Transformations in the Translation of Hard and Soft News Reports into Arabic

Abstract

This study examines local transformations as a translation strategy of the news report genre from English into Arabic. It analyzes the frequency of deletion, substitution, addition, and reorganization to identify any relation between applying these transformations and news topics. This is achieved via a textual analysis of a parallel corpus of 60 texts of hard and soft news reports in English and Arabic derived from two sources: the Reuters (news agency) and BBC (news broadcaster) websites. Results show that deletion is by far the most frequently used transformation in both soft and hard news. Transformation frequencies are discussed in relation to the structural elements of news reports. .