The live simultaneous interpreting of political discourse that news outlets offer has become an increasingly important means through which Arab audiences both shape their understanding of, and determine their reaction to, the West. Interpreters have, of course, played a very positive role in this process of understanding the ‘other’, but some have also used their powerful position to manipulate, consciously or unconsciously, utterances towards certain ethnic, political or social agendas. This thesis addresses such manipulation, motivated by the challenge of rectifying Arab audiences’ possible misconceptions about interpreting processes, and in particular as to the impossibility of unmediated access to the source text. The thesis does by applying a modified version of Hatim and Mason’s (1997) discourse analysis-based model of ideology in translation to Barack Obama’s keynote speech ‘A New Beginning’, and to three of its renderings into Arabic, provided by Al-Arabiya, Al-Jazeera and Russia Today. Initial conclusions suggest that the interpreters intervene in order to represent certain ideological positions, among them stances that are anti-lslamophobic, sectarian, and anti-Israeli. These initial conclusions are further tested by applying the same model to another key speech by Barack Obama, ‘A Moment of Opportunity’, again with three renderings, taken this time from Al-Hurrah, Al-Jazeera, and Al-Arabiya. In addition to finding that most of the ideological positions that are evidenced in the interpretations of the first speech are present in the work of the interpreters of the second one, new positions (such as anti-sexism) are also detected. The broad conclusion is that manipulative intervention (resulting from the different constraints under which interpreters live and work) is a defining characteristic of everyday live simultaneous interpreting into Arabic. So as to potentially lessen the impact of such interventions, the thesis concludes by offering a number of possible solutions, such as the design of specific training programmes.

This thesis offers a critical analysis of the implications of ideological mediations in the translation of English-Kurdish geopolitical texts. It makes an original contribution by enabling a deeper comprehension of the role of re-contextualisation of socio-political texts in situations of constant contemporary conflict in the Middle East. It does so by exploring the reproduction of stance and voice in the translations of a geopolitical commentarial genre commissioned by newspapers. The study provides an account of how patterns of translation choices are conveyed in newspaper commentary articles on the geopolitical issues originally published in English and then how these patterns are re-conveyed in full translations of these articles for four quality Kurdish-language newspapers with different editorial policies: Sbeiy, Kurdistan-i-New, Xendan, and Rudaw. The case study explores the Kurdish translation of English journalistic articles covering general political developments in Middle East and Kurdistan in particular over a significant four-year period of 2011-2014. It is employed as an example of the rewriting activity that has been effective in achieving significant geopolitical results in favour of the media agencies that are considered politically aligned outlets. The study questions the extent to which ideologies involved in leading translation practice and inquires what the Kurdish case-study apprises us about wider practice. The methodology is a hybrid of corpus- and critical narrative-analytical methods that operate within the discipline of descriptive translation studies. The study deployed tripartite models to analyse and depict the interplay between ideology and a translator’s behaviour within media contexts. It adapts Toury’s three-phase descriptive methodology and Chesterman’s concept of norms as complementary models in order to describe the type of norms operating within the context of Kurdish media translation. It also developed critical narrative analysis for further investigating and for describing the normative effects of socio- political factors on the behaviour of the translator within the same realm. The outcomes of the data analysis have revealed that media translation choices are driven by ideology. The socio-political ideology plays a significant role, both historically and currently in the occurrence of stylistic shifts. On the level of meaning, however, the majority of shifts occur due to the current political power dynamics in Kurdistan. The results have also shown that media translation in Iraqi Kurdistan is not neutral and it is largely affected by the policy of the parties to which the media news agencies are aligned. This study encompasses six chapters, a conclusion and appendices.