Translating Saddam: ideology, intertextuality and communicative equivalence in Arabic-English translation

This thesis is concerned with a particularly problematic area of Arabic-English translation, an activity likely to expand considerably as this century continues, and especially in non-literary domains. The past decade has seen increasing attention being paid by translation and other scholars to such issues as ideology, intervention, the role of narratives and the involvement of translation in global news dissemination. Not surprisingly, translation from Arabic looms large in all these areas. Political speeches and statements, often containing a disconcertingly unfamiliar blend of political and religious discourse, invite or require translation (or summary) into English by various agencies with their own particular ideological stances and agenda. Even with accurate and competent linguistic transfer there are many forms of possible manipulation. Equally, poor quality translation between two such incongruent languages can easily produce material that appears at least partly incomprehensible and may tend to make the source text and its producer(s) seem ridiculous to the target reader. Examples of this abound in the available translations of two of Saddam Hussein's speeches in the months leading up to the 2003 invasion of Iraq. To prepare the ground for an examination of these translations, this study first traces the history of ideas about translation and the development of the modem `interdiscipline' of Translation Studies. It then moves on to consider the problems of equivalence and translatability in Arabic-English translation, not only at the word and sentence level but also at that of whole texts, and extends this enquiry into the area of textuality and especially the phenomenon of intertextuality. Intertextuality is then seen to be carried within languages and cultures by the vehicle of ideology and discourse, and thus to represent a particular challenge to translators. Problems in the translation of the Saddam speeches are subsequently identified and discussed in the context of target reader norms and expectations, and in terms of a still rather hazy notion of `communicative equivalence