Translating news items between Arabic and English : a bourdieusian sociological perspective

Abstract EN

To what extent do news items submitted to translation and/or transediting undergo a reframing process, entailing a reconstruction of a constructed reality, already subjected to professional, institutional and contextual influences? What are the main reasons for such a reframing process? The ultimate aim of this study is to develop a sociological perspective to increase understanding of the practices involved in'processes of translation that occur in the production of international news.

To this end, Bourdieusian concepts, such as field, illusio, habitus, doxa, orthodoxy and heterodoxy will be used to identify the role of translators and other individual agents involved in the translation of news items.

It is hoped that these Bourdieusian concepts can thus help construct a general theoretical framework which can 1) provide us with some insights to better understanding the process of news translation at its macro level as a dynamic activity achieved by a number of individual agents, not only the translator, and 2) help examine the role of translators and other agents in such a process.

It has been shown that there are different factors that motivate translators and all those involved in translating and/or commissioning news items from Arabic to English and vice versa, such as their overwhelming desire to be part of a social game, their strenuous attempts to acquire, maintain and redistribute capital and their constant desires to satisfy their own beliefs, attitudes and accumulated value system or the attitude of the company that they work for.