Challenges in Translation News Headlines: A Case of English Headlines Rendered into Arabic

Abstract

The study aims at investigating the challenges and the strategies the translator may encounter while translating news headlines from English into Arabic. Translating headlines across languages can pose unique challenges due to linguistic and cultural differences. To achieve the goals of the study, the researcher collected ten examples from three bilingual news websites that are BBC, Aljazeera, and CNN: Aljazeera website, CNN website, BBC website translated from English into Arabic. In analyzing the data, the researcher draws mainly on Mona Baker's model (1992) and Critical Discourse Analysis of Fairclough (1995) by analyzing and explaining three levels of texts: structure, production, and comprehension. To ensure that the intended goals are achieved in the target language, translators need to apply multiple translation strategies that convey the idea without compromising the general meaning of the press headline and without being affected by cultural factors in translation. The study analyzed ten headlines from different websites to identify the translation difficulties and strategies used and it offered solutions and recommendations for the translators.