Ideological Transformations in English–Arabic Political News Translation Through Critical Discourse Analysis

Abstract

This study examines the influence of the translator’s ideology on the translation of political news from English to Arabic, addressing a research gap in which prior studies often focus on isolated cases or monolingual discourse evaluations. Rather than examining isolated lexical choices, this study demonstrates how recurrent labels such as “martyrs” and “terrorists” operate within broader institutional and ideological framing mechanisms across translated political news. By comparing parallel reports across languages and media systems, the study highlights how recurring lexical patterns function as ethical and ideological positioning tools that systematically reshape narrative responsibility and audience alignment. The study employs van Dijk’s framework of critical discourse analysis (CDA) to discern persistent ideological shifts at the lexical, syntactic, and pragmatic levels. The results indicate that translators, whether through deliberate decisions or institutional limitations, substantially shape ideological framing, contesting the presumption of neutrality in media translation.