Reframing in News Translation: A Study of Translation Strategies in Reporting the Lifting of the Women Driving Ban in Saudi Arabia

Abstract

News agencies are becoming a primary source of information for viewers worldwide. Translation in these news agencies plays a pivotal role in making the information around the globe accessible to those viewers. However, the process of translation witnessed an act of framing in where translators try to make some information in the text more salient than others. To do so, they use textual devices such as addition, omission and/or substitution. These choices are difficult to detect unless one compares the source text with the target text. Translators in news agencies frame the texts to make them accessible to the target readers and to make them match their stereotypical image of the depicted society. This paper aims at analyzing the translated news about allowing women to drive in Saudi Arabia to see how translators framed this news and in what way they portrayed women of Saudi Arabia. The findings show that translators framed the news in a way that does not depict the reality as it is in the source society. In some of the news that have been analyzed in this study, translators tend to add, omit or change some parts of the meaning to serve certain agenda for them or the agency they work for.