The Other in Subtitled Documentary Films and Making History: A Multidisciplinary Perspective to Arabic/English Translation

Dr. Safa'a Ahmed
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The Other in Subtitled Documentary Films and Making
History: A Multidisciplinary Perspective to Arabic/English Translation
Dr. Safa'a Ahmed, Assistant Professor
Faculty of Languages, MSA University
Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Dr. Safa'a Ahmed
Abstract
What is the relation between translation and history? A simple question as it may seem, but it gave the motive for this study to explore academically this relationship. It aimed to investigate the role of subtitling translation of documentary films from Arabic into English and the use of supplementary visual images in making the history of the Other, the Arab other generally and Egyptian Other particularly. It hypothesized that the West has constructed a deformed image of the Egyptian 'Other' and used translation and visual images as a tool to make the latter's history. To test the authenticity or the inauthenticity of the hypothesis, it set the following objectives: to analyse and compare English TTs to their original Arabic STs to infer the translator's strategy; to analyse visual images and discuss the image of the Other as delineated in both the TTs and STs; to present counter stories to reveal the other side of the story and who makes history; to explore how subtitling translation and visual images are utilized to help in making the Other's history; and to devise a future role for translators in this respect.
The sample data was collected from the BBC documentary 'Egypt's Stolen Billions' (2012) and it consists of original Arabic utterances and their subtitling translation from Arabic into English, and some visual images. The study applied a qualitative, theoretical method of research using content analysis and comparison between TTs and STs as tools of analysis. An interdisciplinary approach deriving its key concepts from cultural translation studies and international relations theories was employed. The study found out that whatever the translator' modes of negotiating the Other are, translation is an operative political decision to make the history of this Other and that subtitling translation and visual images can be used as political tools to achieve certain agendas.
Keywords: cultural translation studies, international relations, the Other
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1. Introduction
Translation is the most obviously recognizable type of rewriting, and…it is potentially the most influential because it is able to project the image of an author and/or those works beyond the boundaries of their culture of origin.
(Lefevere 1992:9)
Through colonization, the West created a negative image about the Other, whom it wanted to dominate, save, civilize, or usurp its resources (Mountz 2013). The West, the colonizer, saw itself as superior and the Other, the colonized, as inferior and marginalized. In the post-colonial era or the colonial present as Gregory (2004) calls it, the West has done the same_ using orientalism. It struggles to find any possible binary differences for class, race, gender, sexuality, nation, and religion in order to establish and separate the civilized 'West' from the savage 'Other'.
The responses of the U.S. president George W. Bush to the attacks of September 11, Gregory (2004:24) states, highlight philosophic connotation and denotation divisions that have promoted the negative West representation of the Other, when he simply raised the rhetoric question 'Why do they hate us?' to justify starting his war on terrorism. Bush's Us-and-Them division led the American public opinion to draw an artificial binary between friend and enemies, the 'Others', hence his mobilization has worked out. Intellectuals like Michel Foucault and postmodern philosophy argue that in the production of knowledge, the process of Othering is related to the imaginary representations and power, forcing a political agenda through knowledge of the Other (Said1978:xviii).
Our image as an Arab World or a Muslim World, or what the West likes to call nation states of the Third World, in the eyes of the West as the 'Other' has been deformed through translation as well for decades, a matter which has attracted the attention of many of the post-colonial scholars of translation studies. But most of their works were mainly literature-oriented. The role of translation in the formation of this image, and consequently in making the history of the Other, seems very much appealing to study through documentary films from a political, rather than literary, perspective. Therefore, this study aims to investigate the role of subtitling translation of documentary films from Arabic into English and the use of supplementary visual images in making the history of the Other, of the Arabs generally and Egyptians particularly. The researcher hypothesizes that the West has constructed a deformed image of the Other and used subtitling translation of documentary films (from Arabic into English) and visual images as a tool to make the Other's history.
Dr. Safa'a Ahmed
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Occasional Papers
Vol. 62(Dec. 2016)
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1.1 Significance of the Research. If the relationship between translation, supplemented by visual images, and history is revealed, implications can be grave, not only for the field of translation studies, but also for history, co-existence between civilisations, and target receivers and users. Furthermore, a multidisciplinary approach as such would reveal new perspectives in data analysis.
1.2 Objectives of the Research. These are: to analyse and compare English TTs to their original Arabic STs to infer the translator's strategy; to analyse some supplementary visual images and discuss the image of the Other as delineated in both the TTs and STs; to present counter stories to reveal the other side of the story and who makes history; to explore how subtitling translation and visual images are utilized to help in making the Other's history; and to devise a future role for translators in this respect.
1.3 Key Concepts:
The Other: Scholars from different backgrounds define the concept of the 'Other'. It commonly refers to the 'self' as opposed to the 'other'. According to Tobler's law in geography, everything is related, in a way or another, to everything, but closer things are more related than 'other' further apart ones (Sui 2004). The term ‘other’ serves as both a noun and a verb. By placing one's self at the centre, the ‘other’ always constitutes the outside, the person who is different (Mountz 2013). In cultural studies, there is a binary of the individuals who identify closely with their specific ethnic or religious beliefs and the 'other' individuals who are different from them (Huntington 1993).
The West: The 'West' is a term referring geographically to Europe and at its core comes the United States. Three centuries ago, there was nothing called 'Western civilisation', and no one including the Western societies themselves had heard the term 'West'. 'Christendom', instead, was used to differentiate between itself and the rest. Since the end of the eighteenth and the beginning of the nineteenth centuries, 'Europe' was used in place of 'Christendom' and 'civilisation' was employed without any attributes. At the beginning of the twentieth century, 'Western civilisation' emerged to denote two issues: first and contrary to others, it did not place religion in its heart; second, it realized being one civilisation in front of others.
In addition to this introduction, this paper is divided into three other sections and a conclusion and recommendations. Section two reviews the literature. Then the theoretical framework is addressed in section three. Section four presents the method of research. Data is analysed and discussed in a separate section, five.
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2. Literature Review
When we talk about the Other from a cultural translation studies perspective, this can be women vs. men in a male-dominated society, or the non-western Other vs. the West. The move from linguistic analysis of translation to incorporating culture into the analysis is what Mary Snell-Hornby (1990) calls the 'cultural turn'. Interdisciplnarity uncovers aspects which would not have been otherwise; thus the interaction between translation studies and international relations theories represents new directions in most translation research nowadays.
2.1 Cultural Translation Studies and the Other
In 'Gender in Translation: Cultural Identity and the Politics of Transmission', Simon (1996:ix; cited in Munday2013:198) tackles translation from a gender-studies point of view and criticizes the language of sexism with its long-held images of dominance, fidelity, betrayal and faithfulness. She compares the status of translation in comparison to original writing to the inferior status of women in a man-dominated society. Generally speaking, feminist translators and scholars use every possible translation strategy which makes their translations speak for women instead of males (cf. Santaemilia2005; Goddard1990; Bassnett and Lefervere1990). Since the Other as females lies outside the scope of this paper, the researcher will proceed to the next point.
In 'Translation, Rewriting and the Manipulation of Literary Fame', Lefevere (1992:8) indicates that Edward Fitzgerald, the translator of the Persian Poet Omar Al-Khayyam's Rubayait, looked down at Persians and thought he must 'take liberties' in translating to improve the source text and make it conform with the target language (English) conventions; in other words the translator rewrote the source. He says'The same basic process of rewriting is at work in translation, historiography, anthologization, criticism, and editing'(p.:9).The most significant consideration in translating, according to Lefevere, is the ideological one, referring to the translator's ideology or the ideology imposed by patronage, and both ideology and poetics dictate the translation strategy (Munday2013:197). As such, translation may lend itself to possible alteration of the Other to achieve a certain goal or intention. Lefevere's theory of the two grids will be further explained in the theoretical section.
Most post-colonial research on translation addresses the imbalance of power between the colonizer and the colonized, a matter which meets up explicitly or implicitly with the issue of the Other's image. Interdisciplinarity is evident here. For instance, Spivak (2004) combines feminist, post-structural and post-colonialist approaches to tackle the ideological consequences of translating Third World literature into
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English and the distortion that occurs subsequently. She criticizes Western feminists for their translations of non-Western literature into the language of power, English. Such translation, in her opinion, eliminates the identity and cultures of the politically less powerful. In this translation, 'there can be a betrayal of the democratic ideal into the law of the strongest. This happens when all the literature of the Third World gets translated into a sort of with-it-translatese, so that the literature by a woman in Palestine begins to resemble, in the feel of its prose, something by a man in Taiwan' (Spivak2004: 371-2; cited in Munday2013:202). Translators used to overdo the target text to make it accessible to the target language, culture and reader. Therefore whatever the identity of the culture of the translated literature is, the product is a typical image of the Other. Bassnett and Trivedi (2002) draw our attention to the dysfunctional role played by translation in the colonizing process and promoting for an ideologically-motivated image of both the colonizer and the colonized.
Education, historiography, philosophy, theology and translation are discourses, Niranjana (1992:33) argues, which 'inform the hegemonic apparatuses that belong to the ideological structure of colonial rule'. She explains that she is:
trying to question the withholding of reciprocity and the essentializing of 'difference' (what Johannes Fabian calls a denial of the other… My concern is to probe the absence, lack, or repression of an awareness of asymmetry and historicity in several kinds of writing on translation. (Niranjana1992:10).
and is concerned with the colonial practices of subjectification or more precisely misrepresentation of the other, suggesting that 'historicism' presents as natural what is historical and consequently it becomes inevitable and unchangeable. She then gives the example of Charles Trevelyan's 'Native Boys'(1838) where they appear 'interpellated' or constituted as subjects by the discourses of colonialism. An ardent supporter of English education, Trevelyan shows with a sense of pride how Indians willingly beg for English. Munday (2013:203) cleverly sums the whole situation up:
Niranjana's focus is on the way translation into English has generally been used by the colonial power to construct a rewritten image of the 'East' that has then come to stand for the truth.
Also, in her essay 'the Other Question', Homi Bhabha stresses the idea that translation has a critical role in the distortion of the image of the Other through stereotyping. She says:
The stereotype is not a simplification because it is a false representation of a given reality. It is a simplification because it is an arrested, fixated form of representation that, in denying the play of difference (that the negation through Other permits),
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constitutes a problem for the representation of the subject in significations of psychic and social relations. (Bhabha 1983:27)
This is how the Other is stereotyped in the English translation of the Other. The same idea, namely the West is responsible for the deformed image of the Others, is explored and assured by Berman (2004). Hermans (2006 a,b) edited two volumes under the title 'Translating Others', where the collected essays discuss how the others appear differently through translation.Munday searches the Other as well through discovering how ideology is employed in translation (see for instance 'Translation and Ideology: A Textual Approach (2007a), Translation as Intervention (2007b), Style and Ideology in Translation: Latin American Writing in English (2008) and Evaluation and Intervention in Translation (2010)).
Attention has been drawn to some countries and their Others. Investigating how the Indian Other has been formulated in English translation seemed to be an attractive topic for many post-colonial translation scholars.For example, Kothari (2003) scrutinizes the cultural translation of Indian literature into the English language in 'Translating India: The Cultural Politics of English'. Francophone North African literature has been approached by, for instance, Samia Mehrez's (1992) 'Translation and the Post-colonial Experience: The Francophone North African Text'. But, Mehrez's interest is directed mainly towards literature, e.g. 'Writing the Village in Contemporary Egyptian Literature' (1993a), 'Rewriting the City: The Case of Khital al-Ghitany (1993b), 'Writing the Nation: Latifa al-Zayyat between the pen Door and the Search' (1995) and 'Translating Gender between the Local and the Global' (2008).
2.2 International Relations and the Other
The political literature written on the relationship between the West and the Other, whether this Other is the Arabs, or Islam, can be classified into four main perspectives as Ghanem (2007:264-83;Trans.) argues. The first perspective emerges from Huntington's theorization of the clash of civilisations, based on the materialistic power of the West and disregarding of the immaterialist elements in this power. Using a new liberalist approach to international relations, it sees the West, united at the economic, mass communicative, institutional and cultural levels, as the centre of the universe. Supported by the international economic, political and technological circumstances, this perspective promotes the idea that one globalization model must be adopted by the rest of the world (Fukuyama 1999:20-3). The West is the only one able to spread its values and culture; and the United States is the best model for the future of the world, it claims (Gress1997:47). Such an optimistic view of the West's hegemony does not deem the Other as a rival or a danger; i.e. does not
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believe in the Other's domestic cultures, which automatically dissolve and melt into one global culture when the process of modernization is completed (Ghanem2007:264;Trans.)_modernization refers here to Westernization, which acknowledges its model only.
Similarly the second perspective depends on the materialist power of the West and hence its hegemony, but it is less optimistic because the West is facing some challenges posed by the rest, the Other. In spite of these challenges, which the West can overcome, the Other countries do not represent any danger because the summation of their powers is much less than the West's. According to this perspective, which considers its model as the only acceptable one because it calls for universal values like human rights and democracy, the West is criticized for its consistent attempts to impose its institutional model on the rest of the world disregarding the local, cultural environments. The West is the real actor in a world where the Other is weak, underdeveloped politically and technologically, poor, over-populated, etc. The failure in such policies so far proves the need for adjustment in order to suit the Other. When colonialism ended, the Other started to be an impetus for rather than a topic in history; the leaders in these countries began to oppose the Western policies such as linking aids to democracy and to mobilize their peoples (Fuller1995:152). Scholars promoting for this point of view believe in the relative weight of the various units of the world which is proportional to which successful developmental models they follow. They do not consider Islam a transnational nationality. In other words, they argue that the differences between Muslim countries and groups are stronger than any bond religion provides (Abdel-Rahman2000:113; Trans.). To them, Islam does not have a steadfast ideology, instead an umbrella comprising many incoherent political ideologies; Muslim regimes lack the one vision and goal which can unite them or represent a real danger for the West (pp.117-8). They further add that the danger of Islam is merely a superstition utilized by Muslim countries leaders to reach or keep in power and by the West itself to maintain its interests (p.136). Again the point is to how to change the Other to become similar to the West rather than accepting the idea of 'difference'.
The third perspective is the most pessimistic about the future of the West for it believes in the cultural, more than the materialistic, dimensions of civilisation, that's to say that the West's position is measured somehow by its cultural effects on the rest of the world. Advocates of this opinion maintain that the Western civilisation is specific, not universal, and continuity of hegemony depends on how far the West influences the Other. Consequently, they criticize its wrong perception of globalisation and Westernisation. Stereotyping the Other as
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such is just a temporary phase which will be followed by a non-Westernisation, where the latter's local cultures and civilisations will prevail, and this is called 'second-generation indigenization' by Ronald Dore (cited in Ghanem 2007:270;Trans.). Corey (2014) discusses James Kurth's opinion regarding the fate of the Western civilisation and how self-destruction can be discerned together with external variables leading to its gradual decline. As the American power joined this civilisation, it started to acquire new basics and henceforth the decline was postponed. So, if Europe presents the body of this civilisation, the American ideology represents the mind and energy, reflected in individualism, liberalism, human rights, institutionalization, democracy, rule of law, free market, separation between the state and the church, among others (Corey2014:8-9). The mixing between the European and the U.S. powers enabled the States to win WWI vs. Germany and the Cold war vs. the USSR. Unlike the West, which conceded the concept of religion, according to this perspective, the Other maintained its religious and cultural identity. The Other accordingly represents a challenge to the West, which is already suffering from a lot of problems, and only conflict determines their relationship. However, some scholars who adopt this perspective do not look at Islam as a probable danger to the West because of the absence of a leading vision or a model country that can unite all the Muslims together. A fourth perspective deals with the Muslims' writings on the relationship between the West and Islam as an Other, which lies outside the scope of the present, which is concerned with the West's image of the Other, not vice versa.
Thus, to the best of the researcher's knowledge, this review of the literature on the issue of the Other in translation generally and the Other as reflecting the relationship between the West and the Arabs and Muslims particularly and the latter's image reveals the gap in addressing how the image of the Other is ideologically formulated in the English 'political' translation of the Other Arabs and how this helps in the making of their history. And from the review, the researcher was able to state the research problem statement and hypothesis.
3. Theoretical Framework and Method of Research
This study derives its main concepts from various disciplines: translation studies, cultural studies and political sciences. Reiss's text-type model represents a valuable functional approach to translation. Meanwhile Lefevere's two-grid theory (the textual and the conceptual grids) explores translation from a cultural perspective. It also uses concepts from the conflict theory in international relations in the analysis.
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3.1 Reiss's Text-type Model
Reiss' (2004:171) functional approach to translation is based on Karl Bühler's categorization of language functions into three: informative (conveying information, knowledge and facts), expressive (depending on the aesthetics of language and the author's stylistics) and appellative (inducing a certain behaviour from the receiver). She classifies texts into three corresponding types: informative (communication of content), expressive (communication of artistically organized content) and operative (communication of content with a persuasive character), in addition to a supplementary one called audio-medial text type. Accordingly, she argues that 'the text type determines the general method of translation' (p.175). If the ST is written to convey contents, these contents should be reflected in the TT. If the ST aims to convey artistic content, then the contents in the TT should be transferred in an analogously artistic organization and the translator identifies with the author's creative intention. And if the ST is written to convey persuasively structured content to trigger off impulses of behaviour, then the translator must be capable of triggering off analogous impulses of behaviour in the TT receiver. Her aim was to make a theory of translation applicable to all text types.But Munday (2013:75) criticizes this theory for four reasons. First, why language comprises three functions only? A 'phatic' function establishing or maintaining contact between involved parties can be added (Nord 1997:40). Second, her translation methods do not apply in case of specific texts, like hybrid texts, e.g. a business letter full of individualistic metaphors. Third, whether text types can really be differentiated is questionable. Lastly, choosing a translation method depends on more than text types. This is why the present study will attempt to evade these flaws in the theory by employing an interdisciplinary approach.
3.2 Lefevere's two Grids
Lefevere (2002) argues that translation is a process where a text formulated in code 1 is reformulated in code 2. Certain rules are observed during this process. For a long time, such rules were thought to be 'eternal and unchanging'. Yet, he demonstrates, this view is challenged as:
most scholars writing in the field of translation studies have recently come to accept that such rules are mainly imposed by those people of flesh and blood who commission the translation, which is then made by other people of flesh and blood (not boxes and arrows) in concrete situations, with a given aim in mind. (2002:75).
Lefevere (pp.76-7) postulates that when they translate, people do not think linguistically only, instead, they think in terms of what he calls two intertwined 'textual' and 'conceptual' grids; both are the result of socialization. Not only discrepancies in languages but also discrepancies
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in the textual and conceptual grids cause translation problems, which manifest themselves in translating Western cultures into non-Western ones and vice versa. The author and the translator have to come to terms with the grids and 'find ways of manipulating the grids in such a way that communication becomes not only possible, but interesting and attractive' (p.76). The idea here is that the two grids interplay and determine how reality is represented for the text receiver of not only the target text but also the source.
3.3 The Conflict Theory
In international relations, we can distinguish between three types of Western discourse on the Other and the relation between the West and Islam, or the Western civilisation and the Islamic civilisation: as a part in the clash of civilisations (e.g. the writings of Samuel Huntington 1993; O'Hagan 1995; Ahrari 1997), as a part in the dialogue of civilizations (cf. Afrasiabi 1999;Trans.), or as a part of both conflict and dialogue.
First, advocates for the inevitability of the clash between civilisations argue that a dialogue is impossible for the clear imbalance in power between the different parties. This means that the more powerful party dictates the less powerful ones what to do or not to do; accordingly the former determines the dialogue agenda, which normally deals with issues like freedoms, individual rights (especially women's), plurality, freedom of speech and expression, the universality of human rights, rigid interpretations of Islamic legislation, etc. (Mostafa and Abou-Zeid 2004:8;Trans.). Such issues attract directly the West, which uses them as a means to formulate the Other the way it desires under allegations like fighting terrorism, threatening not only the West but also the Other itself (Ghanem2007:257;Trans.). Though tolerance, one of the strongly claimed western values, asks for respecting the Other's right to difference, the West considers the dialogue of civilisations a façade for hiding a severe conflict of interests. Advocates for this trend are not optimistic about any call for dialogue, understanding, or diversity because officials tend to use conflict rather than dialogue to achieve their goals (Mostafa and Abou-Zeid 2004:8;Trans.).
Second, scholars who call for dialogue, on the other hand, postulate that globalization has become a de facto imposing co-existence and understanding. They seek common grounds for dialogue to nourish and acknowledge the Other and its rights (Ghanem2007:257;Trans.). More realistic scholars do not emphasize the possibility of achieving dialogue between civilisations at an official level; countries and governments, as powers, utilize it to achieve and keep their interests and to impose hegemony over other countries (p.58). Despite the challenges and
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obstacles, dialogue is possible if some cultural, political and economic conditions are provided (Afrasiabi1999:112;Trans.). Stated differently, successful dialogue requires a balance of power among nations.
Third, both dialogue and conflict are states and characteristics of the nature of the relationship between civilisations or countries. Some of those who argue in favour of this opinion think that the current World Order feeds conflict and restricts dialogue.In other epochs, co-operation between civilisations allowed the West to learn from the Other's civilisation (the Islamic one for example). Others think that only dialogue would help get out of the present crisis in international relations (Mostafa2003:414;Trans.).
The present paper adopts the conflict theory in international relations which promotes the first type of discourse on the Other as explained above.
3.4 MCDA Analysis
This study explores supplementary visual images through a multimodal critical discourse analysis MCDA approach. CDA is probably 'the most comprehensive attempt to develop a theory of the inter-connectedness of discourse, power and ideology' (Mayr 2012). CDA research explores discourses that 'testify to more or less overt relations of struggle and conflict' (Wodak and Meyer 2001:2). In this context, language shapes and is shaped by society. In the 1990s, CDA moved from the long-held linguistic analysis towards a consideration of visual images and broader multimodal concepts (cf. Kress and van Leeuven1996, Machin 2007). This vision arises from Hallidayan theory (1978) that discourse language consists of many linguistic and non-linguistic forms of representation. Visual structures, such as images, photographs, diagrams and graphics, convey ideological meanings, which are often more indirect than language. van Leeuven (1996) developed some tools, derived from Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL), to investigate the choices of visual and linguistic features in language. Van Leeuven's (1996) social actor analysis is one of these tools, 'a linguistic and visual inventory of the way we can describe and classify people and some of the ideological effects that these classifications can have' (Mayr 2012). Accordingly, people are personalized or impersonalized, i.e. represented as individuals or generic types, and certain strategies like naming are used to foreground or background aspects of their identity. However, MCDA faces some challenges, O'Halloran (2012:445) explains, in:
1-Modelling the functionality and grammars for non-linguistic features, e.g. visual images, sounds, movement and gesture, architecture and space;
2-Mapping the metafunctional orchestration of semiotic flow in written texts;
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3-Developping theories of intrasemiosis (a source) and intersemiosis (sources);
4-Developping theories to MDA which involve other disciplines; and
5-Developping analytical approaches for SF-MDa by using IT and software applications.
3.5 Method of Research
As a qualitative theoretical research, based on content analysis and comparison to explore the role of Arabic/English subtitling translation of and supplementary visual images in documentary films in making the history of the Other, the paper hypothesizes that the West has constructed a deformed image of the Other and used translation and visual images as a tool to make its history. From the hypothesis, the researcher was able to put the following questions:
1-What are the strategies of translation and supplementary visual images employed in the documentary to negotiate the Other?
2-What is the image of the Other as delineated in and elicited from the target (subtitled English translation) and source (Arabic) texts?
3-How can the role of translation and visual images in making the Other's history be assessed in the light of the collected data?
4-Who makes history?
To answer these questions and test the hypothesis, the paper sets the objectives afore-mentioned in the introduction and collected data from the BBC documentary 'Egypt's Stolen Billions'. Samples consist of both original Arabic utterances and their subtitled translations into English, and some visual images. It is a joint BBC Arabic and BBC Newsnight documentary film, released on November 6, 2012, produced and directed by Daniel Tetlow, filmed by Keith Morris, presented by Reda El Mawy, and edited by Shyama Alissi, Mahmoud Mushatat and Fouad Al Chabawi. Two researchers collaborated in this work, Osama Diab and Severine Chavanne. It is translated by Fouad Abdel-Razek, working for the BBC. The film is the result of a six-month investigation to identify Egyptian assets in the UK linked to President Hosni Mubarak and his associates. The documentary is available on the YouTube, so the researcher had to watch the video, listen to the original (Arabic) utterances and write them down. Then she had to write down the corresponding target subtitling translation (into English) for easy analysis, comparison and discussion of the TTs and their STs. The video was played many times to pick some of the significant visual images. The subtitling translation appeared in two lines maximum on a page and was written in this paper using a slant to reflect the separation between lines on the screen.
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In order to understand the messages in the analysed samples, we need to go back to the time of the 25 January Revolution. The detailed news spread by the Guardian newspaper and Al-Jazeera channels about the wealth of Mubarak and his family, as early as February 5, 2011, has long agitated feelings against Mubarak and aggravated the Revolution leading, among other reasons, to Mubarak's stepping down on February 11. The Egyptians dreamed of the wealth which each and every individual would get when the claimed stolen money returns to the people. The BBC documentary film 'Egypt's Stolen Billions' reveals that the Egyptian assets in the UK which are linked to President Mubarak and his associates have not been frozen by the British government in a clear violation to the asset freezing agreement, signed by the European Union countries in March 2011. Under this surface intention of uncovering Egypt's stolen billions, the documentary aims to convey a certain image about the Other.
The general classification of data analysis and discussion is based on the presentation of the examples of STs and TTs according to the natural narration and sequence of events in the documentary, and the same applies to visual images. Hence, comes the design of the next section.
4. Data Analysis and Discussion
The documentary opens with a comment on how long it has passed since the 25th January revolution, which the presenter shrewdly praises as 'this moment of history' and it presents visual images of victory and celebrations after Mubarak's stepping down; the West calls what has been happening in the Arab World as 'the Arab Spring'. In contrast to these hope-raising images, it presents discontent over 'Egypt's Stolen Billions' through images of fires and chaos on Egypt streets. An implicit message of discontent and the need to go on chaos is thus revealed through the comparison between these two contradictory visual images. The second image intersects with the voice of the presenter saying 'something most Egyptians thought they would never see' as the bonus for revolution and 'and yet there still remains a discontent on Egypt streets, a discontent about Egypt's stolen billions' as a requirement for this revolution to succeed. Notice also the final judgment from the first moments in the documentary that Egypt's Stolen money is calculated by billions.
Then unnecessarily, the audience in the background is filmed in Al-Tahrir square saying in Arabic 'Allahu Akbar, Allahu Akbar' (Allah the Greatest) in the aftermath of stepping down as a sign of victory. The question is why this irrelevant religious reference in this context? Indeed, most Westerners link between this statement and terrorists who always utter 'Alluhu Akbar' before their suicidal operations. So, we can argue
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that from the very beginning, the film reminds the viewers of the recent link between Arabs and terrorism.
The idea of agitating feelings against Mubarak and his regime as a starter for a long list of intentions is supported by the use of visual images, like for example:
[1]
where the faces of the regime symbols, most-hated ministers and billionaire businessmen at that time, are collected in one shot, in a clear manipulation of visual images to serve the topic of the documentary. Then it moves to interviewing guests. One gets shocked when told how easy it is to move money and get out of the country with no accountability:
[2] أحد الضیوف:لو عاوز تروح تسحب من حسابک 011 ملیون دولار وتاخدهم وتحطهم فی شنطة
وتطلع بالشنطة دی من مطار القاهرة محدش هیقولک حاجة
Subtitling: If you wanted to take 100 million dollars from your account/ and put it in your bag and leave from the airport/ no one is going to ask you anything
So this is the image of the Other, in both the target text and the source as the BBC presents it, 'no one is going to ask you anything', i.e. no accountability, no 'state' indeed. The relation between [1] and [2] is thus manifested in how easily those figures and others managed to get wealthy and in the suggested billions of dollars of public assets going missing over 30 years. The analysis should exceed the textual grid towards the conceptual one to understand the references underlying the surface structure of sentences. A register analysis asserts this intention of showing the other with no accountability at all. The field is about stolen billions. The tenor is the BBC talking about corruption in Egypt, addressing the West, the Egyptians and the whole Arab world, in a spoken form for Arabs and a written (subtitling) and audio-medial form for English speaking countries. With the exception of few mistakes (e.g. the translation of 'If you want' into a past simple tense 'wanted' and 'Cairo Airport' into 'the airport', the translator uses a plain prose explication strategy because the text is informative and the focus is on content. But still the text is operative too and it aims to incite hatred from the text receiver towards the regime, therefore the translator adopts an adaptive
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equivalent strategy to get a similar effect, especially through colloquial dialect.
The Other's image as a corrupt one is highlighted in the original Arabic version and its corresponding English subtitling in example [3]:
[3] أحد الضیوف: حتى الان لا توجد إرادة سیاسیة فی الدولة المصریة لاستعادة الأموال المهربة
Subtitling: Until now, there is no political will in the Egyptian/ state to recover the money
The Egyptian state, accordingly, does not intend to recover the stolen money. As mentioned before, the documentary was released in November 2012 in an instable time for Egypt. The Military Council had just ended on 30 June 2012 and Mohamed Morsi, a Moslem Brotherhood leader, took reign. Turbulences spread all over the country. We can imagine the significance of the publication of the film during that period, an operative audio-medial documentary in a critical time. The meaning of the original utterance transcends the textual grid. Conceptually, this sentence raises anger and contempt against the Egyptian state, an image of the Other the BBC is keen to transfer to the West. If we keep in mind who talks to whom, then the plain prose and adaptive effect strategies of translation succeeds in conveying the intended message of the original speaker.
The same translation strategy applies to example [4]:
[4] المذیع: هناک مقولة شائعة مفادها أن مصر أغنى دولة فی العالم لأنها تنهب منذ عصر الفراعنة. ویبدو
أن الأمر لم یختلف کثیرا الیوم
Subtitling: There is a well known saying here that Egypt is/ the richest country in the
world/ because it has been plundered since the pharaohs/ It seems things have not changed much since then
In this example, a well-known saying, that Egypt is one of the richest countries, is promoted by colonial powers. By means by comparing the TT to the ST, the source text reflects the idea that Egypt has been plundered since the Pharaohs, and so does the English; both stress the point that until now the situation has not changed, a matter which requires Egyptians to take some action. Again, the speaker is the BBC presenter and the audience is both the West and the Other itself. The conceptual point here is that the documentary seems to depend on 'well-known' sayings and rumors; we are now about six years after the revolution and these allegations about the stolen billions have not been validate.
To deceive the ordinary viewers and to give fake credibility to what the BBC circulates, the documentary explains that some unknown sources, sources just 'close to the World Bank', say that 54 billion dollars have been lost during the last 8 years. How can the viewer trust these 'close to the World Bank' sources? Notice that the language of numbers speak louder than words in such cases, a conceptual grid the BBC is aware of. The language dimension seems to be logical and referential and the
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translator focuses on transferring the content as it is in plain prose. Definitely, a piece of information like this elicits more anger on the part of Egyptians and more contempt on the part of the English speaking world, who realizes the size of corruption and plundering in Egypt, as an example for the Arab Other.
[5] المذیع: فهناک مصادر مقربة من البنک الدولی تقول أن حوالی أربعة وخمسین ملیار دولار لم یستدل
علیها خلال الثمانی سنوات الأخیرة
Subtitling: Sources close to the World Bank are saying that/ over the last 8 years 54 billion dollars had been lost
Then, events proceed in the same direction and the presenter interviews an ordinary young man and a young woman, not experts, to ask them how much money they think has left Egypt's shores. They reply:
[6] الضیف الأول: ملیارات ملیارات کتیر یعنی -
الضیفة الثانیة: کتیر امممم )ضاحکة( ملیونات ملیارات -
Subtitling: Guest 1:Millions
Guest 2: A lot! Millions, billions
The first sentence is translated wrongly into 'millions' instead of billions; also the effect of repetition in 'a lot of billions maybe' is not conveyed in the target. Of course some effects like repetition, speech fillers (mmm),and stage directions (laughing) are difficult to transfer in subtitling translation. Textually, the text seems simple, but conceptually it aims to deliver the message that Mubarak's regime has stolen billions. To move to a more formal level of facts, the presenter says that the World Bank has 'accounted for 134.4 billion dollars of public assets going missing over 30 years'. He argues that the BBC has seen documents in London, Switzerland and Cairo which 'appear to show how Egyptian state assets were plundered by its rich privilege and business and governmental elite during the three decade-rule of Hosni Mubarak'.
To agitate the feelings of Egyptians and convey a corrupt image about wealthy Egyptians, the presenter mentions that the BBC team travelled to some European countries to make its investigations, saying that the BBC has travelled to the European centres of global capital where 'the wealthy Egyptians are known to escape the harsh Egyptian summer and base in the luxury of the Swiss Mountain air', see examples [7] and [8] . In contrast to this visual image, the documentary presents a harsh opposite image about the poverty of most Egyptians, living among rubbish and without the least basics of human life, example [10].
[7] المذیع: سویسرا ذلک البلد الهادىء الغنی فی وسط أوروبا المعروف بالشوکولاتة وبمصارفه وبساعاته
الدقیقة أیضا.
وهنا فی سویسرا یأتی الکثیرون من أثریاء المصریین لإنفاق أموالهم ولإیداعها أیضا
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Subtitling: Switzerland the quiet and rich country in the heart of Europe famous for its chocolate and its banks and also for its accurate clocks. Here in Switzerland come many rich Egyptians to spend their money and deposit it here too
He refers to the luxury of the wealthy Egyptians who go to Switzerland to spend their money and enjoy the Swiss chocolate, bars, hotels and watches. This idea is further supplemented by visual images of luxurious clocks and watches, hotels, mountains, gardens, etc. The emphasis here is on the claim that those Egyptians go to such places to spend the money they plundered through corruption from the poor people. The shrewd play with visual images enhances a deep-rooted intentionality to create a image of the Other as undoubtedly and overtly corrupt, to raise the level of anger at those figures, and move the post-revolution events to a certain planned track.
[8]
Cousellor Assem Al-Gohari, Head of Egypt's Illicit Gains Committee during the Muslim Brotherhood rule, talks about 'so many corruption communiqués' received by the committee against Mubarak and state officials immediately after the revolution:
[9] الجوهری: بعد الثورة مباشرة تلقینا بلاغات کثیرة جدا بالنسبة للمسؤولیین وبالنسبة لمبارک وبالنسبة
للفساد. الأسرة
الأسرة الحاکمة استمرت فترة طویلة منذ 03 سنة وهى أسرة فاسدة. وبالتالی فالفساد متجذر )یضحک(
متجذر فی کل المؤسسات.
Subtitling: After the revolution we received a lot of intelligence regarding corruption in Egypt by Mubarak and other. The ruling family was in power for over 30 years. It was a corrupt family. Thusly corruption was deeply rooted in the state institutions.
Al-Gohari comments that Mubarak's family continued to rule for over 30 years, it was corrupt and corruption was institutionalized. He helps in the formation of the deformed image of the Other, at the conceptual grid. The translator successfully concentrates on conveying the informative part as well as the appellative part of the original message through an almost word-for-word translation strategy which employs plain prose and adaptive equivalent effect, in addition to the audio-medial feature inherent in the very nature of subtitling documentary films. The resultant is an image of the Other in the target language and culture equivalent to that presented in the source language and culture.
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The presenter talks about the colossal sums of money illegally sent to international financial centres, while the people suffer from underdevelopment and severe poverty. He makes a simple comparison between eleven figures of stolen billions and the World Bank estimates that 'around a quarter of the population live with less than 2 dollars a day'. This idea is deliberately complemented with a series of images of severe poverty afflicting many Egyptians and animals, to the extent of shooting them standing over and eating from piles of garbage.
[10]
This conception is assured by the presenter's provocative commentary that 'the hopes of generations of Egyptians for a better life is being crushed on a daily basis', which incites them to continue revolution, or chaos. At the political level_ since our analysis is both linguistic and political_ one can argue that mass media spots such pictures and criticizes them in a way that helps reflect a wretched image of Egyptians. This idea concurs with the theory of conflicts between civilisations, where the West does not see the Other as a counterpart, instead as an inferior that must change into a typical Western model, which basically does not accept the Other. This should be analytically linked to the US long-held theory of constructive chaos and the Arab Spring revolutions, hailed and encouraged by the West. Later developments in Syria, Libya, Yemen, Egypt, Lebanon and others have led to the advocated 'constructive chaos' .
Mohamed Mahsoub, the ex-State Minister for Legal and Parliamentary Affairs in the Muslim Brotherhood cabinet, is the main guest speaker in the documentary, not an unquestioned personality. Another major speaker in the documentary is Counselor Assem Al-Gohary, Head of Egypt' Illicit Gains Committee during the Muslim Brothhood rule too (refer to example [9]). Is this a co-incidence? The steadfast relationship between the US Minister of Foreign Affairs, Hillary Clinton, and Muslim Brotherhood and their plan of chaos were uncovered later. Mahsoub explains how businessmen in Mubarak's regime used to get money from the central bank of the state and other banks. They used the minimum
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amount to set up the infrastructure of some projects. Then the remaining balance is transferred abroad 'benefiting from poor control over money transfer'. The intention behind this message cannot be explained thus in terms of the textual grid alone, the conceptual grid justifies the linguistic choices in the text. He assures:
[11] محسوب: نتحدث النهاردة عن مثلا تریلیون من الأموال المصریة على مدار 02 01 سنة خرجت من -
الأراضی المصریة.
Subtitling: Over time, we are talking today about a trillion dollars of Egyptian funds that left Egypt over the last thirty years.
that today we are talking about 'for example' a trillion dollars of Egyptian money leaving Egypt over 20-25 years. The expression 'for example' gives us a sense of uncertainty and to our surprise this 'big' figure has never been mentioned in details in the film. Moreover, the original Arabic text talks about 20-25 years, while the English refers to 'the last thirty years' as if the translator was doing the translation in separation from the original text; the target refers implicitly to Mubarak's rule, which lasted about 30 years, as if the translator's goal concentrates on the image of Mubarak himself instead of the specific time of corruption (20-25 years) mentioned in the source text. However, the two versions convey the desired conceptual effect, a corrupt, deformed image of Egypt. Plain prose is used in the translation to transfer the content of the original, while an adaptive equivalent effect translation strategy focuses on transferring an effect on target text receivers similar as much as possible to that of the original.
The Presenter, then, argues that he had looked at documents available online which 'seem to subordinate' what is being said in the documentary. He refers to Mubarak's presidential decree 64 (2004) promulgating the statute of the Central Bank of Egypt, quoting:
[13] TV Presenter: The bank shall have a governor to be appointed by decree of the president of the Republic..The registration of the governor shall be accepted by decree of the president of the Republic..The financial statements, the two auditors' report, and the report on the financial position shall be submitted to the president of the Republic.
In this example, the presenter speaks directly in English, i.e. talking to the West, with no original Arabic text. This translation (of the source decree) appears on the screen and he reads it. The intention here is to show that every significant issue related to money in the Central Bank is in the president's hand, which makes it easy for him to transfer any sums of money to his accounts abroad. To further stress the idea of corruption, the presenter mentions that the BBC team called Farouk Al-Okda, the Central Bank governor during Mubarak's rule, before broadcasting the film to give him the right to reply but the BBC received no response. The repetition of the president of the Republic three times in this text is
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remarkable; it may remind the audience that Mubarak is the main reason behind Egypt's stolen billions. Therefore, the presenter concludes in English that:
[14] TV Presenter: So, these documents appear to confirm that the man, Dr. Farouk Al-Okda, the Central Bank governor, was appointed in September 2003 by the president's office. And Guess who is still sitting there at the top of the Central Bank today?
This conclusion seems naïve since the film receivers expect that such documents should be proved to confirm corruption rather than confirming the truth known to anyone that Al-Okda was appointed by Mubarak. In other words, is just an appointment by the president means stealing billions from Egypt? Not necessarily, investigations only can provide the answer. Look at the agitation of the audience he targets through the sentence 'And Guess who is still sitting there at the top of the Central Bank today?' as if he is saying that corruption is still there and must be revolted against. Very shrewdly he does not provide a direct answer for this question; instead, Al-Okda's picture appears on the screen marked with a red circle around him.
Raising another question on a young lady's picture on the screen boasts the idea of the corrupt other. Look at the presentation of Mrs. Aleya Bendari, working for programmes with the World Health Organisation and later for the International Peace Movement:
[15] TV Presenter: Do you know this lady? She left Egypt for Switzerland about 40 years ago. She has since been working with World Health Organisation and became Susan Mubarak's right-hand woman in Geneva.
She is presented as Susan Mubarak's right-hand woman and as an ex-regime symbol who has been living in the luxury of Switzerland since 40 years. The presenter runs the interview in her apartment in Geneva to further aggravate hatred feelings towards her. She appeared confused, embarrassed and unconfident, unable to find words using English in addition to Arabic. Asked about her exact role in the Movement, she code-switches and continues in English avoiding giving statements in Arabic, the source language, while the presenter insists on continuing in Arabic:
[16] This is..can not..can not.. can not..can not answer this in Arabic :البنداری
(And she waves with her hand indicating that she does not want to talk about this subject.)
المذیع: طب دورک.. دورک؟ ماهو ماشی کوییس ال - -
Your Arabic is good.
البنداری: لا مش ماشی أوی.
المذیع: یعنی دورک کان أیه فی المنظمة؟
البنداری: لأ.. أنا عاوزة أقول لک حاجة إن دلوقتی لما تطلع..
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You have to stop it. Stop it.
Subtitling: No, I want to tell you something, you have to stop it.
The viewer can sense the hesitancy in the guest's performance through gestures, body language and yielding to Arabic at times, as well. Sentences like 'This is..can not..can not.. can not..can not answer this in Arabic', ' لا
مش ماشی أوی ' (not very much), 'لأ..أنا عاوزة أقول لک حاجة إن دلوقتی لما تطلع.. ' (No, I want to tell you something that now when you appear' and 'You have to stop it. Stop it.' in example [16], reflect the hesitant performance of the guest, which can be interpreted as lying, a deformed image intended by the BBC. The translator was keen to convey this message to the West in a comprehensive sentence, 'No, I want to tell you something, you have to stop it, that summarizes the dialogue that went on for seven sentences. A pause was taken to recollect herself and filming was pursued. She seems to defend herself against the accusation of stealing Egypt's money:
[17] I am getting very nervous now البنداری:
المذیع:أنا کنت على التلیفون..
دی funds هتشوف ال report فممکن تبص على ال ، financing البنداری: ماعندیش لأن أنا ماکنتش
بعمل ال جت منین مین اللی ادا واللی اتصرف. مش أنا.
Not me, I wasn't the fundraiser.
Subtitling: I don't have. It was not me/ I never worked as a fundraiser/ So please look at the reports and you'll find out/ Who's paying and who's involved/ Not me, I wasn't a fundraiser.
After raising suspicions against, the presenter admits in 'English' that the 'BBC' (in place of a judge here) found 'no evidence' to show Aleya Al-Bendari's personal 'involvement in any form of money laundering on behalf of Susan Mubarak'. No defense was offered to the Arab viewer in this regard. However, he insists that he found some letters marked 'highly confidential' by an 'anonymous source' confirming transferring assets from Susan Mubarak's International Women Peace Movement to the Institute of Peace Studies at the Alexandria Library in the end of 2012, few month after the revolution. He refers to 2.6 million dollars transferred according to those letters and asks: 'Does that make those funds corrupt by association?' A disputed question with no clear-cut answer.
Indeed, the intended image of the Other is overtly expressed towards the end of the documentary. Mahsoub, in the next two examples, argues that there is a harm brought to Egypt and the Egyptians, for whom a lot of money was claimed to be collected from the West (he is referring to Susan Mubarak's associations and movements), plundered and moved to other countries:
[18] محسوب: ندعو الجهات المصریة الى التحقیق فی هذا الأمر لکن فی حاجة مهمة تشویه وجه
الدولة المصریة والشعب المصری، ان أنت تجمع باسمه تبرعات هائلة ثم لا توجد رقابة مصریة
حقیقیة.
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Subtitling: I'm calling upon the Egyptian authorities to investigate this/ But what's more important is the harm that this has brought to/ Egypt and the reputation of our country and its people/ by collecting large sums in their name and/ not using the money to their benefit
This means that the ruling family is corrupt and encouraged corruption in all the state institutions, a matter which has led to severe poverty among most Egyptians. Some translation shifts include the translation of 'deforming' the Egyptian state and the Egyptian people into 'the harm' to the reputation of 'our' country and its people. The addition of 'reputation', 'our country' and 'its people' is unjustified, unless interpreted in terms of exaggerating the delineated image of the Other. Notice the emotional use of 'our' country rather than Egypt. In fact, the translator's intervention here to adapt the effect of the source on its receivers exceeds the issue of equivalent effect and tends to be exemplified. The translation of 'then there is no real Egyptian control' into 'and not using the money to their benefit' boasts the idea that money was collected under false allegations of using it to help the Egyptian people, but the truth is that this money was stolen. In other words, textually and conceptually the translated text enhances the conflict theory in international relations, according to which the West deforms the image of the Other. The West, who does not accept the Other, sees conflict rather than co-existence or co-operation as the only possible way to deal with Others.
In a surprising, hardly expected conclusion to this documentary, Mahsoub proceeds into explaining the real problem or disaster in this case:
[ محسوب: المهم عندنا لیس هذا المبلغ ولا ذاک وإنما تشویه الشعب المصری وجمع تبرعات باسم [ 19
الشعب المصری ثم عدم استخدامه على الأراضی المصریة ودون رقابة مصریة. هذا هو الأمر الکارثی فی
الحقیقة. Subtitling: The core of the matter is not the money, its about/ the tarnishing of the state of Egypt and its people/ But what's more serious is the harm that this/ has brought to Egypt and the reputation of/ our country and its people/ and collecting donations under their name and not/ using them on Egyptian soil and away from Egyptian control/ this is in fact the real disaster
The register field of the whole documentary is 'Egypt's Stolen Billions', i.e. the surface intention is the large sums of money which were stolen by the Mubark regime and which should be recovered and returned to such poor people. Yet, as the present study claims, the implicit intention of the documentary is deforming the image of the Other by the West. Mahsoub, at the end of the film, admits that 'the real disaster' and 'the core of the matter' is 'not the money'. What then? It is 'the deformation of the Egyptian people'. Therefore, the presenter's final comment 'questions certainly need to be asked as to why colossal fortunes in Egypt and
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abroad belonging to individuals who are not above suspicion have not been frozen?' seems meaningless.
A textual comparison of the TT and ST reveals that the translator added the whole sentence (three lines in subtitling) 'But what's more serious is the harm that this/ has brought to Egypt and the reputation of/ our country and its people' with no corresponding utterance in the original. The analysis of the conceptual grid in this part stresses the deliberate intention to delineate a deformed image of the Other through translation, as we have seen in the previous example. The Arabic version also refers to deforming the reputation of 'the Egyptian people', while the English text refers to 'tarnishing' (a word used especially for metals to refer to the loss of brightness) both 'the state of Egypt and its people'. The translator clearly intervened here through addition, following a translation strategy which does not aim at conveying just a content or an adaptive equivalent effect; instead, it aims at exaggerating the effect of the translation on its target receivers with a view to maximize the deformation of the image of the Other and to create a mistrust between Egyptians, or more broadly Arabs, and their regimes. Such aims concur with the so-called 'constructive chaos' plan and the conflict theory. Thus, people of flesh with certain interests and agendas utilize such tools (e.g. translation and mass media) and strategies to delineate images of Others, and this is how knowledge is made and history is distorted.
Conclusion
It was not my intention from the beginning to claim that it is the subtitling
translation and the use of some supplementary visual images in documentary films which make history, any more than that both are used as tools, among others, to convey a negative image of the Other and to help in the making of its history. It is my contention, however, that the West has constructed a deformed image of the Other and used translation and visual images as tools to achieve specific goals. To this end, the researcher analysed and compared English TTs and Arabic STs to infer the translator's strategy, analysed some visual images by means of a multimodal approach, and discussed the image of the Other as delineated in both the TTs and STs in order to explore how subtitling translation and supplementary visual images are utilized to help in making the history of the Other.
With the exception of 3 sample virtual images (examples 1, 8 and 10), and with the exception of three other examples for quotes statements in English rather than subtitling translation (examples 13, 14 and 15), the study found out that in most cases (9 examples out of a total of 12, i.e. 75%), the translator used a translation strategy focusing on conveying the
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ST content through plain prose and on transferring an adaptive equivalent effect to elicit an effect from TT receivers equivalent as much as possible to that elicited from the source. The textual and conceptual grids in these examples are interwoven in a way which helps delineate the intended corrupt image of the Other, whose 'Stolen Billions' must be recovered, in both the STs and TTs through a translation very close to the original. This is the translation strategy used for about 50 minutes in the 54-minute documentary. The use of visual images, too, complements the source and target messages.
Yet, in 4 out of 12 examples (examples 11, 16, 18 and 19, i.e. 25% of subtitling translation), we can notice a change in translation strategy. Particularly near the end of the documentary, in the last couple of minutes (in examples 18 and 19), a surprise emerges when the main guest, Mahsoub, reveals that the problem is not the money, it is the deformation of the Egyptian people, a matter that contradicts the register field of the documentary, 'Egypt's Stolen Billions'. The translator started to add expressions and sentences with no corresponding utterances in the original and change the meaning of others. The translation exemplifies and exaggerates the corrupt, extremely poor, stupid and defeated image of Egypt and its people. That's to say that the assumed, surface intention of the video is to investigate why 'Egypt's Stolen Billions' has not been recovered yet. But the real, deep intention is not the money, it is the Other's image instead. Raising of the issue of money aims to create a mistrust between Egyptians, and Arabs generally, and their regimes indeed and thus continue the theme of revolution and 'constructive chaos'. Without the interdisciplinary approach suggested in this paper, it would have been difficult, if not impossible, to reach such conceptions.
In the light of the collected data, both translation and visual images can play an important, 'shameful', 'colonial' role _the researcher borrows Bassnett and Trivedi's (2002) expressions_ in deforming the image of the Other. Both can be used as political tools to meet some interests of a West, who believes in 'conflict' rather than co-existence and co-operation and who does not accept the 'different Other' and therefore wants to change it. The West, having all kinds of soft and hard powers, creates knowledge through different means (like mass media) and shapes distorted history the way it desires. Unfortunately, this unveils the passive nature of the Other. The West's ideology of the Other seems to be consistent with Jean-Paul Sartre's play 'No Exit' (1944) when Joseph Garcin says 'L'enfer c'est les Autres' (Hell is the other people). The implications, thus, would be grave for history and co-existence between civilizations. If the history of the Other is deformed as such, the West will
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always hate the Other and keep on confronting it, and so will the Other. They will live in wars and conflicts rather than peace and co-operation. The Other must face the ideologies of both the source and target texts which are formed and shaped to serve the West's interests.
The implications would also be grave for the field of translation studies. This brings us to the idea of fidelity in translation. Fidelity is a man-made rule in translation, which is put by Western theorization of translation to probably serve certain interests, colonial interests for example. Whatever the translator' modes of negotiating the Other are, translation is an operative political decision to make the history of this Other. It has been misused for long. It is time here to reconsider what is translation and what role it should play in the Others' societies. Further research is needed in this critical field. And the future historical role of the translator should be revisited because the point is not transferring messages and cultures 'faithfully', blindly, from one culture into another. Instead, he should filter and challenge the source texts and defend the target identity, culture and civilisation. Some translations should be declined, and others amended if necessary. Not only professional translators or students of translation but also anyone who is going to receive or use translated texts should be well-aware of the potential role of translation in making either conflicts or dialogues among civilizations, and consequently making history.
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