Master’s Thesis: Arabic Orwell Between Communism and Religious Conservatism: Ideological Refraction in Al-Nabhan and Diya’s Arabic Translation
This paper examines the ideological implications of Arabic translations of George Orwell’s 1984. Two translations were analyzed, one by a communist (Al-Harith Al-Nabhan) and the other by a religious conservative (Aziz Diya). The theoretical framework used for example selection and analysis was Fairclough’s Three-dimensional Model. Preliminary results (work in progress) show that each translator worked with the text differently and used techniques such as overlexicalization and omission where certain incompatible ideas were present in the text. These results show the major and inherently subjective role translators play when translating texts; in this case, the Arab readership of both copies of the novel would have a different outlook on the messages being portrayed by the novel.
