Cultural-Loaded Words in Journalistic Translation Between Arabic and English

Abstract

An increasing number of contributions have appeared in recent years on culturally loaded words. This translation needs familiarity with cultural, linguistic and semantic features. Some news is full of culturally loaded words, strange terms and one of them is the religious or in general term ‘political words’ which play a key role in journalism translation through times. The cultural terms in journalism translation are definitely difficult and controversial to some journalist translators. This difficulty maybe because of the differences between different cultures, religions, ideologies, and beliefs. Translation of political writing or journalistic article needs great cultural familiarity with L1 and L2  and the targets receivers by the translator. Therefore; effective methods were provided to solve culture-bound problems in journalism translation from Arabic into English.

This article suggests an article from CNN News translated into Arabic entitles“ Islamists Take Foreign Hostages in Attack on Algerian Oil Field” will be taken as a case study. The researcher applies some examples in the languages of English and Arabic to make the statements more clear. The main objective of this present paper is to show the problem of culturally loaded words in journalistic writing and explain different translations used in this article from English to Arabic. After analyzing all the samples, it has been also determined that the ideologies and politics influence the way used in journalistic translation which means that the journalist translator is not free but under the censorship of CNN Agency. Moreover; in this paper, the various cultural words must be translated in their own context in order to establish their significance when translated into another language and culture and the target audiences and amateurs must be convinced of this type of translation.