M.A. Presentation

1. In the name of Allah, the Most Gracious, the
Most Merciful. Praise is to Him who teaches
me what I do not know, and who gives me
strength, health, and patience to conduct this
work.

2. Analysis of Arabic-English Newspapers
Translation Problems: Al-Ahram Weekly as An
Example
‫للغة‬ ‫العربية‬ ‫اللغة‬ ‫من‬ ‫الصحفية‬ ‫الترجمة‬ ‫مشاكل‬ ‫تحليل‬
‫اإلنجليزية‬:‫ا‬ً‫ج‬‫نموذ‬ ‫األسبوعي‬ ‫األهرام‬
By
Mahmoud Mosaad Mohamed Suleiman
Teaching Assistant – Department of English

3. Dedication
• To my father, May Allah have mercy upon your
soul. You have waited patiently for this moment,
but you left the world. However, your soul is
witnessing this moment now, and you will never
die as you are living in the depth of those who
love you!
• To my mother, you are the one who devotes your
life for me. Now, it is time to crop the fruits of
praying for me all the time. No dedication can
express my feelings for your astonishing patience.

4. Acknowledgement
• I would like to express my greatest gratitude and appreciation to my
supervisor, Prof. Dr. Abdulrahman Ahmed Sayed for his step-by-step
help, full support, deep patience, invaluable advice, and stimulating
criticism of the whole work. Prof. Sayed has granted me the honor
to supervise this thesis, and without his support and help this thesis
would not have seen the light.
• I would like to express my warm thanks to my co-supervisor Dr.
Essam Abdulaziz Fayez for his continuous and invaluable guidance.
His helpfulness and encouragement are beyond any appreciation.
Despite his busy schedule, he has always made time for discussion
and guidance. Dr. Fayez's remarks and advice have been of capital
importance to my work.
• I shall always remember Prof. Sayed and Dr. Fayez for their kindness
and all support that they have given me throughout my study.

5. Introduction
Importance of the
Study
Statement of
the Problem
Objectives of
the Study
Limitations of
the Study and
Date collection
Research
Questions
Organization of
the study

6. • This thesis aims at analyzing and evaluating
journalistic translation from Arabic into English. It
focuses on evaluating Al-Ahram Weekly's
translation of a number of selected articles
written by Abdel Moneim Said in Al-Masry Al-
Youm, and Asharq Al-Awsat. Journalistic texts
pose serious challenges for translators; as they
should render a text that conforms to the policy
of the journal, faithful to the original one, and
meets the needs of the TL reads.
INTRODUCTION

7. • Since journals compete with each other
commercially, a high quality product is
needed.

8. Importance of the Study
• This study is of a special importance since it
deals with Al-Ahram Weekly's translation of
opinion articles, which have not been
analyzed before. Al-Ahram Weekly as an Arab
journal published in Egypt in English has a
special status in local and international
journalism industry. It has been spread among
readers of different cultures, as it reaches 91%
of foreign readers in Egypt.

9. • Moreover, the Al-Ahram Weekly online
website boasts an average of 6000 to 9000
page views per day. The largest number of
online readers comes from the United States
(46.5%), and the second largest number from
Egypt (10.7%). This leads to consider the
degree of accuracy of the translated texts . In
addition, It is currently Egypt’s largest and
most widely read newspaper. As for its
circulation, it may exceed that of all other
pan-Arab newspapers combined.

10. Statement of the Problem
There are some features that are common and central
to journalistic translation. They include the following:
Time and space: articles must
be translated quickly as there is
a fixed time and allocated
space.
Simplicity: one of the
purposes of translated edition
is to simplify the meaning
while using an attractive style
at the same time.

11. Readability is the main problem facing journalistic
translator. To ensure readability of the text the
translator uses the following strategies:
Manipulation: the first occurrence of
manipulation starts with the selection
of the material to be translated
Textual modifications and trans-
editing: the translator changes some
titles and lead sentences to suit the
needs of the TL readers.
Simplification: used to simplify the
language used.
Explicitation: used to render a TT
stating ST information in a more
explicit way than the original
Domestication: used to minimize the
strangeness of the foreign text for the
TL reader. Foreignization, on the
other hand, retains the foreignness of
the original.
Cohesion and coherence: this strategy
is used to provide a coherent text.

12. • The main problem to be tackled in the present
study is how and to what extent the articles
under analysis comply with or deviate from
these common features.

13. Objectives of the Study
investigate and evaluate some
important problems that face
journalistic translators
Specify the strategies involved in
translating journalistic articles

14. Limitation of the Study and Data
Collection
The time scope of this study is limited to one
year starting from January and ending in
December 2014.
The researcher concentrates mainly on specific articles
within that year in order to avoid repetition and
redundancy. If the researcher analyzes all articles of
that year, examples of the same problem will be
repeated.
English translation data is collected mainly from Al-
Ahram Weekly's website. As for the Arabic source
data, it is collected mainly form Al-Masry Al-Youm's
website (almasryalyoum .com), and Asharq Al-Awsat's
website (aawsat.com).

15. Research Questions
This section presents
questions that the study
tries to answer
throughout its chapters
How language function and text
typology affect the type of
equivalence to be used in
journalistic translation? What is
the unit of translation, and how
cultural specific terms are to be
dealt with?
Is it better to use "Journalistic
translation" or "news translation" to
refer to this type of translation?
How can translation be defined
then?
To what extent Al-Ahram Weekly's
translator conveys the message of the
original in the light of the common
features of journalistic translation and
the functionalist approach? How far
does he succeed in rendering a coherent
text?

16. The thesis also
makes use of the
functionalist
approach to
Translation:
How are the features of
journalistic translation
fulfilled in light of the
functionalist approach to
translation?

17. Organization of the
study

18. The present study is divided into five chapters as follows:
Chapter one: An Overview. This chapter gives an overview of
the topic of the thesis. It introduces the topic, and presents Al-
Ahram Weekly, Abdel Moneim Said, the statement of the
problem, literature review, significance of the study, objectives
of the study… etc.
Chapter Two: Basic Translation Concepts. This chapter discusses types of
translation, a brief history of translation studies theory, language functions
and text typology, unit of translation, translatability and untranslatability,
cohesion and coherence, the issue of equivalence according to Nida,
Newmark, and Baker. problems of non-equivalence and strategies for dealing
with them.

19. Chapter Three: Journalistic Translation. This chapter discusses
journalistic translation, its features and their effect on translating
journalistic articles, the functionalist approach to translation, the
skopos theory, Nord's functionalist approach, the concept of
readability, simplification, explicitation, domestication and
foreignization, as well as various strategies and problems that are
crucial to the analysis of the data in the present study.
Chapter Four: Analysis of the Selected Opinion Articles.
This chapter starts with the criteria for the analysis of the
data. Then, it deals with the analysis and evaluation of
opinion articles under study. It investigates problems,
strategies, strengths and weaknesses of the translation
on an elective basis.

20. Conclusion and Results. This chapter presents the main results
and answers the questions posed at the beginning of the thesis,
as well as the suggestions for further studies.
A CD. It contains the full source Arabic articles and the target English
translations under analysis.

21. The researcher concludes from this study that:
Using the term "news translation" to denote translating
newspapers' articles seemed not to be always right. The term
"journalistic translation" should be used instead.

22. Definition of translation should not be isolated from
the field in which a particular translation occurred.

23. Al-Ahram Weekly's translator
succeeded to a great extent in
rendering the same functions of SL
texts as he exploited language to
express the thought of the SL writer
but in a TL and rendered translated
vocative texts.

24. Al-Ahram Weekly's translator
adopted Newmark's view that all
lengths of texts could be
considered units of translation.

25. Formal equivalence and semantic translation
could not be used here in this type of
translation. However, the translator depended
mainly on Newmark's communicative
translation which conforms to Nida's dynamic
equivalence.

26. Problems Facing Journalistic Translators
Limitation of
Time
• 82% of all articles were translated and published
within one-day limit.
Limitation of
Space
• Al-Ahram Weekly's translator had some degree
of freedom regarding this point. As all translated
articles were longer than the original ones

27. Strategies Used by Al-Ahram Weekly’s
Translator
Manipulation
• The translator depended mainly
on two forms of manipulation:
A) linguistic manipulation was
applied through simplification,
and hyperbole. B) Textual
manipulation was applied
through reshaping or
reorganizing the text.

28. Textual Modifications
The translator depended mainly on the following:
Change of the title and lead to suit the need of the TL readers;
Elimination of unnecessary information to avoid redundancy. Elimination
was done at the level of words, sentences, and whole paragraphs;
Change in the order of paragraphs to refocusing information;
Summarizing information to make them easier to be followed and to ensure
their readability;
Addition of information to make the text clear and free of ambiguities.

29. Readability
The translator used linguistic measures as
using short grammatical structures, and
avoiding jargon, in addition to the following
strategies

30. Simplification:
Producing a simple
readable text. Two
forms of
simplification were
used by the
translator
lexical
simplification
(using fewer words
than the original),
stylistic
simplification (long
sentences were
divided).

31. Explicitation
Adding explanatory
information and
making implicature
clear.

32. Domestication
and
foreignization
The translator
depended either
on one or both to
deal with cultural
specific concepts.

33. Cohesion and
coherence
The translator gathered information about
the topic of the article in the lead sentence.
Then, he divided the whole text into
paragraphs. Each paragraph began with a
topic sentence representing the idea about
which that paragraph talked. Moreover, each
paragraph had only one argument developed
through that paragraph. Then, the sequence
of information appeared among paragraphs,
thus paragraphs were linked to one another.

34. Summary
• To sum up, Al-Ahram Weekly's translator
succeeded to a great extent in rendering a
readable text that met the needs of the target
readers. Although, he did not use textual
modifications appropriately, his translation
was acceptable as it did not contain any
irregularities or ambiguities.

35. Thank You Very
Much