Reframing Arabic narratives on Daesh [ISIS] textually through translation: MEMRI’s translation as a case study

Abstract

Abstract Many an ethically minded translator would think twice or thrice prior to translating an ideologically loaded text as they need to reflect the encoded ideologies of the original narrative in the target narrative. Yet, some translators decide, for different reasons, to undermine and challenge the narratives in question, thus applying various reframing strategies to superimpose certain directionality on the original narratives. This paper, therefore, examines the English translations of the Arabic editorials on Daesh (ISIS), published by the Washington-based Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI) that has a large impact on the US policy and the public. In this paper, we explain how media translation contributes to (re)framing the current civil war in Syria on the one hand, and how this promotes the narrative of ‘Arab and Muslim terrorists’ on the other. The study finds that by relying on the narrativity feature of selective appropriation, MEMRI extensively employs the textual reframing tools, i.e., addition and omission, thus promoting different narratives of the civil war. We propose that rival narratives could be circulated through translation where the translators reframe the original narratives and reconstruct the embedded narrativity features that, in turn, renegotiate the original arguments.