TRANSFER OF IDEOLOGY IN THE TRANSLATION OF POLITICAL SPEECHES - Yasser Arafat’s Speech at the UN in 1974

Abstract

This study focuses on examining the process of translating political speeches and how the ideology expressed in the speech is transmitted and how it can influence the process of translation. The main data used in this study are the Arabic and English transcripts of the late Palestinian President Yasser Arafat’s speech to the UN in 1974. The study moves within the discipline of Translation Studies by adopting the theoretical framework of translation strategies and theories of Hermeneutic translation, Equivalence and Skopos theory. The study follows a descriptive comparative analysis of selected examples from the Arabic text and its English translation. The results of the study show examples of ideological manipulation in which the translator used translation techniques such as omission, addition, reformulation of sentence structure and paraphrasing of problematic and controversial elements in the speech in order to harmonise the meaning of the speech with the ideological beliefs and political affiliations of the target audience.