An Error Analysis of Jordanian MA Students’ Translations of Ironic Political Articles in Online News Platforms from Arabic into English

The translation of political irony is difficult due to its dependence on implicit meaning, pragmatic inference, and contextual understanding. Many studies investigated the types of errors committed by translators without accounting for the causes behind these errors. While previous research has examined translation errors in language pairs other than Arabic- English translation, this study focuses on analyzing the errors in English translations of ironic political news articles in Arabic. The data for this research was collected by distributing a questionnaire that contains five extracts of ironic political articles on MA translation students at Yarmouk University. The translated texts were analyzed thoroughly, and errors were identified then categorized based on the three-fold classification of Rahmatillah (2013) and Putri (2019). The study identifies three main types of errors: lexical, semantic, and syntactic. The findings reveal that the most common errors were lexical indicating a continued dependence on literal translation and a lack of awareness of contextual and cultural nuances. As a result, such errors frequently led to meaning distortions, misinterpretations of irony, and a reduction in rhetorical effect. Furthermore, the study found that students prioritize surface-level content while ignoring the communicative goal and cultural subtext encoded in sarcastic discourse. Consequently, the study advises that Jordanian high education institutions overhaul their translation programs, with a focus on irony, political rhetoric, and media discourse. It also recommends for the use of contrastive linguistic analysis when teaching translation, and updating the curricula to include real ironic materials, and hands-on training to improve students' accuracy and contextual awareness while interpreting politically and culturally complicated works.