Ideologization and Marketing in Translating First Person’s Biography in Michael H. Hart’s Book: “The 100”

Abstract

There has been recently a lot of talk about the impact that the translator has on the reader’s mind, and the use limitation of this privilege within translation deontology, this goes back to the end of the 20th century when Translatologists such as Jean-René Ladmiral and Henri Meschonnic have revisited the phenomena of source-oriented and target-oriented translations. In this paper, we analyze the translation of the first person (Muhammad) in Anis Mansour's book that he entitled "الخالدون مائة: أعظمهم محمد رسول الله ﷺ", which is a translated version of Michael H. Hart's book "The 100: A Ranking of the Most Influential Persons in History", in order to highlight the translational transgressions committed by the translator who focused more on satisfying his audience that seems to be unwilling to receive what would shock them if he faithfully conveyed what Michael H. Hart really wrote in the original text.

We have adopted an objective and analytical approach by monitoring added, omitted and distorted sections during the translation of the source text, and by trying to determine the translator’s scope in adapting the text culturally, ideologically or for marketing purposes. The study proved that Anis Mansour went - in his translation of the information in the source text - from the translating role to the authoring role, and this proves, once again, that the receiver of the target text is at the mercy of the translator and his translational conscience in many cases.