Translator’s Ideology and Translation Choices in Political Conflict: Do Translators Have Their Say?

In the context of the Palestinian- Israeli conflict, unfaithful translation to the ‘original’ has been a site of resistance among Arab translators against Israeli occupational practices. This paper aims at studying Arab translator’s ideology in translating conflicting identities through answering two questions: First, to what extent can the translator apply his/her own ideology in the translation without compromising ethical principles (as often determined by faithfulness and accuracy)? Second, if the translator does not find it necessary to abide by the conventional requirements of loyalty and faithfulness, then what would be the criteria of his/her ethical responsibility and whom/what is the translator accountable to? I answer these questions in the context of my translation to Dorit Rabinyan’s All the Rivers from English into Arabic set out in appendix A of my Doctoral dissertation published by ProQuest LLC (2020). Answering these questions, I argue that ideology in translating conflicting identities features the co-productive aspect of translators’ act and marks their substantial autonomy on taking their own decisions without submitting to the dictates imposed by the binary opposition between the original and the translation and the author versus translator hierarchical relationship which underpins traditional codes of ethics translators “must” abide by along the translation process. I evidence my argument through annotating my translation choices and decisions I made all the way through my translation of Rabynian’s Novel. These The findings of this annotative study verify that translators’ position is never impartial or reproductive particularly when their task is translating works laden with representations of imbalanced power relations and political tensions between two cultures to which they, translators, belong.


Introduction 1
Translator's ideology is a remarkable facet that alludes to the very transformative nature of translation. The fact that translator's ideology is a critical factor that influences translators' decisions destabilizes the views which assess translation as merely mechanical and limited to carrying meaning from one language into another by voiceless and invisible linguists who must abide by ethical principles, namely loyalty, faithfulness, and accuracy (equivalence). I claim that the translator's role is co-productive, if not authorial, rather than secondary or neutral as not only authors but also translators produce their discourse under the influence of certain ideological dictates that emanate from and are associated with their societies and readerships' collective ideologies and social contexts (Allababneh, p.1). My claim rests on two assumptions that elaborate the parameters and the maxims of translator's Ideology. First, it is assumed that ideology pertains to beliefs, value systems, knowledge and worldviews rather than to a list of agendas or objectives to be fulfilled during political actions (Van Dijk, p. 2). Second, "translation never coincides with its source, it is not identical or equivalent in any formal or straightforward sense, and it remains to be seen how the notion of the one discourse 'matching' the other is to be filled in" (Theo, Hermans p. 196). I evidence my argument by shedding light on my translation choices in my translation of Dorit Rabinyan's All the Rivers. These choices verify that translators' position is never impartial or reproductive, particularly when their task is translating works laden with representations of imbalanced power relations and political tensions between two cultures to which they, translator and author, belong. In the following sections, I will elaborate on the above-mentioned assumptions by explaining the theoretical framework of my translation choices. Besides, I will extend the discussion of this theoretical framework to explain my translation choices in terms of translation theory and answer key questions, not least those pertaining to the norms and the master discourse of the translating culture which influence and regulate translators' acts.

On Ideology
What is ideology? and how understanding its implications helps us reconsider the traditional inferences and viewpoints about translation, seen as an accurate, faithful and mechanical act whose actors (translators) are only conduits through which meaning transfers between languages and cultures.
Throughout history, ideology has been theorized in different contexts in which psychological, cognitive, social, and political factors were insistently accentuated and thoroughly considered. That is, such factors and how they interact with certain world realities have influenced scholar's perspectives about the notion of ideology and its fundamentals. In this sense, defining and theorizing the concept of ideology has been subjected to transformation process as theorists have been influenced by different factors and circumstances that form their perspectives about the very nature of ideology and how it functions.
To demonstrate, the term 'ideology' was officially coined by the French scholar Antoine Destutt de Tracy, in 1796. Tracy and other French scholars' perspectives about the notion of ideology "as the science of ideas" reflects on the political and social circumstances prevailed in Europe in the Enlightenment era during the French Revolution. In the same vein, Marx's notion of ideology was shaped in the context of capitalism in which Marx's concept of ideology was formulated. According to Marx in that context, Ideology is a "critical weapon in the context of class oppression and the main contradiction between capital and labor" (Larrain, 13). Under these circumstances, the connotations and meanings generated in these political and social contexts to cover the term ideology were pejorative and politically slanted.
However, the current scholarly works on ideology present more comprehensive definitions and views about the concept of ideology than what classical traditions present in this regard. They are comprehensive in the sense that they promote multidisciplinary models through which the idea of ideology is positively viewed and assessed. What is unique about such multidisciplinary models is their focus on cognition, discourse, and society as crucial elements which we must consider to better understand how ideology monitors our language and discourse that, in return, mirror our views and beliefs toward the world in which we live and communicate. In this paper, I want to pursue Van Dijk's definition of ideology to investigate my translation choices, considering ideology as an essential factor in shaping the final product of my translation to Rabinyan's All the Rivers. According to Dijk, cited in Mria Calzada Perez: ] an ideology is the set of factual and evaluative beliefs?-that is the knowledge and the opinions-of a group [….] in other words, a bit like the axioms of a formal system, ideologies consist of those general beliefs and opinions (attitudes) of a group. (p. 5) After exploring many definitions, Stuart Hall agrees with Van Dijk: By ideology I mean the mental frameworks -the languages, the concepts, categories, the imagery of thought, and the systems of presentation -which different classes and social groups deploy in order to make sense of, figure out and render intelligible the way society works. (Hall,p. 29) Synchronizing these definitions and their implications, we cannot reasonably think of ideology without devoting attention to the intertwined relationship between language construction on one hand and our beliefs, attitudes, and worldviews on the other one. This mutual relationship is very well expressed by Paul Simpson as he states that: Language use cannot be regarded as neutral, value-free or exempt from at least some 'angle of telling.' Rather, it is shaped by a mosaic of cultural assumptions, political beliefs, and institutional practices-in other words, ideology. (p. 176).

On Translation and Language
As ideology, the definition of translation has been subjected to a dynamic, transformative process which conforms to diverse contexts in which translation concepts and notions have been established and developed. This fact explains labeling translation approaches with different designations: linguistic approaches, psychological approaches, contextual approaches, postcolonial approaches and so forth. Of course, scholars and theorists' perspectives about translation act adhere to their thinking traditions which influence their views on how language functions and how, in turn, this impacts our perspectives about translation acts and translators' role.
At this point, I want to briefly shed light on two traditions of thinking, which have influenced Western philosophy for decades, in order to demonstrate the logic of various theorists' assessments/opinions about translation in view of their perspectives on language in general and, specifically, on the relational association between form and meaning and the variables that regulate this relationship.
To illustrate, there are two traditions of thinking which have strongly influenced the western philosophy: the Nietzschean tradition and the Platonic tradition. The latter presumes a hierarchical relationship between truth and its representations. The truth of an object is preserved with its creator, and we do not have access to it. We only have a representation of that truth. According to Plato, the representations of truth are also not the same, for they are hierarchically removed from the original. For example, the painter who paints a bed is the farthest removed from the essence of the original bed, and the carpenter who produces the real bed is less removed from the original, but still what the carpenter makes is an imitation of the original bed and what the painter does is an imitation of another imitation. Hence, what the painter does is inferior to the truth of the bed that is preserved -its creator and to the carpenter's real work (Plato p. 2 -4).
On the other hand, Nietzsche In his foundational article 'On Truth and Lies In A Nonmoral Sense,' subverts Plato's concept of truth and deconstructs its vertical relation relations with its representations. He argues that everything we have is human-made, including language and meaning. Language, according to Nietzsche, is arbitrary and a set of conventional metaphors we create, and that metaphorical language creates and shapes meaning not for the sake of truth but for the sake of power we need to survive in our social groups. So, if there is no original in that sense, we can also say that whatever the 'original' is, it will not be perceived in its sameness (p. 83, 86, 94). This horizontal way of thinking deconstructs the notion of the vertical relationship between the original and its imitations and ends up with denying the concept of truth in Plato's argument.
Philosophically speaking, the opposition between the Nietzschean and the Platonic traditions illustrates the philosophical background upon which translation theorists draw their conclusions about language and its representations and the dynamics that govern the (in)stability of such representations, when meaning crosses different cultural and linguistic borders through translation.
In general, traditional and essentialist translation approaches/scholars are platonic in the sense that they implicitly and explicitly grant power to the original text and authors' intentions as essential factors that regulate translators' behavior in their effort to transfer the 'stable' meaning of the source text into the target text. In his very popular article "Science of Translation," Nida recommends conducting "scientific analysis of translation" to "set up series of ordered rules, which could be more or less mechanically applied" (p. 483,493). Of course, Nida's recommendation draws on 'universal grammar' model which studies the operational relations between deep structures and surface structures "held by Chomsky to be a universal feature of human language," (Monday, p. 62,63). According to Monday, Nida sees that studying these relations scientifically will provide "the translator with a technique for decoding the ST and a procedure for encoding the TT,"(p. 63). This essentialist view about language and translation is not independent of the imperialist principles about translation which reduces "the problematics of translation to a question of linguistic differences, resulting from the syntactic, semantic and phonological asymmetries of languages" ( Shamma, p. 279). Moreover, this view underpins the traditional codes of ethics adopted by certain prestigious translation organizations. For instance, the American Translators Association's first code of ethics states that "linguistic integrity is at the core of what translators and interpreters do. Faithful, accurate and impartial translation conveys the message as the author or speaker intended with the same emotional impact on the audience" (American Translators Association Code of Ethics and Professional Practice 1).

On translation and Ideology
In translation studies, ideology has increasingly become one of the research interests for many scholars in the field. However, not all scholars explore ideology in translation from the same angle and at the same level (lexis, text, discourse and context) as well. That is, theorists' scholarly and intellectual backgrounds play a crucial role in the way they perceive how the translator's ideology operates.
In his article "Translation and Ideology," Jeremy Munday studies the translator's ideology with thinking of translation as a process of meaning 'transference' which is featured with shifts between alternative linguistic /stylistic variations selected by translators according to their knowledge and intentions. He refers to such variations as 'transitivity patterns' to explain the translator's interventions that take place through preferring certain structural formulas over other ones, passive voice versus active voice or to highlight subjective pronouns rather than to conceal them as in the source text (p. 201,202). Munday's contention is to underline the efficacy of the textual approach in highlighting translators' intervention. However, this methodology of studying the translator's ideology could be sufficient if, generally, we think of translation as a process of transferring meaning from the source text into the target text with marked textual differences which illustrate translators' minimal preferences and views. Furthermore, this textual approach does not account for translators' ideology in translation works where translators apply common translation strategies like omissions, additions and appropriation. For translators, as social actors, such preferential strategies account for the cultural, social and historical contexts of certain world realities that regulate their endeavors and gear their product toward the expectations and the norms of their target readership. Accordingly, implementing this linguistic, textual approach to reflect on translators' ideology will belittle the way our value systems and beliefs affect and regulate our discourse production and will skate over the discursive function of translation acts which typify the (co)productive aspect of translators' ideology.
However, these linguistic views establish the premise of the traditional ethical codes which deem translation to be a faithful iteration of the source text. Such codes fail as the impossibility of sameness is always averred when a comparison between any two translations of a certain source text is conducted. In addition, they fail to account for social contexts where translation becomes a site of struggle and resistance. That is, in such contexts translators "are perceived as social actors who are heavily involved in the dynamics of translation production" (Khalifa, p. 11) that aligns with the master discourse of translation in the target culture and its readers' expectations and norms to which translators' fidelity is directed and fully devoted. In that sense, it remains that "the culture of translation ultimately guides and regulates the translation of culture" (Faiq, p. 6).
In the following section, I will pursue the discussion about translators' ideology to explain my translation choices in my translation of Rabynian's All the Rivers. These translation choices reflect my ideology and its influence on shaping the Arabic version. This ideology, I argue, features the very co-productive aspect of translators' performance and marks their substantial autonomy on taking their own decisions without submitting to the dictates imposed by the binary oppositions between the original and the translation and the author -versus-translator hierarchical relationship which reinforces the traditional codes of ethics translators "must" abide by along the translation process.

All the Rivers
Among the Israeli writers whose literary works represent the complications of the conflict between Arabs and Israelis is Dorit Rabinyan. Her All the Rivers is an autobiographical account for her love story she lived with a Palestinian artist named Hassan Hurani whom she met in New York City. Dorit Rabinyan, the author and the first narrator, communicates her story by designating herself and Hassan Hurani with different names: Liat and Hilmi.
To demonstrate, Liat, an Israeli Fulbright scholar studying in New York City, has a chance to meet with the affable Hilmi, a Palestinian painter. In a short time, they intensively have love affairs. A relationship unthinkable at home flourishes in post 9/11 New York. Although their relationship is full of passion, Liat believes their romantic relation cannot last and will end when she returns to Israel. While their political, cultural, and religious differences should be of little importance in multicultural New York City, there remains an obscure, impenetrable wall between them ("All the Rivers"[review] p. 71). The story ends with inevitable separation of the two soulmates because their identities are culturally and socially incompatible. Throughout the story, Liat struggles with her emotions toward Hilmi whenever she thinks of the complications surrounding this relation back home.
In 2015, Rabinyan's novel was proposed to be a part of the Israeli high school curriculum, but finally it was banned and viewed, for ideological reasons, as unqualified to be in the literary reading list for high school students. The ban on the novel by the Israeli Ministry of Education derives from realizing its love story as a threat to Israeli identity. This ban was criticized by the media outlets locally and internationally.
Influenced by the local and international reactions toward the ban, I read the novel and decided to translate it into Arabic. My translation choices followed the translation norms of translating Israel in the Arab world. Moreover, they conformed to the entrenched theme of Otherness in the Arab master discourse about Israel and Israelis.
To illustrate, for the Arab media and the Arab reader as well, the ban of the novel was perceived as a result of Israelis' fear for their identity. Furthermore, the end of the relationship was, metaphorically, perceived as the cement wall built between Israel's borders and the West bank. In Al-Hayat newspaper on the 11 th of July, 2017, Abdoh wazan reflected on the novel: The Israeli narrator or the Israeli Author, Dorit Rabinyan, did not distort the character of Hilmi (Hassan Hurani)….. She tried to be loyal to him. She presented his vision about the Palestinian cause and the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, which completely contradicted her vision. She was unable to abandon him and to end her mad love for him, but at the same time she was aware that there was a wall between them that in her subconscious she feared this love, which could be called "peace." She is Like her people who occupied the Palestinian land and who fear the 'Other' who must remain the 'Other'. (My translation) Such reactions tell us how ideology influences our verbal and written discourse about the world events we interact with and witness. Arab collective mind, represented in Al-Wazan's voice, reads the ban as the normal consequence of Israelis' stances and attitudes toward Arabs.in fact, Al-wazans's view echoes the general discourse circulated in the Arab world about what is seen as the characteristics of the Israeli personality in general and Arabs attitudes toward the existence of Israel in specific. Arab translators, as readers, reflect on this collective mind through their translation strategies. In the following section, I intend to shed light on my translation strategies and choices considering how authors and translators' different ideologies influence their different discourses and products. This discussion will help us to deeply rethink the traditional views about translation and its inferior status as compared with the 'original'.

Discourse and Ideology: Arab Translator Versus Zionist Author
In the pre and post-1948 Hebrew literature, Israeli authors, through their protagonists, treated the Other (the European and/or the Arab) in different ways and through different modes: "the naïve mode, the realistic mode/ ethical mode and the psychological mode" (Ramraz-Raʼukh 204). However, such images are always formed in connection with their relation to the land and their self-image. In the pre-1948 Hebrew literature, the representation of Arabs was naïve and peripheral, but the Arab image changed to be central and took different forms in different literary works in the post-1948 literature (Rauch 203, Riza Domb. P. 4). The centrality of Arabs in the Hebrew literature is accompanied by a complex image, the beloved and good on the one hand and the threatening Other on the other one. Rabinyan is an example of modern Israeli authors whose ideology influences the complex mode of Arab image in her novel.
That is, even Rabinyn's novel is a dedication to her feelings and cherished memories she shares with Hassan Hurani (Hilmi), but the content of the novel mirrors her ideology and reflects on the complexities of the Arab image in her work and its influence on highlighting her Zionist identity. She, simultaneously, glorifies Hilmi with very intimate expressions and draws lines between herself and him by recalling common narratives laden with negative images about Arabs back home. She uses the monologue technique to express her individuality on one hand and her collective mind on the other one: How do I describe him?....How do I extract his finished portrait….How can I use mere few lines to paint the whole picture, with all its breadth and depth? Is it even possible to attain that sort of scrutiny, that measure of lucidity, when the hands of loss keep touching the memory, staining it with their fingerprints? (p. 12) Nevertheless, in an imagined phone conversation with her sister who lives in Israel and with whom she shares her new love story. She imagines her sister asking her: Are you going to tell him about the Arab grocer you used to go to? And every hummus joint you have ever had lunch at in Jaffa? Oy, those Arab, she sighs, mimicking our grandmother who used to cluck her tongue and murmur those words in a worried voice evert time there was bad news on TV. Oy, those Arabs. Not just about terrorist attacks, but even when they reported criminal activities or discussed the inflation: Oy, those Arabs. (p.

40)
Moreover, at a certain moment of struggle with her collective identity, Rabinyan' Zionist ideology is crystal clear in her narration for moments when Liat and Hilmi discussed the conflict: I hated the ridiculous patriotic pathos that kept taking me over. I hate that every time I was faced with his radical Arab positions I had to veer the right, squeezing in alongside my conservative parents. It angered me that, faced with his binational fervor, I found myself defending the Israeli consensus-the very same centric opinions that outraged me when my parents espoused them at Friday night dinners. In that setting, with the weekend news on the television in the background, my sister and I used to argue with my parents, and later with Micah, who joined their side. We blamed the occupation for all our troubles, cursed the right-wing government and the settlers. But here in New York I suddenly sounded like them. I defended Israel and justified its politics (p. 147) If we contemplate these short extracts and their implications, it will be easy to conclude that our discourse is regulated by our ideology: worldview, knowledge, and value system which align with the political, social and religious norms that govern our discourse. Recognizing the discourse through which translators and writers express their ideology is very important to draw full attention to ideology in translation and its role in marking the authorial aspect of translators' performance. In Fact, Dorit Rabinyan's prophecy of the tragic end of her relationship stems from her ideology as a Zionist author who believes in such inevitable destiny. The Arab-Israeli conflicting identities signify the main cause behind the tragedy of the soulmates and prevent them to pursue their romantic dream. So, the value system in which she is immersed, her beliefs in addition to her world view are all essential threads that weave the texture of the storyline.
In the same vain, Arab translators' master discourse, pertaining to Israel, is shaped under the influence of their ideology which produce an illustrative discourse that unveils their loyalty to the land and their attitudes toward the Other, Israelis.
Metaphorically and ideologically speaking, my ideology influenced my translation act along the process of producing the Arabic target text, ending with translation decisions that metaphorically reflect on the complications and the historical events of the conflict. For illustration, entitling the Arabic text ‫العازل"‬ ‫,الجدار‬ The Separation Wall," I refer to the wall which was built by Israel in 1995 to isolate Gaza strip from its territories. The cost of this wall was imbodied in separating Palestinians in Gaza Strip from their relatives who live in the east part of their country and left them to suffer absolute isolation. This title is very expressive in that it depicts the protagonists' impossible relationship and the challenges imposed by their conflicting identities. Accordingly, it shows how the ontological origins of this complicated relation are a continuation of the identity differences and the growing rifts between Arabs and Israelis, which are never bridged. Moreover, it makes the failure of the emotional relationship between the protagonists analogous to the failure of the peace initiatives and treaties which were always signed to bring up peace that 'hopefully' patches the bloody history and overcomes the hopelessness of reaching a possible reconciliation.
Furthermore, with titling the target text ‫العازل‬ ‫,الجدار‬ I intend to highly consider the political context of the conflict and the expectations of the Arab readership. This translation choice and other ones ,as well, delineate the different features between my identity and Rabinyan's to which Bassnett in "The Translator as Cross-Cultural Mediator" refers to as 'translator's identity' and 'writer's identity' to talk about certain translational contexts where drawing lines between writers and translators' identities becomes a complex issue and "when a translator becomes a substitute for another writer" (p. 101). To stress the opposite position and to be differently received than the way Rabinyan was received in Israel, my translation choices were decided with full consideration of my values and the expectations of the Arab readership. To clarify, I translated the "State of Israel" to ‫ااااااا‬ which literally means "Israel" to signal my readers' beliefs, and mine as well, regarding the history of Israel as a country and its future. Most Arabs do not recognize Israel as a country as it has no definite borders by consistently extending them on the expense of the indigenous dwellers' land, Palestine. Another example, I translated the abbreviation IDF (Israeli Defense Forces) to ‫اااااااا‬ ‫ااااا‬ ‫اااا‬ which literally means " The Zionist Army Forces". These translation choices show my stance and understanding of the spatial and temporal factors which determine what translation strategies are appropriate to transform Rabinyan's text into Arabic and be appreciated by Arab readers. In this regard Tymoczko writes: The ideology of translation resides not simply in the text translated, but in the voicing and stance of the translator, and in its relevance to the receiving audience. These later features are affected by the place of enunciation of the translator: indeed they are part of what we mean by 'place' of enunciation, for that 'place' is an ideological positioning as well as a geographical and temporal one. These aspects of a translation are motivated and determined by the translator's cultural and ideological affiliations as much as or even more than by the temporal and special location that the translator speaks from. (p. 129) It is assumed that in a situation of violent national conflict, translation does not seem to become a way for fruitful intercultural dialogue and will become a ground of struggle between political and ideological viewpoints even the purpose of the translation is to advance the cause of peace and understanding between the concerned peoples. Thus, the integrity of the translated text, the stylistic level of its language, the degree of which the source language is introduced into the translated text and so forth will mainly express the ideology under whose influence the translator acts (Kayyal,p. 54).
In fact, through these translation strategies, I intend to insinuate my resistant voice and co-produce a text in a conflict-context where the implied reader of the Arabic text is different from the implied reader of both the Hebrew and the English versions. In the first chapter of All the Rivers, my voice pulsates as I add brackets to produce extratextual translation discourse for some geographical proper nouns like Tel Aviv. I domesticated Tel Aviv to be rendered as Jafa to revive the historicity of the place in the Arab readers' memory, especially the young generations. However, domesticating certain parts of the English text in the Arabic version to produce, to a certain extent, a resistant discourse may be met with an objection that stems from two crucial questions: what is the privilege of producing a resistant discourse if Arabs compose the target readership? And, why is domestication preferred over foreignization if, in general, the former is the anticipated translation trend in the (post)colonial context? Nevertheless, scholars' perspectives which value literal and foreignizing translation strategies account for the (post) colonial contexts where the literary work of the colonial subject is rendered to be received by readers of the dominant translating language "to preserve the alterity of the source text" (Bandia qtd. in Shamma, p. 287). However, in the context of translating All the Rivers, domesticating translation functions as a resistance-tool to call the new generation of Arab readers to rethink the defaced reality of naming the colonized subject; the land. Moreover, this translation discourse aligns with Arab readers' narrative discourse which forms their collective memory and mind about the history of the land. Basel Hatim (2002) highlights the necessity of the interaction between the target readership and the positionality of the translator who considers the norms of the target culture and its value system of accepting and appreciating the target text (p. 129). At the same token, Baker, in her In Other Words book, stresses that "whether a text is judged as acceptable or not does not depend on how closely it corresponds to some state of affairs in the world, but rather on whether the reader finds the presented version of reality believable, homogeneous or relevant" (219).
Consequently, omission of certain parts of the source texts was deemed necessary. Guided by Toury's operational norms which determine "the extent of omissions, additions, changes of locations and manipulation of segmentations" in the target text (p. 59), I omitted the parts which included the protagonists' private and intimate moments they spent together. This strategy accounts for the conservative environment where Arab readership is not used to encountering such a sensuous and sensational discourse. Toury's norm is synonymous with the expectancy norms discussed by Centerman in his 'Memes of Translation and: the spread of Ideas in Translation Theory'. According to Chesterman, the Expectancy norms are: Established by the expectations of readers of a translation…concerning what a translation should be like…these expectations are partly governed by the prevalent translation tradition in the target culture…they can also be influenced by economic or ideological factors, power relations within and between cultures and the like. (p. 62)

Conclusion
In this article, I intend to confirm the idea that translators' ideology features their vary (co)productive role in the context of translating the literature between two conflicting-identities and/or cultures. My translation choices, at the textual and paratextual levels including text selection and the discursive translation strategies, evidence my argument by assuming the influence of our values, world knowledge and beliefs on constructing our translation discourse which are, at the same time, governed by the translation norms and the master discourse of the translating culture. I discussed the notion of language and translation and their relationship with ideology by considering the implications of the Nietzschean tradition of thinking which illustrates the arbitrary relationship between the signifier (form) and the signified (meaning). The equivalent representations of this meaning in another system of a sign is regulated by the contextual dynamics and the cultural norms of the translating culture. As implied by the Nietzschean tradition, it is us who impose the metaphorical relationship between the sign and its connotations and denotations to survive in harmony with the social group we belong to. With this in mind, we can recognize that designating the novel with different titles: (The Border Life) in Hebrew , (All the Rivers) in English and (The Separation Wall) in Arabic, explains how "translation never coincides with its source, it is not identical or equivalent in any formal or straightforward sense, and it remains to be seen how the notion of the one discourse 'matching' the other is to be filled in" Theo Hermans 196). Both English and Arabic versions match the source text in accordance and in harmony with the translators' different ideologies and the different backgrounds of two target readerships.
The readers' expectations, in addition to the temporal and spatial dimensions of the translation act form translators' agency and delineate borders between their ideology and the ideology of the source text writer, the authors'. My conclusion for this paper assures Tymoczko's claim that: Questions about the loyalty of a translator arise not because the translator inhabits a space between, with affiliations to that space between, but because the translator is in fact all too committed to a cultural framework, whether that framework is the source culture, the receptor culture, a third culture, or an international cultural framework that includes both source and receptor societies. (p. 138) Consequently, the impossibility of the in-between position teases out conclusions about the shortcomings of some perspectives which limit the translators' agency and view their acts as merely mechanical and neutral at times when the consequences of translation products either enhance certain stereotypes, representations and narratives or repudiate them. Moreover, Translators must be granted professional codes of ethics, authorship laws and moral rights which guarantee their agency.