This thesis examines and discusses the construction, reconstruction and alteration of ideological framing in the production and translation of news discourse by two transnational media outlets. It incorporates an interdisciplinary approach, drawing insights from the fields of translation, critical discourse analysis studies, communication and media studies, and corpus linguistics. The thesis studies how a frame is constructed by these news institutions in their coverage, including the reason for deciding to frame an event in a particular way and how that constructed frame has been reconstructed when it is translated into another language with different socio-cultural conditions. The data, which is about the conflict in Yemen over a period of two years starting from the beginning of the conflict, was collected from the English and Arabic news websites of the BBC and Al-Arabiya. To maintain consistency of coverage, the data collected from both news institutions reports on the same events in the conflict.
The research implemented a corpus-assisted critical discourse analysis approach to identify the quantitative features of the corpora and qualitatively analyse the example accordingly. For the purposes of this study, a critical discourse analysis model was designed and adapted based on two different approaches, combining elements of textual analysis and cognition to compare and grasp how and why the original frame and its translation has been constituted. The focus is on the representations of the parties in the conflict and how they are portrayed in light of the different stances of the news institutions chosen. Thus, triangulating the focus of the analysis towards these representations has allowed for a precise and concentrated effort in assessing how and why the conflict has been framed in the production and reframed in the translation of news discourse.
The results and findings of this thesis reveal how a frame is constructed and reconstructed in the translation by accounting for the discursive methods and translation strategies that constituted that frame. The findings also identified two types of frames on the Macro and Micro levels of discourse production implemented by both news institutions in their coverage of the conflict. It also demonstrates that the news institutions’ view of their readers, in addition to their own aims of discourse production, governs the constitution of how world events are viewed and displays how the conflict has been differently framed by the BBC and Al-Arabiya.
