Constraints and challenges faced in translating presidential debates

Abstract

Presidential debates constitute an essential part of the election process in the United States to gain the trust and votes of the American people. During the debates, candidates present their best public image and showcase their individual political views and positions, providing the audience a chance to scrutinize them and decide who makes a better choice for the future of their nation. With its great economy and unmatched political and military power, the United States remains to be one of the leading influential countries in the world. America‘s interference in international affairs is but one example illustrating its involvement; hence the high demand for the translation of the debates by international observers as any slight change in policy could directly impact them. With drastically different communities and political systems, linguistic and cultural differences arise in the process of translating, putting the translator in the face of various gaps ranging from stylistic, to political and even legal. The purpose of this thesis is to deal with the challenges faced while translating the first American presidential debate of 2020 with emphasis put on the political allusions employed by the candidates. Translation examples from English into Arabic are extracted and categorized according to the different types of constraints encountered in the translation process. The challenges were then analyzed, according to Eugene Nida‘s formal and Dynamic Equivalence and the Techniques of Adjustments along with Vinay & Darbelnet‘s translation procedures. The conclusion was that context is a key element in the translation process.