The Cultural Alterity in Translated Media Discourse: A Critical Analysis of Translating the Term'LGBT'Into Arabic
Dr. Fahad Ahmed Otaif
College of Languages and Translation, King Khalid University
Abha, Saudi Arabia
otaiff@kku.edu.sa; otaiff@gmail.com
https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9832-4289
Examining the presence (or absence) of Arabic cultural and descriptive equivalents, the study found that the Arabic cultural and linguistic equivalents of the so called “LGBT” were largely excluded and surfaced only rarely in older public Arabic discourse, for example in limited United Nations texts prior to 2006.
Findings show that, regardless of whether translators adopted linguistically “domesticating” or “foreignizing” strategies, foreign concepts and their extralinguistic cultural references still entered the target discourse via various conceptual structures and cognitive mechanisms embedded in the most frequently used translations. The paper concludes by urging translators working into Arabic to engage critically with foreign narratives and by underscoring translation’s role as a locus of intercultural communication and socio-cultural practice.