Translating Islamic Media Discourse from Arabic into English: An Analysis of Translation Process

Abstract

This study deals with the translation of Islamic media discourse from Arabic to English. It investigates both the process and product of translating Islamic media texts to determine the problems that translators encounter and the strategies that they employ to provide a communicative, target-reader friendly translation. This study uses an analytical and conceptual framework that stems from various taxonomies of translation strategies and cognitive translation studies. The translation process is investigated through the use of eye-tracking technology, keystroking, and user activity software. A parallel corpus of Islamic media texts is also analyzed to determine the most common strategies that are employed by translators of Islamic media. Analysis of the parallel corpus indicates that the translators have adopted various strategies to render Islamic media texts into English, including transference, functional equivalence, transposition, componential analysis, and foreignization, among others. The behavioral data generated by eye tracking, keystroking, Translog protocols, and user activity software show that the translation process involves a considerable number of fixations, pauses, insertions, deletions, and negotiations that may justify the decisions of the translators of a text.

1. Introduction

Mass media and social platforms, such as YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter, have been extensively used to disseminate different ideologies including, radicalism, Islamophobia, and xenophobia. Insofar as Islamic media is concerned, the discourses of intolerance and hatred have been challenged with a discourse of moderation that stems originally from the teachings of Islam that describe Muslims as ʾumah wasaṭ, or “middle path”. A considerable number of writers have adopted an approach that aims to moderate Islamic media discourse and liberate it from extremism and negativity [1]. Adopting this approach could lay the groundwork for positively transforming the awareness of Muslims [1]. The translation of Islamic media discourse on moderation and fundamentalism is therefore of immense importance. It has become necessary to counter stereotypes and extremism [2] and promote understanding and peaceful coexistence among diverse religious and cultural communities [3]. This study is not concerned with the analysis of the discourse of moderation or radicalism. It mainly focuses on the translation of such texts into another language and culture. Translating Islamic media discourse is an activity that inevitably involves not only two languages but also two cultural traditions [4]. Language is at the heart of culture, and the survival of both aspects is interdependent [5]. Moreover, Bassnett underscores the translator’s responsibility to approach the source text in a manner that ensures correspondence between the target language rendition and the source language original. However, she cautions against the peril of attempting to superimpose the value system of the source language culture onto the target language culture [6]. This is applicable to the translation of Islamic discourse that is deeply- rooted in Arabic and Islamic culture. Consequently, its translation can be a challenge for the translator, who is likely to encounter an array of linguistic and extralinguistic difficulties.

Hence, this study investigates these problems of translating Islamic media discourse based on an investigation of the translation process and the human-machine interaction that takes place during this process. This study aims to answer the following questions:

1. What are the cognitive processes that take place in the process of translating Islamic media texts?

2. What kinds of knowledge, skills, and abilities do translators exhibit when translating Islamic media texts?

3. What strategies are adopted by translators while translating Islamic media texts from Arabic into English?

2. Literature review

A bulk of literature has been produced on translation across languages. Literature abounds with studies on translation equivalence [7], untranslatability issues [8], explicitation and implicitation [9], and translation universals [10]. It seems however that some genres or text types receive more attention than others. Insofar as the translation of Islamic genres is concerned, problems involving the translation of the Qur’an and hadith (Prophetic transmissions) have been conducted [11, 12, 13]. Other studies have dealt with the translation of Islamic literature [14, 15], Islamic philosophical texts [16], and Islamic oral literature such as ʾanāšīd (melodious and rhythmic Islamic songs), mawālid (poetry and praises that extol the qualities and virtues of Prophet Muhammad) and rawatibs (fixed routine or schedule of recitation) [17, 18]. However, translation process research (TPR) and cognitive translation studies (CTS) have received comparatively little attention in the literature. Early studies on CTS focused on the use and description of technological tools that can be used in tracking the process of translation. Examples of such studies are Carl’s study on Translog, a revolutionary software for the recording of the user activity data in empirical translation process research [19], and Carl’s use of Translog II for recording user activity data in empirical reading and writing research [20]. Other studies have examined the use of syntactic metrics in the assessment of translation and interpreting outputs. For instance, the use of metrics of syntactic equivalence in the assessment of translation difficulty of sentences translated from English into Dutch was explored [21]. In a similar vein, the use of six AI-based syntactic complexity metrics in the performance of some sight interpreters in English-to-Chinese sight interpreting was examined [22]. The six metrics used in the study are incomplete dependency theory (IDT), dependency locality theory (DLT), combined IDT and DLT (IDT + DLT), left embeddedness (LE), nested nouns distance (NND), and bilingual complexity ratio (BRC).

The use of technology in translation and translation processes gained momentum in the last decade of the 20th century and in the 21st century. The Center for Research and Innovation in Translation and Translation Technology (CRITT) was established at the Copenhagen Business School, and it provides a translation process research database (TPR-DB) [23]. At the time of the study, the TPR-DB included about 30 studies on translation, postediting, and revision that were recorded with Translog and with the Cognitive Analysis and Statistical Methods for Advanced Computer Aided Translation (CASMACAT) workbench. The database, which includes more than 600,000 translated words in more than 10 different languages, has made the integration of many technological tools possible, ensuring more accurate analysis of the translation process. One of these tools is Qualitivity, which can convert Trados Studio keylogging data into Translog-II format and adds the converted data to the CRITT TPR-DB [23].

Cognitive translation studies have paid special attention to translation difficulty and cognitive loads. Three linguistic factors may lead to translation difficulty, namely, structural complexity, sentence length, and degree of polysemy [24]. The literature suggests many other contributing factors to the difficulty of translation including the excessive use of specialized terms and idiomatic expressions [25], readability, non-literalness, word frequency [26, 27], text type, and genre conventions [28]. Cognitive load and translation difficulty have also been investigated using various types of external measurements including subjective rating [27, 29, 30, 31, 32]. Similarly, physiological and behavioral measures have also been used in the analysis of translation difficulty and cognitive efforts. Many studies have utilized thinking-aloud protocols and keylogging methods including pause data [15, 33, 34]. Other studies have investigated eye-tracking data, including fixation duration, and fixation count to assess translation difficulty [35, 36, 37]. Moreover, few studies have investigated translation difficulty through the use of physiological measures such as galvanic skin response [38] and heart rate and blood pressure data [39].

This study differs from the above studies in a number of aspects. Unlike many studies, this study not only investigates the translation product, but it also deals with the cognitive aspects involving the translation of Islamic media discourse from Arabic to English. In doing so, this study aims to provide practical insights into the intricate dynamics of translating sensitive texts that may hold profound religious and cultural significance. In fact, the landscape of cognitive translation studies in this domain has until now been sparsely explored. Moreover, this study uses an integrative, multidimensional methodology that amalgamates many state-of-the-art computational tools to meticulously examine both the translation process and the translation product. By embracing this eclectic approach, this study delves into the intricacies of cognitive processes that underlie the translation of Islamic discourse into English and the complex decision-making mechanisms used by translators when doing this. The incorporation of technology into the translation process will enable us to dissect the linguistic, ideological, and cultural nuances involved and will facilitate an in-depth assessment of translated text.

3. Conceptual framework

The analytical framework of this study is based on the taxonomies of translation strategies as stated by major theoreticians in the field, as well as cognitive translation research. Newmark suggested a detailed model of translation strategies that can be used in the rendering of cultural aspects in the target language, including transference, naturalization, cultural equivalent, functional equivalent, descriptive equivalent, componential analysis, shifts or transpositions, modulation, compensation, paraphrase, couplets, notes, and additions [40]. Insofar as culture-specific terms are concerned, Harvey proposed some translation techniques, including functional equivalence, formal equivalence or a “word-for-word” translation, transcription or “borrowing,” and descriptive or self-explanatory translation through the use of generic terms, even though these terms are not culture-bound [41].

As stated earlier, this study is concerned not only with analyzing the strategies used by translators of Islamic media discourse but also with analyzing the cognitive load and processes that led to the use of a particular term/expression/strategy rather than the other when rendering translations. In fact, process-oriented research has benefited from some theories of cognitive or neuroscience and psycholinguistics [42, 43, 44]. Process-oriented translation research deals with the translator’s behavior and skill development [45] and the cognitive mechanisms they apply while translating [46]. While both product-oriented and process-oriented translation research are two aspects of descriptive translation studies on the Holmes-Toury map [47], descriptive translation research goes beyond merely documenting and recording translation data objectively; it is progressively shifting toward recognizing recurring or predictive patterns in translations, as Toury correctly envisioned four decades ago [44]. TPR employed multimodal cognitive load measurements that have been used in cognitive psychology. Four methods have been used to estimate the level of cognitive load experienced, as follows:

1. Subjective rating, in which users rank their experienced load on single or multiple rating scales [48].

2. Performance measures, which aim to investigate some aspects of human performance such as task completion time, critical errors, false starts, speed, correctness [29, 49], and performance on secondary tasks [50].

3. Physiological measures, in which galvanic skin response and heart rate are measured [51]. Additionally, physiological sensors such as electroencephalography (EEG) and electrooculography (EOG) can be used to assess cognitive load [52].

4. Behavioral measures, which can be used to observe some aspects of user activity such as keystroke logging, retrospective protocols, segmentation patterns, and pause analysis.

This study is mainly concerned with the last method. It attempts to analyze the process of translation of Islamic media discourse by analyzing text input events, the movements of mouse, the movement of eye (i.e., eye gaze and fixations), gestures, and facial expressions, among others.

4. Materials and methods

This study uses a mixed-method approach that combines both qualitative and quantitative methods explained below.

4.1 Analysis of the translation process

The translation process is analyzed in this study to examine the various cognitive processes used by translators while translating Islamic media texts involving moderation and radicalism. Qualitative and quantitative methods are used in the analysis of the translation process. This study contends that a full grasp and understanding of the translation problems, strategies, sensitivities, and the like starts with understanding the pre-translation stage of any translation project. For this purpose, this study uses webcam eye-tracking technology to analyze some of the physical movements and reactions of the translators before and during translation. This artificial intelligence-based technique can analyze any image coming from a webcam. It detects a translator’s face and pupils and provides a report about their gazes, number of fixations, as well as facial expressions and emotions. The privacy of participants is guaranteed as no image or sound is saved in the servers of hosting service providers such as RealEye and Eyevido Lab. Instead, the software saves gaze point predictions as basic text data. An integrated webcam with eye tracking or an infrared eye tracker can also be used for more reliable data quality. However, the use of Eyevido Lab was sufficient for the purpose of our study, because additional tools to capture other processes were used. One of these software is RealEye, which is used to collect basic information about facial coding to detect emotions. The software provides some information about the emotions of the participants (i.e., happy, sad, surprised, etc.). This can give an idea about how translators react to a text with which they agree or disagree.

4.2 Keystroke logging software

Keystroke logging software can provide a detailed analysis of the translation process from start to end, including pauses and their duration, deletions, insertions, and revisions, among others. The relay of this process serves as a retrospective evaluation of the translation and is an indication of the problems translators encounter and how they overcome them. For this purpose, a software called Translog is used.

4.3 Inputlog and the metalinguistic skills of translators

Inputlog has been used to identify what tools translators use while translating Islamic media texts. In a highly digitized industry, it is incumbent upon translators to utilize various technological and instrumental tools in the translation process. Inputlog is used to identify the various tools used and resources consulted by the translator.

An analysis of the translation process and final product will be performed with specific reference to the translation of four Islamic media texts. The texts represent both moderate and radical media discourse. Three professional translators were asked to translate the texts using a cloud-based translation management system called Smartcat. Additionally, the translated texts were exported as aligned bilingual files. The output serves as a parallel corpus to shed more light on the strategies adopted by the translators in the rendering of Islamic media discourse into English.

5. Results: translation as a process

The translation of Islamic media texts in general and moderate and radical texts in particular is a complicated process. What often emerges as an end product is the outcome of a series of events in which the translator negotiates with the writer of the texts and supports or rejects their opinions. A major reason why a translator opts for one strategy rather than the other may not be clearly explained while assessing the quality of the translation product. Concrete answers, however, can be retrieved by documenting the translation process using advanced technology such as eye-tracking, screen recording, and keylogging. For example, in the translation of a text titled ʿalimūhum (“teach them”), some sentences from the source text were not translated into the target text. The deletion of a portion of the text does not necessarily mean that the translator is linguistically incompetent, but it may imply that the translation is not faithful to the source text. Tracking the facial expressions of the translators of the text has clearly shown that the translators are often happy or surprised while translating. They are happy with what the writer says and surprised when the writer refers to some aspects of intolerance and hatred that some extremists display, as shown in Figure 1.

Figure 1.

Translators’ facial coding while reading text one.

The translators appear to have been highly impressed by the writer and the message of his article (i.e., the call for moderation, love, tolerance, and coexistence). One of the two translators even went the extra mile and deleted the translation of many sentences in which the writer criticized some prayers that some Muslims repeat in their Friday sermons that represent clear examples of hate speech, calling for the destructions and elimination of non-Muslims, as shown in Figure 2.

Figure 2.

Deletion as a translation strategy.

Investigating interactive behavior feature patterns such as eye gazes, gestures, facial expressions, and other aspects of user activity may provide a way of interpreting the many procedures used in the process of translation. As shown in Figure 3, eye-tracking technology was used to monitor the translator’s gaze and fixations while reading and translating a source text that unjustifiably criticizes a classical Arab poet.

Figure 3.

Sight path of gazes and heatmaps while translating text two.

The sight path of the gazes and heatmaps clearly show when the translators identified certain areas of difficulty in the text. These difficult areas include the use of culture-specific terms in Arabic and the ironic tone of the writer of the source text and his clear bias against classical and contemporary poets and politicians. Data from the eye tracking software shows that in the rendering of this short text, the translator made 191 fixations that lasted for a total of 40,156 milliseconds. The question that arises is, “what was the translator fixating on?” When the translator encountered the text for the first time, he read it from start to finish, spotting several problems as indicated from the sight paths in Figure 3.

The translator’s fixations are primarily on words and expressions such as yusabihu “speaks highly of,” az-zanādiqah “heretics,” ahl az-zandaqah wa al-mujūn wa al-khalāʿah “people of heresy, obscenity, and lasciviousness,” ar-raʾīs al-hālik “the perished president,” al-mutaḥawwil wa al-thābit “the static and the dynamic,” and shaykh al-hadāthah “pioneer of modernity” as well as on proper nouns such as Bashar, Adonis, and Abu Nwas. Not all fixations imply linguistic or translational difficulty. Examining the translation process via the Translog replay tab (Figure 4) shows that the translator has 1338 user events, including 876 production events and 154 elimination events, and spent 29,36,078 milliseconds performing the task.

Figure 4.

Linear view for the translation of text two.

As the linear view of the translation shows, the translator translated the entire text literally in the beginning and he made a number of improvements during the revision phase. He paused at yusabihu [41.369] and translated it firstly as “glorify” “formal equivalence”. Later on, he changed the translation to “speaks highly of his poetry” “functional equivalence”. He paused at az-zanādiqah [01:34;125], checked the meaning in a dictionary and a corpus, rendering it as “heretics” “functional equivalence”, and later as Az-zanādiqah “heretics” “couplet”. He paused at al-mutaḥawwil wa al-thābit [49:703] and rendered it as “the static and the changeable”. Later on, he paused for [02;15;422] and rendered ahl az-zandaqah wa al-mujūn wa al-khalāʿah as “heretics and facetious person/people”. Apparently not satisfied, again he paused [01:20:031] and rendered it as “people of heresy, obscenity, and lasciviousness”. Additionally, the translator paused for [12:406] while translating zawjat ar-raʾīs al-hālik rendering it as “the wife of the late president” “euphemism”.

In the revision process, the translator went through the text once again and reconsidered the translation for all proper names. He paused for [54.266] to look for the Wiki page about Bashar bin Burd and added “a Persian poet of the late Umayyad and early Abbasid periods” to his translation. He paused again for [01:43.250] and added a note on Adonis: “a Syrian poet, essayist and translator”. He also paused for [33.312] and replaced “changeable” with “dynamic” and backspaced and added the transference al-mutaḥawwil wa al-thābit. In the revision of the text, the translator paused for [31.047] to replace “defended” with “supported,” [29.406] to replace “gain” with “received,” and [01:12.015] to replace “leader” with “pioneer”. The export of the translation as a multilingual file clearly shows the difference between the first draft of the translation and the final edited and revised text (Table 1).

Source (AR)	Target (EN)	Revised
haḏā huwa Bašār Bin Burd al-aḏī yusabiḥu bišiʿrihi al-ʿalmāniyūn wa ʾahlu al-ḥadāṯah	This is Bashar Ben Burd that secularists and modernists glorify!!	This is Bashar Ben Burd [a Persian poet of the late Umayyad and early Abbasid periods] that secularists and modernists speak highly of his poetry!!
liḏālika lā ġrū ʾan yudāfiʿu ʿanhu al-zanādiqah al-ǧudud ka-ʾadunīs fī kitābih al-ṯābit wa al-mutaḥwil	Therefore, it is not surprising that new heretics like Adonis defended him in his book the Static and the Changeable.	Therefore, it is not surprising that new heretics like Adonis, a Syrian poet, essayist, and translator, defended him in his book, al-thabit wa al-mutahwel (the Static and the Dynamic).
lā ġurū ʾan yudāfiʿ ʿanhu bašār wa ḥamād ʿuǧrud wa ʾabī nawās wa ġayrihim min ʾahl al-zanadqah wa al-muǧūn wa al-ẖalāʿah	It is not surprising that Bashar, Hamd Ajrad and Abū Nuwās and other people of heresy, obscenity, and lasciviousness.	It is no wonder that Bashar, Hamd Ajrad (a poet who lived in the Abbasid and Umauid era), Abū Nuwās and other people of heresy, obscenity, and lasciviousness supported him.
lā ġurū ʾan taḥṣul Ǧīhān ṣafwat, zauǧat al-rʾaīs al-hālik Anwar Al-Sādāt ʿalā daraǧat al-ʿālamiyah min ǧāmiʿat Al-Qāhirah bi-taqdīr īmtiyāz fī risālatihā ʿan Bašār Bin Burd, šayẖ al-ḥadāṯah, ḏalka al-muʿaḏab ṣāḥib al-fikr al-mustanīr ḍida al-sulṭah al-raǧʿiyah	It is not surprising that Jihan Safwat, the wife of the perished Egyptian president, Anwar Al-Sadat, gained her Doctorate from Cairo University with distinction for her thesis titled “Bashar Bin Burd is the leader of modernism, that agonized the owner of enlightened thought against the reactionary power!!	It is not surprising that Jihan Safwat, the wife of the late Egyptian president, Anwar Al-Sadat, received her Doctorate from Cairo University with distinction for her thesis titled “Bashar Bin Burd: The pioneer of modernism and the agonized poet of enlightened thought against the reactionary power”.

Table 1.

Translated and revised versions of text two.

The translation of text three includes a similar number of fixations and pauses. Data from eye tracking shows that the total fixations are 70 and the total duration in milliseconds is 16,184, as shown in Figure 5.

Figure 5.

Heatmaps and gaze fixation in the translation of text three.

Pauses and fixations are indicative of an array of processes. As the heatmap shows, the translator had longer fixations on expressions such as ka-l-afʿā “like a snake,” ʿalmānī muslim “a Muslim secularist,” māriksī muslim “a Muslim Marxist,” al-dajal a-ṣarīḥ “blatant deception,” al-ʿaImānīyah “secularisim,” sum zuʿāf “deadly venom,” al-shahādatayn “the two testimonies,” yushrik bi-llāh “associates partners with God,” and so forth. The linear representation reveals that fixations and pauses are indicative of linguistic, culture-specific, and ideology-specific problems in the text. The translator used various strategies while rendering some of the terms and expressions. For instance, the translator used formal equivalence in the renditions of many collocations in the text even though he attempted to determine more acceptable equivalence to these expressions during the revision stage (functional equivalent). For example, taḥta shiʿārāt maqbūlah wa musamyāt mustasāghah was literally translated as “acceptable slogans and acceptable names” “formal equivalence,” but later in the revision phase, the translator edited and rendered the two collocations as “accepted mantra and palatable labels” “functional equivalence,” which appears more appropriate in this context. Couplets have also been used in the translation of al-shahādatayn, where the translator gives the Arabic transliteration of the word and after a [51.000] pause, he adds “the two declarations of faith”. The translator’s disagreement with the opinions of the writer, who draws an analogy between Muslim secularists and communists as venomous snakes and labels secularism as deadly poisonous, seems obvious. Even though the translator rendered the text literally to a great extent and translated fanajid man yaṭlu ʿalaynā ka-l-Afʿā wa yatashaddaq bi-annahu ʿilmānī Muslim, aw Mārksī Muslim aw ḥattá shuyūʿī Muslim as “We may find a person who looks like a snake and claim that he is a secularist, Marxist or communist Muslim,” he deleted the expression in the revision phase of the text, instead rendering it as “We may find a person who may claim that he is a secularist, Marxist or communist Muslim,” where “snake” is deleted and a euphemism is clearly used. Calling someone a snake in Arab culture is derogatory and offensive. It implies that a person is deceitful, treacherous, or cunning. It may suggest that the accused person is manipulative, who often resorts to dishonest means to achieve their goals. The revision of the text also included some structural and textual edits.

Another important aspect of the translation process can be investigated through an analysis of user events and what resources/tools they have used to inform their decisions. Consider, for example, the translation of text four. The statistics of user events are provided in Table 2.

General Information
Overview
Total Process Time	00:53:20
Total Pause Time	00:35:13
Total Active Writing Time	00:18:06
Total Process Time (s)	3200.562
Total Pause Time (s)	2113.935
Total Active Writing Time (s)	1086.627
Proportion of Pause Time	66.049%
Keystrokes Produced in This Session
Total Keystrokes incl. Inserted and Replaced Characters in Main Document	18,323
Total Non-Character Keys	179
Characters Inserted	6755
Characters Replaced	9308
Total Typed (incl. spaces)	2081
Per Minute (incl. spaces)	39.012
Total Typed (excl. spaces)	1694
Per Minute (excl. spaces)	31.757
Total Words in Main Document	358

Table 2.

The statistics of user events while translating text four.

Table 2 shows that the translation of the texts was completed in 00:53:20 (3200.562 s). The total keystrokes, including inserted and replaced characters in the main document, is 18,323. This includes 179 total noncharacter keys, 6755 inserted characters, and 9308 replaced characters. The total typed characters including spaces is 2081 and the total typed characters excluding spaces is 1694. The totals of words, sentences, and paragraphs in the main document are 358, 33, and 28, respectively. The translation of the text involved a considerable number of pauses (2691 times), as shown in Figure 6.

Figure 6.

Pauses during the translation of text four.

The pauses give an indication of the problems involved in the translation of Islamic media texts, the strategies adopted by translators, and the edits and revisions that took place in various translation drafts. Tracking the pauses also unveiled the various skills and CAT tools used in translation. The focus panel in the above graph (Figure 6) shows that various CAT tools were employed, including a translation management system (Smartcat), a parallel online corpus (Reverso), the web as corpus, The Arabic–English Parallel Corpus of Authentic Hadith and other Hadith and Quranic Corpora, bilingual e-dictionaries (e.g., Qāmūs al-Maʿānī), and classical Arabic dictionaries Al-Qāmūs al-Muhit and Lisān al-Arab. Moreover, the translator used Google Images and encyclopedias such as Wikipedia. The latter was especially used for getting more information about historical and religious figures (e.g., Abu Dharr Al-Ghifari Al-Kinani). The translator sometimes resorted to random searches to find out appropriate translations for collocations in English. The translator also used his own knowledge to determine appropriate translations for certain expressions and intertextual references in classical Islamic texts, which in his view might have previously been translated into English, such as “the Farewell Sermon of the Messenger of Allah (PBUH)”. Table 3 illustrates some of these user activities.

Window title	Total time (s)	Total time (relative)	Total keystrokes	Total keystrokes (relative)
Inputlog 8.0.0.17	6.718	0.002	0	0
New Tab - Google Chrome	143.330	0.045	217	0.052
al-qadīd qāmūs al-maʿānī - Google Search - Google Chrome	19.405	0.006	0	0
taʿrīf wa šarḥ wa maʿnā qadīd bī-al-ʿarabī fī maʿāǧim al-luġatī al-ʿarabīyah muʿǧam Al-Maʿānī Al-Ǧāmiʿ, Al-Muʿǧam Al-Wasīṭ, Al-luġah Al-ʿarabīyah Al-Muʿāṣar, Al-Rʾāid, Lisān Al-ʿarab ،Al-Qāmūs Al-Muḥīṭ - muʿǧam ʿarabī ʿarabī ṣafḥat 1- Google Chrome	28.438	0.009	0	0
al-ǧawārī In English - Translation and Meaning in English-Arabic Dictionary of All Terms Page 1 - Google Chrome	9.889	0.003	9	0.002
qadīd In English - Translation and Meaning in English-Arabic Dictionary of All Terms Page 1 - Google Chrome	17.845	0.006	12	0.003
abu thar al ghafari - Google Search - Google Chrome	43.110	0.013	11	0.003
Abu Dharr Al-Ghifari Al-Kinani said Bilal son of a black woman - Google Search - Google Chrome	30.514	0.01	50	0.012
Racist Statements are Unacceptable | Bilal the Abyssinian - Google Chrome	145.657	0.046	27	0.006
Reverso Context | Translation in context - Arabic, German, Spanish, French, Hebrew, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Dutch, Polish, Portuguese, Romanian, Russian, Swedish, Turkish, Ukrainian, Chinese, English - Google Chrome	22.032	0.007	9	0.002
ʿaṣabiyah - Translation into English - examples Arabic | Reverso Context - Google Chrome	48.638	0.015	88	0.021
The Prophet said it is not among us who calls for racism Hadith - Google Search - Google Chrome	5.453	0.002	0	0
The Prophet said it is not among us who calls for racism Hadith - Google Search - Google Chrome	47.355	0.015	40	0.01
The Prophet who calls for racism Hadith - Google Search - Google Chrome	22.098	0.007	0	0
al-fitan - Translation into English - examples Arabic | Reverso Context - Google Chrome	27.830	0.009	7	0.002
corpus of hadith - Google Search - Google Chrome	45.719	0.014	8	0.002
Hadith Corpus | SpringerLink - Google Chrome	6.281	0.002	0	0
The Arabic–English Parallel Corpus of Authentic Hadith | Al-tammami | International Journal on Islamic Applications in Computer Science and Technology - Google Chrome	10.515	0.003	0	0
search corpus of hadith - Google Search - Google Chrome	37.438	0.012	109	0.026
Sunnah.com - Sayings and Teachings of Prophet Muhammad - Google Chrome	22.739	0.007	23	0.005
Search Results - Search Results - Arab is not better than non-Arab (page 1) - Sunnah.com - Sayings and Teachings of Prophet Muhammad - Google Chrome	39.258	0.012	95	0.023
Search Results - Sunnah.com - Sayings and Teachings of Prophet Muhammad - Google Chrome	8.326	0.003	0	0
an Arab is not better than a non Arab hadith - Google Search - Google Chrome	38.562	0.012	19	0.005
Islam’s anti-racist message from the 7th century still resonates today - Google Chrome	26.062	0.008	9	0.002
The Quranic Arabic Corpus - Word by Word Grammar, Syntax and Morphology of the Holy Quran - Google Chrome	13.249	0.004	0	0
The Quranic Arabic Corpus - Translation - Google Chrome	29.793	0.009	14	0.003
The Quranic Arabic Corpus - Quran Search - Google Chrome	9.145	0.003	0	0
farewell sermon prophet matters of Jahiliya feet - Google Search - Google Chrome	10.573	0.003	0	0
The Farewell Sermon of the Messenger of Allah (PBUH) | Completion of Islam - Google Chrome	27.719	0.009	11	0.003
Total	3200.562	1.000	4199	1.000

Table 3.

User events the translation of text four.

The revision process normally involved many productions, deletions, and insertions that were completed after consulting online translation resources. The translator also refined the final edited text and checked its quality using large language models such as ChatGPT by asking prompts like: -"Can you edit the following text and provide an improved English revised and edited text?” In this case, the AI-based edited version included various instances of structural, stylistic, lexical, and collocational edits.

6. Analysis of the translation product

Evidence from the parallel corpus shows that the translators of Islamic media discourse employed various strategies while translating Islamic media texts into English. Table 4 provides a summary of these strategies as a detailed explanation of these strategies is out of the scope of this paper.

Source Text	Target Text	Strategy
ʿallimūhum maʿnā at-takhalliyah qabla at-taḥalliyah; ʾayy an-na al-insān yajibu ʿalayhi ʾan yukhalliyya nafsahu ʾawwala min ash-sharr qabla ʾan yuḥallīhā bi-l-khayr.	Teach them the meaning of al-taẖlīyah “divestment” before al-taḥlīyah “adornment” – meaning that is incumbent upon a person to firstly remove evil from himself before adorning himself with good [sic].	transference and functional equivalence
Fi kulli salāmi min an-nās ṣadaqah.	In every phalanx of a person is charity” [1]. Phalanxes are fingers or toes that whenever you move, a counter of good deeds move along with it [sic]. How great is Allah!	Componential analysis and Descriptive equivalence
allimūhum ʾanna jawhar al-ʿibādah fī al-qalb; fahuwa al-miḍḥah allatī ʾin ṣalaḥat ṣalaḥ al-jasad, waʾin fasadat fasad al-jasad.	Teach them that the essence of worship is in the heart; it is that organ which when it is sound then the rest of the body is sound too.	Generalization
allimūhum ʾanna lillāh raḥamāt tatanazzal laylun nahār, taghshā al-kawn, litujīb as-sāʾilīn, wa tuḥmī al-ghāfilīn.	Teach them that Allah is merciful, descending day and night to respond to those who ask for forgiveness, to protect the ignorant	Transposition
ʿallimūhum ʾanna Allāh huwa al-ḥasīb ʿalá khalqih; mā jaʿala ʾawsiyāʾa ʿalá ʿibādih yuḥāsibūnahum ʿalá khaṭāyāhum.	Teach them that Allah Himself is the one who holds His creation to account. He has not placed any supervisors over His slaves to take them to account for their sins.	Modulation
ʿallimūhum ʾanna kalimat al-ḥaqq lā taqʿu fī ṭarf as-sayf, walā fī fawwahhat al-bandaqīyah, walā fī zirr al-ḥizām an-nāsif.	Teach them that the word of truth does not fall at the edge of a sword, nor at the mouth of a gun, nor the button of an explosive belt.	Formal equivalence
ʿallimūhum ʾanna man yatakhaṭṭā riqāb an-nās liyaṣil ʾilá aṣ-ṣufūf al-ʾūlá fī aṣ-ṣalāh wa-sayyāratuhu khārij al-masjid tuʿīq al-mārah, wa-tusiddu ṭ-ṭarīq ʾan dhunubuhu ʾaʿẓam min ʾajrih.	Teach them that the one who walks over the necks of people to reach the first row in Salaah while his car is parked outside the mosque impeding passers-by and blocking the road, incurs a sin greater than the reward he receives!	Explicitation paraphrase
kuli daula fī al-`alam taĥtađin ila şadriha shata al-mažahib wa al-adyān.	Every country in the world embraces different kinds of sects and religions.	Domestication
kuli daula fī al-`alam taĥtađin ila şadriha shata al-mažahib wa al-adyān.	Every country in the world has different kinds of creeds and adyān “religions”.	Foreignization
ʿallimūhum ʾan yadʿū li-anfusihim bial-iṣlāḥ, wal-hidāyah, wat-tamāʾinah, wayatruku ʿanhum adduʿāʾ ḍidd ghayrihim duʿāʾ ‘Allāhummah aḥṣihim ʿaddan, waqtulhum bidadan, walā tubqī minhum ʾaḥadan	Teach them to supplicate for themselves with reform, guidance, and reassurance and to leave supplicating against others.	Deletion

Table 4.

Strategies in the translation of Islamic media texts into English.

7. Discussion

This study has investigated the translation of Islamic media texts from Arabic to English, paying attention to both the process and product of translation. The corpus-assisted analysis of the end product of translation has shown that translators of these types of texts have employed a myriad of strategies to render the texts including formal equivalence, functional equivalence, transference, couplets, explicitations, implicitiations, and accommodations, among others. This finding of the study is in line with those of other studies that were conducted on the analysis of translation quality in different genres and languages [53, 54, 55, 56]. It is the contention of this study, however, that the analysis of the product does not always justify the choice or the preference of one translation strategy over another. An analysis of the process, on the other hand, can explicitly clarify these choices. The analysis of the process of translation using webcam eye-tracking technology has shown that translators of sensitive texts sometimes used deletion as a translation strategy with a view to accommodating the target readers. Their facial expressions have clearly shown their disagreement with the discourse of some fundamentalists who accuse others of blasphemy or adopt a discourse that fuels hatred, intolerance, and hostility. While this finding of the study may not have been reported in other studies, the use of deletion and accommodation strategies to meet some sociocultural norms has been reported in studies including [57, 58, 59]. The analysis of these cognitive processes can shed more light on the choices of translators. Findings from the view path of the gazes and heatmaps as well as Translog protocols have shown that the translation process involves a considerable number of fixations and pauses. The findings of this study agree with other studies that investigated the operationalization of pauses in translation (e.g., [60, 61, 62]), that translators experience prolonged pauses when looking for solutions to the lexico-grammatical and culture-specific problems in a text. In the case of this study, the source texts abound with Islamic terms and concepts, allusions, presuppositions, idioms, and the like, which defy translation. On the other hand, the findings of this study have shown that the translator of Islamic media texts from Arabic to English who participated in this study had extended pauses during translation and revision of the texts; these pauses were not dedicated to verify the naturalness of the target text (TT) and to confirm its adherence to the grammatical and stylistic norms of the TL. The longest pauses were rather dedicated to neutralization and mitigation of the criticisms in the source text. Hence, the complexity of translating Islamic discourse, whether one of moderation or radicalism, resides not only in accurately rendering the linguistic and cultural aspects of the text but also in the underlying presuppositions and ideologies behind the discourse. Even though the translators attempted to render the texts literally in the beginning, the revision of the text included several omissions for some expressions the translators deemed inappropriate.

The analysis of user events using Inputlog has also shown that translators of Islamic media texts spent ample time using various CAT tools and resources that can help them in the rendering of the text. Online dictionaries, search engines, parallel corpora, Google images, and classical Islamic resources, among others, were all used by the translators. This finding is in line with those of [63], that pauses not only give an idea about the problems that a translator may encounter, but they may also reflect the development of the translator’s instrumental competence and skills they have accumulated.

8. Conclusion

This study examined the translation of Islamic media texts from Arabic to English. The process and product of translation have been investigated with a view to determine the problems and coinciding strategies and cognitive processes involved in the translation of Islamic media discourse. The process and the product of translation were examined based on the amalgamation of several technological tools including webcam eye-tracking, keystroking, and tracking user events. This study has concluded that the process of translation is characterized by abundant gazes, fixations, and pauses during which the translator of a text anticipates or locates a problem, selects an appropriate strategy, and searches in dictionaries, references, and corpora. The process of translation includes a series of negotiations, renegotiations, and edits. The ideology of the translator is discernible in the process of translation through the various choices he or she makes while translating a particular expression, which might justify the omissions, explicitations, implicitations, and accommodations she or he employs.

This work is not free from limitations that could be addressed by future research. As any other empirical study, the analysis of the process of translation is based on a limited number of texts and translators. The texts may not be representative of all the problems that translators of Islamic discourse may encounter. In a similar vein, the process of translation and the lengthy list of user activities may differ from one text to another, let alone from one genre to another. User activity may also differ from one individual translator to another. More empirical studies involving more translators and directionalities are still needed to unravel not only the problems and strategies of translation but also the ideologies, biases, and prejudices that can mar the work of a translator.