Deciphering linguistic and cultural hurdles in English-Arabic media translation: Insights from the BBC online news articles

Abstract

Media language encompasses literary and ‎scientific elements, technical terminology, and cultural references. Effectively conveying its message to the target audience from diverse cultural and linguistic backgrounds can be challenging. This highlights some of the subtleties of media language that might add to translation difficulties. Media translation is a complex process, which involves information, knowledge, and analysis from a wide range of disciplines, including art, economics, literature, politics and science. In translating media content, accuracy in communicating cultural allusions, technical terms, and nuances ‎ to the intended audience is equally crucial as translating plain text from one language to another. This study explores the linguistic and cultural barriers that may occur while translating English-Arabic online media, with a focus on findings from BBC Online News articles. It attempts to further contribute to a deeper understanding of media translation by focusing on bridging the linguistic and cultural divide while translating English to Arabic in online media. The results of this study suggest that a translator with advanced ‎proficiency and a thorough comprehension of the subtle linguistic and cultural ‎differences that exist ‎in both languages is required to provide high-quality ‎English to Arabic translation. In other ‎‎words, skilled translators who can ‎understand and incorporate the linguistic and cultural quirks of both ‎‎languages, creating a seamless connection ‎between the translation and media ‎domains, are essential for efficient media translation.