Translation and Cultural Representation: Russia Today and Al Jazeera English Coverage of Egypt and Syria

This thesis examines communicative and processual meaning-making from linguistic and translation perspectives, whereas the latter is approached as a form of intercultural mediation. It explores the role of translation in disseminating guided, or sanctioned interpretations, in the host language by capturing interpretations meant to reinforce or subdue narratives circulating on public levels through resituating the translated events in different contexts. Re-contextualisation, as the study explores, plays a role in reopening texts for interpretations when viewed in light of importing different aspects previously underrepresented from the source language. These aspects result in adopting, rejecting or reinforcing its meanings by the socio-cultural system of the target language. To do so, the study explores how communication unfolds, meaning reshaped and transformed during media mediation and translation. The flow of media messages and how they interrelate are investigated in light of linguistic and translation perspectives. The research questions circulate how do messages impact other messages and how did they alter narratives dynamics through repositioning participants and identifying them in relation to each other and the unfolding events. The research aims to reveal the impact of renarration and how identifying participants of immediate relevance to the unfolding events promotes the perspective of an intended participant in conflict. Repositioning participants, in turn, impacts the narratives that the translations are elaborated within constructively. The study had borrowed tenets offered by framing analysis and CDA to assist the narrative account of translation studies in its attempts to investigate the chronological developments of narratives to meta and disciplinary narratives from ontological and public narratives. The study investigates the emergence of narratives that challenge the dynamics of the status quo or aim to sustain them, as well as the roles of intertextuality and re-contextualisation in such interaction.