Evaluating of English Translations of Condolence Expressions in Electronic Newspapers Websites

Abstract

Media plays a significant role in societies as it has a great influence on the world. The expansion of the world and its successive events have made translation an indispensable means used to document the accelerating events that humanity is going through. A range of communication technology has expanded the grief space in sad events, like death, from private experience to public. Besides, cultural differences mainly influence how individuals express their condolence feelings. The role of translation has been and still is crucial to learning about other peoples’ cultures and their level of development in order to keep pace with changes at all levels. Therefore, translation has formed a bridge extended between countries and societies throughout the ages. The current study sets out to identify reasons behind translation difficulties and problems encountered by translators in rendering condolence expressions from Arabic into English in electronic newspaper websites. To do so, the revised Juliane House model of translation quality assessment (1997) is adopted. It involves an analysis and assessment of condoling expressions in five Arabic newspapers translated into English. Ultimately, the study has come up some conclusions that there is an important difference in how people express their sorrows and the reason might be attributed to the culture and belief between two different societies.