Technical vs Ideological Manipulation of MENA Political Narratives via Subtitling

MENA political conflicts have inculcated controversial narratives, giving rise to deep-seated political tensions and combat, locally and globally. Political media can accentuate or contest such narratives and, sometimes, even create new ones. Narratives dwell in their source text until they are relocated to the target text through the translation process, in which they can often be subject to multi-level manipulation in proportion to the ideological constraints of translators and their institutions. Subtitling, in particular, also has its own technical constraints that can require textual manipulation. This variation of constraints motivated the study to investigate whether manipulation is technically necessitated or ideologically driven. The ultimate purpose is to raise awareness of the commonly unrecognised role of ideology in manipulating the subtitling of political narratives under the pretext of technicality. Focusing on the Arabic–English subtitling of MENA political narratives produced by Monitor Mideast, Palestinian Media Watch, and Middle East Media Research Institute, the investigation starts with the first phase, where a micro-analysis drawing on Gottlieb’s (1992) subtitling strategies differentiates between the subtitlers’ technical and ideological choices. The second phase of the investigation comprises of a macro-analysis (comprehensive framework) drawing on Baker’s (2006a) narrative account, which interprets the subtitlers’ ideological choices for the text in association with broader patterns of manipulation in the paratext and context. The study discussed concrete examples where ideology—rather than a technicality—manifested in textual choices. Coherently woven, furthermore, the narrative distortion shown was not only limited to the text but also included the paratext and context. Besides paratextual verbal manipulation (e.g., using different titles), there were also higher-level patterns of non-verbal manipulation that included reconfiguring the original narrative features. These multi-level manipulation patterns have ultimately led to the source text narratives being reframed in the target text.