Open AccessManipulation of translation in hard news reporting on the Gulf crisis: combining narrative and appraisal
Author(s) -
Julie Boéri,
Ashraf Fattah
Publication year - 2020
Publication title -
meta
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
eISSN - 1492-1421
pISSN - 0026-0452
DOI - 10.7202/1073637ar
Subject(s) - newspaper , narrative , context (archaeology) , ideology , translation studies , negotiation , politics , political science , media studies , sociology , linguistics , history , literature , law , art , philosophy , archaeology
This paper explores the manipulation of translation for propagandisticpurposes in the Gulf crisis, which has led to the economic blockade of Qatar sinceJune 2017. It focuses on Al-Ittihad , an Arabic daily newspaper owned by theUnited Arab Emirates. The data under analysis is extracted from a hard news dailysection that Al-Ittihad has dedicated to Qatar since the outbreak of thecrisis. Combining Narrative Theory with the Appraisal Framework provides aninsightful account of the ideologically motivated manipulation and weaponization ofnews translation. Going beyond the reductive claim of domestication in Newstranslation studies, this dual theoretical approach allows for further articulationof the socio-political context with translation strategies, by combining macro- andmicro-analysis. This approach also uncovers the workings of propaganda inAl-Ittihad ’s translational news reporting. From the transediting of foreignattributions to the intersemiotic design of the newspaper’s layout, translationalnews reporting involves embedding personal and shared narratives into the micro- andmacro-levels of the hard news section to construe a negative evaluation of Qatar.Behind a façade of detachment and neutrality, hard news reports and the translationon which they rely feed into the propagandistic discourse of hawkishparties.