Vol. 4 (1) Jul. 2022

Article ID. JHSSR-1141-2022

The Sociocultural Analysis of Translating BBC News Media Text into English

Kais A. Kadhim and Said N. Al Amrani

Abstract:

This article presents the nature of the structural changes in the Arabic translation of English political BBC news, which may be attributable to differences in cultural, ideological and sociolinguistic backgrounds of its target speakers. The main objective is to find out whether the lexical and cultural aspects change the quality of the translated message. The article has taken cognizance of Hatim’s (1997) notions on translating across different nations and Fishman’s (1972) notion that language to a certain extent is the sociolinguistic reflection of its speakers. Towards the end, a comparative methodology of the source text ST and target text TT has been adopted by examining the differences and the similarities of the structure and its correlated content. In conclusion, the study observes that the cultural background, ideological make-up and sociolinguistic perception of the target readers contribute to the nature of the structure of the translation output in Arabic news. Furthermore, the structural changes are attributable to TT speakers’ differences in cultural, ideological and sociolinguistic backgrounds.

DOI: https://doi.org/10.37534/bp.jhssr.2022.v4.n1.id1141.p127