Translation-Based Rewriting of Orientalist Writings on Saudi History

This study contends that rewriting can be used to address flaws in the source text when ideological reasons take precedence. The study examines translation as rewriting using the Lefevere notion, which entails altering texts with cultural and ideological ramifications. The author examines two published Arabic versions of Johann Ludwig Burckhardt’s Travels in Arabia 1829. A comparative descriptive approach was used to investigate the effect of the dominant ideology in a given society at a given time on the translator’s choice of strategies in the translation process. Two translations of the same text were compared: one completed by Saudi translators and the other by a non-Saudi translator. We discovered that, most of the time, the Saudi translators adapted to the ideological power structures especially when the text is concerned with ideological, regional, religious and social structural facts.