Translating Paratexts in Digital Media: Exploring Problems and Strategies

This study aimed to explore the problems and strategies of translating paratexts in digital media through content analysis, comparing the English and Arabic paratextual elements of six media digital sources, including the BBC News website, Al Arabiya blog, and Reuters forum. The study identified several translation problems, including culturally specific terms, cultural references, conflicting verbal and paratextual components, and reframing the narrative functions of paratexts. The emergent themes revealed that 97% of the problems were attributed to terminology and lexical choices, whereas 83% were related to the integration of visual elements. Themes of cultural adaptation for governing the content of paratextual elements and reframing the narrative functions of paratexts each reached 80%. The emergent themes also revealed the strategies that translators use to address the translation of paratexts. These strategies include employing the translation adaptation approach (95%), applying functional translation (90%), using thematic analysis for intralinguistic subtitles (87%), using multimodal transcription (85%), and using transposition (82%). The study recommends replacing cultural references, idioms, or symbols with equivalents that resonate with the target audience. Functional equivalence ensures that translated paratexts serve the same purpose in the target language, adhering to cultural norms. The study highlights the distinction between traditional criteria for identifying paratexts and the functionality of translation in identifying digital paratexts. Understanding functional equivalence dynamics can help translators produce high-quality translations for the digital era. Thus, the study contributes to the fields of translation studies, translation and culture studies, and translation and information technology.