitter account and attributed to the Qatari Emir in which he expressed support for Hamas, Hezbollah, and Iran against the public policy of the GCC (p.

614). Even though Qatar claimed those statements were fake and that QNA was hacked (p.

614), the damage had already been done. Three GCC member states, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates, in addition to Egypt, decided to cut all diplomatic and economic ties with Qatar and closed their land borders and airspace for Qatari traffic (p.

615).

The public reason cited for this boycott was Qatar’s support for organizations that have been labeled as terrorist groups by the four countries (p. 614) and its colluding with

Iranian militias in Iraq by paying US$700 million to these groups under the pretense of paying a ransom for the release of kidnapped Qatari citizens (pp. 614–615). The boycott was also accompanied by a media offensive (pp. 614–615) from both sides. This particularly extensive media coverage of the events from both parties is a great opportunity for this research project. It provides the project with a great volume of data for analysis.

1.2 Research Problem

The conflict among these various groups in the Arab Gulf region and their attempts to gain local support or international recognition have intensified the role played by the media. Governments, opposition movements, and even militias in the region use media

9 outlets that they owned or that were allied with their cause in order to export their own rhetoric and ideology and circulate their own narrative of the events. These outlets were used to shape public opinion regarding the conflict in order to portray certain events and agents of the narratives in a positive or negative light.

Some of the media outlets in the region blatantly favor one side of the conflict and express that in their published materials. Others, however, claim independence and impartiality but use language that indicates otherwise. In both cases, many articles published in these outlets are translations from international news agencies and newspapers, or sometimes translations of articles from the same outlet. For example, the Arabic CNN websites and the Arabic BBC both translate from their English-language websites. In addition to news articles, some newspapers in the region also translate opinion pieces and editorials from renowned sources. This presents researchers with a wealth of resources for research on ideology in translation, since some of the source articles that are translated might not correspond with the ideological positioning of the translating and publishing outlet.

In the case of news outlets that explicitly favor one ideology, translating foreign opinion pieces and editorials that agree with this ideology might be beneficial by showing the outlet’s readership that the ideology adopted by the outlet is supported by others around the world. This, in turn, lends this ideology some degree of authentication and credibility.

For example, Egyptian news outlets in favor of the military rule that ousted the previous ruling Muslim Brotherhood party might translate articles that are critical of the Muslim

Brotherhood party in order to bolster support for the new ruler. In some cases, however, the translated news articles or editorials might diverge in some aspects from the ideological

10 inclination of the publishing outlet. In such cases, the piece might undergo some form of editing during or after translation to remove or add ideological elements. These elements can be exposed easily through a simple comparative analysis of the source text and the translation.

In other cases where the publishing outlet might claim to align itself with an impartial publishing policy, other translating and editing techniques might be used to promote a certain ideology or viewpoint. Grammatical and lexical shifts might be present in such texts and can be investigated using various discourse analysis models. In both cases, paratextual elements might also be used during or after the translation process to provide a different ideological frame for the text. These processes are exactly what interest us in this particular research, as will be discussed next.

1.3 Research Questions

This research project aims at answering three main questions. First, how is translation used by online newspapers and news outlets to shape public opinion in the Gulf

Region?4 Second, what shifts do the translations investigated undergo to promote or suppress a certain ideological position? Third, how are paratexts surrounding the translated texts exploited by online newspapers and news outlets to shape the ideology of the translated text?

To answer these questions, a textual analysis will be conducted based on the linguistic toolkit of Critical Discourse Analysis. This analysis will help uncover the lexical and grammatical shifts that these translated texts went through in order to express or suppress

4 Accessibility issues necessitates limiting the scope of data sources to only use online news outlets as will be discussed in Chapter 3. 11 certain ideological narratives and viewpoints. In addition, a paratextual analysis will also be conducted to investigate the use of the paratextual elements surrounding the translations in reframing the narratives of the translated texts. This will also include the selections of the source texts for translation and how this selection strategy serves to align the news outlet with certain ideological narratives.

This research hypothesizes that online newspapers in the Gulf region do use translation from Western news outlets into the Arabic language to promote certain ideological viewpoints that are aligned with their own or that are critical of their ideological opponents. Translating known or credible authors or newspapers in the Western world is a strategy that usually lends credibility to the expressed ideology and, thus, to the publisher of the translation. Moreover, this study hypothesizes that news translations in the Gulf region display multiple grammatical and lexical shifts in order to promote or suppress a certain ideological position in the translated text. Finally, this research hypothesizes that paratextual elements are also used to frame the translated text in a way that favors the ideological dispositions of the newspaper where the translation is published.

1.4 Significance of the Research

The major significance of this research is its possible contributions to the field of

Translation Studies and to other fields. First, the study of political ideology in discourse enables us to better understand ideology in discourse in general. This contributes to our ability to analyze political discourse, which is of great importance to activist groups and individuals alike. It enables us to analyze and detect ideology in discourse, which in turn enables us to oppose, criticize, and expose misleading and deceitful narratives in this volatile region of the world.

Second, studying ideology in news translation benefits the field of Translation Studies in various ways. Although the people of the Arab Gulf region share a language, differences among them provide a large and diverse pool of data for the study of ideology in translation.

In addition, the field of Translation Studies may benefit from the study of Arabic news, which is under-studied and limited to a small number of works, such as those by Samia Bazzi (2009,

2015) and Ali Darwish (2009). The linguistic and cultural differences between Arabic and the languages of the Western world are significant, which may help put Western-centered theories of translation to the test. It allows us to test these theories using under-studied language pairs, which in turn will increase our understanding of these theories and language pairs alike. Traditional notions in Translation Studies, such as equivalence, domestication and foreignization, will benefit from the increased study of translation between Arabic and

European languages. Theories and models in Translation Studies, such as functionalist approaches or Critical Discourse Analysis, for example, may benefit from the culturally and linguistically challenging study of Arabic discourse.

In addition, the field of Translation Studies may benefit from further study of news translation. Interest in this phenomenon is relatively new, and most of the research published is limited to using Critical Discourse Analysis to look at translations of mostly

European language pairs in western-based agencies. There are many opportunities still to study ideology in news production from various perspectives and language pairs. This research project will help fill a gap in the field by examining under-studied translated Arabic discourse. It also aims at using the relatively new and underdeveloped Narrative Theory

(Baker, 2014, p. 174) as a means of analyzing ideology in combination with Critical Discourse

Analysis. Using Narrative Theory to study web-based newspapers may also broaden our

13 understanding of paratexts and paratextual elements, which may benefit the field of

Translation Studies in general. The robust digital environment of online newspapers may benefit from such studies as well.

Finally, studying news translation will also benefit other disciplines. The field of media studies and communication studies will benefit from studying the often covert role of translation and translators in shaping ideology in news production. It will also help shed light on the changes that news items go through from one news outlet to the other. Moreover, it will provide a new perspective on Arab media, which certainly does not fit into the

Western-centered theories of the press (Kraidy, 2011; Rugh, 1979).

1.5 Research Method

To build a rich and sufficient data sample, this research will investigate English language Western-authored editorials, opinion pieces, and analysis reporting that have been translated into Arabic. These types of texts are chosen for this research because argumentative texts are usually more ideologically charged than expository news reports.

They are also considered more stable in the translation where they are less likely to go through extreme editing (Hernández Guerrero, 2009, pp. 43–46; Valdeón, 2015a, p. 442), as will be discussed in the upcoming chapters. The research project looks at the translations of these texts that have been published in three Arab online news outlets with different ideological viewpoints and different restrictions based on the news outlets’ physical location.

The first newspaper selected is Al Eqtisadiah [The Economy Newspaper], a Saudi-owned and

Saudi-based newspaper that is subject to Saudi publishing laws and restrictions and that supports the Saudi ideological viewpoint. The second is Asharq Al-Awsat [The Middle East], a more liberal Saudi newspaper that supports the Saudi ideological viewpoint but is based

14 outside Saudi Arabia and is not subject to Saudi publishing laws. The third is Arabi21, which is a Qatari funded online news outlet that is aligned with the Qatari ideological viewpoint. All three newspapers translate, on a regular basis, editorials and opinion pieces from western newspapers. In addition, all three newspapers have an online edition, which is important since web-based paratextual elements are investigated and since this provides the research with timely accessibility to the data.

Twenty texts have been chosen from each of the three newspapers. Each text is a translation from English that has been published on the news outlet’s website in 2017. We have chosen texts related to major conflict issues in the region: the war in Yemen, the Arab spring, the Iranian nuclear agreement, and the boycott of Qatar. These hot-button issues are expected to be ideologically charged and thus constitute a good research sample.

The translated texts have been studied and compared with their sources. They have been investigated for patterns of ideological shifts such as addition, omission, lexical shifts, grammatical reorganization and other markers of ideological shifts. The paratexts have also been investigated in the headlines, images, and the selections of what to translate and from which source. The results are presented and discussed for their ideological effect in chapters

4, 5 and 6.

1.6 Organization of the Dissertation

This research project comprises seven chapters. Chapter 1 introduces the dissertation and explains the research problem and its historical context. It also discusses the research hypothesis and its significance to the field of Translation Studies and briefly introduces the methodology adopted for this research project. Chapter 2 reviews the literature on news translation and on ideology in Translation Studies. It also introduces two

15 of the methodologies used to investigate ideology in discourse: Critical Discourse Analysis and Narrative Theory. Chapter 3 discusses the methodology used to conduct the research in this dissertation. It introduces the data sources that will be investigated, the three data sets and how they were compiled. It also introduces the analysis model and procedure used for this research. Chapters 4, 5 and 6 introduce the results of the analyses conducted on the translations of the three news outlets: Al Eqtisadiah, Asharq Al-Awsat, and Arabi21 respectively. Each chapter reviews the results of the textual and paratextual analyses conducted on the corresponding data set and discusses those results in the light of Narrative

Theory as introduced by Mona Baker (2006b, 2007, 2010, 2014). Chapter 7 summarizes the findings of the research, discusses its limitations and future research opportunities.

CHAPTER 2: LITERATURE REVIEW

Overview

This chapter reviews the literature on news translation and on ideology in

Translation Studies. To understand how translation has been and is still playing a major role in news production, it is essential to look at the history of translation in the profession of journalism. Therefore, the first section of this chapter begins by looking at the role played by translation in journalism and news production in Europe and in the Arab world since the inception of the print news industry. It also discusses research on the integration of translation in news production in modern-day news agencies. The second section of this chapter discusses the research, or relative lack thereof, on news translation in the fields of

Journalism Studies and Translation Studies. It documents the interest in news translation in the field of Translation Studies and briefly discusses examples of news translation research.

This leads to the third section of the chapter, which discusses the unique nature of translation in the context of news production and how this unique nature challenges traditional models of translation in the field of Translation Studies. This section concludes with a discussion of some terms, such as ‘transediting,’ which have been used by some scholars to refer to this unique process of translation in news production. The next section of this chapter presents an introduction to ideology and how it became an important topic of research in Translation Studies. This is introduced by defining what ideology is and how it was introduced in the field through what is known as the cultural turn in Translation Studies.

The section ends by discussing some of the methodologies used to investigate ideology in translation. It highlights two major ‘lenses’ used to investigate ideology in Translation

Studies and other disciplines: Critical Discourse Analysis and Narrative Theory. Each is introduced and discussed briefly along with examples of research in Translation Studies that were conducted using these investigational lenses.

2.1 History of News and Translation

Translation has been playing a major role in journalism since its inception, when knowledge of other languages and cultures was essential for the profession (Valdeón, 2012a, p. 851). Roberto Valdeón thoroughly documents this long-established relationship in Europe for the field of Translation Studies (2012a, 2015b). In England, Brendan Dooley and Sabrina

Baron (2005) argue that news of war was the main catalyst behind the creation of the printed news publication industry in the country in the seventeenth century (p. 17). During that time and as the Thirty Years’ War was being fought in Central Europe, Dutch-language news reports of the events of the war were brought from the Low Countries to England in the form of single-sheet gazettes or corantos,5 the contents of which were translated and reported in manuscript newsletters (p. 17). As the demand for these news reports increased among

English readers, these gazettes started to be translated regularly in 1620-21 (p. 18). Elmer

Beller (1927) believes that these gazettes were the inspiration behind the first weekly gazette printed and published in London by a well-known London stationer in 1621 (p. 276).

This weekly gazette was made up of translations of Dutch and German news-sheets (p. 276).

The translation of news remained an integral part of the printed press industry in England

5 Also referred to as ‘currents’ by some scholars (Baron & Dooley, 2005, p. 17). 18 for many years. Bob Clarke (2004) mentions The Daily Courant, which was published in 1702 and whose content was made up exclusively of translations from French and Dutch news reports, ‘as if nothing had changed since’ 1621 (p. 42).

Importing and translating foreign news for local readers in England remained a common practice until the early nineteenth century (Valdeón, 2015b, p. 638). It was also a practice in other European countries at that time. In Spain, news reports were provided to readers through the postal service and further reprinted and translated by publishers as needed (Ettinghausen, 2005, p. 199). In 1641 and 1642, printers in Barcelona published multiple gazettes that were translations of French news reports into Catalan as a result of the revolts of the Catalans and the Portuguese against King Philip IV (p. 202). Two Dutch- language gazettes that inaugurated the print news industry in Amsterdam were also translated and issued in a French edition; other gazettes in Amsterdam followed that model

(Lankhorst, 2005, p. 152). In Sweden, due to strict censorship practices, the country’s first newspaper was printed and published through the Stockholm postmaster, who was tasked with selecting appropriate news articles from foreign gazettes, removing any objectionable passages, and then translating them into Swedish to be published (Ries, 2005, pp. 240–241).

The relationship between translation and journalism has been observed in the first newspapers and gazettes of the Arab World as well. Abd Al-Rahman Al-Jabarti, who documented the French colonization of Egypt, mentioned a daily bulletin printed in Arabic by order of the French ‘to record daily developments in their various departments and courts.’ This bulletin, called Al-Ahdath Al-Yawmiah (Daily events), was written first in Arabic by Ismail Al-Khashab, secretary of the diwan (council), and then translated into French to be circulated among the French troops in Egypt (as cited in Ayalon, 1995, p. 12). Philippe de

Tarrazi (1913), who documented the Arab press, calls it ‘the mother of Arab newspapers and its start,’6 but he claims it ceased publication in 1801 after the French left Egypt (pp. 48–49).

In 1828, a newspaper called Al-Waqaee Al-Masriah (Egyptian affairs) was published in two editions, an original Turkish edition and an Arabic translation of the Turkish original

(Ayalon, 1995, p. 184).

In Lebanon, newspapers also printed translations from the European press along with summaries of current events and literary articles (Ayalon, 1995, p. 35). Hadiqat Al-

Akhbar (The Garden of News)7 was the first private newspaper to be published in Lebanon in 1858; it was published during the rule of the Ottomans but was the first to be published from outside the Ottoman capital. Its founder, Khalil Al-Khuri, published news reports from the international press along with translated foreign literature (Tarrazi, 1913, pp. 55–56).

Outside of Lebanon, newspapers were for the most part state-run and contained mostly

Ottoman decrees and official news, with foreign news articles appearing less frequently

(Ayalon, 1995, pp. 25–26). These newspapers, such as Baghdad’s al-Zawra, Tripoli’s Tarablus al-Gharb, Sana'a’s al-San'a’, and Makkah’s al-Hijaz, were produced in two versions: Turkish and Arabic; the officials producing both versions had a limited command of Arabic, which led to some texts being unintelligible (pp. 25–26).

This enduring relationship between translation and journalism has only grown stronger and more complex. Luc van Doorslaer (2010a) discusses this complex integration in modern-day news production and argues that ‘various aspects of translation’ are integrated into various levels of the modern-day news production process: during news-

6 My translation. 7 My translation. 20 gathering by correspondents or news agencies, and during news processing by editors, translators or journalists (p. 181). Esperança Bielsa and Susan Bassnett (2009) also explore the role of translation in modern-day news agencies such as Reuters and Agence France-

Presse (AFP) in their book titled Translation in Global News (Bielsa & Bassnett, 2009). They describe these news agencies as ‘vast translating organizations with the technology and skills required for the production of fast and accurate translations’ (p. 34). They also argue that ‘translation is one element in a complex set of processes whereby information is transposed from one language into another and then edited, rewritten, shaped and repackaged in a new context’ (p. 11).

To highlight how translation is integrated into news production, Bielsa and Bassnett cite an unpublished talk by Eric Wishart at a seminar organized at the University of Warwick in April 2004. Wishart, who was at the time the editor-in-chief of AFP, gave as an example the story of a train explosion that had happened in North Korea at the time and described the process of how the news was transferred from North Korea to the world. At first, the news came to AFP from the Chinese News Agency both in Chinese and in English. Then more news about the incident came from South Korean news agencies in Korean and in English.

The local translators working for AFP translated the Chinese and Korean texts into English and a French writer at the central editing desk in Hong Kong translated the English texts into

French. These, in turn, were translated into other languages once they were circulated around the world (as cited in Bielsa & Bassnett, 2009, p. 14). This example shows how translation plays a major role in the circulation of news around the world from the news source, through the major news agencies, and in the final news outlet.

Bielsa and Bassnett (2009) also investigate translation in news production in three major news agencies: AFP, Reuters, and Inter Press Service (IPS). They sent out questionnaires and conducted interviews with translators and editors in the three news agencies to understand how translation fits into the news production process in those agencies. They present two models of translation in news production and describe the actual practices involved in each model. These are the dominant models, one in which translation is done by journalists with no translation training (p. 81), and the other model in which news items are produced by both journalists and professional translators working side by side (p.

82). They find that despite the significant differences between the two models as adapted by

AFP and IPS, translation still plays a major role in the news production process in both agencies (p. 80). Aneta Podkalicka (2011) mentions the BBC’s global newsroom, which

‘produced, reproduced, and trans-edited news bulletins’ (p. 144), in her discussion of the

‘translation factories’ created by BBC World Service (Podkalicka, 2011). These examples suggest the enormous role translation plays in modern-day news production.

2.2 News Translation Research

News is a rich site of political and social commentary, which makes it a great resource for conducting research on ideology. News language has been studied at least in Britain since the 1970s, with an increasing interest in news as discourse (Holland, 2013, p. 333). Teun van

Dijk (1988b) describes the early studies of news as anecdotal research that was followed later by content analysis studies mainly in America, which in turn was later followed by a growing interest in ‘ideological, microsociological, linguistic, and discourse analytical study of news’ (pp. 15–16). Translation, however, has been mostly ignored in these studies across various disciplines, including Journalism Studies (Holland, 2006, p. 334; Palmer, 2009, p.

186; Valdeón, 2012a, p. 851). The interest in translation in Journalism Studies is mostly limited to a 2011 special issue of Journalism that was dedicated to ‘the politics of translation in the BBC World Service’ (Valdeón, 2012a, pp. 851–852).

It is believed that interest in news translation in the field of Translation Studies started to gain popularity in the first decade of the twenty-first century, after the Warwick project ‘Translation in Global News’ (Valdeón, 2015b, p. 641; van Doorslaer, 2010b, p. 175).

The project and its conference are credited with introducing ‘innovative research paradigms’ in news translation (van Doorslaer, 2009, p. 83). The three-year project funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council in Britain organized a number of conferences dedicated to

‘investigating the politics and economics of translation in global media’ (Bassnett, 2006, p.

5).

Before the Warwick project, research into news translation in the field of Translation

Studies was mostly limited to aspects of audiovisual translation in the media (van Doorslaer,

2009, p. 84) and was mainly concerned with linguistic analysis or the role of the journalist/translator as gatekeeper (Valdeón, 2015b, p. 640). Moreover, it mostly consisted of descriptive accounts by news translation practitioners (Bielsa & Bassnett, 2009, p. 62).

For example, Valdeón (2015b) cites a study by Akio Fujii in 1988 as one of the early works on news translation (p. 640), in which Fujii suggests that the role of the journalist/translator in Japanese news has gone beyond that of ‘message controlling’ to gatekeeping (Fujii, 1988, p. 32). Another example of early news translation research is the work of Kristian Hursti

(2001), who looks at the influence of English on Finnish through the ‘news communication’ between Reuters and the Finnish News Agency. Using textual analysis, he lists reorganization, deletion, addition, and substitution as major linguistic gatekeeping

23 operations used by Finnish journalists to transform stories translated from Reuters (Hursti,

2001). Valdeón also mentions María-José Hernández Guerrero as one of the first and most prolific scholars in Spain to discuss news translation, starting in 1997 with a paper titled ‘La traducción en la prensa: los artículos de opinión’ [Translation in the press: opinion columns]

(1997). Her work is in Spanish, which, according to Valdeón, has limited its impact on the field of Translation Studies (Valdeón, 2015b, p. 640).

The seminars on news translation held at the University of Warwick helped increase interest in news translation in the field and resulted in increased publications on this issue.

One example to illustrate this increased interest is the number of reference works on

Translation Studies that have since introduced entries about news translation. For example, the Routledge Encyclopedia of Translation Studies (2009) only added an entry titled ‘News gathering and dissemination,’ authored by Jerry Palmer, in its second edition, eleven years after the encyclopedia was first published in 1998. The first volume of the Handbook of

Translation Studies (2010) also includes an entry titled ‘Journalism and translation,’ authored by Luc van Doorslaer, who is a translation scholar and a journalist (Valdeón, 2015b, p. 635). In this entry, van Doorslaer writes briefly about the history of news translation, the concept of transediting, and some of the challenges facing news translation research (van

Doorslaer, 2010a). The third volume of the Handbook of Translation Studies (2012) also includes an entry titled ‘Information, communication, translation,’ authored by Roberto A.

Valdeón, who discusses how these three have ‘much to say to each other’ (Valdeón, 2012b, p. 71). The Routledge Handbook of Translation Studies (2013) includes a chapter titled ‘News translation’ authored by Robert Holland, who discusses news translation research and challenges facing news translation (Holland, 2013). Finally, the Routledge Handbook of

Interpreting (2015) and Routledge Encyclopedia of Interpreting Studies (2015) both include entries titled ‘Interpreting for the mass media’ and ‘News interpreting,’ respectively.

In addition to these entries in reference works, there is other evidence of the increasing interest in news translation research (Valdeón, 2015b, p. 636), such as the two major publications that were a direct result of the Warwick project. The first of these is titled

Translation in Global News: Proceedings of the Conference held at the University of Warwick,

23 June 2006, edited by Kyle Conway and Susan Bassnett (2006). This publication, which consists mainly of transcribed lectures and presentations from the conference that are mainly ‘preliminary reflections on the topic’, includes contributions by translation scholars and practitioners in the field of journalism (Valdeón, 2015b, p. 636). However, the most notable contribution that came as a direct result of the Warwick project is ‘Translation in

Global News’ authored by Esperança Bielsa and Susan Bassnett (2009). Their work, discussed in the earlier section of this chapter, looks at the process of translation in news production in three major news agencies. Most importantly, they also look at the attitudes of journalists and translators toward translation, the invisibility of translators in news agencies, the complex process of translation and editing in this setting, and other aspects that have since been explored by news translation researchers (Bielsa & Bassnett, 2009).

In addition, a special issue of Language and Intercultural Communication dedicated to news translation was issued in 2005. Some of the interesting contributions in this issue include an article by Susan Bassnett (2005), who discusses the duality of acculturation and foreignization and how this is a redundant debate in news translation, which ‘appears to sit somewhere between translation as we have understood the term and interpreting’ (p. 125).

Claire Tsai (2005) looks at the process of newsroom translation in Taiwanese TV and

25 questions whether translation in a newsroom setting is actually translation or rewriting

(Tsai, 2005). Finally, Alberto Orengo (2005) suggests using a theory of localization to study news translation in order to account for its complexity and lack of a suitable definition (p.

185).

Recently, a special issue of Perspectives: Studies in Translation Theory and Practice dedicated to news translation research was issued in 2015. One of the articles in this issue is by Lucile Davier (2015), who argues that the concept of acculturation as introduced by Susan

Bassnett (Bassnett, 2005) is ‘not discriminating enough to look at the production of news flows in contexts where time, space, economic constraints and, hence, high readability […] have to be taken into account’ (p. 547). She also argues for the definition of translation to be extended beyond that of mere lingual transfer, since translation is already ‘interlingual and intercultural per se and does not need to be accompanied by a supplementary adjective’ (p.

548). Another contribution in this issue is the work of Roberto A. Valdeón (2015b), who documents a huge segment of the research conducted on news translation in his paper titled

‘Fifteen years of journalistic translation research and more.’ He looks at the research on journalistic translation from a historical point of view and from a research point of view

(Valdeón, 2015b). His contribution provides comprehensive documentation of the research on news translation in the field of Translation Studies and other disciplines.

2.3 News Translation in Translation Studies

This section discusses some of the challenges facing news translation research in the field of Translation Studies. It first looks at some of the unique aspects of news translation and how these aspects clash with the traditional knowledge in Translation Studies or even clash with the definition of translation itself. Next, it looks at some of the ways translation

26 scholars have tried to address this unique situation by using concepts such as transediting to describe the process of news translation.

2.3.1 The Nature of News Translation

Scholars of Translation Studies have paid little attention to the process of news translation (Valdeón, 2015b, p. 648). As mentioned earlier, one of the major contributions that investigated the process of news translation is the book by Esperança Bielsa and Susan

Bassnett (2009). In it, they discuss the nature of news translation and argue that the main objective of news translation is to communicate information quickly, clearly, and effectively.

They suggest that this increases the importance of journalistic factors related to time, space, and genre in the process of news translation in addition to the traditional linguistic and cultural aspects (p. 63). They point out five features that distinguish news translation from other forms of translation (p. 63), based on the work of Maria Josefina Tapia (as quoted in

Guerrero, 2005, pp. 157–158):

1. News translation’s objective is to relay information.

2. It has a mass audience, which dictates the use of a clear and direct language.

3. It is produced for a specific geographical, temporal and cultural context. It is

conditioned by the medium in which it is published.

4. It is subject to limitations of time and space.

5. News translators are proofreaders and back-translators.

Bielsa and Bassnett (2009) also suggest adding a feature of ‘versatility’ that distinguishes the news translator, since he/she needs to work on a variety of subjects such as politics, sports, or financial news (p. 63). They also list a number of changes that a source text in news translation goes through, including change of headline or lead, eliminating

27 unnecessary information, adding background information, changing the order of paragraphs, and summarizing of information (p. 64).

In news translation, however, translation proper is merely one aspect in a ‘complex set of processes whereby information is transposed from one language into another and then edited, rewritten, shaped and repackaged in a new context, to such a degree that any clear distinction between source and target ceases to be meaningful’ (Bielsa & Bassnett, 2009, p.

11). This complex process produces unique aspects that challenge a number of traditional concepts in Translation Studies and even the definition of translation itself (p. 11). This is mainly because research in Translation Studies regarding language and power has mostly focused on the analysis of literary texts, where the binary distinction between source and target is traditionally of great importance (p. 11), in addition to concepts of authorship and equivalence (p. 63). What follows is a brief look at some of these aspects as discussed by news translation scholars.

2.3.2 News Translation and Traditional Concepts in Translation Studies

One feature of translation in the process of news production is the fact that translation has been integrated into news production to the point where it is impossible to separate the two. The nature of news production involves a two-fold process of translation and editing where texts are checked, corrected, synthesized, and rewritten for a new audience in a brief, accurate and fluent manner (Bielsa & Bassnett, 2009, p. 88). Luc van

Doorslaer (2010a) goes further and describes news production as a ‘complex, integrated combination of information gathering, translating, selecting, reinterpreting, contextualizing and editing,’ with aspects of translation found at various levels of news production (p. 181).

He adds that translating and writing the news are ‘brought together in one process that is

28 both creative and re-creative at the same time,’ and it is almost impossible to distinguish the two activities (p. 183). Scholars have used the term ‘transediting’ to describe this phenomenon, which is discussed later in this section. This integration of translation and editing complicates and makes fruitless any attempt to study the position and role of

‘translation proper’ in the process of news production, since it is virtually impossible to deconstruct a news article to determine which parts are translated and which parts are edited (van Doorslaer, 2010b, p. 181).

One problem that arises from this integration of translation into the process of news production is that most news agencies do not hire translators as such (Bielsa & Bassnett,

2009, p. 57). In fact, translators are rarely acknowledged in news agencies except perhaps when mentioning a local journalist who provides language assistance to an international journalist reporting from that location (p. 60). It is a paradoxical situation whereby the integration of translation into the news production process is overwhelming to the point that there are no formal translation positions in these newsrooms (van Doorslaer, 2010a, p. 183).

Translation, in these agencies, is seen as part of the process of journalistic writing and editing and is mostly performed by a news editor with knowledge of more than one language (Bielsa

& Bassnett, 2009, p. 57). This is mainly because those multilingual news editors have experience in journalistic work and knowledge of the conventions of journalistic work, such as genre and style (Bielsa & Bassnett, 2009, p. 57; Schäffner, 2012, p. 874).

Translators can still work in these agencies producing news, but only if they are first trained as journalists (Bielsa & Bassnett, 2009, p. 83). This is also true for some foreign correspondents who, according to Stephen Hess, have worked as translators first (Hess,

1996, pp. 15, 69). In fact, journalists who are interested in working for these major agencies

29 must know at least one foreign language; this is true in the case of Reuters and AFP where entrance requirements include a translation test of a news article (Bielsa & Bassnett, 2009, p. 58).

Moreover, these journalists do not even conceive of themselves as translators and prefer other terms such as international journalists or editors, journalist-translators, or, basically, journalists who are proficient in another language (Bielsa & Bassnett, 2009, p. 15;

Schäffner, 2012, p. 874). Their view of translation is mainly limited to that of literal transfer, which in itself, as they view it, is not enough to produce publishable news texts; the journalist would use his/her knowledge and understanding of the target culture’s norms to produce a more suitable text (Bielsa & Bassnett, 2009, p. 15). This aspect of news translation, which applies to news translation in the press as well as news agencies, increases the invisibility of translation, since the word translation is itself avoided (Schäffner, 2012, p. 874).

Another issue that distinguishes news translation is that it has to adhere to the norms of journalism, which include domestication. Bielsa and Bassnett (2009) point out that in news translation ‘the dominant strategy is absolute domestication,’ where texts must be adapted to the needs and expectations of the target readers (p. 10). Since news translation is subject to the same conventions of genre and style that control journalistic production (p.

57), translated news texts have to be edited and changed to ‘suit the target audience, the in- house style, and/or ideological positions of the newspaper’ (Schäffner, 2012, p. 874).

Georgios Floros (2012) notes that translation is integrated into many professions, such as legal translation or localization, that impose their own conventions on translation but leave some room for ‘translational norms to operate’ (p. 929). This, he adds, is not the case in news

30 translation, where the norms are ‘fully dictated by journalists and the news industry’ (p.

929). This also aggravates the invisibility of translation and of the translator as well.

This integration also gives rise to other problems in news translation. The task of news production, which includes aspects of translation, writing, and editing, is mostly assumed by an editor or journalist working as part of a desk, where the process of news production is done by multiple people (Bielsa & Bassnett, 2009, p. 57). In fact, it is the norm in many news outlets for several multilingual journalists to work on producing a single text that is reviewed by an editor before publication (p. 69). This complicates the concept of authorship in Translation Studies, since authorship of the target text here is not an individual criterion but a collective one (p. 69).

Another feature that distinguishes news translation from other forms of translation is the disassociation of the source text and its authorship. In news translation, the use of multiple sources to produce a news article is a widespread practice (van Doorslaer, 2010b, p. 181). One reason for the use of multiple source texts, for example, is that smaller news outlets rely in their international news coverage on texts coming from international news agencies and news outlets, since these smaller outlets do not have the means to hire international correspondents (Tsai, 2010, pp. 178–179). In news translation, the source text does not have an ‘essence that must be respected in the target text’ (Bielsa & Bassnett, 2009, p. 56). The translator or journalist is not obliged to keep the content of the source or its form; unlike in literary translation, the news translator ‘does not owe respect and faithfulness to the source text’ (p. 56). One fact that enforces the view of a source text as ‘raw material’ instead of a finished original text is how news agencies themselves do not sign the texts they distribute to news outlets around the world (p. 85). The problematization of the source text

31 in news translation leads also to the problematization of the concept of authorship. When the source text consists of thousands of words that are synthesized to a few lines, or when it consists of numerous loosely connected interviews that are used to compose a single target text (Bielsa & Bassnett, 2009, p. 16), the concepts of original text and original author lose in news translation the status they hold in literary translation.

2.3.3 Transediting

As discussed earlier, the process of news translation involves significant alterations to the news material that result in a target text different in content from its supposed source text (Bielsa & Bassnett, 2009, p. 63). Bielsa and Bassnett (2009) argue that the process of editing, where the news items 'are checked, corrected, modified, polished up and prepared for publication,' is no different from translation (p. 63). This context, they add, led to the adoption of a term coined by Karen Stetting (1989) to deal with the ‘grey area’ between translation and editing (Stetting, 1989, p. 371; as cited in Bielsa & Bassnett, 2009, p. 63). The term 'transediting' was first introduced by Stetting as an alternative approach to investigating certain forms of translation where editing is necessary (Stetting, 1989, pp.

371–372; as cited in Schäffner, 2012, pp. 867). This includes 'cultural and situational adaptations,' in addition to other textual actions by the editor and translator to correct mistakes and improve the style, grammar and cohesion of the target text (Stetting, 1989, p.

372; as cited in Schäffner, 2012, pp. 867). These changes, Stetting suggests, are made to improve 'clarity, relevance, and adherence to the conventions of the textual type in question'

(Stetting, 1989, p. 372; as cited in Schäffner, 2012, pp. 867). Stetting lists five cases for that type of 'transediting,' which include the case of news translation where a journalist would

32 use multiple source texts and background information to produce a single target text

(Stetting, 1989, pp. 373–374; as cited in Schäffner, 2012, pp. 868).

Many scholars have used the term 'transediting' to refer to the process of translation and editing in the newsroom or the term 'transeditor' to refer to the journalist-translator performing this process. Kristian Hursti (2001), for example, defines the process of transediting as involving translation and editing and argues that it is an important part of the gatekeeping process that journalists use to control the flow of information from gate to gate (Hursti, 2001). On the other hand, Tom Cheesman and Arnd-Michael Nohl (2011) use the term 'transediting' to refer to semantic changes happening during translation. However, they argue that it is not synonymous with gatekeeping, since the latter only happens before the translation process and involves the selection of texts to be translated and the selection and organization of its parts (p. 218).

Aktan and Nohl (2010) use the terms ‘transediting’ and ‘transeditors’ in their analysis of news stories published on the BBC World Service Turkish Radio website. They find five patterns of 'transediting’ that include: adding information, modifying semantics, reducing information, omission of information, and editor's inputs (Aktan & Nohl, 2010).

Meifang Zhang (2013) also uses the term in her analysis of translated headlines, where she argues that the transeditor has to work under constraints that include: the readership, the target culture social values, the news agency’s stance and value positions, and the mode of communication (Zhang, 2013, pp. 11–13). Ya-mei Chen (2009), too, uses the term in her analysis of quotations as markers of ideological shifts in news translation and defines it as 'a socially regulated translating activity' that is 'always under various contextual constraints and involves multiple parties’ (p. 228). She cites Maria Cheng's three stages of transediting:

33 source selection, perspective reset, and macro/micro level transediting (Cheng, 2004, pp.

103–108; as cited in Chen, 2009, p. 204).

Despite its popularity among translation scholars, many have argued against the use of the term ‘transediting.’ Bielsa and Bassnett (2009) mention the term and argue against its use since it would imply another form of translating the news, opting instead to refer to news translation (pp. 63–64). Floros (2012) argues for using ‘news translation’ as an 'overarching term for all possible hybrid subforms that translation may take on within the news industry’

(p. 926), while Davier (2015) calls the term ‘transediting’ an ‘empty vessel’ (p. 539). Christina

Schäffner (2012) also presents a compelling argument that the term 'transediting' is influenced by 'equivalence-based theories' of translation that were popular at that time (p.

868) and that although the term was useful at that time by raising awareness about the complexity of the news translation process, using the term runs the risk of limiting our understanding of translation to that of literal word-for-word translation. She also adds that researchers should consider the whole complex of actions surrounding news translators, along with the policies and ideologies that control their actions, if those researchers want to fully understand the process and product of news translation (pp. 880–881). Finally,

Valdeón (2014) also agrees that the term ‘transediting’ has served its purpose and has now become useless; he further suggests differentiating between translation and other practices without looking at translation as a mere linguistic transfer (p. 60).

Other scholars have opted for different ways to describe news translation. For example, Valdeón (2006) uses the term ‘transformative acts’ to refer to both acts of translating and editing (p. 257). Ji-Hae Kang (2007) foregoes using a specific term and simply refers to translation, revision, and editing as separate processes in news translation for the

Korean edition of Newsweek (p. 226). Luc van Doorslaer (2012) introduces the concept of the ‘journalator,’ who is ‘a newsroom worker who makes abundant use of translation (in its broader definitions) when transferring and reformulating or recreating informative journalistic texts’ (p. 1049).

I will use the term ‘news translation’ as an umbrella term to refer to the case of translation in the news to avoid portraying translation as a mere lingual transfer. This dissertation views news translation as a highly mediated act of translation and thus will be investigated as so. It is important to mention that research in news translation has challenged some of the allegedly unique aspects of news translation that we have discussed earlier. Floros (2012), for example, discusses a number of reasons that justify viewing news translation as yet another form of translation in its traditional sense. He argues that the temporal pressures that play a role in news translation are no different than other forms of translation that require timely translation (p. 927). He also rejects as a fallacy the claim that news translation has to be adapted to audience expectations, since we can only assume what the audience expectations are (p. 929). He also adds that the issues of source text and authorship have already been challenged in literary translation through the theory of intertextuality, which views the source text, or any text, as an amalgamation of texts rather than a static text (pp. 927–928). The issue of fidelity to a source text or an author has also been challenged in the translation of certain genres such as advertisements (p. 928). Finally,

Floros argues that 'extreme editing,' which supposedly differentiates news translation from other forms of translation, is in fact not limited to newsroom translation but can be found in all forms of translation (p. 928). As for the issue of news translators viewing themselves as journalists first rather than translators, Erkka Vuorinen (1997) argues that it could be

35 attributed to the issue of status, since these journalists view translation as a less creative action, limited to word-for-word transfer between languages, whereas editing is viewed as a much more creative process and thus more prestigious (p. 169).

One final point to take into account when discussing news translation is that newspapers sometimes translate other types of texts besides news articles. Newspapers, for example, might translate editorials, excerpts from literary works, book reviews and other texts. Maria José Hernandez Guerrero (2009) suggests a dichotomy of stable and unstable source texts in news translation (Hernández Guerrero, 2009, pp. 43–46; as cited in Valdeón,

2015a, p. 442). She argues that editorials and opinion columns can be considered as stable sources since they are more stylistically elaborate than news articles and are written by well- known authors, which compels the translators to respect the content and length of the text

(Hernández Guerrero, 2009, p. 45; as cited in Valdeón, 2015a, p. 443). Author reputation and copyright issues (Valdeón, 2015a, p. 443) make these texts less likely to go through the extreme editing that informative news articles go through. Valdeón tested this by investigating 18 editorial articles written by a Nobel laureate in English and their Spanish translations and found no major changes from the source texts (Valdeón, 2016; as cited in

Valdeón, 2015a, p. 447). Although Valdeón notes that this dichotomy ‘might be a good starting point’ for translation research, he argues that it ‘has not proved effective’ (2015a, p.

451). He uses an example of a Financial Times editorial that has been translated into Spanish, where two phrases were omitted. He argues that such changes served to downplay the critical viewpoint of the original and weaken its message in order to reframe the position of the ultra-conservative Spanish government. This, he argues, made this stable source

36 unstable, which proves that the stable vs unstable dichotomy ‘requires further modulation’

(p. 449).

2.4 Ideology and Translation

Investigating ideology in translated discourse, as this research project intends to do, raises the problematic issue of ideology’s scope and definition. The French term idéologie was first coined in 1796 by Count Destutt de Tracy to refer to a ‘new rationalist science of ideas that set out the epistemological study of concepts and the workings of the mind'

(Munday, 2007, p. 196). Later, however, it came to carry a more negative political connotation, referring to political manipulation (p. 196) used mainly to refer to the manipulation of others or, as Teun A. van Dijk puts it, 'a system of wrong, false, distorted or otherwise misguided beliefs, typically associated with our social or political opponents' (Van

Dijk, 1998, p. 2). Van Dijk (1998) defines ideology as the ‘basis of the social representations shared by members of a group’ (p. 8), while Ian Mason (1994) defines it as ‘the set of beliefs and values which inform an individual’s or institution’s view of the world and assist their interpretation of events, facts, etc.’ (p. 25). These definitions are not limited to political thought but include all thought, which will give us a broader framework for our research.

Ideology, in its negative sense, became a subject of interest in the field of linguistics and later in Translation Studies since 1985 (Munday, 2007, p. 196). Scholars of both fields have linked the concept of ideology with language in general and translation in particular. In linguistics, Norman Fairclough (2001) claims that ‘Ideologies are closely linked to language, because using language is the commonest form of social behaviour’ (p. 2). He adds that power is accomplished specifically through the 'ideological workings of language' (p. 2). In

Translation Studies, Christina Schäffner (2014) argues that the act of translation is in itself

37 ideological in nature, since the selection of the text to be translated and its use in the target culture are determined by the aims and interests of the ‘social agents’ (p. 23). She adds that ideology can also be investigated on the textual level at both the lexical and grammatical levels (p. 23).

The interest in ideology in the field of Translation Studies during the so-called

'cultural turn' led scholars like Andre Lefevere (1992) to move from the linguistic aspects of translation to consider its cultural context. Lefevere, who worked mainly on literary texts, focused on those factors that govern the reception, acceptance, and ‘canonization’ of texts in a culture (p. 2). These factors are power, ideology, institution, and manipulation (p. 2). He further claims that the actors involved are re-writing literature and controlling its consumption based on poetical and ideological motives (pp. 7–8). From this viewpoint, various scholars have studied the relationship between ideology and translation in categories such as patronage, censorship, translation direction, translation policies under totalitarian regimes, power structures and other aspects (Schäffner, 2007, pp. 136–142).

For example, Tejaswini Niranjana (1992) uses postcolonial theory to study the power relations in literary translation in colonial contexts. She sees translation as a tool used by colonial powers to rewrite as truth their image of the colonized culture (p. 33). Gayatri

Spivak (2000) also discusses ideology in translating Third World literature into ‘power’ languages and how this distorts these literary works. Lawrence Venuti (1995) discusses the invisibility of the translator in Anglo-American culture through what he terms the domestication of foreign literature through translation. This, he claims, reduces the translated texts to the values of the receiving culture, which in turn erases the original

38 culture from the text (p. 20). These scholars and others have contributed to the study of ideology in translation, and their work enables further research on this phenomenon.

The relationship between ideology and language led to the development of various models for investigating ideology in discourse. This section will introduce two of these models: Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) and Narrative Theory. We will now discuss each model and its contribution to studying ideology in discourse.

2.4.1 Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA)

Socially oriented linguists in England first introduced Critical Linguistics following the interest in the public use of language by scholars of the Frankfurt school and advocates of Critical Theory (Chilton, 2004, p. x). This was followed by the introduction of Critical

Discourse Analysis, which was used in conjunction with the systemic-functional linguistics associated with M. A. K. Halliday (1985) by socially and politically oriented scholars to investigate language as a social activity rather than a mental one (Chilton, 2004, p. x). Jeremy

Munday (2007) claims that the main purpose of Critical Discourse Analysis is to investigate the link between ideology and the language used to express that ideology (p. 198). CDA tries to 'mediate between linguistic structures as evident in a text and the social, political and historical contexts of text production and reception' (Schäffner, 2007, p. 135), and it can show how ‘media discourse constructs and/or frames reality’ (Schäffner, 2012, p. 879).

Multiple frameworks and approaches have been developed in Critical Discourse

Analysis. Roger Fowler (1991), for example, introduced a text analysis approach based on M.

A. K. Halliday’s (1985) systematic–functional grammar. Fowler’s approach focuses on features of transitivity, the use of passives and nominalizations, and modality (Kuo &

Nakamura, 2005, p. 398). Another tradition was established by Teun A. van Dijk (1988b,

1988a), who transitioned from textual analysis to discourse analysis in his socio-cognitive approach to CDA; his approach also extends its range from microstructures to include macrostructures, such as headlines and lead paragraphs (Kuo & Nakamura, 2005, p. 398).

Norman Fairclough’s (1995) approach deals with a three-dimensional model of discourse that includes text analysis, analysis of discourse practices, and analysis of social practices

(Kuo & Nakamura, 2005, p. 398).

Despite the varying approaches developed under CDA, they are mostly concerned with investigating a number of linguistic features of ideology that link surface lexical and grammatical elements of a text to their semantic functions and representations (Munday,

2007, p. 198). Munday (2007) summarizes these key linguistic features as follows:

(i) domain-specific lexis and patterns of transitivity (nominalization, passivization, etc.), linked to the experiential representation of reality;

(ii) modality markers (attitudinal epithets and adverbs, conditionals of all kinds, negation, etc.), that show evaluation and other devices (such as pronouns) that express writer-reader relationship and are linked to the interpersonal function of language; and

(iii) thematic and information structures (concerning the order and organization of elements in a sentence) and patterns of cohesion (repetition, or variety of semantic fields, substitution, ellipsis, etc.), which contribute to producing textual coherence. (p. 198)

Thus, many scholars of translation have used different CDA approaches alone or in combination with other approaches to study ideology in translated discourse by investigating one or more of these textual features.

One example of such research is the work of Ian Mason (1994), who looks at a Spanish article that was published simultaneously with its English translation in UNESCO’s Courier

40 magazine. Mason finds evidence of 'divergent discourses' based on the shifts in the features investigated (p. 34). Those features are lexical cohesion, which includes lexical choice, recurrence and collocational cohesion; discourse indicators; theme/rheme organization; and text structure (pp. 28–31). Tinna Puurtinen (2000) looks at ideological reification, which is 'a mode of operation of ideology through which power relations which are transitory states are represented as if they were timeless, natural and permanent' (Thompson, 1990, pp. 65–66; as cited in Puurtinen, 2000, p. 179). She particularly discusses the ideological implications of using three textual strategies associated with reification: 'passivisation, nominalisation, and premodified (participial) constructions' (Puurtinen, 2000, pp. 179–

184).

Valdeón (2007) investigates BBC and CNN's English- and Spanish-language coverage of the 2004 Madrid terrorist attacks. He focuses on the lexical choices made in these outlets to describe the Basque separatist organization, which was initially accused of carrying out the attack. He finds that different lexical choices are made based on the medium and language in which the news reports are published (Valdeón, 2007). Elpida Loupaki (2010) analyzes

English news articles translated into Greek and looks for the strategies used by translators to deal with conflict. She finds that some of the techniques used to render, remove or add conflict into the target text include literal translation, neutralization, omission, addition, and explicitation (p. 72).

Ewa Gumul (2010) looks at explicitation as a marker of ideological shift in English news articles translated and published in a Polish magazine. She uses a combination of CDA

41 and Hatim and Mason’s model of three levels of mediation8 (p. 102) to investigate sixteen types of explicitation, based on her work and the work of other scholars (pp. 97–99). She argues that although none of the texts expressed a fundamental ideological change, the explicitation shifts investigated do in fact constitute a changed viewpoint (p. 108). In another contribution, Gumul (2011) looks at translated news reports on the Iraqi conflict as published in Polish newspapers, using the same combination of CDA and Hatim and Mason’s model of three levels of mediation. In this paper, she looks specifically at shifts in grammatical metaphors, transitivity, modality, lexical choice, and cohesion (pp. 762–763).

She finds enough instances of mediation based on the discourse features she investigated to constitute a change in viewpoint (p. 771). Finally, Sai-Hua Kuo and Mari Nakamura (2005) use CDA to investigate translations into Chinese of news reports about Taiwan’s first lady in two ideologically opposed newspapers. The researchers investigate headlines, editorial deletion and addition, syntactic and lexical variation, and stylistic differences in paragraph/thematic combination. Their study found evidence of extensive mediation in the discourse features investigated (Kuo & Nakamura, 2005).

Despite the popularity of CDA among translation scholars, there are a few problems presented by this investigative method. The first is presented by Mona Baker (2010), who argues that mediation is not limited to the text alone but can happen around the text in its paratexts and in the selection of the text to be translated (p. 347). Baker looks at translations by The Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI) and finds that those translations are mostly accurate and avoid any obvious mediation in the text. She argues that

8 The model reflects three degrees of intervention by the translator: minimal, partial and maximal. (Gumul 2010, p. 102). 42 such institutions driven by ideological agendas would avoid any obvious mediation that might affect their credibility, since other activist groups are able to access and compare both source and translation (p. 347). Instead, Baker finds patterns of ‘selective appropriation’ in two aspects: the selection of source languages to translate from and the target languages to translate into (p. 355).

Another problem with CDA is presented by Jeremy Munday (2007), who is concerned with the translator’s unique lexical priming based on his/her unique individual experience of language, which might subconsciously drive the translator’s choice (p. 199). Finally, Paul

Chilton (2004) claims that 'discourse analysts too are political animals’ (p. 205). However, he adds that ‘it is impossible to analyse political language behaviour unless one does exercise one’s political intuitions, which are by definition critical’ (p. 205).

2.4.2 Narrative Theory and Framing

The second lens used to investigate ideology in translation is Narrative Theory. This model, which was introduced to Translation Studies by Mona Baker (Baker, 2005, 2006a,

2006b, 2007), is based on the work of Margaret R. Somers and Gloria D. Gibson (Somers,

1992, 1994, 1997; Somers & Gibson, 1994). Baker (2006a) defines narratives as the ‘public and personal stories that we subscribe to and that guide our behavior’; they are the stories we tell ourselves and others about the world we live in (p. 464). According to Baker, no one stands outside all narratives, and those narratives shape reality instead of just representing it (p. 467). Narratives are dynamic concrete entities that change as people are exposed to new stories (Baker, 2006b, p. 3). This means that our behavior is guided by these 'divergent, criss-crossing, often vacillating' stories we believe in (p. 3). It also means that these stories have a great possibility of creating change (p. 3).

Narratives are not limited to textual expressions but can also be expressed through other media forms (Baker, 2006b, p. 19). In fact, the narrative approach is not exclusively concerned with analyzing linguistic patterns in a text and how these are linked to the concept of discourse. Instead, the approach focuses on how narratives are configured and circulated by the individuals and institutions concerned and how translators intervene in this process

(Baker, 2014, p. 159).

Baker distinguishes between four types of narrative. Ontological narratives are

'personal stories that we tell ourselves about our place in the world and our own personal history' (Baker, 2006b, p. 28). Public narratives are 'stories elaborated by and circulating among social and institutional formations larger than the individual,’ such as the family or the whole nation (p. 33). Conceptual narratives are ‘the stories and explanations that scholars in any field elaborate for themselves and others about their object of inquiry' (p.

39). Finally, meta-narratives are stories ‘in which we are embedded as contemporary actors in history' (Somers & Gibson, 1994, p. 61; as cited in Baker, 2006b, p. 44).

Baker also discusses eight features of narrativity—four based on the work of Somers and Gibson (1994) and Somers (1992, 1997): selective appropriation, temporality, relationality and causal emplotment; and four based on the work of Jerome Bruner (1991): particularity, genericness, normativeness and narrative accrual (Baker, 2006b, p. 78).

Baker further notes that narratives can be tested in relation to three types of cohesion: structural or argumentative, material, and characterological (Baker, 2006a, pp.

468–469). Narratives can also be tested for fidelity by testing (a) ‘the elements of a narrative that may be regarded as its reasons’, as well as (b) the values promoted by the narrative (p.

469). She finally introduces the concept of framing, which can be understood as the

‘deliberate discursive moves designed to anticipate and guide others’ interpretation of and attitudes towards a set of events’ (Baker, 2007, p. 156). Framing can help outline the

‘discursive work’ performed by the narrators to build a set of events into a narrative (p. 155).

It is a crucial part of activism, where the process of framing a narrative mainly

'involves setting up structures of anticipation that guide others’ interpretation of events, usually as a direct challenge to dominant interpretations of the same events in a given society' (p. 156).

Baker adds that:

The notion of framing is closely connected to the question of how narrative theory allows us to consider the immediate narrative elaborated in the text being translated or interpreted and the larger narratives in which the text is embedded, and how this in turn allows us to see translational choices not merely as local linguistic challenges but as contributing directly to the narratives that shape our social world. (Baker, 2007, p. 156)

Choices made by the narrators, such as choosing a label to describe something or someone, or using pronouns and adverbs to position that something or someone in social and political space, enable the narrator to frame the narrative for others (p. 156). In fact,

Baker contends, any linguistic or non-linguistic tool can be used in the reframing process to build up an interpretive context for the narrative audience (p. 158). This includes

'paralinguistic devices such as intonation and typography, visual resources such as colour, image and layout, and [...] linguistic devices such as tense shifts, deixis, code switching, and the use of euphemisms' (p. 158).

As a fairly new approach to investigating ideology in translation, Narrative Theory has its strengths and weaknesses. Its major strengths are presented by Baker (2007), who

45 argues that Narrative Theory does not limit us to reductionist categories such as race, gender, or religion (p. 152) and that it allows us to see social actors as real-life individuals rather than abstractions (p. 153). It also allows us to account for crisscrossing or even competing narratives, rather than painting our subjects into a rigid narrative (p. 154). In addition, it has the ability to deal with individual texts as well as larger narratives at the same time, and it encourages us to locate the significance of these individual texts within the larger narratives in society (Baker, 2006b, p. 4). It is a 'vehicle for social and political processes' that is more 'concrete and accessible' than the concept of discourse (p. 3).

On the other hand, some of the weaknesses of Narrative Theory that have been discussed by scholars of Translation Studies include the fact that the particular approach to

Narrative Theory adopted in Baker’s book (2006b) is still underdeveloped in many areas, as

Baker herself admits (Baker, 2014, p. 174). She suggests that future research investigate 'a wider range of genres and themes,' including news translation (p. 174). Another issue discussed by Baker is that the methods of narrative analysis used so far in Translation

Studies are 'relatively imprecise' and many find it difficult to apply them in a sustainable way

(p. 174). She also adds that future research could benefit from applying models that take into account micro-level textual and non-textual analysis (p. 174). Jeremy Munday (2008) argues that ‘the relation between narratives and their textual realizations also requires more problematization’ (p. 220). He adds that in some instances the motivation behind a translator’s choice might be unclear especially when that choice departs from the expected translation strategy of that particular agent (p. 221).

Some of the research conducted using Narrative Theory includes the work of Baker herself (2010), who investigates the MEMRI project and finds patterns of ‘selective

46 appropriation’ in two aspects: the selection of source languages to translate from and the target languages to translate into (p. 355), and the selection of the worst examples of Arab discourse to be translated (p. 357). Baker also investigates other sites of framing, such as headlines, links, and images (p. 361). Souhad Al Sharif (2009) also investigates MEMRI’s use of translation to reinforce negative narratives of Palestinians and Palestinian women through selective appropriation and framing strategies (pp. 224–227). Another study was conducted by Sue-Ann Harding (2011), who investigates the narratives of mainstream and nonmainstream Russian news websites in reporting on and translating news reports of the

2004 Beslan hostage disaster. She investigates narrative materials and distinguishes them from non-narrative materials and also looks at temporary narrators and other elements (p.

58). Harding finds that nonmainstream news outlets do challenge the mainstream narrative by ‘re-characterising key actors, making alternative narrative connections, and by including and re-weighting details, elements, and temporary narrators missing from official stories’ (p.

58).

Finally, Anneleen Spiessens and Piet Van Poucke (2016) have also conducted a study that utilizes Critical Discourse Analysis and framing. They look at translations by a Russian website (InoSMI) of Western news coverage of the Crimean crisis in 2014 and how the translations reframed the Western discourse through selective appropriation, shifts and omissions in translation, and the use of images (p. 355). They find that the Russian website indeed uses these strategies in a way that ‘mitigates Russia’s aggressive behaviour, downplays alarming reports on the region’s economic health and endorses the image of a strong president,’ in addition to ‘discrediting oppositional forces and excessively foregrounding existing criticism on the West’s handling of the conflict’ (pp. 355–356).

2.4 Conclusion

There is no doubt that translation plays a key role in news production. The field of

Translation Studies has seen increasing interest among its scholars in studying news translation. Despite the difficulties facing news translation scholars and how news translation challenges traditional concepts in the field of Translation Studies, the ideological nature of news production and the huge amount of translation it produces every day provide great research opportunities that should not be ignored. Those traditional concepts in

Translation Studies have already been challenged by translation scholars in relation to news translation and other types of translation. Research on news translation will benefit the field of Translation Studies and other fields as well.

This dissertation attempts to study the translation of editorials and opinion pieces in

Arab media, specifically the Arab Gulf region. Our interest in this region stems from the ongoing conflict there and how that might have implications for news translation. Our interest in editorials and opinion pieces lies in their ideologically charged nature and in how they are less likely to go through extreme editing, which would enable us to find a more

‘stable’ source to compare it against its translation. The methodology used in this research is discussed in the next chapter.

CHAPTER 3: METHODOLOGY

Overview

This chapter discusses the methodology used to conduct the research in this dissertation. The first section begins by introducing the three newspapers used as sources of the data collected and explaining the rationale behind their selection. The second section discusses the data collected from these sources, including the type of texts collected and the time frame of the data sets. This section also discusses the challenges faced during the collection process and how the final data sets were chosen and randomized. The last section introduces the analysis model and procedure used for this research.

3.1 Data Sources

As mentioned in the introductory chapter, this research aims to investigate how translation in the media plays a role in shaping public opinion in the Arab Gulf region. It specifically aims at studying how newspapers in the Arab Gulf region use translation to promote or suppress certain ideological narratives. This is achieved by investigating the shifts that occur in translated newspaper opinions and the ideological implications of those shifts. It is also achieved by investigating the shifts in paratextual material surrounding the translated text and how these contribute to the promotion or suppression of the ideological narratives adopted by those newspapers in the translated articles.

Our interest in the newspapers of the Arab Gulf region stems from the ongoing conflict that has recently intensified in the already turbulent Middle East region. Major events such as the Iraq-Iran war, the war on terrorism, the invasion of Iraq, and the Arab

Spring have strained the region’s relations and intensified its divisions. The conflicts among groups to gain local support or international recognition have increased the role played by the media in serving this purpose. News outlets owned or aligned with each party of the conflict have been used to promote the ideology and narrative reality of that party. One significant way this is achieved is through translation.

Translation has been used as a tool to promote or suppress ideological viewpoints that are aligned with each side of the conflict. Translating Western news articles and opinion pieces that express similar ideological viewpoints to those adopted by the news outlet lends that news outlet a certain level of credibility and validity (Harding, 2012, p. 349) and further promotes the ideological views of its side of the conflict. Therefore, the selection of what to translate and what not to translate plays a key role in the ideologically charged process of news translation. Once a text is selected, translation shifts may also play a major role in aligning the text with the ideological positions of the outlet.

Thus, the initial stage of the data collection process for this research involved establishing three criteria for the newspapers to be investigated. First, the researcher looked for Arabic news outlets that translate regularly from English sources. This limitation is mainly due to the primary researcher's language proficiency. Therefore, non-Arabic news outlets and news outlets that translate from languages other than English were excluded from the initial list of data sources. This led to the exclusion of Iranian newspapers, even though Iran is a major player in this conflict.

The second criterion was availability. Newspapers that are available only in print format and have no digital form were excluded, since it would be difficult to obtain a full and comprehensive list of the translated materials in these news outlets. A Lebanese newspaper that was aligned with Hezbollah and Iran was also excluded from the list of data sources since its website went through a major redesign during the data collection process and all translated materials on the website were removed. No other Arabic newspaper aligned with

Iran and that also translates regularly from English news outlets was found.

The third and final criterion was the presence of translated editorials and opinion pieces, whether they are individually authored or jointly authored by the editorial board. As mentioned earlier, our interest in editorials and opinion pieces lies in their ideologically charged nature and in how they are less likely to go through extreme editing, as suggested by their description as ‘stable sources’ (Hernández Guerrero, 2009, pp. 43–46; as cited in

Valdeón, 2015, p. 442). We should mention here Valdeón’s ambivalence regarding the idea of stable sources; in one article he suggests that editorials are considered stable sources that

‘do not allow much room for deviation’ and mostly ‘remain very close to the original’ in translation (2016, p. 17), while in another he contends that the dichotomy of stable and unstable sources has not proven to be effective (2015a, p. 451) and that it ‘requires further modulation’ (p. 449). However, since our research investigates ideologically motivated textual and paratextual shifts in news translation, and since that would necessitate the availability of a source text for comparison, it can be argued that this research can still make use of the dichotomy of stable and unstable sources. For the purpose of this research, stable sources will be defined as editorials, opinion pieces and analytical news reports that have been translated from a single source text that has been published in an English news outlet.

Therefore, our data sources were limited to newspapers that translate editorials and opinion pieces rather than daily news articles from the major news agencies such as Reuters or AFP.

Three sources, which will be discussed below, were found that fit our data sources criteria. It should be mentioned, however, that although our research goal of comparing the strategies involved in promoting or suppressing ideological viewpoints would benefit from a “neutral” source of data to be investigated as a control, no other data source was found that meets all of the aforementioned criteria. The search process involved going through lists of newspapers in Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Kuwait, Lebanon, Iraq and other Arab countries. Only a few news outlets met our research criteria, and it can be safely stated that none of these were neutral.

The first data source chosen for our research is Al Eqtisadiah [The Economy

Newspaper]. It is a privately owned Saudi newspaper that is based in Saudi Arabia and subject to Saudi publishing laws. It was first published by the Saudi Research and Publishing

Company in 1992 in Riyadh (SRPC, n.d.). It is run by an all-Saudi editorial board and is published in both print and digital formats with a section dedicated to articles translated from the British Financial Times newspaper. It publishes an average of four translations every day, mostly covering politics and financial news and commentary. This consistent translation regime provides ample data for investigation.

The second data source chosen for this research is Asharq Al-Awsat [The Middle East].

It is a pan-Arab newspaper first published in London in 1978. It is owned by the Saudi

Research and Publishing Company (SRPC, n.d.), the same company that owns Al Eqtisadiah.

However, unlike the first source, Asharq Al-Awsat’s main office is based in London, and the

52 paper is run by an editorial board of Arab nationals.9 Its ‘terms of use’ page indicates that it is subject ‘exclusively to the judicial authorities in the United Kingdom’ (“Terms of Use,” n.d.).

It is published in print and digital format and regularly translates columns and opinion pieces from Bloomberg, the New York Times, and Washington Post. Although the newspaper does not translate opinion pieces every day, the data set provided is still adequate in size to provide us with the necessary data of at least twenty articles about the region’s major players and conflicts.

The third and final source chosen for this research is the Arabi21 website. The website does not list any information about its ownership or location. However, news reports about the website indicate that it is a Muslim Brotherhood-affiliated website based in London and funded by Qatar (Salahodeen, 2018). It is published exclusively in a digital format, with a section dedicated to translating news and commentary from various Western newspapers and from various languages. It translates five to seven articles every day, mainly covering politics. This provides a significant amount of data, despite the extra work involved in cleaning up the data by removing non-English sourced articles.

Some of the news outlets that were examined and disqualified for this research include Al Hayat [The life], a privately owned Saudi newspaper based in London. The newspaper publishes translations of opinion pieces mostly from French, among other languages. Moreover, its website has only thirty days of archived articles and there is no way of accessing older articles. Another is Al Ahd News [The promise], a Lebanese news website affiliated with Hezbollah that used to publish translations from Western newspapers. The

9 A Lebanese editor-in-chief, a Saudi and Sudanese assistant editors-in-chief, an Egyptian senior editor, and a Kurdish Iraqi head of political desk. 53 website, as mentioned earlier, went through a major redesign and now only publishes translations from Hebrew news outlets. Al Yaum [Today] is a Saudi newspaper that used to publish translations from Bloomberg but has lately ceased to do so and has removed all translated content from its website. Wayback Machine was not helpful in retrieving the translated content since the archiving service only ‘crawled’ the newspaper’s website once a month, which limited the number of translated articles that can be retrieved.

3.2 Data Sets

The research will focus particularly on news articles that are considered ‘stable sources’ (Hernández Guerrero, 2009, pp. 43–46; as cited in Valdeón, 2015, p. 442). This particular type of news text provides us with an opportunity to investigate translation in news production with minimal intervention of editing. Stable sources include editorials, opinion pieces and analytical news reports authored by well-known journalists. It excludes news items reported by news agencies and articles translated by journalists based on multiple foreign texts. The time range for our data sets was initially a period of three years starting from January 2015 to December 2017. However, this was later reduced to one year starting from January 1, 2017, to December 31, 2017. This time range was chosen due to the major events that occurred in the region in 2017, such as Trump becoming president of the

United States and threatening to withdraw from the Iran nuclear deal, his first official visit to Saudi Arabia, and Saudi Arabia cutting ties with Qatar. The expectation was that these events would be reflected in the data sets, which would provide us with a greater potential for investigating how the three newspapers deal with ideologically charged texts.

The data used in this research is represented by a corpus of 120 texts, 60 source texts along with 60 translations. The data is divided into three sets based on the newspaper where

54 the translations appeared. The first set (X) is made up of 20 translations by Al Eqtisadiah along with their corresponding source texts, all of which were published by Financial Times.

The second set (Y) is made up of 20 translations by Asharq Al-Awsat along with their corresponding source texts from the New York Times, Bloomberg, and Washington Post. The third set (Z) is made up of 20 translations by Arabi21 along with their corresponding source texts from multiple newspapers and websites. These newspapers will be discussed later in

Chapter 6.

The researcher started by compiling a list of all translated articles in each one of the three sources – Al Eqtisadiah, Asharq Al-Awsat, and Arabi21 – during the specified data range.

The lists were compiled in Microsoft Excel spreadsheets. Each list includes every article’s headline and URL. This initial list would later be categorized and only editorials and opinion pieces about Saudi Arabia, Trump, Qatar, Iran, and Yemen were highlighted and compiled in a second list. The final three data sets comprising 20 source and 20 target texts from each newspaper were chosen randomly from this second list.

The tools used during the compilation of the data sets include a data mining tool and a data randomizer. The data mining tool used is called Data Miner.10 It is an online data scraping tool that allows users to extract data from webpages quickly and effortlessly. The website provides a web browser extension that can be used without downloading any additional software. The extension allows the user with some HTML knowledge to prepare a formula that extracts data from a webpage based on the HTML tags used. It then allows the user to copy the values inside those tags to an Excel spreadsheet. The second tool used for

10 https://data-miner.io/ 55 this research is an online data set randomizer called Research randomizer.11 The online tool randomly generates a list of numbers from a list range specified by the user. What follows is a description of the data collection process for each one of the three sources.

3.2.1 Al Eqtisadiah’s Data Set

During the data collection process, Al Eqtisadiah’s website in its previous design would only show articles from its last daily issue. However, previous issues were still archived and accessible through a simple URL pattern that includes the issue’s date.

Therefore, a list of URLs was manually created to cover the period from January 1, 2017, to

December 31, 2017. Each URL points to the Financial Times section of Al Eqtisadiah during the date included in the URL where a number of articles that have been translated for that issue are listed. For example, the URL [http://www.aleqt.com/2017/01/03/section_ft.html] would point to the archived articles translated and published on January 3, 2017. All the articles translated from Financial Times by Al Eqtisadiah in 2017 were collected by going through each URL and scraping the data from the webpage using Data Miner. The data collection process revealed that 1627 articles had been translated and published on Al

Eqtisadiah’s website in 2017.

Based on the headline alone or by consulting the article itself, the researcher was able to compile a list of all articles related to the various sides of the conflict: Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and Iran. These articles either directly discussed political or financial affairs of one of these countries or indirectly discussed other matters pertinent to these countries, such as OPEC,

President Trump, the Iranian nuclear deal, or the war in Yemen. This second list contained

11 https://www.randomizer.org/ 56

43 articles. The last step was to randomly choose 20 articles from this list. This was done using the Research Randomizer tool. The final list was given a four-character alpha-numeric identifier starting with (X) to refer to Al Eqtisadiah, followed by either (S) for source text or

(T) for target text, followed by a two-digit number from 01 to 20.

3.2.2 Asharq Al-Awsat’s Data Set

Even though Asharq Al-Awsat has an archive on its website of all its published articles, these articles are only accessible using the search function on the website. The website's navigation feature allows access only to articles published in the last thirty days. The website also has an 'opinion' page where all original Arabic and translated opinion pieces are published. Fortunately, translated articles usually include a tag line that indicates that these are translations. In addition, the search function allows searching exclusively in the opinion section of the website and also allows searching within a specified time period. Therefore, this was used to locate all translated columns published in 2017. This was done by searching

[New York Times Service] ’,خدمة نيويورك تايمز‘ :for the tag lines used in the translated articles

By agreement with] ’,باالتفاق مع بلومبيرغ‘ Washington Post Service] and] ’,خدمة واشنطن بوست‘

Bloomberg]. As a precaution and to make sure all relevant translated articles were included in the event some were not tagged with one of the previous tags, another search was conducted using the following terms in Arabic: Saudi Arabia, Iran, Qatar, Trump, nuclear deal, and Yemen.

The search results were collected using the data scraper in the search results page after creating a formula that collects the headlines and URLs of the search results. The data was then stored in a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet. The total collected number of articles translated and published on the newspaper's website in 2017 is 448 articles, which includes

113 from the New York Times, 220 from Bloomberg, 89 from Washington Post, and 26 articles that were written specifically for Asharq Al-Awsat by Western journalists or diplomats.

Based on the headlines or by consulting the articles in the initial list, a second list was compiled containing articles related to Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and Iran. This second list contained 32 articles. The final list of 20 articles was randomly chosen from this second list using Research Randomizer. The final list was given a four-character alpha-numeric identifier starting with (Y) to refer to Asharq Al-Awsat, followed by either (S) for source text or (T) for target text, followed by a two-digit number from 01 to 20.

3.2.3 Arabi21’s Data Set

Arabi21 publishes its translations in a separate section on its website titled

‘International Press’. Navigation is possible using numbered pages. The data collection started by locating the page numbers where the articles from 2017 are listed. The data scraper was then used to extract headlines and URLs for each article on those pages. The list of articles was then stored on a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet. The total number of translated texts published on the Arabi21 website in 2017 is 2201.

A second list was then compiled by searching the headlines for the terms: Saudi,

Salman, Riyadh, Qatar, Iran, and Doha. This list was comprised of 418 articles. This list was later narrowed by going to the corresponding URL of each article and removing any texts that were translated from non-English sources. A third list comprising all relevant articles was compiled; this was composed of 218 articles related to Saudi Arabia, and 87 articles related to Qatar. The final data set of 20 articles were randomly chosen from this list using

Research Randomizer. For this particular source, the final list was divided equally between

Saudi-related articles and Qatari-related ones. Ten articles were chosen randomly for each.

The final list was given a four-character alpha-numerical identifier starting with (Z) to refer to Arabi21, followed by either (S) for source text or (T) for target text, followed by a two- digit number ranging from 01 to 20. Texts ZT01 to ZT10 are translations directly related to

Saudi Arabia, while texts ZT11 to ZT20 are translations directly related to Qatar.

3.3 Analysis Model

As mentioned in the previous chapter, this research makes use of two major lenses that are used to investigate ideology in discourse: Critical Discourse Analysis and Narrative

Theory. Our analysis model investigates shifts in translation in both the textual elements of the translated text and the paratextual elements surrounding the translated text. The textual analysis will be informed by Critical Discourse Analysis and its linguistic toolkit. Critical

Discourse Analysis has been used in Translation Studies to investigate textual shifts in translation involving lexical choice, deletion of information, and addition of information or explicitation, among other things. The paratextual analysis will focus on shifts in the elements surrounding the translated text, such as headlines and photographs, in addition to the selection strategies adopted by the newspapers regarding what issues to translate and from which source. The discussion of the results of the textual and paratextual analysis will be informed by Narrative Theory and the concept of framing as discussed by Baker (2006a,

2007, 2010, 2014, 2018).

3.3.1 Textual Analysis

The textual or linguistic analysis this research conducts involves comparing the source text with its translation in order to isolate translation shifts. These shifts have been investigated by scholars of Translation Studies and Critical Discourse Analysis and can range

59 from shifts in the lexical level to shifts in the grammatical level (Schäffner, 2014, p. 23). Our analysis includes investigating shifts in lexical choice, deletion of text segments, lexical items or whole paragraphs, addition of information for explicitation or otherwise, and shifts in sentence structure.

Lexical choice is an important feature for investigating ideology in discourse. It is one of the basic features of linguistic analysis in CDA (Machin & Mayr, 2012, p. 30). Its significance lies in the notion that lexical choice creates 'lexical fields,' which in turn 'signify certain kinds of identities, values and sequences of activity which are not necessarily made explicit' in the text (p. 30). Shifts in lexical choice in the process of translation mostly involve shifts in word connotation when a translator uses a word that has a different connotation from that of the original word in the source text. This also includes naming and reference strategies where a group is named in a way that identifies ‘the group(s) that they are associated with (or at least the groups that the speaker/writer wants them to be associated with)’ (Richardson, 2006, p. 49). The analysis of lexical choice can also potentially include the analysis of other features from the Critical Discourse Analysis linguistic toolkit, such as shifts in modal verbs or modal auxiliaries and speech reporting verbs. Expressions of modality can ‘reflect the ideological development of texts’ (Bazzi, 2009, p. 86), while different quoting verbs can be used to shift the readers' perception of the event or of the person being quoted (Machin & Mayr, 2012, p. 58).

Lexical choice has been investigated by many translation scholars. Ian Mason (1994) investigates lexical cohesion, which includes lexical choice, recurrence of lexical items and collocational cohesion (pp. 28–30). He argues that many of the lexical choices made in the translated text he was investigating appeared to involve manipulation of values rather than

60 being mere innocent or careless renditions (p. 28). These choices manipulate values through

‘flattening’, ‘slanting’, or ‘sharpening’ the lexical items translated (p. 28). Roberto Valdeón

(2007) has also investigated naming strategies used by English websites to refer to the separatist group known as ETA. In these websites' translations of Spanish news reports that exclusively referred to the group using the Spanish term terrorista (p. 104), Valdeón finds that these websites either exclusively used the terms separatist or the term terrorist, or opted for using both terms in their translations (pp. 105–106). He also finds that most of the

English websites surveyed used the term separatist, 'putting emphasis on the political motivations rather than on the violent actions' of the group (p. 106). Ewa Gumul (2011) has also investigated lexical choice among other markers of ideology. She argues that ‘it is often the strength of powerful connotations attached to seemingly equivalent lexical items which gives the source text and the target text different shades of meaning changing the ideology conveyed’ (p. 763). This research will investigate lexical choice in translation and its implication for the promotion or subversion of certain ideological narratives.

Deletion is another important feature for investigating ideology in discourse. In news production, texts go through a range of changes that include deleting unnecessary information and summarizing (Bielsa & Bassnett, 2009, p. 64), which in itself requires deletion of information (van Dijk, 1988b, p. 116). Deletion can be motivated by space limitations or a lack of sources to verify critical news events (p. 117). It can also be motivated by the journalist or translator's view of what information is irrelevant, or by decisions about

'details that are not consistent with the models, scripts, or attitudes of journalists or those

(assumed by the journalist) of the readers' (p. 117). However, editorials and opinion pieces have been shown to be less likely to go through extreme changes in the process of

61 translation, as discussed earlier. This makes deletion of information in this type of news translation far more significant from an ideological point of view.

Deletion has been studied by a number of translation scholars. Elpida Loupaki (2010) investigates how news translators deal with conflict in the text. She finds that deletion was used by the translators to either erase the conflict form the source text (p. 66) or to introduce a new conflict to the text (p. 68). Sai-Hua Kuo and Mari Nakamura (2005) investigate news translations about Taiwan’s first lady in two ideologically opposed newspapers. One of the features they investigate is editorial deletion. They find that each newspaper used deletion selectively to eliminate 'common background information' or to eliminate information that was not aligned with its own political view (p. 402). This study investigates deletion of information and its implication for the promotion or subversion of certain ideological narratives.

Another important feature for investigating ideology in discourse is addition. In news production, addition involves inserting information from another source text or from the text producer's own background knowledge of the subject (van Dijk, 1988b, p. 117). Addition can be used as a means of explicitation, which is considered by many scholars as a universal feature of translation (Olohan & Baker, 2000, p. 142). Olohan and Baker define it as 'the spelling out in a target text of information which is only implicit in a source text' (p. 142).

Tiina Puurtinen (2003) claims that explicitation shifts can ‘change the viewpoints and modify the opinions expressed in source texts’ (as cited in Gumul, 2010, p. 99). Unlike news articles, editorials and opinion pieces are considered stable sources where the addition of information is minimal. Adding information to such texts in the process of translation would then represent an especially significant ideological shift.

One study that investigates addition is the work of Valdeón (2007) mentioned earlier where he finds that the English websites translating Spanish news reports regularly added phrases or clauses to their translations to 'provide their readership with information about the current legal status' of the separatist group ETA (p. 106). The additions can also run longer than a single phrase or clause of added historical information (p. 107). Loupaki's research mentioned earlier (2010) also discusses addition. She notes that addition of information is used by translators to introduce new conflict into the translated text that was not present in the source text (p. 68). Ewa Gumul (2010) also investigates 16 types of explicitation in Polish translations of English news articles. She finds that these additions in political texts ‘might serve to communicate an altered point of view to the target-text readership’ (p. 108). The present research project investigates addition of information or explicitation, and its implication for the promotion or subversion of certain ideological narratives.

The final feature to be investigated is shifts in sentence structure. This mainly has to do with placement of the ‘agents’ who perform the action and the ‘patients’ who undergo the action (van Dijk, 1991, p. 58). Shifting sentence structures through passivization, for example, 'can have a strong effect on the way we perceive events and actions' (Puurtinen,

2000, p. 180). It can 'present true information in an incomplete way' (p. 184) by foregrounding the action rather than the agent who carried out that action, who is usually mentioned at the end of the clause or deleted from the clause altogether (p. 180).

Nominalization can also have the same effect of concealing agency (p. 182). In addition to the placement of an agent in a sentence around an action, the way speakers are reported through direct or indirect speech can also have an impact on how those speakers are viewed (van

Dijk, 1991, p. 151). Direct or indirect quotations can be used to obtain a first-hand account of a news event, provide a more precise account of the event, and shield the news producer from any liability of slander (van Dijk, 1988b, p. 87). Although a pilot study of our data indicated that these features are very rare, since most of the translations tend to mirror the lexical and sentence structure of the source text, they are still monitored in the textual analysis and reported in the results.

3.3.2 Paratextual Analysis

The paratextual analysis conducted for this research project involves investigating elements surrounding the source and target texts in our data sets. The term 'paratext' was introduced by Gérard Genette to denote both verbal and visual elements that surround and extend the text 'precisely in order to present it' (Genette, 1997, p. 1). Paratexts surrounding the translations play a major role in the perception of the translation and have been studied by many scholars of Translation Studies (cf. Tahir-Gürçağlar, 2011). One of the most recent works on paratexts in Translation Studies is that of Kathryn Batchelor (2018), who attempts to explore and refine the concept of paratexts from the perspective of Translation Studies. In order to extend the scope of translation research into paratexts beyond literary texts and to include digital and web-based texts, she redefines a paratext as 'a consciously crafted threshold for a text which has the potential to influence the way(s) in which the text is received' (p. 142). The paratextual analysis conducted for this research project will investigate features such as selection strategies, the translated headlines, and the photographs used in the target texts as compared to those used in the source texts. While the selection strategies do not fall under the usual definition of ‘paratexts,’ the investigation of such strategies involves investigating paratextual elements such as the translated article’s

64 headline, author pages, articles about the newspapers investigated and other elements.

Headlines are also considered a paratextual element in this project as they are in other disciplines (cf. Holsanova, Rahm, & Holmqvist, 2006), since they resemble the book title in

Genette’s (1997) concept of paratexts and also fall under Batchelor’s (2018) definition of paratexts mentioned earlier.

Selection strategies in translation can be indicative of ideological bias. The selection of news items to be translated has been discussed as one of the major procedures of gatekeeping and restricting the flow of foreign news (Hursti, 2001). Christina Schäffner

(2008) argues that ‘power relations’ and ideological positions directly influence the choice of what to translate and from which provider (p. 18). Roberto Valdeón (2008) also argues that in news translation, the selection of news items and topics to be translated is more likely to be based on the news outlet’s ideological stance than on the readership’s possible interest

(p. 320). This research can benefit from the investigation of selection strategies involving the subject matter of the articles translated, the source where the original text was published, and the authors of those original texts.

Selection has been investigated by many scholars in Translation Studies. Valdeón

(2008), for example, looked at the selection of both texts and information to be translated into Spanish on BBC Mundo’s website. He argues that these selection strategies contribute to the creation and projection onto the audience of a viewpoint that ‘accentuates an ethnocentric view of the world whereby Anglophone news is given prominence at the expense of other more international items’ (p. 303). Mona Baker (2010) also investigated the translations of MEMRI from a selection point of view. Her research found patterns of selective appropriation in two aspects: the selection of news articles to translate and the

65 selection of language pairs (p. 355). Souhad Al Sharif (2009) also looked at MEMRI’s translations on Palestinian women. She found that MEMRI selectively appropriates texts that reinforce negative narratives of Palestinians and Palestinian women while ignoring anything positive about Palestinian and Arab women (pp. 224–227). This study investigates selection strategies and their implication for the promotion or subversion of certain ideological narratives.

Headlines are privileged sites of framing and so are especially indicative of ideological bias. They indicate the most important information of the news article (van Dijk, 1988a, p.

188) and ‘define the situation and, thus, program the reader with a preferred reading and interpretation plan’ (van Dijk & Kintsch, 1983 as cited in van Dijk, 1988a, p. 226). They can also be used to enhance the importance of less important information (p. 226). Van Dijk

(1985) discusses ‘skewed headlining,’ whereby a topic that constitutes a very small portion of the text is elevated to be the main topic of the text through its inclusion in the headline (p.

78). He acknowledges that this might be a result of ‘implicit journalistic rule of news organization’ rather than an ideological position (p. 78). However, it can be argued that this is not the case in news translation where ideological positioning plays a more important role in the translation process. The selection of what to translate and the selection of what information to foreground from that translation are both more likely to be based on ideological positioning. Van Dijk himself in a later work argues that headlines indicate what the journalist or translator thinks is the most important information in the text which in itself implies an opinion about the events in the text (van Dijk, 1991 as cited in Kuo & Nakamura,

2005, p. 400).

Headlines have been investigated by numerous translation scholars. The previously mentioned research by Sai-Hua Kuo and Mari Nakamura (2005) investigated headlines, among other features, and found shifts in headline topics based on the ideological positions of the two newspapers investigated (p. 410). Meifang Zhang (2013) also investigated translations of headlines as paratexts in relation to four news events in a period of two years.

She found that headlines go through mediation in translation that causes the translator’s own ‘knowledge and values’ to be introduced into the translated text (p. 408). This research studies the shifts that headlines go through in translation and the implications of those shifts for the promotion or subversion of certain ideological narratives. Headlines will also be investigated within our selection strategies portion of the paratextual analysis.

Photographs also play a major role in the news translation process, particularly in a web-based news outlet. They are ‘the most important visual dimension of the news’ (van

Dijk, 1988a, p. 115). In web-based news environments, they are also an important visual dimension surrounding the news. Scholars of linguistics and of Critical Discourse Analysis became interested in these visual elements in the late 1980s and early 1990s (Machin &

Mayr, 2012, p. 6), and tools have been developed to describe these elements and how they relate to the text (p. 8). Moreover, Narrative Theory as an analysis tool, according to Mona

Baker (2014), extends beyond texts to include 'open-ended set of resources' that include photographs and diagrams (pp. 159–160).

Photographs and other visual elements have been studied by some translation scholars. In their work on news translation in news agencies, Esperança Bielsa and Susan

Bassnett (2009) argue that ‘there are common threads that can be discerned in the way in which a story is presented, and this commonality may well be driven by accessibility to

67 shared visual images, rather than to any common verbal elements’ (p. 118). They briefly discuss the photographs published of Saddam Hussein after he was captured by US soldiers in Iraq. The researchers compared those images with Saddam’s usual image of a powerful military leader and how these new images portrayed both his demise, and the US army’s care and concern for Saddam’s wellbeing (p. 118). Christina Schäffner’s (2005) research on

Spiegel International and its attempt to bring the unique voice of the German newspaper to

English readers through translation included only a short paragraph about the photographs used in the translation process (p. 164). Schäffner found that many photographs had been replaced, due mostly to copyright issues (p. 164). Mona Baker (2007) also looked at how photographs were used as a framing strategy to frame the text they accompany within the

‘war on terror’ frame (p. 159). This study investigates the use of photographs and other images in news translation and how it can influence the reader's perception of the translated narrative.

3.3.3 Discussion

The discussion section will be presented after reviewing the results of the textual and paratextual analysis of the data. This section will attempt to synthesize the results of the analyses to answer the questions posed by this research. We will discuss how translation is used in each newspaper investigated to promote or subvert certain ideological narratives and how translation is used to shape public opinion in the Arab Gulf region. The discussion will be informed by Narrative Theory and the concept of framing as suggested by Mona Baker

(2006a, 2007, 2010, 2014, 2018).

It is important to note here that it is almost impossible to determine the motivation behind each individual shift that might be encountered in the textual and paratextual

68 analyses. Gumul (2011) notes that ‘no marker of ideology is inherently ideologically loaded’ and that a single linguistic feature ‘should never be automatically interpreted as an expression of a particular ideological meaning’ (p. 764). However, the sum of these shifts that might be encountered ‘at the textual micro-level […] may finally result in a shift of position at the macro-level’ (Loupaki, 2010, p. 72). The recurrence of these shifts in a single text or in the whole data set might suggest the presence of certain patterns that enable this research project to make assumptions and conclusions based on the bigger picture rather than on individual occurrences (p. 64).

3.4 Conclusion

This chapter started by looking at the data sources we will be investigating. These are three newspapers in the Arab Gulf region that regularly translate English editorials and opinion pieces in addition to other news reports. The second section of the chapter introduced the data sets and how 20 translations and 20 source texts were compiled and randomly chosen from each newspaper to be investigated. The third and last section of the chapter introduced the analysis model which is divided into textual and paratextual analyses.

CHAPTER 4: AL EQTISADIAH: DATA ANALYSIS AND DISCUSSION

Overview

This chapter reviews the results of the analysis conducted on the translations published by the Saudi privately owned financial newspaper Al Eqtisadiah. The data set consists of twenty translations published by the newspaper in 2017 along with the source texts obtained from the website of British-based financial newspaper Financial Times. These texts were investigated for textual and paratextual shifts as mentioned in Chapter 3. The first section of this chapter focuses on the analysis of the textual shifts encountered and lists representative examples for each type of shift. The second section focuses on the analysis of the paratextual elements surrounding the translated texts. The final section presents the researcher's discussion and overall conclusions on the results of the textual and paratextual analyses.

4.1 Textual Analysis

Based on elements from Critical Discourse Analysis, this section of the chapter starts by comparing the twenty translated texts against their source texts. The analysis is conducted by locating any shifts in the translated texts compared with their source texts based on textual elements drawn from the linguistic toolkit established by Critical Discourse

Analysis. These are shifts in lexical choice, deletion of source text content, addition or explicitation of information, and shifts in sentence structure. The shifts will be discussed

70 based on the framework of Narrative Theory and the concept of framing as introduced by

Mona Baker (Baker, 2006b, 2007, 2010, 2014). The following are representative examples of some of the shifts found, since it would be difficult to include all instances of these shifts in the limited space of this chapter.

4.1.1 Lexical choice

The analysis of the translated texts in the data set indicates that most of the lexical shifts encountered are related to the naming of certain groups. These names go through a shift in the translation process either by using a different name to refer to that group or by erasing parts of the name, such as an adjective phrase that modifies the noun. Other lexical shifts were observed, but only in rare instances. This limited number of lexical shifts is probably due to the translations being literal, where lexical equivalence is dominant.

The first naming shift that has been recorded involves instances of translating the

Daesh]. The acronym ISIS stands for the Islamic] ”داعش“ terrorist group known as ISIS into

State of Iraq and Syria or the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham [the Levant]. In the Arab media,

الدولة “ Daesh], which stands for] ”داعش“ the group is mostly referred to by the Arabic acronym

Islamic State of Iraq and Sham] (Krauss, 2015). The term is used] ”اإلسالمية في العراق والشام mostly to mock the terrorist group and delegitimize its status as an Islamic State, to the point that the term was banned by the group within the areas under its control (Krauss, 2015). In the international media, however, the group is known either by its acronyms (ISIS, ISIL) or by the name the Islamic State. In the data set, the acronym ISIS was recorded in texts XS02,

XS04, and XS12. The translations in XT02, XT04, and XT12, however, use the term Daesh instead. XS12, for example, discusses the terrorist group’s economy and uses the acronym

Daesh] in 28] ”داعش“ Isis in 42 instances. The translated text XT12, instead, renders these as

the organization] in 11] ”التنظيم“ Daesh organization] in 4 instances, or] ”تنظيم داعش“ ,instances

here mostly refers to illegal militant or - تنظيم - instances. The Arabic word for organization terrorist groups that work outside society’s mainstream institutions (Baker, 2006b, p. 120).

Daesh] in four] ”داعش“ The seven instances of ISIS mentioned in XS02 have been translated as

Daesh organization] in three instances. TS04, which discusses the] ”تنظيم داعش“ instances or

”تنظيم داعش“ Syrian regime, mentions ISIS in three instances. These are translated in XT04 as

Daesh] respectively. This shows] ”داعش“ Daesh gang], and] ”عصابة داعش“ ,[Daesh organization] a unique pattern of always translating the name of the group using the name popular in most

Arab media. These shifts in the naming of the group serve to delegitimize the group and deny it the status of a state or even as being Islamic. The negative names used along with the

gang] frame the group as a villainous group] ”عصابة“ organization] and] ”تنظيم“ adjectives operating outside the confines of law and civilized society. This might highlight a narrative position adopted by the newspaper of rejecting the group, its status, its legitimacy and the group’s own narrative about itself.

The term caliphate was also mentioned twice in XS12 to refer to the “state” created by the terrorist group. It was rendered differently in both cases as follows:

XS12: …get that money out of its collapsing, self-proclaimed caliphate.

…إخراج تلك األموال من نطاق المناطق التي سيطر عليها.

XT12 back translation: …take those funds out of the range of areas they control…

XS12: …long after the caliphate is gone.

...بعد فترة طويلة من انهيار سلطتهم.

XT12 back translation: …long after the collapse of their regime/authority. [emphasis added by researcher]

The term caliphate refers to the political system in Islam where a Muslim caliph presides over an Islamic state. Although the stated goal of the terrorist group is to recreate this political system and create a caliphate or Islamic State, the Arabic term is rarely used in

Arab media, as it might serve to legitimatize the terrorist group’s agenda. It might also be avoided because it is an outdated concept in the modern Islamic world, which is made up of multiple independent Muslim countries.

Related to these shifts in the name of the terrorist group Isis is the translation of lexical items about the terrorist groups operating in the region. For example, the term jihadi is used three times in XS04, two of which are in two consecutive sentences. The first instance of the term is modified by the adjective Sunni, referring to one of the two major sects of Islam in the region, Sunnis and Shias. In this first instance, the translation in XT04 renders the term

the extremists]. The use of the adjective Sunni is problematic, since it] ”المتطرفين“ simply as links terrorist groups exclusively to a certain sect of Islam and since most Sunni Muslims condemn these groups and their actions. The term jihadi itself is problematic and controversial as well, since it links violence and terrorism to an Islamic notion, and hence, to

Islam itself. The translation here rejects these connotations and simply renders the phrase using a more general term that does not single out a particular sect or religious affiliation. As for the other two instances of the term jihadi in XS04, the translations of the two instances differ based on the context for each term. The two sentences read as follows:

From the start of what began as a civic uprising against its tyranny in 2011, the minority regime has been peddling the story that it is a bulwark of

religious pluralism against jihadi extremists. Yet an early Assad response to the democratic challenge was to empty Sednaya and other notorious jails of hundreds of jihadi prisoners, in the hope — eventually fulfilled — they would hijack the rebellion. (XS04, emphasis added by the researcher)

”السجناء الجهاديين“ the extremists] and] ”المتطرفين“ These two terms were translated as

[the jihadi prisoners] respectively. The first instance was translated exactly as the previously mentioned instance of the term jihadi in the text. However, what is interesting is that the second instance of the term was retained and translated as is. In this instance, the newspaper and its translators retain the term possibly because they share the same narrative position elaborated in the source text, which suggests that the uprising in Syria was hijacked by jihadi terrorists as a result of Assad’s own deliberate actions when he released all violent extremists from the country’s jails to create a situation that allows him to use force indiscriminately against the revolting civilians. It is a common narrative in Arab media that

Assad created the problem of Isis to stay in power indefinitely. The use of the term as is in the translation shifts the blame for the sectarian war and the influence of terrorist groups in the region completely onto Assad. The use of the term, although controversial as mentioned, is an attempt to draw attention to the seriousness and cruelty of Assad’s actions.

Another shift was recorded in XT05, where the term Islamist extremism was rendered

extremism and terrorism]. Again, the shift here is possibly an attempt to] ”التطرف واإلرهاب“ as distance terrorism and violence from being associated with a specific religion, Islam in this case. The repetition here, where two similar words are used, is a common feature of Arabic writing style and is possibly used to highlight the seriousness of the problem. Another example can be found in the same text, where the term Wahhabi (XS05) was rendered as

Salafi] (XT05). Wahhabi is a term that refers to the followers of a renewal movement] ”سلفي“

74 of Islam as advocated by Imam Muhammad Ibn Abd Al-Wahhab, who called for a return to the traditional teachings of Islam as practiced by the Prophet and his companions. The term carries negative connotations and is mostly used as a derogatory term (Blanchard, 2008) even by other Muslims, who see the movement as a very strict interpretation of Islam. The

Salaf] meaning] سلف Salafi], on the other hand, is derived from the Arabic term] ”سلفي“ term ancestors or predecessors. Salafi literally means one who practices Islam as it was practiced by the Prophet and his companions. The term Wahhabi is usually rejected by the followers of this interpretation of Islam, who prefer the neutral non-derogatory term Salafi instead

(Blanchard, 2008). The newspaper shares this narrative position, as evident in its translation of the term in question. Finally, the terms Sunni rebels and jihadi groups (XS12) are translated

extremist group] respectively. Again, these shifts] ”جماعة متطرفة“ the rebels] and] ”المتمردين“ as are possibly an attempt to reject linking terrorism and extremism to Islam in general and

Sunni Islam in particular. The shift in the first instance was made by simply omitting the adjective Sunni while keeping the name as is.

Other lexical shifts in naming include the term the Islamic Republic mentioned in

XS03, which refers to the Islamic Republic of Iran. The term, which was mentioned twice in

Iran] in both instances. This might be a simple] ”إيران“ the source text, was rendered simply as case of using the most common name of the country as used in Arab media. It is common practice in Arab media to use the short form of the names of countries in the region, such as

,The Arab Republic of Egypt]. In the same text] ”جمهورية مصر العربية“ Egypt] instead of] ”مصر“ however, the translation (XT03) removes the religious title Ayatollah from the formal name of Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei as mentioned in the source text (XS03).

Using an official’s name without their title might be a sign of familiarity or a sign of having a

75 negative view of that person. It can be argued that the latter is the case here, since the title carries a religious significance particularly among Shia Muslims that is not shared in other

Islamic countries in the region. In fact, the term itself is borrowed in Persian from the Arabic language. Its literal meaning is “a sign of Allah”, a concept that is problematic and controversial in Sunni Islam (AlSulaiman, 1993).

Other lexical shifts recorded in the data set include translating the phrase the GCC12

[capitals in the Gulf Cooperation Council] ”عواصم في مجلس التعاون الخليجي“ hawks from XS05 into in XT05. This shift possibly serves to avoid negatively describing the governments of the GGC as aggressive warmongers by using a neutral term to refer to the governments of these countries instead. In another instance in the same text, which discusses the boycott by Saudi

Arabia and three other countries of Qatar, the phrase the Saudis and their allies was

the Gulf capitals], referring to three of the four countries which] ”عواصم الخليج“ translated as

allies] activates] ”حلفاء“ are Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, and United Arab Emirates. The Arabic term a narrative of military cooperation and military action. The newspaper here probably attempts to avoid describing the boycott in a negative and hostile frame of war while also showing how this boycott is not spearheaded by one country only but is a collective decision by most of the countries of the Gulf Cooperation Council.

Another example noted in the data set involves more than just a lexical shift, even though the lexical choice made in the translation probably plays a major role in shifting the

”مفاضلة“ narrative of the source text segment. The term contradiction was translated as

[differentiation/tradeoff] in XT20 as shown below.

12 The acronym refers to the Gulf Cooperation Council which includes Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Qatar, and Oman. 76

XS20: There sometimes seems to be a bit of a contradiction between Aramco working overtime to prolong the oil age, because they know Saudi Arabia cannot entirely end this dependency, while the highest authorities in Saudi Arabia keep forecasting a technology driven, futuristic world.

يبدو في بعض األحيان أن هناك مفاضلة بين عمل شركة أرامكو اإلضافي إلطالة عمر النفط، من باب الحرص على عدم المغامرة بإنهاء تلك العضوية دفعة واحدة، وبين االتجاه اإلصالحي قوي الرهان على تواصل التنبؤ بعالم مستقبلي مدفوع بالتكنولوجيا.

XT20 back translation: At times, there seems to be a tradeoff between Aramco's extra work to extend oil life, in order not to risk ending that membership at once, and the strong reformist trend to continue to predict a future world driven by technology. [emphasis added by researcher]

The source text here refers to the Saudi Vision 2030 initiative that attempts to reduce the country’s dependence on oil as a main source of income and instead invest in diversifying the economy. It attempts to highlight the contradiction in these plans by pointing out that

Saudi Aramco, the national oil company, is still conducting its regular operations diligently.

The translation, by contrast, manipulates the sentence to convey a different view that suggests that both actions can still happen at the same time as long as they are balanced correctly. The term contradiction had to go through a lexical shift in the translation process to accommodate the other shifts in the text.

Finally, only two shifts in speech reporting verbs were recorded. In XS03, the phrase

specialists note]. This translation might] ”يالحظ مختصون“ experts say was translated in XT03 as downplay the opinion of those experts, who commend the Iranian president’s achievement in reducing the Iranian currency’s inflation, by narrating their opinion using a less assertive verb. The second instance of a lexical shift regarding speech reporting was recorded in XS01,

announced] instead. This shift also] ”أعلن“ where the verb claiming was translated in XT01 as 77 includes deletion of segments of the text and, thus, will be presented in the next subsection

4.1.2.

4.1.2 Deletion

Among all textual features investigated, deletion is the most used technique to shift the narratives in the translated texts. The instances of deletion found range from single lexical items to paragraphs. This study has already discussed in the lexical choice analysis how some adjectives were erased to shift the name of a group into a different name. Other examples of single lexical item deletion are listed in table 1 below.

ST ID Source phrase TT ID Translation Back Translation attempt محاولة XS02 tortured attempt XT02 leaving a vacuum ترك فراغ XS02 allegedly leaving a vacuum XT02 threats تهديدات XS02 grave threats XT02 the president الرئيس XS03 centrist president XT03 Its finance of terrorism تمويلها اإلرهاب XS03 alleged finance of terrorism XT03 Table 1: Deletion of single lexical items in the translations of Al Eqtisadiah

السياسة الخارجية المشوشة تخيم على “ Three of these examples are from XT02, which is titled

the messy foreign policy hangs over Obama's legacy]. The text discusses a number] ”إرث أوباما of blunders that have tarnished President Obama’s two terms in office. The source text XS02 mentions his tortured attempt to avoid intervening in Syria. The adjective tortured was eliminated in the translation, which erases the struggle that the president was facing when he took that decision. Obama was also criticized for allegedly leaving a vacuum in Syria that was filled by Russia. The translation ignores the adverb allegedly, which portrays Obama as definitely guilty of this action. The article also mentions the grave threats facing the United

States after Obama leaves office. The adjective grave was omitted in the translation, which tones down the seriousness of these threats. These shifts have possibly been introduced to the translation to align the text with the official narrative view of the Saudi government,

78 which sees Obama’s administration as pro-Iranian and blames it for its inaction in the Syrian crisis.

In XS03, which discusses the terrible state of Iran’s economy, the adjective centrist was erased when the article mentioned the Iranian president. This shift denies the president’s political affiliation in the Iranian political spectrum, which puts him in the same narrative position as the hardline conservatives in his country. The adjective alleged was also erased when the article mentioned Trump’s notice to Iran for its alleged finance of terrorism.

This deletion shifts the position of the country from being accused of financing terror to being certainly guilty of it. One final example that is not listed in the table above was found in XS07, where the agent, OPEC, in the passive sentence they’ve been burned time and again by OPEC was erased. Erasing the agent of a passive sentence also entails erasing the preposition by. The original text blames OPEC for not cutting oil production fast enough as it promised, which caused some traders to be less optimistic about the oil trade. The translation, on the other hand, removes OPEC’s agency in a possible attempt to shift the responsibility away from the organization.

Deletion also involved longer portions of the text, such as phrases, clauses, and sentences. For example, in XS02 again, supporters of Obama argue that he has played a steadying role that has shored up American influence and opened up new opportunities. The

لعب أوباما دورا “ dependent clause was deleted in the translation, which was rendered simply as

Obama played a role that leads to stability]. The translation here might be] ”يؤدي إلى االستقرار an attempt to downplay Obama’s achievements in his presidency. It might also attempt to avoid any negative implications related to those new opportunities, which might be interpreted by the readers to refer to the nuclear agreement with Iran. In the same text, the

79 author suggests that Obama’s inaction on Syria after Assad used chemical weapons on his own people allowed Russia to intervene decisively on its behalf two years later. This was

allowed Russia to intervene]. This deletion] ”سمح لروسيا بالتدخل“ rendered in the translation as has two effects: it downplays Russia’s role in Syria, by erasing the adverb decisively, which in turn avoids portraying Assad’s regime in a stronger position in the Syrian war, and it gives the reader an impression that this intervention was a direct and immediate result of Obama’s inaction. XS01 discusses the oil production cuts promised by OPEC and mentions that The trick is now to assess if the cuts are real or whether it’s just posturing. This was translated as

the worthwhile issue now is to assess whether] ”األمر المجدي اآلن هو تقييم ما إذا كانت التخفيضات حقيقية“ the reductions are real]. The clause after the coordinating conjunction has been erased completely, since it hints at the possibility that OPEC, which is led by Saudi Arabia, is either lying about its intended cuts or is too weak to enforce these cuts on its member states.

Deletion also involved erasing longer segments of the source texts that can sometimes range up to whole paragraphs. Most of these paragraphs contained ideological views that are not aligned with those of the newspaper and, thus, have been removed. Some deletions, however, appear to be neutral and might have been removed due to time limitations on the translation or due to limited space, since these articles are also published in the printed version of the newspaper. The following are examples of some of these paragraphs.

XS01: But with each supertanker carrying more than 2m barrels of crude, the data can be noisy. By January 12, exports had rebounded from Saudi Arabia, UAE and Kuwait, putting them on a par with October, according to Clipper Data.

XS03: Meanwhile, Iran imposed sanctions on 15 US companies for alleged human rights violations and co-operating with Israel, state news agency IRNA reported on Sunday, said Reuters.

XS07: Prince Mohammed bin Salman, who was placed next in line for the Saudi throne by his elderly father this week, has staked his popularity on transforming the desert kingdom’s economy and reducing its reliance on oil.

XS15: Occidental, which has loaded supertankers at sea, this year tested whether a mammoth supertanker could dock at its oil terminal in Corpus Christi, Texas. Others are finding ways to reduce transportation and freight costs to make Asian sales more profitable.

XS16: But the foreign investment flows Prince Mohammed is banking on to back his vision have yet to flow into the kingdom on a scale that matches the vocal approval his ideas have generated. And the challenge he faces is complicated by past failures: the kingdom has previously announced bold reform plans that were not fully realised — including economic zones that were supposed to rise in the desert but never got off the ground.

The paragraph from XS01 may have been deleted because it claims that Saudi oil production has increased, which indicates that it is not keeping its promise to cut down production. The paragraph from XS03 might have been deleted by the translator as a comment on Iran’s ability to impose sanctions on US companies. Such a claim might be considered a mere reactionary empty gesture. Both XS07 and XS15 show how even neutral paragraphs might be deleted. The paragraph in XS07 was probably removed because the information in the paragraph is common knowledge among the Saudi readers of the newspaper. On the other hand, the paragraph in XS15 might have been deleted due to space or time limitations facing the translator, since the information in the paragraph can be said

81 to be irrelevant to Saudi or Arab readers. The paragraph from XS16, however, is a different story. The paragraph suggests that Prince Mohammed’s vision might fail after all, diminishes the support it received as mere vocal approval and paints the people behind it as unable to learn from past mistakes. Since ‘Vision 2030’ relies heavily on the support of the Saudi people, deleting this negative prediction about the vision is a predictable outcome.

Another observation to be noted here is that some cases of deletion involved substitution of the deleted portions with added information. One example of this is from

XT17, which discusses the ramifications of Trump’s tax reform plan on airline companies in the Arab Gulf region. The source text names three of the biggest airline companies in the region, including Qatar Airways. The translation, however, simply removes the name of the

and another Gulf airline] in one] ”خطوط جوية خليجية أخرى“ Qatari airline and replaces it by

another airline] in another instance. In XS02, the author mentions] ”خطوط أخرى“ instance, and that President Obama had sparred with allies in Israel and Saudi Arabia. The translator in

في الشرق “ XT02 chose to delete both countries from this statement and replace them with

in the Middle East]. The translator here is possibly trying to avoid linking the two] ”األوسط countries, since doing so might give the reader an impression that these two countries are allies. This is a result of narratives circulating at the time in anti-Saudi media that suggest that Saudi Arabia is secretly working with Israel against Arab unity and interests.

A final observation is that deletion might also lead to lexical choice shifts. One example of this is from text XS01, where the translator deleted the underlined segments and

تعكف منذ فترة “ announced] and had already cut to] ”أعلن“ changed the lexical items claimed to

had been working for some time on cutting]” as shown below. While the source text] ”على portrays the Saudi minister’s words as not necessarily accurate, the translation rejects this

82 narrative and shifts the text to construct a narrative of a country that is working diligently to make the cuts and keep its promise. This is done by deleting the critical portions of the text, shifting the reporting verb to a more assertive one, and changing the tense of the verb cut.

XS01: While the Gulf states have been very vocal about how much they are cutting, with Saudi Arabia’s oil minister claiming on Thursday that the kingdom had already cut production below 10m barrels a day — the lowest in two years — Daniel Gerber wants to see at least two weeks’ shipping information first.

وأعلن وزير النفط السعودي يوم الخميس أن المملكة تعكف منذ فترة على تخفيض اإلنتاج إلى مستوى دون عشرة ماليين برميل يوميا أدنى مستوى لها منذ عامين

XT01 back translation: Saudi Arabia’s oil minister announced on Thursday that the kingdom had been working for some time on cutting production below 10m barrels a day — its lowest in two years. [emphasis added by the researcher]

4.1.3 Addition

Instances of addition in the translations by Al Eqtisadiah were limited in quantity and were mostly for the purpose of explicitation. Some of these examples are provided below.

XS01: working for the sanctions-hit Rhodesian government

العمل لدى حكومة روديسيا العنصرية التي تعرضت لعقوبات

XT01 back translation: Working for the racist government of Rhodesia that has been subjected to sanctions.

XS01: gives it an edge

هذا يعطيها ميزة تتفوق بها على الشركات األخرى

XT01 back translation: which gives it an advantage to be superior over other companies.

XS05: accuse the gas-rich emirate

يتهمون قطر، اإلمارة الغنية بالغاز

XT05 back translation: accuse Qatar, the gas-rich emirate

racist] to explain the clause] ”العنصرية“ In XT01, the translator added the term regarding the sanctions against the Rhodesian government. Another instance can be found in the same text where the translator gives more details about what that advantage would give the company in question. Another instance can be found in text XT05 where the translator makes explicit the name of the gas-rich emirate as shown above.

However, one instance was found where the translator adds information that might be ideologically motivated. In XS05, which discusses the boycott of Qatar by the four countries mentioned earlier, the clause The Saudis, seconded vociferously by the United Arab

Emirates was extended in the translation to include Egypt, and the names of the countries were changed to the capitals of those countries. The translation in XT05 was rendered as

.[Riyadh and Cairo, strongly supported by Abu Dhabi] ”الرياض والقاهرة، المدعومتان بشدة من أبو ظبي“

This change is probably an attempt by the translator to avoid attributing the boycott only to countries of the Gulf Cooperation Council. Instead, the translator uses background information to explicate the statement in order to portray the action as being taken by a coalition of Arab countries, especially since Egypt is viewed as a major player in the Arab world. The use of the capitals instead of the countries might be an attempt to refer to the

84 governments and policy makers of those countries rather than risk referring to the peoples of those countries.

4.1.4 Sentence structure

As expected, only a limited number of shifts were found in sentence structure. XS01, which discusses OPEC’s promised cuts in oil production, asks: will they actually deliver all the promised cuts? The translation in XT01 erases the agents referred to by the pronoun they in

هل سيتم “ :the translation, in this case OPEC member states, by using the passive voice instead

Will all promised cuts actually be implemented?] Again, the] ”بالفعل تنفيذ جميع التخفيضات الموعودة؟ pattern adopted by the newspaper is possibly an attempt to avoid portraying a negative view of OPEC, since that, in turn, might convey a negative view of Saudi Arabia. Another instance was found in XS05, where the sentence starts The Saudis accused Qatar’s foreign minister.

This was translated in XT05 in the passive voice without mentioning who made these

accusations were levied against Qatar’s foreign] ”كيلت االتهامات لوزير الخارجية القطري“ :accusations minister]. This gives the reader the impression that these accusations were coming from more than one source, which makes these accusations more credible. A final instance was noted in the same text XS05, where the sentence Saudi Arabia has long feuded with Qatar was

-There is a long] ”هناك نزاع طويل األمد بين السعودية وقطر“ shifted in the translation to read as standing dispute between Saudi Arabia and Qatar]. The translation here changes the structure of the sentence to remove Saudi Arabia from the foregrounded subject position and instead background both parties. While the source statement relates the action to Saudi

Arabia, the translation removes that completely.

4.2 Paratextual Analysis

This section of the analysis will focus on three paratextual elements in the translations published by Al Eqtisadiah. First, an analysis will be conducted to investigate the selection strategies used by the newspaper regarding what articles are translated. This feature will be investigated across all the translated articles by Al Eqtisadiah in 2017 rather than only on the 20 articles in our data set. Second, an analysis will be conducted to compare the headlines in the translations with the ones in the source articles and to investigate how these headlines reframe the narrative position of the source articles. Finally, an analysis will be conducted on the photographs used in the translations against the ones used in the source texts.

4.2.1 Selection strategies

Financial Times is a newspaper dedicated mostly to financial news and analysis. It is a very popular financial newspaper, with 910,000 readers for its print and digital formats in

2017 (FT.com, 2018) compared with The Wall Street Journal’s 2.64 million average global issue sales in 2018 (WSJ.com, 2018). Its website Ft.com averaged 22 million viewers per month in the six months from October 2018 to March 2019 (SimilarWeb.com, 2019b).

Translating articles from such a widely circulated newspaper adds value to the translating newspaper, particularly since Al Eqtisadiah is also dedicated to financial news and analysis.

It gives it access to well established financial authors covering a wide range of business news, in addition to specialists who cover specific regions and businesses that are of interest to Al

Eqtisadiah’s readers. This is evident in the data set, where news articles about the Gulf region are usually authored by a limited number of authors. However, looking at the articles produced by some of these authors on ft.com, a significant number of articles about Saudi

Arabia or the region as a whole have not been translated by Al Eqtisadiah. This might be a decision made by the newspaper because the topics these articles cover are already covered by the newspaper’s local reporters and analysts or because the content of these articles is not suitable for publishing due to its critical nature. Studying deselection strategies, unfortunately, is beyond the scope of this research project. It can be argued, however, that

Al Eqtisadiah’s choice of which authors to translate is limited by three factors: their work at

Financial Times, the subjects they write about, and the articles Al Eqtisadiah chooses to translate for its readers. These factors might limit the number of articles translated about

Saudi Arabia and the Gulf region in general, since it would be difficult to find such positive articles from the small pool of authors writing for Financial Times about the Arab Gulf region.

This claim is supported by the analysis of the topics translated that will be discussed next.

Topic (Arabic search terms) Number of articles Percentage of total Saudi Arabia (Saudi, Riyadh, OPEC, Aramco, 8 0.49% Mohammed, Salman) Qatar (Qatar, Doha, Tamim, boycott, Al 6 0.36% Jazeera) Iran (Iran, Tehran, nuclear agreement) 2 0.12% USA (America, United States, Washington, 133 8.17% the White House, Pentagon) Trump (Trump, president) 71 4.36% China (China, Beijing) 112 6.88% UK (United Kingdom, Britain, Brexit, 81 4.97% England) Banks (bank, banks, banking) 56 3.44% Investment (investment, investors, invest) 79 4.85% Markets (market, markets) 129 7.92% Total number of translated articles in 1627 2017 Table 2: Number of articles translated per topic in Al Eqtisadiah

As for the topics of the articles translated, a corpus analysis was conducted on the headlines of the 1627 articles collected from Al Eqtisadiah’s website. A number of critical terms were investigated to determine how many articles were translated on each topic. The 87 list of terms covers some of the issues usually discussed in political commentary pages in this and similar news outlets. The results were reviewed for any repetition or false positives and are represented above in Table 2.

The results of the analysis show that even though Al Eqtisadiah translates articles about the conflict in the region, the number of those translations is insignificant compared with the overall number of translated articles. The topic that received the highest percentage of coverage in the translated articles is the United States, with 8.17% of the total translated articles. This is a common and predictable outcome, since the United States has the largest economy in the world and is home to hundreds of the world’s biggest banks, stock markets, and tech companies. China also received a substantial portion of coverage with 6.88% of the total translated articles. Again, this is predictable since China has the second largest economy in the world and has been growing substantially lately.

Yet, there are signs of selective appropriation in the translations by Al Eqtisadiah. The newspaper published six translated articles, two directly about Saudi Arabia and four about

OPEC, all of which are positive or made positive through textual shifts as discussed above in

4.1. On the other hand, all the translated articles about Qatar and Iran carry a negative view of the two countries. The following are examples of the Arabic headlines of some of these ideologically charged texts, along with their back translations.

أرامكو السعودية تطلق محركات نقلة االقتصاد النوعية نحو الغد

Saudi Aramco launches engines of an economy paradigm shift towards tomorrow

االتفاق السعودي - الروسي خريطة طريق لدعم أسعار النفط

The Saudi – Russian agreement is a road map to supporting oil prices

قطر المعزولة تدفع ثمن الرهان الخاسر على إيران واإلخوان

Isolated Qatar pays for the losing bet on Iran and the Brotherhood

فاينانشيال تايمز: قطر تمول المتطرفين في المنطقة بمليار دوالر

Financial Times: Qatar funds extremists in the region by $ 1 billion

رفع العقوبات يفشل في تخفيف متاعب اإليرانيين

The lifting of the sanctions fails to ease the Iranians' troubles

By only translating positive articles about Saudi Arabia, or by shifting the translation and the headlines to present a more positive image of Saudi Arabia, Al Eqtisadiah uses selective appropriation to reframe the country in a stronger position financially, politically and otherwise. The newspaper subscribes to the narratives of a Saudi Arabia with a bright and prosperous future while suppressing other negative narratives. On the other hand, the newspaper also subscribes to narratives of a treacherous Qatar that attempts to break the unity of the GCC and supports questionable groups in the region.

4.2.2 Headlines

The headlines analysis conducted for this research project involves comparing the translated headlines against their source texts to locate any shifts that might skew the narrative position of the article. The results show mostly minor shifts involving rewording of the main topic of the source headlines. However, some major shifts were also noted where the translated headline carries a different main topic than the source headline.

One example of the minor shifts in the translated headlines includes text XS01, which is titled Global oil flow trackers set to keep Opec honest. The translated headline in XT01 was

the attention of the oil] ”أنظار الصناعة النفطية تتركز على مدى االلتزام بتخفيض اإلمدادات“ rendered as industry is focused on the commitment to reduce supplies]. Both headlines focus on the same topic: the promised cuts in oil production promised by OPEC. However, the source headline suggests that OPEC might be dishonest if these cuts are not met, which was avoided in the translation by putting the responsibility for those cuts on a hidden agent. Another example of these minor shifts can be found in text XS05, which is titled Qatar pays the price for betting

قطر المعزولة تدفع ثمن الرهان الخاسر على إيران “ on the Brotherhood. This was translated in XT05 into

Isolated Qatar pays for the losing bet on Iran and the Brotherhood]. The headline] ”واإلخوان goes through two changes where Qatar was first described as isolated and Iran was added to the list of things Qatar bet on. Even though Qatar’s support for the Muslim Brotherhood is a major point of contention between it and the four boycotting countries, the narrative in the media of these four countries also focuses on Qatar’s relationship with Iran, which goes against the unified policy of the GCC countries. Another example can be found in text XS13,

مجموعات الطاقة “ which is titled Big Oil bets on a dash for gas. This was translated in XT13 as

Big energy groups betting on oil’s bad cousin]. Both headlines] ”الكبرى تراهن على ابن عم النفط السيئ introduce the same topic. The translation, however, uses a phrase that carries a negative connotation about gas as an energy source.

A number of headlines, however, were found with major shifts in their topic. One example of this can be found in text XS03, which is titled Iranian poor struggle to make ends meet. The headline here focuses on the struggle of the Iranian people to cope with the country’s failing economy. The translation, by contrast, uses the same topic but shifts the

90 focus to the sanctions against the country and how lifting these sanctions has failed to ease

رفع “ the economic stress faced by ordinary people. The headline of XT03 was rendered as

'The lifting of the sanctions fails to ease the Iranians] ”العقوبات يفشل في تخفيف متاعب اإليرانيين troubles]. It is worth mentioning here that the translator probably chose to change the headline to include one of the issues discussed in the article. Another example of a major shift in headlines can be found in XS10, which is titled Trump falls flat with climate change

The oil] ”صناعة النفط والغاز تنتظرها سنوات كثيرة مقبلة“ retreat. The headline in XT10 was rendered as and gas industry are surviving for many years to come]. The headline here shifts the topic from Trump’s decision to withdraw from the Paris Climate Agreement to the possible implications of this decision for the state of the gas and oil industries. The headline paints a positive image for the future of these industries, which in turn paints a positive image for the future of Saudi Arabia’s economy, since it relies heavily on oil exports.

The final major shift in headlines can be found in XS20, which is titled Saudi Aramco plans for a life after oil. This neutral statement about Saudi Aramco’s future was rendered in

”أرامكو السعودية تطلق محركات نقلة االقتصاد النوعية نحو الغد“ a more positive view of its future in XT20 as

[Saudi Aramco launches engines of an economic paradigm shift toward tomorrow]. It should be mentioned here that the source text lists a number of difficulties facing the company in its transition. These were deleted from the translation. In fact, this text, in particular, had the most deleted portions in our data set, with around 800 words removed in the translation.

The translation, like the headline, ends up only portraying the transition in a positive way, unlike the source article.

4.2.3 Photographs

The most notable finding in the analysis of the photographs used in the translations is that Al Eqtisadiah uses only one photograph or no photographs at all in its translations, despite some source articles having upwards of five photographs and infographics. This trend might be dictated by space limitations in the print format, since the translated articles appear in both print and digital formats. Another reason, as discussed in the previous chapter, might be due to copyright laws and pricing for using these images. This is also a reasonable conclusion, since two of the texts in our data set about the oil industry (XT08 and

XT15) use the same image of an oil well worker wearing proper safety gear.

As for the changes in photographs, none of the twenty translated articles in the data set had the same photograph as the source articles. Instead, most of the photographs used in the translations are similar to the ones replaced. For example, the main photograph used in

XS16 is of the Saudi Crown Prince standing next to the managing director of the IMF while waving to attendants at the opening ceremony of the Future Investment Initiative

Conference in Riyadh. The translation also uses a photograph of the prince from the same conference. The photograph used in XT16 is of the prince addressing the crowd during a session of the same conference. This is a local event, which suggests that the newspaper sent in photographers and used its own photographs in the translated text. Two texts also use an image of the newspaper’s logo instead, which might suggest that the print version of the translated article appeared without an accompanying photograph.

Figure 1 Left: Photograph used in XS03. Right: Photograph used in XT03

Of the photographs used, only two used in the translated texts suggest a shift in the source’s narrative. The first photograph displayed above to the left in Figure 1 shows the supreme leader of Iran addressing a crowd at a shrine in an Iranian city. This photograph was used in XS03, which discusses the political and financial situation in Iran. It foregrounds the supreme leader, who was described in the text as the ‘ultimate decision maker’ in Iran, and it shows his massive following to indicate his power over the country. The translation, however, uses a different photograph, that of an elderly Iranian worker, who is probably too old for such manual labor, building a wall. It should be mentioned that the source text starts by addressing the case of a 38-year-old Iranian builder named “Ibrahim” who is struggling to provide for his family. A back search for the photograph used in the translation showed that it was taken in 2008 and, thus, cannot be a photograph of “Ibrahim” who is the subject of this 2017 article. As mentioned earlier, the headline of the translation was shifted to focus on the deteriorating economic situation in Iran despite the sanctions on the country being lifted. The photo used in XT03 highlights this shift and works to support its narrative.

Figure 2 Left: Photograph used in XS05. Right: Photograph used in XT05.

The second set of photographs, displayed above in Figure 2, shows the photographs used in XS05 and XT05, respectively. While the source text uses a photograph of pigeons flying over Doha’s corniche with massive skyscrapers in the background, the translation portrays a different narrative. It uses a photograph of a Qatari man in Qatar’s stock exchange looking at screens displaying stock market prices that are covered with red text that indicates decreasing stock share prices. The newspaper’s view on the effectiveness of the boycott is shown here in the stark difference between the two photographs, where one indicates prosperity while the other indicates financial trouble.

4.3 Discussion

This chapter begins by introducing the results of the textual and paratextual analyses conducted on the data set of twenty articles translated and published by Al Eqtisadiah along with their twenty source texts published by Financial Times. These results show that Al

Eqtisadiah has limited its translations to articles published by a single newspaper. This is a widely used method for smaller newspapers and news outlets to publish news and analytical content from bigger, more prestigious news organizations. The limitation of translating from one newspaper is probably a financial decision, since such syndication agreements can be

94 costly for small newspapers. Financial Times offers republishing contracts that allow other media outlets to translate and republish content from FT.com while also using the Financial

Times’ name and logo (FT.com, n.d.). Therefore, by relying on one widely known and prestigious source for their translated content, Al Eqtisadiah will benefit financially and professionally.

Looking at the topics of the headlines of the articles translated by Al Eqtisadiah in

2017, it can be argued that this smaller newspaper has benefited from this business relationship. It brought it access to content created by experts in various financial fields and allowed it to complement its own content using the content of a well-known brand name in the field of business news. The minimal coverage of the conflict in the Arab Gulf region proves the intended direction of the newspaper.

Despite this, however, there are indications that the newspaper used translation to propagate certain narratives circulating in the region while suppressing others. One indication of this is the fact that all six articles critical of Qatar were translated after Saudi

Arabia, followed by other Arab and Muslim countries, announced it was cutting all ties with

Qatar. This might be a sign of the newspaper’s attempt to campaign to reshape the narrative about the crisis. On the other hand, the fact that all six articles were published in the span of one month, June 2017, suggests that this was a short campaign or it was essentially an effect of the excessive amount of coverage this issue received in international news media.

Yet, when Al Eqtisadiah translates ideologically charged articles about the region, it still uses translation to reframe and construct certain narratives. This is evident in both the textual and paratextual analyses conducted for the research project. The shifts in the translations of these ideologically charged articles indicate an active attempt by the

95 translator and the newspaper to construct a narrative that distances extremist ideology from

Sunni Islam and the notion of Islamic Jihad. This is a common narrative in the region’s media, since the Sunni countries of the region have also been victims of terrorist attacks and mostly condemn the actions of the terrorist groups that associate with Islam. This narrative also delegitimizes and villainizes the terrorist group known as ISIS. It also rejects the group and rejects its narrative about itself and its so-called “state.” The constructed narrative further distances the Syrian resistance from the agenda of this and other terrorist groups.

As for the Saudi frames, the translations portray Saudi Arabia in a strong economic position by reframing its current economic transition in an optimistic way. This is done by removing the negative criticism from the translated articles. It is also done by constructing a positive image of OPEC and its leadership while erasing criticism of the organization and the possible limited future for the oil and gas industries. The articles selected for translation about Saudi Arabia both have positive headlines, which highlights the accomplishments and success stories related to the country’s economy.

The political frame of Saudi Arabia also constructs a narrative of a strong and decisive country that is keen on the unity of the Gulf Cooperation Council and the Arab world. The newspaper also legitimizes the actions of the GCC countries and portrays them as a unified bloc concerned by the actions of Qatar that are breaking this unity toward a peaceful and prosperous area. The constructed narratives in the translation condemn Qatar’s actions and paint them as risky and ill-advised. It narrates the boycott of Qatar as a reasonable reaction to concerning actions that weaken and isolate the perpetrator.

In the single translated article about Iran, the newspaper uses translation to construct an image of an economically failing country that prefers to support its militant arms in the

96 region rather than work on improving the lives of its citizens. It also portrays President

Obama, who spearheaded the efforts behind the nuclear agreement, as weak, indecisive and compromising the peace of the region for his own personal glory. It strips him of his achievements and portrays the United States in a better light after the end of his presidency.

These are all narratives that are widespread in the region’s media, specifically the media outlets in Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, Egypt, and Bahrain among other countries. Most of these narratives are parallel to the publicly stated policies of the region’s countries, including those of the governments of the four countries.

CHAPTER 5: ASHARQ AL-AWSAT: DATA ANALYSIS AND DISCUSSION

Overview

This chapter reviews the results of the analysis conducted on the translations published by the London-based, privately-owned, pan-Arab newspaper Asharq Al-Awsat.

The data set consists of twenty translations published by the newspaper in 2017 along with the source texts obtained from the websites of three newspapers: the New York Times,

Washington Post, and Bloomberg. These texts were investigated for textual and paratextual shifts, as mentioned in Chapter 3. The first section of this chapter focuses on the analysis of the textual shifts encountered and lists representative examples for each type of shift. The second section focuses on the analysis of the paratextual elements surrounding the translated texts. The final section presents the researcher's discussion and overall conclusions on the results of the textual and paratextual analyses.

5.1 Textual Analysis

Based on elements from Critical Discourse Analysis, this section of the chapter starts by comparing the twenty translated texts against their source texts. The analysis is conducted by locating any shifts in the translated texts compared with their source texts, based on textual elements drawn from the linguistic toolkit established by Critical Discourse

Analysis. These are shifts in lexical choice, deletion of source text content, addition or explicitation of information, and shifts in sentence structure. The shifts will be discussed

98 based on the framework of Narrative Theory and the concept of framing as introduced by

5.1.1 Lexical choice

The analysis of the data set for shifts in lexical choice showed that most of these shifts were in the naming of certain groups or individuals. Some of these shifts were driven by common practices in journalism, while others might be ideologically motivated. Other types of lexical shifts that might be ideologically motivated were very limited in quantity. The following are examples of these shifts.

A pattern was observed regarding the naming of the terrorist group ISIS, also known as Daesh, that is similar to what was observed in the translations in Al Eqtisadiah. Again, the

the] ”التنظيم“ Daesh] or] "داعش“ terms ISIS and the Islamic State were translated as

”داعش“ organization]. The acronym ISIS was mentioned once in YS07 and was rendered as

[Daesh] in YT07. The author of text YS18 uses the term the Islamic State once and then uses the acronym ISIS eleven times throughout the text. The translated text YT18 renders the first

Daesh organization]. As for the remaining instances, the] ”تنظيم داعش“ mention of the group as

the] ”التنظيم“ Daesh] in ten instances, and the term] ”داعش“ translation makes use of the term organization] in one instance. Finally, YS20 uses the term the Islamic State in four instances.

Daesh organization]” in three] ”تنظيم داعش“ The translation, by contrast, renders these as

Daesh] in the last instance. This pattern shows how Asharq Al-Awsat] ”داعش“ instances and subscribes to the narratives in the region that delegitimize and mock this group.

YS18: But even after the terror militia set up its "state," "the people of the region did not want invasion-sized forces to return," the ex-secretary recalls.

لكن حتى قبل أن تؤسس الميليشيا اإلرهابية كيانها المزعوم، "لم يرغب سكان المنطقة في عودة قوات ضخمة بحجم يشبه قوات غزو"، حسبما ذكر الوزير السابق

YT18 Back Translation: But even before the terror militia established its alleged entity, “the people of the region did not want the return of large forces in a size similar to invasion forces” according to the ex-secretary [emphasis added by researcher]

Another interesting shift concerning the terror group can be found in YS18. In the source text segment presented above, the author discusses ISIS and uses the term “state” in

alleged] and replaces the] ”المزعوم“ quotation marks. The translation, however, adds the term

entity]. It also shifts the time of the statement before the establishment] ”كيان“ term state with of the “state” rather than after. The translator here is probably trying to avoid describing the terrorist organization “entity” as a state, which is in line with the narratives of ISIS in most of the Arab media. Adding the term alleged might also serve to question the truth behind the

state] indicates something much bigger] ”دولة“ existence of such state, where the Arabic term and complex than what a terrorist group calls a “state.” The time shift, however, appears to imply that the Iraqi people have always been against large forces fighting in their country.

There are also other naming shifts that might be ideologically motivated. The controversial term jihadis was used twice in YS20. Both instances were rendered in YT20 as

the hardliners]. On the other hand, the term Sunni Islamist was used in YS10 and] ”المتشددين“

the Islamist hardliners]. It appears that the] ”المتشددين اإلسالميين“ was translated in YT10 as newspaper here also adopts a narrative position similar to that of Al Eqtisadiah, whereby it

100 rejects the association of terrorism with certain sects of Islam and avoids linking the Islamic notion of Jihad to terror groups. However, the newspaper does not reject the link between

Islam and some terror groups, as evident in the last example mentioned. Yet, one instance of this is not enough to reach any concrete findings about this issue. Another shift is the

[Doha] ”الدوحه“ translation of the collective noun Qataris from YS10, which was rendered as in YT10. This is probably an attempt to limit the responsibility for the actions described in the article to the government of Qatar rather than to all Qatari people as the collective noun might insinuate in Arabic.

On the other hand, a number of lexical shifts in naming were probably motivated by common practices in journalism and in the Arab region. One example of these is the acronym

MBS referring to Saudi crown prince Mohammed bin Salman, which was used in two source

”ولي العهد الجديد“ texts: YS01 and YS11. In YT01, the translation of the acronym was rendered as

األمير محمد “ the new crown prince]. In YT11, the second instance of the term was rendered as]

prince Mohammed bin Salman]. This is an expected lexical explicitation shift, since] ”بن سلمان acronyms are rarely used in Arabic. In addition, it is considered respectful to address or talk about someone using their formal name and title or their preferred kunya.13 The term Persian

the Arabian Gulf] in YT15. This] ”الخليج العربي“ Gulf from YS15 was also expectedly rendered as

الرئيس “ is the most common translation for the name of the gulf in the region. In YT09, the title

the Chinese president] is used instead of the actual name Xi Jinping in YS09. This is a] ”الصيني common practice in journalism, where job titles are used specifically for those whose names are not considered common knowledge to everyone.

13 This is a name honorably given to someone based on the name of a direct relative. The most common form of this is the use of the term Abu (father of) or Umm (mother of) followed by the name of the person’s eldest born child. 101

In addition to the previous naming shifts, two more shifts in naming were recorded that involve deletion or explicitation. The first was found in YS10, where the phrase the

these countries]. The preceding] ”هذه الدول“ Persian Gulf countries was rendered in YT10 as sentence mentions the names of these countries, which suggests that this shift is possibly an attempt to avoid repetition and enhance cohesion while also avoiding the use of the term

Persian Gulf, since the term used in the region is the Arabian Gulf. The other instance was

the four] ”الدول األربع“ found in YS01 where the term the Saudis was rendered in YT01 as countries]. Here the source term was explicated to include all four countries boycotting

Qatar, probably to show that the conditions that were conveyed to Qatar to end the boycott were not made by Saudi Arabia alone but by all four countries. This can also be an example of explicitation, where background information is added to the text.

Other types of lexical shifts include the term prevented in text YS02, which was discussing Obama’s inability to speak frankly about constraints facing his country because

”إمتنع“ of his sensitive position as commander in chief. This was translated in YT02 as

[refused], which erases the reason behind his inability to speak frankly and portrays it as a decision he made for other reasons. The article in YS06 discusses Trump’s comments about

Saudi Arabia during his election campaign. The term negative rhetoric, which was used in the

the issued] ”التصريحات الصادرة“ source text to refer to those comments, was translated as statements] in YT06. This might be an attempt by the translator to soften the negative tone of the source term, which in turn plays down the importance of those comments. Finally, in

YS10, the phrase the Saudis felt emboldened was used to describe how the Saudis felt about

The Saudis] ”السعوديين شعروا بدفع أكبر“ Qatar after Trump’s visit. This was translated in YT10 as felt a bigger push]. The shift here was probably driven by the fact that the term emboldened

102 portrays Saudi Arabia as afraid and unable to act without consent and support from the

United States.

5.1.2 Deletion

Deletion of segments of the source texts was again the most common textual shift in the translations. These segments ranged from single lexical items to paragraphs. Most of these instances of deletion are ideologically motivated. However, there was a considerable number of instances where the deletion was probably motivated by space limitations, as will be discussed in this subsection.

One example of deletion of single lexical items was found in YT02, which discusses

Obama’s support for the Arab Spring. The source text indicates that this support was in defiance of old allies like Saudi Arabia and Israel. However, the translator omits Israel from the Arabic text, probably to avoid linking the two countries. The Iranian and Qatari media have been suggesting lately that Saudi Arabia was conducting backdoor talks with Israel, something that the Saudi government denies completely. The translation here probably attempts to avoid linking the two countries, a tie that might be construed as a sign of the validity of those claims. Another example can be found in YS07, where Iran’s work on the delivery mechanism for an eventual nuclear weapon was discussed. The term eventual was removed from the translation in YT07, possibly in an attempt to increase the intensity of the threat of Iran’s nuclear power and its claimed peaceful nuclear program. In YS18, the author suggests that the United States’ interests are not aligned with certain countries of the region such as Iraq, Iran, Russia, Turkey, the Assad government in Syria and the Gulf states. The translation in YT18, however, erases the last phrase the Gulf states. The countries of the Gulf region have always stated that the United States is an ally that shares the interests of the Gulf

103 countries and their peoples. The translation here might be an attempt to convey this idea by rejecting the author’s claim and erasing it completely. Finally, YS19 discusses how some Arab countries saw Obama as a pro-Iranian president. The text states that the Saudis and the rest of the Sunni Arab world share this view of Obama. The translation in YT19, however, avoids the sectarian motivation behind this view by simply omitting the term Sunni, probably to indicate that this is an Arab issue rather than a Sunni Muslim one.

Longer segments have also been deleted from the translations. These are some examples of these shifts where the erased segments are underlined.

YS01: Already some of the salary cuts he imposed to reduce the budget deficit have been rolled back given the opposition they engendered.

YS02: Iraq was liberated from Saddam Hussein, but the result was sectarian warfare, fueled by a struggle between Iran and Saudi Arabia.

YS08: That said, the focus of Trump’s visit was surprisingly narrow and, as a result, involved some missed opportunities.

YS10: Sensing their opportunity, the Emiratis, Saudis and Bahrainis urged Tamim to scale back Qatar’s regional activities.

The translation of the first example in YT01 deleted the last segment that suggested that the Saudi government’s decision to roll back the salary cuts was motivated by opposition from the Saudi people. The government’s public narrative is that these cuts were reinstated after the economy bounced back due to the measures taken at the time. The translation here aligns with this view while also avoiding making any negative remarks about the political situation in Saudi Arabia, especially in the post-Arab Spring period. In the second example, the translation in YT02 deleted the last clause of the sentence that suggests that the sectarian

104 war in Iraq is made worse by the conflict between Saudi Arabia and Iran. This was probably erased to distance the Saudi-Iranian conflict from being motivated by sectarianism. It has been the public narrative of the Saudi government to consider the Iranian issue a political one between two countries rather than between two sects. Moreover, Saudi Arabia has always criticized Iran’s support for the armed sectarian militias in Iraq, Lebanon and Yemen.

To suggest that the sectarian war is fueled by the conflict between the two countries portrays

Saudi Arabia as also supporting armed sectarian militants in the region, something that it vehemently denies. The deletion here is probably an attempt to align with the Saudi narrative of the conflict in Iraq as being exacerbated by terrorist groups and by Iran’s interventions and support of armed militias.

Another interesting example shown above can be found in text YS08, which suggests that Trump’s visit to Saudi Arabia was limited in its achievements due to its narrow focus.

The translation in YT08 erases this criticism completely and instead translates the sentence in a way that highlights the achievements that have been made instead. The phrase that said

.[in the light of this] ”وفي ضوء ذلك“ at the beginning of the sentence was also translated as

While the source term is used to introduce a concessive statement, the translated term is used to introduce a result instead. Finally, the sentence in YS10 starts by implying that the countries boycotting Qatar took those steps only after Qatar faced some failures in its foreign policy and after Al Jazeera had lost Arab viewers. The translation in YT10 rejects this by deleting the phrase sensing their opportunity. This is probably to avoid portraying these countries as opportunistic and unable to take similar actions under normal circumstances.

The textual analysis has also shown that deletion involved longer segments that can range up to a whole paragraph of the source text. Only a few of these paragraphs have an

105 ideological view that is not aligned with that of the newspaper. Most of the remaining instances expressed neutral ideological views or views aligned with the ones espoused by the newspaper. The following are examples of these deleted paragraphs.

YS02-A: Mr. Obama not only adapted to the shape of Middle Eastern power politics, but he also largely overlooked human rights abuses by Saudi Arabia, Israel, Egypt and other allies. The Bush administration’s patronizing rhetoric of democracy promotion was shelved, but this came at the cost of reducing American concerns in the Middle East to terrorism and national security.

YS02-B: At first glance, the twists and turns of Mr. Obama’s Syria policy made the president seem indecisive, if not incoherent: calling for Mr. Assad to step down without taking direct action against him, even after the regime’s use of chemical weapons in defiance of Mr. Obama’s “red line”; attacking the jihadists of the Islamic State while allies like Turkey and Qatar supported other extremist groups; opposing Russian designs and then coordinating airstrikes with Moscow. But the aim of keeping American troops out of Syria was consistent. At his final news conference as president, Mr. Obama expressed anguish over the fall of Aleppo, but insisted that his Syria policy had been guided by his sense of “what’s the right thing to do for America.”

YS04: Perhaps. But Iran negotiated the current nuclear deal only after the U.S. imposed and enforced sanctions that cut its banking system off from the international economy and cut off its ability to export oil. Those so- called secondary sanctions crippled Iran's economy, because they applied not only to Iran but also to any foreign entities that did business with it.

106

What's to say the threat of bringing back those sanctions won't persuade America's European allies to try to fix the nuclear deal's flaws? It worked before.

YS05: Others in the administration, including CIA Director Mike Pompeo and senior strategist Steve Bannon, have argued against the deal. In some ways this is not surprising. Pompeo was one of the pact's harshest critics when he was in Congress. Bannon has been opposed to most international agreements, from the Paris accord on climate change to the Trans-Pacific Partnership.

For now, it's worth watching what Trump administration officials say about the agreement. One talking point from White House officials on Monday was that the administration considered Iran to be in breach of the spirit, if not the letter, of the nuclear agreement because, they say, the bargain's purpose was to enhance regional stability.

YS16: So was all of this worth it? We know what the West got out of the nuclear deal: a temporary suspension of Iran's nuclear program and increased transparency into its stockpiles, enrichment facilities and laboratories. At the time the Obama administration told us that in exchange, the U.S. had to lift only the crippling nuclear sanctions against Iran. It turns out the price was much higher.

Six full paragraphs totaling 626 words were deleted from YS02, which discusses

Obama’s legacy. The first example listed above (YS02-A) was deleted from the middle of the text, while the remaining five paragraphs, including the second example listed above (YS02-

B), were at the end of the article. The first example (YS02-A) carries criticism of President

Obama but levies a charge of human rights abuses against three countries, including Saudi

Arabia. This could have been avoided by simply deleting the names of some or all of these

107 countries. Yet, the translation omits the whole paragraph. At the same time, five more paragraphs were deleted from the end of the article. Some of these are critical of President

Obama’s legacy as shown in the second example (YS02-B). It portrays him as weak and concerned only with his country’s interests, limiting the role of the United States as a peace- keeping superpower. The text also accuses Qatar of supporting extremist groups, although it was published a few months before the boycott of Qatar. The paragraph was still deleted nonetheless. The remaining examples shown above from YS04, YS05 and YS15 are also ideologically aligned with the public Saudi narratives that criticize the nuclear agreement with Iran. All this suggests that these paragraphs were deleted only because of space limitations or time constraints relating to the translation process. A look at the printed version of the articles shows that most of these articles are published in a very limited space in two pages dedicated to opinion articles (Figure 3). The limited space of two pages, which must accommodate a number of original and translated commentaries, in addition to the daily political cartoon, might be the reason behind these deletions. This is probably a decision made by the editor rather than the translator.

108

Figure 3 Opinion pages in the printed version of Asharq Al-Awsat

5.1.3 Addition

The textual analysis of the data set located some instances of addition. Most of these seem to have been motivated by common practices in journalism or by standard Arabic writing style. Two examples can be found in the translation of YS06, which mentions the operation of the Arab coalition led by Saudi Arabia to restore the Yemeni president. When

the] ”العلمية السعودية“ the operation was mentioned again in the text, it was rendered in YT06 as

Saudi operation]. The second example can be found in the same text, where the phrase the

”الدولتين الكبيرتين“ two nations, referring to Saudi Arabia and the United States, was translated as

[the two great states]. The first example might be a simple example of explicitation in Arabic translation, while the second might be considered a standard practice in Arab newspapers when discussing such occasions. In YT12, the term meetings, which refers to James Mattis’

his high-level] ”إجتماعاته رفيعة المستوى“ meetings during his visit to the region, was rendered as

109 meetings], possibly to indicate the level of people he met. This is also a common practice in

Arab newspapers when discussing such diplomatic occasions. In the same text, the phrase

مطار الشعيرات التابع للنظام “ on a Syrian airfield was explicated in the translation and rendered as

the Syrian regime’s Shayrat airport]. The name of the airfield has been mentioned] ”السوري before in Arab media in relation to chemical bombings carried out by the regime and other incidents. Thus, the use of the name of the airfield in the translation is expected here, even though it might possibly be ideologically motivated.

A limited number of additions were found to be ideologically motivated. Two examples of this can be found in YT05, where the source text uses the phrase regional aggression, which refers to Iran’s intervention in the region. The translation renders this

Its ongoing aggression in the Middle East]. The] ”عدوانها المستمر في منطقة الشرق األوسط“ phrase as addition to the translation here serves to suggest that Iran’s aggression is an ongoing problem. In the same text, the author claims that Iran was pushing the edges regarding its compliance with the terms of the nuclear agreement. The translated article rendered the

experimenting with American reactions in] ”تختبر ردود الفعل األميركية بصور رعناء“ phrase as reckless ways]. The addition here is probably a comment on Iran’s commitment to the nuclear agreement and might portray Iran as a country that does not respect its obligations.

In YS06, the author suggests a way for the United States and Saudi Arabia to get Qatar to stop

دعمها “ its support for extremist groups in the region. The phrase in YT06 was translated as

its continued support], presumably in an attempt to portray that support as an] ”المستمر ongoing problem. Finally, YS20 discusses Obama’s inaction toward Assad’s use of chemical weapons against his people. However, when Trump ordered the strike on Assad’s forces, the author noted that Trump did actually order the 59-missile strike. The translation in YT20,

110

Trump did what Obama did not do]. The] ”فعل ترمب ما لم يفعله أوباما“ however, states that translator here probably attempts to remind the readers of what had already been discussed regarding Obama’s inaction. This repetition only serves to emphasize this image of Obama as weak and unable to act or keep his “red line” promise.14

5.1.4 Sentence Structure

Only two instances of sentence structure shifts were recorded in the data set, both of which are passivization shifts. The first instance was found in YS03, which discusses the anti- corruption crackdown in Saudi Arabia and claims that the King and his son have ordered the

وقد صدرت أوامر بإلقاء “ arrest of hundreds of officials. The translation in YT03 renders this as

orders have been issued for the arrest] of those officials. The deletion of the agent] ”القبض على here is possibly an attempt to distance this action from being solely made by the King and his son, instead portraying it as a legitimate action issued by law enforcement. The second instance can be found in YS17, which states that the Omani government paid the Iranians to release American hikers. The translation in YT17, however, deleted the agent here and

funds] ”كما دفعت األموال لإليرانيين مقابل اإلفراج عن بعض السياح األميركيين“ rendered the statement as were also paid to the Iranians for the release of a few American tourists]. The translation avoids portraying Oman as working against the GCC countries’ interests and public policies of cutting ties with the Iranian government. Oman has long taken a neutral stance within the

GCC regarding Iran and even recently Israel. Yet the issue is never discussed in Saudi-owned media.

14 This is in reference to “the red line” statement by President Obama that if Assad uses chemical weapons against his people, it would warrant the United States intervening with military action. 111

5.2 Paratextual Analysis

This section of the analysis will focus on three paratextual elements in the translations published by Asharq Al-Awsat. First, an analysis will be conducted to investigate the selection strategies used by the newspaper regarding what articles are translated. This feature will be investigated across all the articles translated by Asharq Al-Awsat in 2017, rather than only on the 20 articles in our data set. Second, an analysis will be conducted to compare the headlines in the translations with the ones in the source articles and to investigate how these headlines change the narrative position of the translated articles.

Finally, the use of photographs in the translated articles will be discussed.

5.2.1 Selection strategies

Asharq Al-Awsat [The Middle East] is a pan-Arab newspaper that translates opinion columns from three prestigious newspapers. One of the main news outlets that is syndicated in Asharq Al-Awsat is Bloomberg Opinion, a division of Bloomberg News. The main service website Bloomberg.com averaged 81 million views a month in the six months from October

2018 to March 2019 (SimilarWeb.com, 2019a). In 2017, the newspaper translated 220 opinion pieces from Bloomberg Opinion. Asharq Al-Awsat also translates opinion columns from the New York Times, which averaged 313 million views a month in the six months from

October 2018 to March 2019 (SimilarWeb.com, 2019c). In 2017, the newspaper translated

113 opinion pieces from the New York Times. Asharq Al-Awsat also translates from

Washington Post, which averaged 186 million views a month in the six months from October

2018 to March 2019 (SimilarWeb.com, 2019d). In 2017, the newspaper translated 89 opinion columns from Washington Post. Finally, Asharq Al-Awsat also translates articles that have been written specifically for Asharq Al-Awsat by Western journalists and diplomats.

112

These totaled 26 translated articles in 2017. All this grants the newspaper a wide range of authors and topics to translate.

Topic (Arabic search terms) Number of Percentage articles of total Saudi Arabia (Saudi, Riyadh, OPEC, Aramco, Mohammed, 8 1.7% Salman) Qatar (Qatar, Doha, Tamim, boycott, Al Jazeera) 5 1.1% Iran (Iran, Tehran, nuclear agreement) 23 5.1% USA (America, United States, Washington, the White House, 67 14.9% Pentagon) Trump (Trump, president) 59 13.1% Russia (Russia, Putin, Kremlin, Moscow) 41 9.1% UK (United Kingdom, Britain, Brexit, England) 24 5.3% Syria (Syria, Damascus, Assad, Bashar, chemical weapons) 23 5.1% China (China, Beijing) 7 1.5% Total number of translated articles in 2017 448 Table 3: Number of translated articles per topic in Asharq Al-Awsat

Table 3 above presents the results of an analysis conducted by searching the headlines of all translated texts in Asharq Al-Awsat in 2017 for certain keywords. The results show that the number of articles directly related to Saudi Arabia and Qatar is relatively fewer than translated articles about world politics. Iran, by contrast, has been covered far more extensively than Saudi Arabia and Qatar. This shows how important issues related to Iran are in the view of the newspaper. Most of the articles here are represented by negative headlines and mostly involve discussion of the nuclear deal, Iran’s intervention in Syria, or its support for terrorist organizations in the region. Syria has also been covered extensively compared with Saudi Arabia and Qatar. This also indicates the importance of the events in this country according to this newspaper. The number of articles translated about the remaining topics mentioned in the table above is higher, as expected. This is a common trend in almost all newspapers, where superpowers receive the lion’s share of news and commentary coverage. All this shows that although the newspaper translates articles related

113 to the conflict in the region, it is mostly more concerned with Iran and sees it as a regional threat. Its translations of articles about Qatar are limited and probably motivated by journalistic practices rather than being engaged in a media campaign against the country.

As for the authors translated, the analysis shows that three authors were extensively featured in the translations by Asharq Al-Awsat. These three authors are David Ignatius with

46 articles translated, Leonid Bershidsky with 44 articles translated, and Eli Lake with 33 articles translated. A look at their authors’ pages on the newspaper’s website shows that they discuss an array of topics regarding world politics and security. David Ignatius’ author page is the only one of the three that includes a brief introduction about him. It reads:

صحافي وروائي. وهو محرر مشارك وكاتب عمود في صحيفة واشنطن بوست. كتب ثماني روايات، بما في ذلك جسد األكاذيب

Back translation: Journalist and novelist. He is an associate editor and columnist for The Washington Post. He has written eight novels, including Body of Lies

The description, which is also a feature for other less translated authors, provides the reader with an overview of the authors translated. This also adds to the prestige and credibility that the newspaper constructs around its translated texts. It should also be mentioned here that one of the positive texts translated about Saudi Arabia was written by an author who was only translated once in Asharq Al-Awsat, while a second text was written by an author who was translated only twice in Asharq Al-Awsat. Again, selection strategies play a major role here in what topics or authors to translate in order to express certain views about the countries of the region or to add to the prestige and credibility of the newspaper.

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The translations, however, show a clear pattern of selective appropriation where the newspaper publishes only positive narratives about Saudi Arabia, while choosing negative articles to translate about Qatar and Iran. The following are examples of the Arabic headlines of some of these texts.

الطريق إلى السعودية الجديدة

The road to the new Saudi Arabia

السعودية كما يحلم بها أمير شاب

Saudi Arabia as dreamed by a young prince

عن عزل قطر ومعاقبتها

On the isolation and punishment of Qatar

قطر... الترويج لتغيير األنظمة وحشد األموال

Qatar ... promoting regime changes and fundraising

اإلرهاب اإليراني في األرجنتين ولحظة العدالة

Iranian terrorism in Argentina and the moment of justice

ترمب ينهي "عصر التنازالت" مع إيران

Trump ends "era of concessions" with Iran

The above are examples of the headlines used for the articles discussing the parties to the conflict in the region. Both headlines used for the Saudi Arabia articles project a rosy image of a strong and prosperous future for the kingdom, while the content of these articles has also been translated in a way that projects a similar image. By contrast, the articles related to Qatar and Iran carry negative headlines and mostly negative content. The articles 115 about Qatar project an image of a problematic state that seeks to forcefully change the region’s regimes and that hence should be isolated and punished. The articles on Iran discuss its terrorist links and how the world had to make concessions to appease the country and comply with its demands in relation to the nuclear issue. These are common narratives in

Saudi and Arab media regarding the conflict in the region.

5.2.2 Headlines

The headlines analysis conducted for this research project involves comparing the translated headlines against their source texts to locate any shifts that might skew the narrative position of the article. The results show that most of these headlines were close to the original. However, some minor and major changes were found in the translations of the ideologically charged articles related to the countries of the region.

Most of the translated headlines were translated literally or with minor textual changes that do not shift the focus from the main topic of the article. One example of the headlines that have been translated literally can be found in YS02, which is title Obama

أوباما كان “ Hoped to Transform the World. It Transformed Him. This was translated in YT02 as

Obama was hoping to transform the world but he] ”يأمل إحداث تحول في العالم فتحول هو شخصيًا personally transformed]. Another example can be found in YS15, which is titled Trump's New

سياسة ترمب الجديدة تركز على “ Policy Will Focus on Iran's Meddlers. This was translated in YT15 as

.[Trump's new policy focuses on Iran's agents] ”وكالء إيران

Other headlines were also translated closely to the original with minimal changes that do not change the topic of the article. One example can be found in YS08, which is titled How

Trump can confront Iran without blowing up the nuclear deal. This was translated in YT08 as

How can Iran be confronted without canceling the] ”كيف يمكن مواجهة إيران دون إلغاء االتفاق النووي؟“

116 nuclear deal?]. The translation uses the passive form of the question, which removes the agency of Trump. This implies that such action of confronting Iran should be taken by the international community or at least by the superpowers of the world rather than by a single person. Another example can be found in YS13, which is titled Congress demands clarity on

تساؤالت “ Trump administration’s dealings with Qatar. The translation in YT13 renders this as

Questions by Congress about Qatar]. The translation erases the party being] ”للكونغرس حول قطر questioned and instead implies that these are general questions about the behavior of Qatar.

A number of headlines used for the translated articles were changed completely from the source headlines. One example can be found in YS06, which is titled Qatar Crisis Shows

Risk of Trump's Saudi Reset. The headline here and the article suggest that the steps taken by

Saudi Arabia and other Arab countries against Qatar might prevent the Saudi-US relationship reset after it was strained during Obama’s two terms in office. The translation in YT06, however, provides a more general topic that implies that the article will discuss the crisis.

On the isolation and punishment of] ”عن عزل قطر ومعاقبتها“ The headline was translated as

Qatar]. The translation’s headline and the translated article itself avoid directly mentioning the author’s opinion on the consequences of the boycott for the Saudi-US relation. Another example can be found in YS10, which is titled in a question form Why key Arab countries have cut ties with Qatar — and what Trump had to do with it. The translation, however, removes

قطر... الترويج لتغيير األنظمة “ the mystery of the question and provides and answer in the title as

Qatar ... promoting regime changes and fundraising]. A final example can be] ”وحشد األموال found in YS16, which is titled Obama's Alternative Facts on the Iran Nuclear Deal. The

Has Cassandra operation] ”هل فككت عملية كاساندرا ضد حزب هللا؟“ translation in YT16 is titled against Hezbollah been dismantled?]. The translation shifts the focus to one of the main

117 points discussed in the article, when Obama’s administration eliminated a security operation that was supposed to dismantle Hezbollah’s drug trafficking network. This was done, according to the article, to prevent the operation from affecting the nuclear deal negotiations.

5.2.3 Photographs

Asharq Al-Awsat is the only newspaper in this research project that does not use photographs from the source texts. In fact, it does not use any photographs related to the article at all. Instead, it uses only a small photograph of the author of the source article, as shown in Figure 3 in the previous section of this chapter. The reason, as discussed earlier, is probably the limited space allocated for opinion articles. The articles on the website are the same as those published in the print version of the newspaper. This limits the size allowed for each article, since the print version allocates two pages for its original Arabic and translated opinion columns. Using expressive photographs related to each article would limit the space further and force the newspaper to publish fewer articles. The lack of expressive images also plays into mimicking the traditional format of opinion columns before the age of the internet. This paints the newspaper as a traditional newspaper that cares for the content rather than the look of its pages.

However, the small portraits of the authors of these articles do not seem to be used arbitrarily. The photos of these well-known authors provide a certain level of prestige and credibility to these articles and in turn to the newspaper. They give these authors a level of importance and portray their opinion as expertly crafted from reliable sources. This is particularly relevant in the age of the internet, where anonymous people write online behind made-up usernames. Having a portrait of the authors of the articles can help boost the readers’ trust in these authors and in the newspaper as well.

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5.3 Discussion

Asharq Al-Awsat uses translation as a means to add to its analytical content and to achieve prestige. The sources it chooses to translate from are all very well-known and prestigious newspapers. This is also apparent in the topics the newspaper chooses to translate about, which are mostly articles about world politics written by very accomplished authors. The use of author descriptions on the newspaper’s website also indicates that the selection process is based on prestige and experience of these authors. The selection strategy used by the newspaper mostly serves these purposes of complementing the newspaper’s content and increasing its visibility and prestige. This is also evident in the selection of topics to be translated, where the newspaper mostly focuses on international news. It rarely translates opinion columns about the Arab world, since these are usually covered by its own columnists.

Yet, the newspaper still translates articles about the sides in the conflict, even though these translations might not be considered significant in volume, specifically the translations about Saudi Arabia and Qatar. The choice of these articles, however, shows a pattern of selective appropriation by the newspaper in selecting texts that align with its own narrative position. These texts mostly portray Saudi Arabia in a positive light or are altered textually for this purpose. The selected translations are also critical of Iran, the nuclear deal, and former US President Barack Obama. The translations also go through textual and paratextual shifts that serve to propagate certain narratives while erasing others.

In the context of terrorism and violent groups, the newspaper uses neutral naming strategies to avoid linking these groups to certain religions or specific sects. It also uses textual alterations to distance these groups from the Islamic notion of Jihad. The newspaper

119 adopts the popular Arab media narrative of rejecting the terrorist group known as ISIS in its translation of the group’s name. It uses naming shifts to delegitimize the group, reject its narrative of itself, and villainize it. It also denies its status as a “state.”

The Saudi narratives are framed using textual and paratextual features to portray certain views. They portray a leading country that is working to restore the unity of the Gulf

Cooperation Council through making tough decisions in unison with other Arab countries. It is also portrayed as working with allies in the world to become a strong and thriving country with a promising future and as benefiting politically and financially from these relationships.

The narratives expressed by the newspaper also reject the claims in anti-Saudi media that link the country to Israel and accuse it of holding secret meetings and talks with the Israeli government.

Those narratives also align with Saudi views on the dangers of allowing Iran to develop nuclear technology. They narrate the conflict with Iran as a political one motivated by Iran’s ambitions in the region, rather than a sectarian conflict. They portray Iran as a dangerous and reckless country that continuously supports militant groups in the region.

The narratives also paint a negative image of the nuclear deal that was signed during

Obama’s presidency. As a result, these narratives paint him as pro-Iranian and willing to compromise and appease the Iranian hardline government at the cost of the region’s stability.

Although the narratives expressed by the newspaper through its translations about

Qatar do agree with those of the Saudi government, they are not as critical of it as the previous newspaper investigated in this research project. The narratives are minimally altered to express the view that Qatar indeed supports the Muslim Brotherhood, which is

120 viewed by the newspaper as a terrorist group. Those shifts mostly appear in the headlines of the texts and in the deletion of some controversial segments from the texts. The newspaper also frames the boycott of Qatar as a legitimate action made to isolate Qatar and punish it financially and diplomatically. It portrays the action as a collective decision made by the GCC countries and other leading Arab countries.

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CHAPTER 6: ARABI21: DATA ANALYSIS AND DISCUSSION

Overview

This chapter reviews the results of the analysis conducted on the translations published by the Arabic-language online news outlet Arabi21. The data set consists of twenty translations published by the news outlet in 2017 along with the source texts obtained from the websites of various source newspapers. These texts were investigated for textual and paratextual shifts, as mentioned in Chapter 3. The first section of this chapter focuses on the analysis of the textual shifts encountered and lists representative examples for each type of shift. The second section focuses on the analysis of the paratextual elements surrounding the translated texts. The final section presents the researcher's discussion and overall conclusions on the results of the textual and paratextual analyses. It should be noted here that the first 10 texts in the data set directly discuss issues about Saudi Arabia, while the second 10 texts directly discuss issues about Qatar. Unlike the previous data sets, the number of articles directly discussing Saudi Arabia and translated from English source texts was 218, while the number of articles directly discussing Qatar and translated from English source texts was 87. This large volume of articles directly discussing these two parties to the conflict allows for the data set to be exclusively compiled of ideologically charged articles directly discussing these two parties to the conflict. Thus, the data set is divided between the two parties to ensure that we can investigate how the news outlet treats the translations on each party to the conflict.

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6.1 Textual Analysis

Analysis. These are shifts in lexical choice, deletion of source text content, addition or explicitation of information, and shifts in sentence structure. The shifts will be discussed based on the framework of Narrative Theory and the concept of framing as introduced by

6.1.1 Lexical choice

The analysis of the data set for lexical shifts showed a large number of shifts in naming and in other lexical choices. This increasing number might be attributed to the fact that all twenty texts directly discuss Saudi Arabia or Qatar. The ideologically charged texts are expected to cause more ideological shifts. The following are examples of these shifts.

One particular deviation in the results of this analysis, compared to the results of the past two outlets, lies in the way Arabi21 treats the names of the terrorist group ISIS, also known as Daesh. A pattern was observed here where all instances of the names of the group

the state organization]. The acronym ISIS was used twice in] ”تنظيم الدولة“ were translated as

ZS11 and once in ZS13, ZS18, and ZS19. In all these instances, the news outlet rendered the

the state organization]. The term Islamic State was used twice in] ”تنظيم الدولة“ translation as

”تنظيم الدولة“ both ZS08 and ZS19 and once in ZS12. Again, all these instances were rendered as

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[the state organization]. Text ZS08 uses two other names to describe the group: the Sunni

تنظيم “ extremist group and Daesh. In both instances, the translation in ZT08 was rendered as

the state organization]. This is a common practice in Qatari news outlets. A simple] ”الدولة

Daesh] yields 1238 results in the news] ”داعش“ search on Al Jazeera’s website for the term

the state organization] yields 25920] ”تنظيم الدولة“ section, while searching for the term results.15 The term used here stands in what appears to be a middle ground between the

[organization] ”تنظيم“ Arab media and the international media. It uses the negative term

(Baker, 2006b, p. 120) while also acknowledging that the group is a state. This might be an attempt by the news outlet to appear neutral and professional. Although Al Jazeera

the Islamic State organization], it does] ”تنظيم الدولة اإلسالمية“ sometimes uses the full name as not appear that Arabi21 uses the full name in the data set.

Another deviation was found in the translations of the term Jihadi. The term jihadis was mentioned in ZS09 to refer to Al-Qaeda and ISIS. In the translation in ZT09, the term was

jihadis]. In the same text, the phrase extremist jihadi groups was] ”جهاديين“ rendered as is

jihadi groups]. Again, in ZS11, the term jihadists] ”جماعات جهادية“ rendered in the translation as was mentioned to refer to ISIS militants. The translation in ZT11 again renders the term as

jihadis]. Finally, the term jihadi extremism was mentioned in ZS13 and was] ”جهاديين“ is

jihadis]. The term extremism was probably omitted because] ”جهاديين“ translated in ZT13 as

jihadis] to refer exclusively to these extremist] ”جهاديين“ the newspaper uses the Arabic term organization. Using the Arabic “” [jihadi extremists] might suggest that there are non- extremist jihadis. Unlike the previous newspapers discussed in Chapters 4 and 5, Arabi21 does not attempt to distance these groups from the controversial notion of Jihad in Islam.

15 Search conducted on aljazeera.net Arabic website on April 30, 2019 124

This frames these terrorist groups as primarily motivated by religion rather than by politics or sheer violence, as they are portrayed in the Arab and Islamic media.

Other naming shifts include the translation of the segment from ZS13 They are especially angered by Al Jazeera’s support for the Muslim Brotherhood, which was translated

this camp is angered by Qatar’s] ”هذا المعسكر غاضب لدعم قطر جماعة اإلخوان المسلمين“ in ZT13 as support for the Muslim Brotherhood group]. Two lexical shifts can be noticed here. First, the pronoun they referring to the Saudi bloc mentioned at the beginning of the paragraph was

.this camp], a term that associates this bloc with military action] ”هذا المعسكر“ translated as

The news outlet here possibly attempts to reframe the boycott as a military action rather

Qatar]. Al] ”قطر“ than a diplomatic one. The second shift was translating Al Jazeera into

Jazeera has always portrayed itself as a neutral and professional news network that gives a voice to the people. This shift probably attempts to avoid portraying the channel as being biased towards the Muslim Brotherhood. Even though Qatar might acknowledge its support for the group, Al Jazeera is usually portrayed as independent from Qatari politics. Another

”األزمة القطرية“ shift was noted in ZS16, where the term the Gulf crisis was translated in ZT16 as

[the Qatari crisis]. The Qatari government and its media treat the name of the country as a brand name that has to be marketed and used constantly (Kovessy, 2015). This shift probably attempts to do that by shifting the focus from the issue affecting the whole Gulf region to only affecting Qatar.

In addition to naming shifts, other lexical shifts have been recorded in the data set.

For example, the author in ZS05, which discusses UK arms sales to Saudi Arabia, claims that

تضاعف “ arms sales had risen by almost 500 per cent. The translation in ZT05 renders this as

multiplied hundreds of times]. While the text suggests a six-fold increase, the] ”مئات المرات

125 translation vastly exaggerates the increase. The same text also discusses Saudi Arabia’s attempts to shut down major ports in Yemen, which it said was to stop the flow of weapons

under the pretext of] ”تحت ذريعة وقف وصول األسلحة“ into the country. This was translated as stopping the arrival of weapons]. The reporting verb here is eliminated and replaced by a phrase that suggests that Saudi Arabia is not honest or sincere about this claim. Article ZS20 discusses the Palestinians’ reaction to the boycott of Qatar, which supports the ruling Muslim

Brotherhood offshoot there known as Hamas. The term Qatari money, which might carry

Qatari aid] instead. The] ”مساعدات قطرية“ negative connotations, was translated in ZT20 as translation avoids the source term that might carry a negative or illegal connotation and uses a more positive term, possibly to reframe the Qatari financial support to Hamas as charity.

Four more lexical shifts appeared in the same text. The shifts created a pattern that reframes the narrative in a certain way. Text ZS09 discusses the reforms being implemented in Saudi Arabia. The first shift was in the translation of the phrase in one dramatic move. This

a not very well calculated move], referring] ”بخطوة غير محسوبة جيدا“ was translated in ZT09 as to the Saudi government’s decision to cut some benefits from the salaries of the public sector.

The second instance was the translation of the phrase appease public sentiment, referring to

من أجل “ the government’s later decision to reverse these cuts. The phrase was translated as

in order to ease intensity of public anger]. The translation exaggerates] ”تخفيف حدة الغضب الشعبي the public response to the cuts by the government. The third instance was the translation of

هذه الخطوة “ the term the U-turn, referring to the reversal of the cuts. This was translated as

this failed step]. While the source term can be considered neutral toward the cause of] ”الفاشلة the decision to reverse the cuts, the translation states that it was a result of failure. Finally, the fourth instance was the translation of the phrase disburse revenue, referring to the

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توزيع “ government’s ability to pay public sector employees. The translation renders this as

Distribution of government aid]. The translation portrays an image of a] ”الحكومة المساعدات financial meltdown in the country to the point where public sector employees need government aid. The pattern of shifts here possibly attempts to reframe the country’s economy from one that is being reformed to an economy that has broken down completely.

It also portrays those in the government as failures, indecisive and fearful of their own people.

Finally, another pattern in lexical shifts was noted regarding Saudi Arabia’s boycott of Qatar. The Saudi government and other Arab countries severed diplomatic ties with Qatar, closed its only border crossing, and prevented Qatari ships and airplanes from using its airspace and sea routes. While Qatar can still have access to the rest of the world through

Iran’s airspace and its own ports, the Qatari narrative directed toward international public

”مقاطعة“ opinion insisted on describing it as a blockade. While the Saudi media uses the term

blockade/siege]. This was evident in the] ”حصار“ boycott], the Qatari media uses the term] translations by Arabi21.

In ZS18, the author claims that the four countries have suspended air, land, and sea travel to and from Qatar. While this might suggest that these countries prevented their own airlines and ships from traveling to and from Qatar, the translation translates this as

besieged it by land, sea and air]. The translation here suggests a ”وحصارها برا وبحرا وجوا“ military action that prevents any and all travel from and into Qatar. Again, in ZS19, the term boycotting in the sentence whose air, land and sea links with the boycotting nations were

which was] ”التي حوصرت برا وجوا وبحرا“ besieged] as in] ”حوصرت“ severed, was translated as besieged by land, air and sea]. Finally, in ZS20, the term isolation and the phrase put behind

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.[blockade] ”حصار“ a diplomatic and economic cordon were both translated in ZT20 as simply

More examples of the use of the term blockade will be discussed in 6.1.3 below.

6.1.2 Deletion

Deletion was found to be the most used technique to shift the narrative in the translated articles. The deletion ranged mostly from short segments to paragraphs. It should be noted that the deleted segments from the last ten texts relating to Qatar exceeded the deleted segments in the first ten texts, except for one text where almost half the article was deleted. The following are examples of the ideologically charged passages deleted and some interesting patterns of deletion.

Some of the shorter segments deleted include the term rival from the segment in ZS07 imposing an embargo on rival Qatar. The term suggests that both parties are engaged in this rivalry and thus engaged in the conflict. The translation erases the term possibly to reframe the conflict as being forced by one party over the other, who now becomes a victim. In discussing the terrorist group ISIS in ZS08, the translation erases the phrase also known as

Daesh. As mentioned earlier, Arabi21 avoids the term Daesh and instead uses the term the state organization. In the same text, a statement by Saudi and Iraqi officials indicated that one of Saudi Arabia’s largest producers of dairy products was set to open a project on the

Saudi-Iraqi border in a region that will benefit from such investment. The translation erases the segment according to Saudi and Iraqi officials, which gives the reader an impression that the statement came from the company itself rather than from officials in the two governments. This downplays the importance of the statement and casts doubts on its authenticity. The same text also indicates that some Shiite clerics aligned with Iran oppose rapprochement with Saudi Arabia. This was erased in the translation and replaced by the

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there are those who]. This omission portrays the objection as coming from] ”هناك من“ phrase regular Iraqi people rather than from Iran supporters. Both shifts might be an attempt to undermine the new reconciliation in the Saudi-Iraqi relationship since the Gulf War.

The article in ZS11 claims that the cause of the confrontation between Saudi Arabia and Qatar is Qatar’s relations with Shia Iran. The term Shia was deleted in the translation, probably to avoid involving sectarianism in the conflict. It might also be an attempt to distance Qatar from aligning itself with a rival sect, which might not be received well by its mostly Sunni audience. The translation of the same text also erases the word sectarian from the phrase Riyadh’s sectarian rival. The translation here also avoids involving sectarianism in the conflict. In ZS12, which discusses the boycott of Qatar, the author suggests that the boycotting countries share two major threats to their rule: Iran and political Islam, coupled with violent jihad. The last phrase in the sentence coupled with violent jihad was removed from the translation. It appears that this is an attempt to distance the Muslim Brotherhood, which is supported by Qatar and despised by the boycotting countries, from simply being coupled with violent jihad. In discussing Turkey, an ally of Qatar, ZS13 states that it is a NATO ally but backer of the Muslim Brotherhood. The translation uses the first part of the segment indicating that Turkey is indeed a NATO member, while deleting the second phrase about its support for the Muslim Brotherhood, probably to portray Turkey as a neutral party to the conflicts in the region and distance it from Qatari-aligned groups.

ZS19-A: prominent Muslim Brotherhood preachers who have supported violence, such as Al Jazeera broadcaster Sheikh Yusuf alQaradawi.

ZS19-B: The Muslim Brotherhood organization renounced violence in the 1970s, but since Egypt’s July 2013 coup, disaffected former members have

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formed radical splinter cells that have carried out assassinations and car bomb attacks against security forces and judges in the Sinai peninsula, Cairo and other city centers.

ZS19-C: Qatar also continues to support Hamas, the Muslim Brotherhood offshoot based in the Gaza Strip that has conducted militant campaigns against Israel.

ZS20-A: organised by ruling Islamist group Hamas.

ZS20-B: Last month Donald Trump singled out Hamas among the terrorist groups causing “a humanitarian and security disaster”, alongside Hizbollah, al-Qaeda, and so-called Islamic State. [emphasis added by researcher]

A pattern was noticed where translations about the Muslim Brotherhood group erase negative segments about the group, including articles about its Palestinian offshoot known as Hamas, as shown above. The translation in the first example (ZS19-A) deleted the segments that link Yusuf Al Qaradawi to previous fatwas that supported suicide bombers and deleted the fact that he has access to millions of Muslims through Al Jazeera TV channel.

The translation of the second example above (ZS19-B) removes the underlined term radical, in addition to the segment that describes the attacks perpetrated by those former members

”عمليات“ :of the group. The translation replaces the second segment with a single word

[operations]. The term has a negative connotation in this context, but it is much milder and more toned down than the original. The translation also deletes the remaining locations of those attacks, mentioning only Sinai and Cairo. The translation of the third example above

(ZS19-C) removes the first underlined segment that indicates the affiliation of Hamas and

war]. The narrative position of Arabi21] ”حرب“ replaces the second segment with the word is that Hamas is a legitimate political party of the Palestinian State that is engaged in a war

130 against an occupying force, whereas the original might portray the group as an illegal militant group engaged in dubious activities. The fourth example above comes from the last text in the data set (ZS20-A). The translation here avoids negatively describing Hamas as an

Islamist group, which possibly distances it from other groups in the region. This is echoed again in the next example (ZS20-B), where the translation deletes two segments that equate the group with terrorist groups working in the region.

ZS12-A: Qatar's ruling family, the Al-Thani's, have long supported the Muslim Brotherhood, which espouses a pan-Islamic caliphate that would ultimately do away with current rulers.

ZS12-B: In April this year it has been reported that a staggering $1bn (£784m) ransom was paid by Qatar to terrorist groups in Iraq, some of it to Iran, in order to secure the release of 26 princes kidnapped while hunting a large game bird called a bustard.

Qatar denies it.

ZS13: although it is similarly sinister insofar as both amount to Qatar’s embrace of the upheavals of the so-called Arab Spring. As the present emir’s father, Hamad bin Khalifa al-Thani, told Nicolas Sarkozy in 2009, when the then French president urged him to stop backing Hamas, the Palestinian branch of the Brotherhood, “one has to ride the tide of history”.

ZS15: Qatar TV later reported the emir’s alleged speech on its evening news program before the government communications office claimed — belatedly, on May 24 — that the QNA website had been hacked and false statements posted on it.

Many text segments that discuss the reasons behind the boycott of Qatar were also erased. Two examples of this are listed above (ZS12-A, ZS12-B), where both paragraphs were

131 removed completely from the translated article. The first paragraph discusses one of the main reasons of the boycott, namely Qatar’s support for the Muslim Brotherhood group. The second paragraph discusses an example of such support where Qatar was accused of funding terrorist groups in Iraq and meeting a prominent leader of the Iranian Islamic Revolutionary

Guard. Qatar insists that the money was a ransom for its kidnapped citizens, while the Saudi narrative insists it was motivated by a malicious agenda. The paragraph from ZS13 was also deleted completely. Finally, one of the reasons behind the boycott circulated in Saudi media was a speech attributed to the Qatari Emir commending Iran’s stabilizing role in the region.

The quote that angered the Gulf countries who had already cut diplomatic ties with Iran was later denied by the Qatari government, which claimed that the Qatari News Agency’s twitter account was hacked. The underlined segment in ZS15 that was deleted in the translation gives a different account of what has happened. The translation deleted this segment, possibly in an attempt to reject this claim completely.

A final pattern observed in the translations concerns deletion of segments that portray Qatar in a negative or weak image. An example of this can be found in ZS12, where the sentence So now airspace has been closed, imports stopped at borders, Qatari expatriates expelled was deleted from the translation. The sentence portrays a negative image of Qatar’s economy as a result of the boycott, which probably resulted in its deletion in an attempt to reject this image. In ZS13, the sentence the minuscule but rich and ambitious emirate of Qatar

the small and rich Qatar] instead. The term] ”الدولة الصغيرة الثرية قطر“ was translated as minuscule was replaced by the toned-down term small, while the term ambitious, which might be open to negative interpretations, was deleted from the translation. The article in

ZS18 contains a decent number of similar instances, one of which discusses how Qatar

132 doesn’t need to follow Saudi’s dictates the way it would if its survival were predicated on it. The last part of the sentence the way it would if its survival were predicated on it, referring to

Qatar’s oil production, was removed from the translation. While the original sentence portrays Qatar in a strong position, since its economy does not rely heavily on the price of oil, the translation simply portrays Qatar as being stronger regardless of the reasons. A similar shift was noted in the translation of the clause since Saudi Arabia can’t rein in Qatar using its dominance over oil, where the last part of the clause using its dominance over oil was removed. Again, the translation here portrays Qatar as strong against Saudi Arabia without explaining that it is in a financially strong position. Finally, two paragraphs were also deleted from the same text, as shown below. Both paragraphs discuss the possible consequences of the boycott of Qatar and paint a less than optimistic view of its economy.

ZT18: Saudi has closed its land border with Qatar, through which Qatar imports most of its food; residents of the country are worried about the possibility of long-term shortages. And the list of demands Saudi wants Qatar to submit to in order to end the punishment effectively calls for it to discard everything that makes Qatar independent. Among other things, it calls for the country to nearly sever ties with Iran and Turkey and shut down Al Jazeera completely.

There are also questions about what will happen to Qatar’s recently announced agenda to expand its liquefied natural gas production by 30 percent over the next five to seven years. The countries boycotting Qatar could discourage companies like Exxon Mobil — which has important relationships throughout the region — from investing in Qatar’s expanded liquefaction operations. Without that corporate investment, Qatar would have to spend a great deal more money to pull off its initiative.

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6.1.3 Addition

One of the stark shifts in addition in the translations of Arabi21 involves the use of reporting clauses at the beginning of each and every paragraph in 18 out of 20 texts in the data set. Summaries at the beginning of every translation were added as well. Other types of addition were also noted in the analysis. The following are examples of instances of addition in the translated texts.

Both ZT02 and ZT10 start with three introductory paragraphs that summarize the articles. These are followed by a phrase that indicates the start of the translation of the article. Both texts were then translated directly. For the remaining 18 texts, however, this was not the case. These usually also start with a summary of the article or a translation of the sub-headlines from the source text. The text, however, is reported using reporting clauses at the beginning of every paragraph in the translation. For example, the translation in ZT09 starts with the following introductory paragraphs:

كتبت نائبة رئيس برنامج الشرق األوسط والباحثة البارزة في معهد الدراسات الدولية )تشاتام هاوس( في لندن جين كيننينمونت مقاال، حول البرنامج اإلصالحي لولي العهد السعودي الجديد األمير محمد بن سلمان، الذي قالت إنه يعد بإصالح كل شيء غير النظام السياسي.

وتقول الكاتبة في المقال المنشور على موقع المركز إن ابن سلمان ال يشعر بالضغوط للقيام بعملية إصالح سياسي، لكن المعارضة له لن تبقى ساكتة إلى األبد

ZT09 Back translation: The vice president of the Middle East program and senior researcher at the Institute for International Studies (Chatham House) in London, Jane Kinninmont, wrote an article on the reform program of the new Saudi crown prince, Prince Mohammed bin Salman, in which she said he promises to reform everything other than the political system.

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The author says in the article posted on the institute’s website that Ibn Salman does not feel the pressure to carry out a political reform, but the opposition will not remain silent forever.

Every paragraph that follows this introduction starts with a different reporting

the author] ”وتعلق الكاتبة قائلة“ ,[Kinninmont adds] ”تضيف كيننينمونت“ :clause. Some of these are

Kinninmont points in her article] ”وتشير كيننينمونت في مقالها، الذي ترجمته عربيcomments saying], “21

”وتخلص كيننينمونت إلى“ the author finds that], and] ”وتجد الكاتبة أن“ ,[that was translated by Arabi21

[Kinninmont concludes]. This pattern of additions can be found in 18 out of all 20 texts in the data set. The reported segments oscillate between direct reporting using quotation marks or indirect reporting.

These additions might derive from a number of reasons. First, these additions might enable the news outlet and the translators to add their own voice to the translated articles.

Where the segment is aligned with ideological views of the news outlet, it is reported using assertive speech-reporting verbs such as remark, explain or conclude. On the other hand, segments that are questioned or rejected by the news outlet might be reported using less assertive speech-reporting verbs such as claim or accuse or neutral verbs such as say or thinks. Second, these additions might serve to increase the importance of the text and portray it as dramatic and exceptional (Fairclough, 1995, p. 56). These additions might also give the reader the impression that these texts are written by authoritative figures (p. 56). Third, these additions might allow the news outlet to shift the genre of the text from an analytical report to a news report. This allows the news outlet to make extreme edits to the source text similar to those edits made to news items that are based on multiple source texts. Finally, this might shield the news outlet from any legal liability or public condemnation that might

135 arise from any inaccurate or controversial claims in these texts. Using reported speech allows the reporter to both associate with and distance from the author of the source text (p.

56).

Other additions to the translation of Arabi21 include the translation of the phrase rounded up in an extraordinary corruption crackdown, referring to the crackdown on corruption in Saudi Arabia where many officials and princes were held in the Ritz-Carlton

ألقي القبض عليهم ضمن إجراءات غير عادية بحجة مكافحة “ hotel in Riyadh. The sentence was rendered as

.[rounded up in extraordinary measures under the pretext of combating corruption] ”الفساد

The translation questions the source’s narrative about the actual reasons behind the arrest

under the pretext]. It paints an image for its] ”بحجة“ of those people by adding the phrase readers of a sinister plot instead of a possibly legal action. Another addition was noticed following the clause despite mounting evidence of war crimes from ZS05. The translation adds

because of the] ”بسبب القصف الجوي للتحالف الذي تقوده السعودية“ a phrase after this clause that reads aerial bombing of the Saudi-led coalition]. The translation foregrounds the reason behind the accusation of war crimes and highlights the Saudi role in the coalition, even though the coalition includes numerous other countries, including Qatar before its role was suspended after the boycott. Another addition was also noted in the same sentence which continues as war crimes and massacres at hospitals, schools and weddings. The translation deletes the term

and vital infrastructure in the] ”والبنى التحتية الحيوية في البلد“ weddings and replaces it with country]. The source text dated November 8, 2017, probably refers to an incident that took place in 2015.16 The coalition denied carrying out any bombing operations during the time of the incident. Moreover, the incident occurred at a time when Qatar was still part of the

16 https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-34388463 136

coalition. The deletion of the term probably indicates a narrative position similar to that of

the coalition of denying this particular incident where an explosion was reported to have

taken place during a wedding. The addition still, however, condemns the coalition for other

incidents.

The source text in ZS09 mentions the war in Yemen and interjects that it is the first

war Saudi Arabia has led since the state was formed. The translation in ZT09 renders the text

which is considered the first] ”التي تعد الحرب األولى التي تقودها السعودية ضد جارتها منذ إنشاء المملكة“ as

ضد “ Saudi-led war against its neighbor since the creation of the kingdom]. The added phrase

against its neighbor], can only be interpreted negatively among Arab and Muslim] ”جارتها

readers, since kindness to one’s neighbor is a very popular notion in Arab and Muslim

cultures. The translation thus puts the Kingdom’s involvement in a negative light from an

Arab and Muslim cultural perspective. Another interesting example can be found in the

translation of ZS19, where the article quotes Mokhtar Awad, a research fellow at George

Washington University’s Program on Extremism. The quotes discuss the dangers to the

region posed by the Muslim Brotherhood group. Some of these quotes read Qatar has been

consistently undermining the Egyptian regime, These actors [the Muslim Brotherhood] are

embedded in the heart of the country and they are able to destabilize, and They pose a more

realistic threat of overthrowing the government than al-Qaeda or Islamic State ever can with

their campaigns in the Sinai. The translation adds the following phrases before each of the

ويمضي في زعمه “ Awad is claiming], and] ”عواد يزعم“ ,[Awad claimed that] ”وزعم عواد أن“ :quotes

he continues his claim saying]. The additions question the validity of the claims and] ”قائال ً

expert opinion of Awad. They downplay an expert’s opinion by adding these reporting

clauses with less assertive reporting verbs. A final example can be found in ZS11, where the

137 sentence A month after Prince Mohammed’s statement a terrorist attack took place in Tehran,

بعد شهر من “ targeting parliament and Ayatollah Khomeini’s tomb was translated in ZT11 as

”تصريحات األمير بن سلمان حول إيران، قام جهاديون تابعون لتنظيم الدولة باستهداف البرلمان اإليراني ومرقد اإلمام الخميني

[A month after Prince bin Salman's remarks about Iran, jihadis affiliated with the state organization targeted the Iranian parliament and the shrine of Imam Khomeini]. In this example, the phrase terrorist attack was explicated to jihadis affiliated with the state organization. The addition of the term jihadis here along with their affiliation possibly attempts to link the Prince directly to the terrorist group, which is what the Iranian government and media suggested after the event but failed to substantiate.

6.1.4 Sentence structure

The only changes in sentence structure recorded were caused by the news outlet’s use of the reporting clauses at the beginning of every paragraph, as discussed earlier. In addition, some of the shorter paragraphs were combined into longer ones in the translation.

This is probably a style choice by Arabi21 to project a unified format in the translated texts.

ZS05-A: There is also fresh concern over the Kingdom’s attempt to shut all air, land and sea ports into Yemen, which it said was to stop the flow of weapons but will also halt aid imports.

الفتا إلى أن هناك مخاوف من محاولة المملكة إغالق المجال الجوي والمعابر البحرية والبرية، بشكل يمنع من وصول المساعدات للسكان؛ تحت ذريعة وقف وصول األسلحة بعد الصاروخ الذي وصل العاصمة الرياض.

ZT05-A back translation: pointing out that there are fears that the Kingdom's attempt to close the air space and sea and land crossings, in a way that prevents the arrival of aid to the population; under the pretext of

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stopping the arrival of weapons after the rocket that arrived in the capital Riyadh.

ZS05-B: The products being sold include Raytheon’s Paveway IV bomb, which was found at the scene of an air strike that hit vital food stores in January last year, and the Brimstone, Storm Shadow, PGM 500 Hakim and Alarm missiles.

وبحسب التقرير، فإنه تم العثور على قنابل "ريثون بيفوي آي" في مخزن لألغذية، قصف في كانون "الثاني/ يناير، باإلضافة إلى "بريمستون" و"ستورم شادو" و"بي جي أم 500 هاكيم" و"أالرم".

ZT05-B back translation: According to the report, Raytheon’s Paveway was found in a food store, bombed in January, in addition to Brimstone, Storm Shadow, PGM 500 Hakim.

One sentence structure shift shown above was noticed in ZT05-A where a clause was moved to the middle of the sentence rather than the end. The translation here might be an attempt to foreground the negative effects of the action rather than the reason behind it. This shifts the reader’s attention to the negative aspect of the action, which casts a negative light on the agent doing the action. Another shift was also noticed in another segment in the same text ZT05-B, where the initial phrase The products being sold include was deleted from the translation. Although this might be considered a deletion shift, the structure of the translated sentence following the deletion implies that all these high-tech weapons sold to Saudi Arabia were used in the alleged bombing. This shifts the narrative from discussing weapons sales to Saudi Arabia to discussing the picture painted by the translation of a ruthless war campaign against the Yemeni people.

The last example of a shift in sentence structure can also be considered an instance of addition. In ZS12, a short paragraph reads: It's coping with a simmering insurgency in its Shia-

139 dominated Eastern Province. This sentence, related to Saudi Arabia, was repeated in the

تضاف إلى ذلك المتاعب التي تعانيها الدولة “ :translation and made into a longer paragraph as follows

من التمرد الشيعي في شرق السعودية، حيث تواجه السعودية تمردا وغضبا تشهده المنطقة الشرقية التي يسكنها الشيعة بشكل

Adding to this is the state's troubles with the Shiite insurgency in eastern Saudi] ”أساسي

Arabia, where Saudi Arabia is facing a rebellion and anger in the mainly Shi'ite eastern region]. This is probably an attempt to highlight this particular issue by giving it a larger text space. It is one of the issues being covered extensively in Qatari media.

6.2 Paratextual Analysis

This section of the analysis focuses on three paratextual elements in the translations published by Arabi21. First, an analysis is conducted to investigate the selection strategies used by the news outlet regarding what articles are translated. This feature will be investigated across all the translated articles by Arabi21 in 2017 rather than only on the 20 articles in our data set. Secondly, an analysis is conducted to compare the headlines in the translations with the ones in the source articles and to investigate how these headlines change the narrative position of the articles. Finally, the use of photographs in the translated articles will be discussed.

6.2.1 Selection strategies

Arabi21 is an Arabic-language online news outlet. The website does not indicate its affiliation, despite some reports linking it to a new Qatari media network that emerged after the 2014 diplomatic crisis in the Gulf Cooperation Council (Salahodeen, 2018). The website includes an “International Press” section that publishes translations from various international news outlets and from various languages. Unlike the previous news sources

140 investigated in Chapters 4 and 5, Arabi21 does not seem to have any syndication agreements with specific newspapers. Instead, it translates from well-known newspapers like the New

York Times, Washington Post, The Guardian, The Times, Le Monde and Der Spiegel. It also translates from less-known newspapers such as the Swiss Neue Zürcher Zeitung, a French news outlet called Dreuz.info, Italian Gli Occhi della Guerra, and the Russian Nezavisimaya

Gazeta, among others.

This pattern of translation indicates that, unlike the previous newspapers, Arabi21 does not appear to be trying to exclusively use notable and prestigious sources. Instead, it translates from almost any source it can find that discusses the parties to the conflict, including sources that are considered controversial in the Arab world, such as Israeli newspapers. Translation, thus, is not used to gain credibility or status or to increase the news outlet’s audience; it is instead used to convey specific viewpoints that might serve the news outlet’s agenda. This is particularly evident in the headlines of the translated articles published on Arabi21’s website in 2017. The following is a sample of some of those headlines, along with their back translation.

صحيفة عن ابن سلمان: ستالين المملكة العربية السعودية

Newspaper about Ibn Salman: Stalin of Saudi Arabia

صحيفة إسبانية: ما سر األمراء السعوديين المفقودين؟

Spanish newspaper: What is the secret behind the missing Saudi princes?

صحيفة روسية: تنامي "إرهاب هاتفي" رافق زيارة الملك سلمان

Russian newspaper: Growing "telephone terrorism" accompanied King Salman's visit

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مقال في "الغارديان": لماذا حان اآلن الوقت للحديث مع حماس؟

Article in The Guardian: Why is it now time to talk to Hamas?

فوربس: هكذا تهدد السعودية واإلمارات مصالح أمريكا بحصار قطر

Forbes: This is how Saudi Arabia and the UAE threaten America's interests with the blockade of Qatar

The sample above shows three negative headlines about Saudi Arabia, a positive headline about Hamas, and a neutral headline about Qatar. Apart from a few positive or neutral articles about Saudi Arabia that were published before the boycott, almost all the articles discussing Saudi Arabia are negative. By contrast, Qatar is portrayed as a victim or as a rebel in the headlines of the translated articles. However, despite the fact that the news outlet did not attempt to gain credibility or prestige for itself, it portrays the translated articles as important and authoritative. This is done by using the name of the prestigious newspapers in the headline or by using the name of the author. Most translations from the

New York Times, The Guardian, or Washington Post, for example, include the name of that newspaper in the headline. Less-known newspapers, on the other hand, are referred to by their nationality or simply as “a newspaper,” as the examples above show.

The table below shows the results of an analysis conducted by searching the headlines of all translated texts published on Arabi21 in 2017 for certain keywords. The number of articles related to the three sides of the conflict, namely Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and

Iran, indicates that Arabi21 does indeed use translation a great deal to frame the conflict in a certain way.

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Topic (Arabic search terms) Number of Percentage articles of total Saudi Arabia (Saudi, Riyadh, OPEC, Aramco, Mohammed, 338 15.3% Salman) Qatar (Qatar, Doha, Tamim, boycott, Al Jazeera) 123 5.5% Iran (Iran, Tehran, nuclear agreement) 106 4.8% USA (America, United States, Washington, the White House, 283 12.8% Pentagon) Trump (Trump, president) 330 14.9% Russia (Russia, Putin, Kremlin, Moscow) 126 5.7% UK (United Kingdom, Britain, Brexit, England) 152 6.9% Syria (Syria, Damascus, Assad, Bashar, chemical weapons) 194 8.8% China (China, Beijing) 16 0.7% Total number of translated articles in 2017 2201 Table 4: Number of translated articles per topic in Arabi21

Out of 2201 articles translated by Arabi21 in 2017, Saudi Arabia is the most-covered topic with a total of 338 articles, followed by 330 translated articles about President Trump and 283 translated articles about the United States. An examination of the remaining numbers indicates that these three topics are covered more extensively than other news- leading countries or issues in the world. It is predictable that newspapers in the Arab world will dedicate large portions of their coverage to certain influential countries in the developed world. However, for Saudi Arabia to be covered in almost as many translations as the United

States is unusual especially in a non-Saudi news outlet.

In addition, both Qatar and Iran are also covered with more than one hundred articles each. This is substantially more coverage than in the previous newspapers investigated.

What is more interesting is that only 30 articles about Saudi Arabia were translated before

Trump’s visit to Riyadh, which preceded the media campaign on Qatar and the boycott two weeks later. The remaining articles, exceeding 300 in total, were translated after May 20,

2017. All of this and the results of the textual analysis present a clear indication of a media

143 campaign designed specifically to negatively influence Arab public opinion about Saudi

Arabia.

6.2.2 Headlines

The headlines analysis conducted for this research project involves comparing the translated headlines against their source texts to locate any shifts that might skew the narrative position of the article. The results of the analysis show that most of the headlines have gone through a major change, while the remaining headlines were minimally changed.

These changes will be discussed in this subsection.

In the first ten articles in the data set that directly discuss Saudi Arabia, five of the headlines underwent a major change from the original, while the remaining five are rendered literally or with minimal changes. For example, the article in ZS04 uses the headline

Donald Trump has unleashed the Saudi Arabia we always wanted — and feared. The

Foreign] ”فورين بوليسي: لماذا سيندم ترامب على دعمه البن سلمان؟“ translation in ZT04 uses the headline

Policy: Why Trump will regret his support for Ibn Salman]. The translation uses the name of the newspaper that published the original text, possibly to increase the importance and acceptance of the text by the readers. The translation also uses the term Ibn Salman to refer to the Saudi Crown Prince, a name that is mostly used by anti-Saudi media in the Arab world.

The translation’s headline also shifts the topic from American policy about Saudi Arabia to the possible negative consequences of the relationship and it highlights Trump’s involvement in Saudi affairs, a point that portrays the Saudi prince as being propped up by a foreign power.

Another example is the headline of article ZS08, which reads Saudis open Iraqi border

وول ستريت: ما هو الدور “ and forge ties to counter Iran. The translation ZT08 has the headline

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Wall Street: What is the American role in Saudi-Iraqi] ”األمريكي بالتقارب السعودي العراقي؟ rapprochement?]. Again, the headline includes the name of the source newspaper, possibly to paint the article as important and insightful. The headline also questions the secret backdoor relationship between Saudi Arabia and the United States, a common feature in anti-

Saudi and anti-US rhetoric in the Arab world. It also portrays Saudi political actions as being forced or dictated by a foreign power. A final example can be found in ZS10, which is titled

The Guardian view on Yemen: a catastrophe that shames Britain. The translation, however,

The Guardian: Riyadh is] ”الغارديان: الرياض مسؤولة عن أسوأ أزمة إنسانية في العالم“ uses the headline responsible for the worst humanitarian crisis in the world]. The translation here foregrounds a statement that was mentioned in the text and uses it as the headline of the article. This shifts the narrative from the discussion of Britain’s involvement in the war to a rebuke of Saudi Arabia’s alleged role in the humanitarian crisis in Yemen.

However, in the last ten articles about Qatar, only three headlines are translated literally or with minimal alteration, while the remaining seven headlines go through major changes. This is probably because the translated articles about Saudi Arabia are already critical of Saudi Arabia and carry negative headlines. The headlines of the translated texts about Qatar, on the other hand, are changed to give a more positive image of Qatar. One example of the major changes in the headlines about Qatar can be found in ZS11, which is headlined Iran election and Qatar crisis set Middle East on edge as Saudi Arabia seeks to extend its influence. The translation shifts the topic from Iran’s elections to highlight Qatar’s crisis

إندبندنت: أزمة قطر “ first and to highlight the consequences for Saudi Arabia in the headline

Independent: Qatar crisis and Iran elections revealed the] ”وانتخابات إيران كشفت ضعف السعودية weakness of Saudi Arabia]. The translation’s headline again uses the name of the source

145 newspaper and paints a negative consequence of the boycott for Saudi Arabia’s position in the region. Another example can be found in ZS14, which is headlined Saudi Arabia's power

الغارديان: “ play leaves Qatar with little room to manoeuvre. The translation uses the headline

The Guardian: That is why Saudi Arabia decided to open] ”لهذا قررت السعودية فتح خالف علني مع قطر a public dispute with Qatar]. The headline uses the name of the source newspaper and shifts

Qatar’s weak position to focus instead on the reasons behind the conflict. It also portrays the conflict as being instigated by Saudi Arabia, with Qatar being the victim of this dispute.

Another example can be found in ZS15 from the Washington Post, which is headlined

كاتب أمريكي: ما هو “ What’s going on with Qatar? The headline of the translation in ZT15 reads

American writer: What is the secret of the Saudi-UAE attack] ”سر الهجوم السعودي اإلماراتي على قطر؟ on Qatar?]. The headline does not use the name of the source newspaper despite its popularity and instead attributes the article to an American writer. It also shifts the focus from a question about Qatar’s role to the action taken by two of the four countries who

attack] to paint the action as aggressive and] ”هجوم“ started the boycott. It uses the term hostile, which highlights Qatar’s position as a victim. A final example can be found in ZS19, which is headlined Egypt’s stake in case against Qatar is bigger than you may think. While the source headline attempts to show why Egypt decided to join the boycott, the translation’s headline portrays a vindictive country that is interested only in pursuing the Muslim

بلومبيرغ: نظام السيسي يترقب االنتقام من اإلخوان في “ Brotherhood members. The translation’s headline

Bloomberg: Sisi’s regime awaits revenge on Brotherhood in Qatar] also uses the term] ”قطر

Sisi’s regime] instead of Egypt, possibly to highlight the news outlet’s protest] ”نظام السيسي“ against the military coup that removed the Muslim Brotherhood from Egypt’s government.

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6.2.3 Photographs

Analysis of the photographs used in the translations published by Arabi21 shows that the news outlet uses one photograph in every translated article. Most of the translated articles use the photograph from the source text (ZT04, ZT06, ZT12, ZT13, ZT14, ZT17) or a similar photograph of the same subject (ZT01, ZT03, ZT07, ZT09, ZT18, ZT19). For example,

ZS01 uses multiple photographs, including one of Prince Al-Waleed bin Talal during an official ceremony in Saudi Arabia as its main photograph. The translated article uses a different photograph of the Prince from a press conference. However, shifts in photographs used that are possibly ideologically motivated were noted in a number of articles.

Figure 4 Left: photograph used in ZS02. Right: photograph used in ZT02

One example of this is the photographs used in ZS02 and ZT02, shown above in Figure

4. The text discusses the possible consequences for Saudi Arabia’s plan to attract foreign investors after it launched a corruption crackdown where a number of officials were housed in the Ritz-Carlton during the investigation. The source text ZS02 uses a photograph of Prince

Mohammed bin Salman attending the Future Investment Initiative conference in Riyadh. He is shown sitting next to a number of international guests, including the head of SoftBank. The translation, by contrast, simply uses a photograph of the hotel where the officials were held.

This shifts the focus of the article from discussing the future of Saudi investments to 147 highlighting an aspect that might threaten that future. It shifts the focus to questions about the legitimacy of these actions and how they might create an unsafe environment for investors.

Figure 5 Left: photograph used in ZS05. Right: photograph used in ZT05

The second example shown above in Figure 5 is from ZS05 and ZT05. The source text discusses the UK’s increased sales of military equipment to Saudi Arabia since the start of the war in Yemen. The source text uses a number of photographs that show the destruction on both sides of the war. The main photograph used in the source text shows the location in

Saudi Arabia that was targeted by rockets shot by the Houthis in Yemen. It also shows a Saudi fireman inspecting the site where the rockets hit. The translated article, however, uses a different photograph showing a Yemeni boy walking through the rubble of a destroyed building in Sana’a. While the source article also uses such photographs in an album highlighting the destruction, the translated article shifts the focus to show only one side of the consequences of war. While the source text discusses the atrocities of the war from both sides and highlights Britain’s role in it, the translation portrays the article as a rebuke of the

Saudi-led coalition.

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6.3 Discussion

This chapter investigates the textual shifts and paratextual elements surrounding the translated texts published by Arabi21 in 2017. The results of the investigation show that

Arabi21 is actively engaged in re-narrating the conflict in the region through translation. This is evident in the choices it makes in translation, the volume of the translated texts, and the textual and paratextual shifts introduced in the translated texts.

The analysis of the topics covered and the headlines used in the translations shows a pattern of selective appropriation that reframes the narrative in a positive way for the Qatari side of the conflict while propagating a negative narrative about Saudi Arabia and other countries. The news outlet had been translating mostly negative articles about Saudi Arabia before the boycott and after it was announced. However, these translations ramped up in volume in the few days before the boycott and immediately after the boycott was announced.

The news outlet translates from multiple sources, including both reputable and less-known newspapers in multiple languages. It portrays those translations as accurate and authoritative by attributing the articles from prestigious authors or newspapers to their actual sources. It treats these opinion columns as factual news that should be reported.

The translations’ narrative about terror groups is different from that of most Arab news outlets. Arabi21 uses a less dismissive name to describe the terrorist group ISIS, which also acknowledges the terrorist group’s own narrative about its supposed “state,” something that is noticed only in Qatari-affiliated media in the Gulf region. It also uses these groups’ own narrative about themselves as being Islamic by using the term Jihad, which suggests that these groups are operating from a religious motivation rather than a political one.

However, it attempts to distance sectarianism from the conflict in the region.

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Arabi21 portrays Qatar as an independent state that cares only about the peoples of the Arab world. It projects an image of a financially and politically strong but small nation that is resilient in the face of those who wish it ill. The news outlet also aligns with the Qatari narrative in framing the boycott as military action that attempts to bring down and punish the country and the Muslim Brotherhood members who reside in it. It also describes the boycott as a crisis for Qatar, rather than a crisis for the Gulf region.

The news outlet also acknowledges Qatar’s support for the Muslim Brotherhood and for Hamas. However, it attempts to distinguish the two as separate entities, and it portrays the Qatari support for Hamas as a charitable endeavor rather than funding for illegal groups, as it is portrayed in the media of the other side of the conflict. It also acknowledges that Qatar is home to many Muslim Brotherhood members but denies their support for violence and suicide bombing and denies giving them access to millions of Muslims through Al Jazeera TV network. It portrays Al Jazeera as a neutral and objective news outlet and distances it from supporting these groups.

As for Saudi Arabia, it is always portrayed in these translations as financially and politically struggling. The current economic reforms are portrayed as a huge failure that ruined the job market and forced the government to give out aid to its citizens. The translations also portray the political situation as tense and ready to erupt if it were not for the government’s backtracking on its ill-planned reforms. The news outlet is also critical of the country’s criminal laws and how it handles the crackdown on corruption, and it casts those arrested in the corruption crackdown as victims. Arabi21 is also critical of the country’s foreign policy and uses translation to frame those in the government as being controlled and propped up by foreign powers. It narrates the Yemen war from one perspective and only

150 sees the destruction that is caused by one side of the war. It uses the Yemeni people’s suffering to advance its own agendas.

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CHAPTER 7: CONCLUSION

Overview

This chapter summarizes the findings of this research project. It starts by discussing the overall results of the analyses of the three data sets and attempts to answer the research questions based on these results. It also discusses the limitations of this research project and suggests a number of future research opportunities based on this research project.

7.1 Summary of Findings

News media play a crucial role in circulating certain narratives during times of conflict. This research project attempted to investigate the role played by translation in news outlets' expression and suppression of certain narratives and ideological views. The project sets out to answer three main questions. First, how is translation used by online newspapers and news outlets to shape public opinion in the Gulf Region? Second, what shifts do the translations investigated undergo to promote or suppress a certain ideological position?

Third, what other sites of mediation do online newspapers exploit to shape the ideology of a translated text?

To answer these questions, the research attempted to investigate the translations of editorials and opinion pieces in three online newspapers in the Arab Gulf region that have different ideological inclinations and different censorship practices. Twenty ideologically

152 charged translations were randomly chosen from the published translations of each news outlet in 2017. Textual and paratextual analyses were conducted on these translations as compared with their source texts. The results showed some major similarities and differences in the way translation is used in these newspapers to express or suppress certain narratives and ideological viewpoints.

One of the major similarities that were hypothesized by the researcher and that has been observed in this investigation is the translation of articles from reputable newspapers.

Both Al Eqtisadiah and Asharq Al-Awsat exclusively translate from such newspapers. While

Arabi21 also translates from less reputable sources, it still made the effort to indicate the articles that have been translated from more prestigious sources. The use of reputable sources is an attempt by the news outlet to gain credibility and prestige among its readers.

The same situation was also observed with the translations of famous or expert authors.

Paratexts were also used by all three news outlets to reframe the narratives of the original source texts. Headlines, for example, were mostly altered to express certain views that align with each news outlet. Photographs were also used by Al Eqtisadiah and Arabi21 to paint the texts and the subjects they discuss in a certain positive or negative light. Asharq

Al-Awsat also uses photographs of the authors to give its readers a more classic and authentic journalistic experience. As discussed in Chapter 5, this is another means the newspaper utilizes to add prestige and credibility to its publication.

In addition to paratextual shifts, textual shifts were also observed in the translations of all three news outlets. These shifts were observed in lexical items, deletion, addition and in sentence structure. The lexical shifts in all three outlets were mostly related to the naming of certain groups. Other lexical shifts were also recorded in the textual analysis of the three

153 data sets, although these were mostly limited in volume. Addition and sentence structure shifts were also present in the translations in limited instances. One explanation for the limited number of shifts in sentence structure might be the fact that these translations tend to be literal translations that mimics the original's structure. Deletion, however, was the most-used shift in the translation process. It ranged from deletion of single lexical items to paragraphs. Addition and lexical shifts were also introduced as a result of such deletions in order to reframe the translated segments.

One of the major differences between the three news outlets is the volume of coverage of the conflict in the Gulf region. While Al Eqtisadiah and Asharq Al-Awsat gave the conflict minor space in their translated articles in 2017, Arabi21 was engaged in what can only be described as a media offensive that is pro-Qatar and anti-Saudi Arabia. This was noticed by comparing the number of translated articles about the conflict parties with the translations about other world issues. The first two newspapers, by contrast, chose to provide readers with balanced and professional journalism that covers various topics of interest to their readers.

Overall, translation was used by all three outlets to reframe and construct certain narratives about the conflict and its parties, although in different proportions. Segments critical of the political allies of the news outlets were removed or toned down, while segments critical of the other side are amplified and highlighted. The analyses show that translation was used by all three news outlets to shape public narrative and perception about the events and agents in the Arab Gulf region.

While this research investigated editorials and opinion pieces because they are less likely to go through extreme editing in news translation, the results showed that this

154 assumption is not completely accurate. The opinion columns translated by these news outlets did, in fact, undergo major shifts and editing, although these are still less extreme than the shifts and editing a normal news article from a news agency usually undergoes in translation. More research should be conducted to investigate this phenomenon.

The results of this study contribute and enhance previous research findings on ideology in discourse in the field of Translation Studies and other disciplines. It contributes to the research on ideology in translated discourse in an understudied region of the world by providing researchers with a view on how translation is used in news outlets in this particular region to express or suppress certain narratives and ideological views. The methodology of this study also contributes to Critical Discourse Analysis and Narrative

Theory in Translation Studies, providing future researchers on the subject with a starting point for investigating ideology in Arabic translated news commentary through the features of ideology investigated. The study also contributes to research on translation into Arabic in general and news translation into Arabic in particular.

The study also contributes to the fields of Communications Studies and Journalism. It challenges the concept of neutrality in news commentary translation in the Arab Gulf region.

It also provides a look at how news outlets in this region use translation to gain credibility or to express certain narratives and ideological views. It also shows how translation can be mediated to reframe certain narratives and how news outlets in the region subscribe to different narratives such as their view on extremism and terrorist groups operating in the

Muslim world.

155

7.2 Limitations and Future Research Opportunities

A number of limitations have been noted for this particular project. First, the Critical

Discourse Analysis linguistic toolkit was not fully utilized for this project. The textual shifts chosen for this research project were informed by a pilot study of the first data set where the translations were mostly literal. Some of the features of the toolkit were ignored due to the linguistic and cultural differences between English and Arabic. The theme and rheme analysis, for example, was neglected since Arabic has ‘a relatively free word-order, which permits different constituents, Predicator, Subject, Complement and Adjunct, to occupy different positions in the clause’ (Abdul-Raof, 2013 as cited in Potter, 2016). Including all the features from the toolkit would take more time and effort in a large data set such as the data set analyzed in this project. Future research might be conducted on the unique nature of the

Arabic language, which might benefit research on ideology in translation in particular and

Translation Studies in general.

Second, the data sets were also limited to ideologically charged articles. This was intentional, since these would have the most possible instances of translation shifts.

However, looking at other texts would also be beneficial to the field of Translation Studies and to the issue of news translation. Finding such shifts in less ideologically charged texts would possibly mean that some of these changes were not actually ideologically motivated.

This would benefit the researcher in making more concrete conclusions about the motivations behind these shifts.

Finally, a smaller and more concise data set would also be a great opportunity for future research. This would enable the researcher to fully utilize the methodological lenses used in relation to translation pairs involving Arabic. A full CDA and Narrative analysis of

156 both the source texts and the translations might enable the researcher to locate other mediation techniques used in news translation and in translation in general.

157

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APPENDICIES

Appendix 1: Al Eqtisadiah Data Set

Source Articles

ID Title URL XS01 Global oil flow trackers set to keep Opec honest https://www.ft.com/content/2c31f822-d8d5- 11e6-944b-e7eb37a6aa8e XS02 Obama’s messy foreign policy legacy https://www.ft.com/content/f08c3476-d7a4- 11e6-944b-e7eb37a6aa8e XS03 Iranian poor struggle to make ends meet https://www.ft.com/content/2728d67e- 097d-11e7-97d1-5e720a26771b XS04 Syria strikes: Assad’s luck may finally be running https://www.ft.com/content/2187d678- out 1b9a-11e7-bcac-6d03d067f81f XS05 Qatar pays the price for betting on the https://www.ft.com/content/6fb0f5a6-4a9c- Brotherhood 11e7-919a-1e14ce4af89b XS06 SoftBank’s Son uses rare structure for $93bn https://www.ft.com/content/b6fe313a-4add- tech fund 11e7-a3f4-c742b9791d43 XS07 Hedge funds turn from Opec friend to adversary https://www.ft.com/content/c24b150c-57fe- in oil market 11e7-80b6-9bfa4c1f83d2 XS08 When will the US fracking spree finally slow https://www.ft.com/content/852623aa-61f0- down? 11e7-91a7-502f7ee26895 XS09 Egypt businesses battle inflation after currency https://www.ft.com/content/f68ddbcc-7146- devaluation 11e7-aca6-c6bd07df1a3c XS10 Trump falls flat with climate change retreat https://www.ft.com/content/2f687cfe-7abb- 11e7-9108-edda0bcbc928 XS11 Oil traders grapple with US crude conundrum https://www.ft.com/content/06766e6c-88af- 11e7-bf50-e1c239b45787 XS12 Isis finds escape route for the profits of war https://www.ft.com/content/b2f616d4-8656- 11e7-8bb1-5ba57d47eff7 XS13 Big Oil bets on a dash for gas https://www.ft.com/content/f23e35e0-92b5- 11e7-bdfa-eda243196c2c XS14 Thirst for oil returns in wealthy nations https://www.ft.com/content/d436b5e2-9c86- 11e7-9a86-4d5a475ba4c5 XS15 US shale industry hunts in Asia for new oil https://www.ft.com/content/85486194-9eeb- buyers 11e7-8cd4-932067fbf946 XS16 Saudi prince uses ‘Davos in the desert’ to woo https://www.ft.com/content/13b83f02-bb03- world’s top investors 11e7-8c12-5661783e5589 XS17 Gulf airlines targeted by US tax reform provision https://www.ft.com/content/553ec306-cf9e- 11e7-9dbb-291a884dd8c6 XS18 Trump, Xi and the siren song of nationalism https://www.ft.com/content/d8c490d6-d2c6- 11e7-a303-9060cb1e5f44 XS19 US says it may restart intermediate nuclear https://www.ft.com/content/0f60026a-ddd0- missile development 11e7-a8a4-0a1e63a52f9c XS20 Saudi Aramco plans for a life after oil https://www.ft.com/content/e46162ca-d9a6- 11e7-a039-c64b1c09b482

172

Translated Articles

ID Title [back translation] URL http://www.aleqt.com/2017/01/15/article_1121001.html أنظار الصناعة النفطية تتركز على مدى االلتزام بتخفيض XT01 اإلمدادات [The attention of the oil industry is focused on the commitment to reduce supplies] http://www.aleqt.com/2017/01/18/article_1122781.html السياسة الخارجية المشوشة تخيم على إرث أوباما XT02 [the messy foreign policy hangs over Obama's legacy] http://www.aleqt.com/2017/03/28/article_1159106.html رفع العقوبات يفشل في تخفيف متاعب اإليرانيين XT03 [The lifting of the sanctions fails to ease the Iranians' troubles] http://www.aleqt.com/2017/04/09/article_1166496.html توماهوك ينقل رسالة مهمة لألسد XT04 [Tomahawk conveys an important message to Assad] http://www.aleqt.com/2017/06/08/article_1200016.html قطر المعزولة تدفع ثمن الرهان الخاسر على إيران XT05 واإلخوان [Isolated Qatar pays for the losing bet on Iran and the Brotherhood] http://www.aleqt.com/2017/06/14/article_1203486.html سوفت بانك تخرج عن الطابع التقليدي لصفقات التكنولوجيا XT06 [Softbank goes beyond the traditional nature of technology deals] http://www.aleqt.com/2017/06/27/article_1210151.html صناديق التحوط تحث أوبك على إعادة التوازن لسوق XT07 النفط [Hedge funds urge OPEC to rebalance the oil market] http://www.aleqt.com/2017/07/10/article_1216621.html فورة الزيت الصخري ال تظهر عالمة على التراجع XT08 [The spur of shale oil does not show a sign of decline] http://www.aleqt.com/2017/08/01/article_1229226.html تعويم الجنيه يدفع الشركات المصرية إلى معركة مع XT09 التضخم [Floating the pound is pushing Egyptian companies to a battle with inflation] http://www.aleqt.com/2017/08/07/article_1233286.html صناعة النفط والغاز تنتظرها سنوات كثيرة مقبلة XT10 [The oil and gas industry are surviving for many years to come] http://www.aleqt.com/2017/08/27/article_1243031.html تجار النفط يتعاركون مع لغز الخام األمريكي XT11 [Oil traders clash with the conundrum of American crude] http://www.aleqt.com/2017/08/28/article_1243506.html اقتصاد داعش الخفي .. صرافات وشركات ودور محتمل XT12 في إعادة اإلعمار [Daesh hidden economy… Banks, companies and a possible role in the reconstruction] http://www.aleqt.com/2017/09/11/article_1249431.html مجموعات الطاقة الكبرى تراهن على ابن عم النفط السيئ XT13 [Big energy groups betting on oil’s bad cousin] http://www.aleqt.com/2017/09/25/article_1256991.html النفط الرخيص يعيد إلى الطريق السيارات المتعطشة XT14 للوقود [Cheap oil brings back to the road the cars thirsty for fuel] http://www.aleqt.com/2017/09/25/article_1257541.html صناعة الزيت الصخري تنقل المنافسة مع أوبك إلى آسيا XT15

173

[Shale oil industry moves competition with OPEC to Asia] http://www.aleqt.com/2017/10/28/article_1274376.html فاينانشيال تايمز: األمير محمد بن سلمان أثار إعجاب كبار XT16 المستثمرين في العالم [Financial Times: Prince Mohammed bin Salman has impressed the world's top investors] http://www.aleqt.com/2017/11/30/article_1291256.html اإلصالح الضريبي األمريكي يهدد صناعة الطيران في XT17 الخليج [US tax reform threatens aviation industry in the Gulf] http://www.aleqt.com/2017/12/02/article_1292426.html أعراض القومية تظهر في أنحاء مختلفة من العالم XT18 [The symptoms of nationalism appear in different parts of the world] http://www.aleqt.com/2017/12/14/article_1298496.html واشنطن تهدد موسكو بمعاودة تطوير صواريخ نوويّة XT19 [Washington threatens Moscow to re- develop nuclear missiles] http://www.aleqt.com/2017/12/15/article_1299086.html أرامكو السعودية تطلق محركات نقلة االقتصاد النوعية XT20 نحو الغد [Saudi Aramco launches engines of an economy paradigm shift towards tomorrow]

174

Appendix 2: Asharq Al-Awsat Data Set

Source Articles

ID Title URL YS01 Embrace a New Saudi Arabia http://www.washingtoninstitute.org/policy- analysis/view/embrace-a-new-saudi-arabia YS02 Obama Hoped to Transform the World. It https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/12/opinion/obama- Transformed Him. hoped-to-transform-the-world-it-transformed- him.html?_r=0 YS03 Saudi Arabia Is Set to Become a Bigger https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2017-11- Commodities Player 15/saudi-arabia-is-set-to-become-a-bigger-commodities- player YS04 Fans of Iran Nuke Deal Start to https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2017-09- Acknowledge Its Flaws 14/fans-of-iran-nuke-deal-start-to-acknowledge-its-flaws YS05 Trump Just Came Very Close to Killing the https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2017-07- Iran Deal 18/trump-just-came-very-close-to-killing-the-iran-deal YS06 Qatar Crisis Shows Risk of Trump's Saudi https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2017-06- Reset 09/qatar-crisis-shows-risk-of-trump-s-saudi-reset YS07 Obama Should Thank Trump for Putting https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2017-02- Iran on Notice 03/obama-should-thank-trump-for-putting-iran-on- notice YS08 How Trump can confront Iran without https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/global- blowing up the nuclear deal opinions/how-trump-can-confront-iran-without-blowing- up-the-nuclear-deal/2017/08/06/0cc021ae-7960-11e7- 8f39-eeb7d3a2d304_story.html YS09 Trump is right about China and North https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/trump-is- Korea right-about-china-and-north- korea/2017/08/01/66a1a5f6-7700-11e7-8839- ec48ec4cae25_story.html YS10 Why key Arab countries have cut ties with https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/monkey- Qatar — and what Trump had to do with it cage/wp/2017/06/07/what-you-should-know-about- qatar-now YS11 Trump to unveil plans for an ‘Arab NATO’ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/josh- in Saudi Arabia rogin/wp/2017/05/17/trump-to-unveil-plans-for-an- arab-nato-in-saudi-arabia YS12 Mattis and Trump: The odd couple that https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/global- works opinions/mattis-and-trump-the-odd-couple-that- works/2017/04/25/5e01adf0-29ef-11e7-a616- d7c8a68c1a66_story.html YS13 Congress demands clarity on Trump https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/josh- administration’s dealings with Qatar rogin/wp/2017/12/20/congress-demands-clarity-on- trump-administrations-dealings-with-qatar YS14 Trump is dealing with Iran the same way https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/post- he always dealt with business partisan/wp/2017/10/13/trump-is-dealing-with-iran- the-same-way-he-always-dealt-with-business YS15 Trump's New Policy Will Focus on Iran's https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2017-10- Meddlers 04/trump-s-new-policy-will-focus-on-iran-s-meddlers YS16 Obama's Alternative Facts on the Iran https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2017-12- Nuclear Deal 18/obama-s-alternative-facts-on-the-iran-nuclear-deal YS17 As Iran Holds a Hostage, Britain Forgets https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2017-11- Who It’s Dealing With 10/as-iran-holds-a-hostage-britain-forgets-who-it-s- dealing-with YS18 Why Did the U.S. Even Get Involved in https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2017-10- Syria? 09/why-did-the-u-s-even-get-involved-in-syria YS19 Saudis Expect Big Economic Boost From https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2017-05- Trump Visit 18/saudis-expect-big-economic-boost-from-trump-visit

175

YS20 Thank Trump for Enforcing Obama's 'Red https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2017-04- Line' in Syria 07/thank-trump-for-enforcing-obama-s-red-line-in-syria

Translated Articles

ID Title [back translation] URL https://aawsat.com/node/964397 الطريق إلى السعودية الجديدة YT01 [The road to the new Saudi Arabia] https://aawsat.com/node/831516 أوباما كان يأمل إحداث تحول في العالم فتحول هو شخصيًا YT02 [Obama was hoping to transform the world but he personally transformed] https://aawsat.com/node/1085016 السعودية في طريقها للتحول إلى عامل محوري في سوق السلع YT03 [Saudi Arabia is on its way to transforming into a pivotal factor in the commodities market] https://aawsat.com/node/1025866 مؤيدو االتفاق النووي واالعتراف باألخطاء YT04 [Supporters of the nuclear agreement and recognition of mistakes] https://aawsat.com/node/978471 ترمب كاد يلغي االتفاق النووي اإليراني YT05 [Trump almost cancelled the Iranian nuclear deal] https://aawsat.com/node/950151 عن عزل قطر ومعاقبتها YT06 [On the isolation and punishment of Qatar] https://aawsat.com/node/858076 ينبغي ألوباما شكر ترمب YT07 [Obama should thank Trump] https://aawsat.com/node/994491 كيف يمكن مواجهة إيران دون إلغاء االتفاق النووي؟ YT08 [How can Iran be confronted without canceling the nuclear deal?] https://aawsat.com/node/991056 ترمب على حق بشأن كوريا الشمالية YT09 [Trump is right about North Korea] https://aawsat.com/node/949566 قطر... الترويج لتغيير األنظمة وحشد األموال YT10 [Qatar ... promoting regime changes and fundraising] https://aawsat.com/node/931191 زيارة لها دالالتها YT11 [A visit that has its connotations] https://aawsat.com/node/911986 ماتيس وترمب: الرفيقان المتضادان المتوافقان YT12 [Matisse and Trump: the contradicting corresponding comrades] https://aawsat.com/node/1120556 تساؤالت للكونغرس حول قطر YT13 [Questions by Congress about Qatar] https://aawsat.com/node/1053226 االستراتيجية الجديدة ومحاولة احتواء المد اإليراني YT14 [The new strategy and the attempt to contain the tide of Iran] https://aawsat.com/node/1045291 سياسة ترمب الجديدة تركز على وكالء إيران YT15 [Tramp's new policy focuses on Iran's agents] https://aawsat.com/node/1117971 هل فككت "عملية كاساندرا" ضد "حزب هللا"؟ YT16 [Has “Cassandra operation” against “Hezbollah” been dismantled?] https://aawsat.com/node/1080771 مع احتجاز إيران الرهائن تتناسى بريطانيا مع َمن تتعامل YT17 [As Iran holds the hostages, Britain is forgetting who it is dealing with] https://aawsat.com/node/1047766 لماذا تدخلت أميركا في سوريا من األساس؟ YT18 [Why did America intervene in Syria in the first place?] https://aawsat.com/node/929911 السعودية وجدت في أميركا شريكا ً مناسبا ً YT19 [Saudi Arabia found a suitable partner in America]

176

https://aawsat.com/node/898681 شكرا ترمب على تفعيل خط أوباما األحمر في سوريا YT20 [Thank you Trump for activating Obama's red line in Syria]

177

Appendix 3: Arabi21 Data Set

Source Articles

ID Title URL ZS01 EXCLUSIVE: 'American mercenaries are http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article- torturing' Saudi elite rounded up by new 5108651/American-mercenaries-torturing-Saudi- crown prince - and billionaire Prince princes.html Alwaleed was hung upside down 'just to send a message' ZS02 Saudi investors check out after hotel turned https://www.ft.com/content/4cb6a472-caf5-11e7- into luxury prison ab18-7a9fb7d6163e ZS03 Saudi Arabia’s prince is doing damage https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/global- control opinions/saudi-arabias-prince-is-doing-damage- control/2017/11/16/e3710ba4-cb14-11e7-8321- 481fd63f174d_story.html ZS04 Donald Trump Has Unleashed the Saudi https://foreignpolicy.com/2017/11/10/donald- Arabia We Always Wanted — and Feared trump-has-unleashed-the-saudi-arabia-we-always- wanted-and-feared/ ZS05 UK sales of bombs and missiles to Saudi https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home- Arabia increase by almost 500% since start news/uk-british-weapons-arms-sales-saudi-arabia- of Yemen war yemen-war-increase-500-civilians-war-crimes-export- a8042871.html ZS06 Saudi cleric says women are to blame for https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/asia/sa rape and harassment udi-arabia-women-rape-sexual-harassment-men- middle-east-muslim-a8010511.html ZS07 Saudi Arabia Clamps Down as Crown Prince https://www.wsj.com/articles/saudi-arabia-clamps- Consolidates Power down-as-crown-prince-consolidates-power- 1505345008 ZS08 Saudis Open Iraqi Border and Forge Ties to https://www.wsj.com/articles/saudis-open-iraqi- Counter Iran border-and-forge-ties-to-counter-iran-1503480601 ZS09 Saudi Arabia’s New Crown Prince Promises https://www.chathamhouse.org/expert/comment/sau Reforms to Everything Except Politics di-arabia-s-new-crown-prince-promises-reforms- everything-except-politics ZS10 The Guardian view on Yemen: a catastrophe https://www.theguardian.com/world/commentisfree/2017/ that shames Britain nov/17/the-guardian-view-on-yemen-a-catastrophe-that- shames-britain ZS11 Iran election and Qatar crisis set Middle East https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle- on edge as Saudi Arabia seeks to extend its east/iran-saudi-arabia-middle-east-turning-point- influence hassan-rouhani-inauguration-a7875581.html ZS12 Qatar crisis: Have Saudis gone too far? https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east- 40297809 ZS13 Saudi Arabia is playing a dangerous game https://www.ft.com/content/b29acf54-50f5-11e7- with Qatar a1f2-db19572361bb ZS14 Saudi Arabia's power play leaves Qatar with https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/jun/05/s little room to manoeuvre audi-arabias-power-play-leaves-qatar-with-little-room- for-manouvre ZS15 What’s going on with Qatar? https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/monkey- cage/wp/2017/06/01/whats-going-on-with- qatar/?utm_term=.afce0b48976b ZS16 The threat of regime change 2.0 to GCC unity https://www.middleeasteye.net/opinion/threat- regime-change-20-gcc-unity ZS17 New UAE Documentary Claims Qatar https://foreignpolicy.com/2017/07/24/new-uae- Complicit in 9/11 Attacks documentary-claims-qatar-complicit-in-911-attacks- gulf-crisis-saudi-arabia-doha/ ZS18 The special ingredient that helps explain https://www.vox.com/world/2017/7/2/15882682/sa Saudi Arabia’s diplomatic war on Qatar udi-arabia-qatar-natural-gas-boycott

178

ZS19 Egypt’s Stake in Case Against Qatar Is Bigger https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-06- Than You May Think 28/terrorism-case-against-qatar-muddied-by-muslim- brotherhood-links ZS20 Isolation of Gaza Strip’s biggest donor rattles https://www.ft.com/content/581fbcec-51b8-11e7- Hamas bfb8-997009366969

Translated Articles

ID Title [back translation] URL https://arabi21.com/story/1051084 ديلي ميل: مرتزقة أجانب يعذبون أمراء السعودية المعتقلين ZT01 [Daily Mail: Foreign mercenaries torturing detained Saudi princes] https://arabi21.com/story/1049927 فايننشال تايمز: اعتقاالت السعودية تسبب الفزع للمستثمرين ZT02 [Financial Times: Saudi arrests cause panic to investors] https://arabi21.com/story/1049821 واشنطن بوست: ابن سلمان يحاول حصر أضرار انفجاره السياسي ZT03 [Washington Post: Ibn Salman tries to limit the damage caused by his political explosion] https://arabi21.com/story/1049090 فورين بوليسي: لماذا سيندم ترامب على دعمه البن سلمان؟ ZT04 [Foreign Policy: Why Trump will regret his support for Ibn Salman?] https://arabi21.com/story/1047492 إندبندنت: زيادة بنسبة 500% بصفقات السالح البريطاني للسعودية ZT05 [Independent: 500% increase in British arms deals to Saudi Arabia] https://arabi21.com/story/1042949 إندبندنت: داعية سعودي يحمل المرأة مسؤولية االغتصاب والتحرش ZT06 [Independent: Saudi preacher holds women responsible for rape and harassment] https://arabi21.com/story/1034544 وول ستريت: السعودية تشدد على المعارضة وابن سلمان يعزز سلطته ZT07 [Wall Street: Saudi Arabia cracks down on opposition and Ibn Salman strengthens his power] https://arabi21.com/story/1029862 وول ستريت: ما هو الدور األمريكي بالتقارب السعودي العراقي؟ ZT08 [Wall Street: What is the American role in Saudi-Iraqi rapprochement] https://arabi21.com/story/1023189 باحثة بريطانية: المعارضة السعودية لن تبقى هادئة لألبد ZT09 [British researcher: Saudi opposition will not remain calm forever] https://arabi21.com/story/1049993 الغارديان: الرياض مسؤولة عن أسوأ أزمة إنسانية في العالم ZT10 [The Guardian: Riyadh is responsible for the worst humanitarian crisis in the world] https://arabi21.com/story/1025416 إندبندنت: أزمة قطر وانتخابات إيران كشفت ضعف السعودية ZT11 [Independent: Qatar crisis and Iran elections revealed weakness of Saudi Arabia] https://arabi21.com/story/1014732 محلل أمني بريطاني: هل تمادت السعودية في معاقبة قطر؟ ZT12 [British security analyst: Has Saudi Arabia gone too far to punish Qatar?] https://arabi21.com/story/1014310 ديفيد غاردنر: السعودية تغامر في لعبة خطيرة مع قطر ZT13 [David Gardner: Saudi Arabia is venturing into a dangerous game with Qatar] https://arabi21.com/story/1012335 الغارديان: لهذا قررت السعودية فتح خالف علني مع قطر ZT14 [The Guardian: That is why Saudi Arabia decided to open a public dispute with Qatar] https://arabi21.com/story/1011073 كاتب أمريكي: ما هو سر الهجوم السعودي اإلماراتي على قطر؟ ZT15

179

[American writer: What is the secret of the Saudi-UAE attack on Qatar?] https://arabi21.com/story/1041337 ميدل إيست آي: محاوالت قلب نظام قطر تهدد الخليج بأكمله ZT16 [Middle East Eye: Attempts to overthrow the regime of Qatar threaten the entire Gulf] https://arabi21.com/story/1023193 آخر اتهامات اإلمارات: قطر هي التي نفذت ZT17 9 /11 [The latest charges from the UAE: Qatar carried out 9/11] https://arabi21.com/story/1018561 هذا هو العنصر الخاص الذي يفسر فرض حصار على قطر :ZT18 VOX [VOX: This is the special element that explains the imposition of a blockade on Qatar] https://arabi21.com/story/1017548 بلومبيرغ: نظام السيسي يترقب االنتقام من اإلخوان في قطر ZT19 [Bloomberg: Sisi’s regime awaits revenge on Brotherhood in Qatar] https://arabi21.com/story/1014817 فايننشال تايمز: كيف يرى الغزيون حصار قطر وتأثيره عليهم؟ ZT20 [Financial Times: How do Gazans see the blockade of Qatar and its impact on them?]

180