'Transediting’ Saudi Arabia by the BBC: a corpus-driven critical discourse analysis study of representations and power negotiation, 2013–2015

Translators in newsrooms routinely apply what Bielsa and Bassnett (2009, p.10) refer to as ‘absolute domestication’ in which the source text (ST) is ‘transedited’ (Stetting, 1989, pp.371-82). This can lead to power ‘abuse’ and ‘ethnocentric violence’ against the ST, language and culture (Venuti, 1995). By incorporating corpus tools and critical discourse analysis (CDA) (Wodak and Meyer, 2016), this research investigates, first, the key themes that the BBC Monitoring Middle East (BBCM-M) service tended to focus on when reporting on Saudi Arabia from Arabic news output from 2013 to 2015 in relation to other British news sources reporting in English, second, the representations of Saudi Arabia disseminated by the BBCM-M and the extent to which it contributed to such representations and, third, the power dynamics between the Arabic source and English target texts through transediting. The study reveals three key themes that characterise the BBCM-M’s coverage of Saudi Arabia: identity, action and status and relations. There are four main representations of Saudi Arabia: 1) as filled with men of authority, who are unlike women, with real agency, 2) its rivalry with Iran and reliance on the US, 3) its three-dimensional image in relation to terrorism and 4) its paradoxical portrayal in relation to: power, policies and development. Importantly, these are ‘anchored’ to stereotypical ‘social representations’ (Moscovici, 2000) that fit into the ‘system of representations’ of Arabs and Muslims in Western media and literature (Said, 1978). The study also exposes a power imbalance in favour of English both prior to and during the ‘transediting’ process, which enabled the active contributions of BBCM M professionals to these representations. This research demonstrates how translation in a cross-cultural context such as news translation can be an apparatus of ‘coloniality of power and knowledge’ (Quijano, 2000). It also shows how a certain ‘system of representations’ can be sustained across time, languages and cultures via the constant reproduction of certain images that ‘anchor’ the same ‘social representations’ that exist in that system

The Pragmatic Functions of the Expression ‘Insha’a Allah’ in the Speech Acts of Non-native, Non-Muslim Arabic Speakers

There is a large volume of published studies on the pragmatic functions of the Arabic expression ‘insha’a Allah’, which has a literal translation of (“God willing”). However, these studies investigated this issue from the perspective of Arab or Muslim participants only. Thus far, no attempt has been made to understand how the expression is used by non-native, non-Muslim speakers of Arabic as a second language. Based on the speech-act theory, this paper reports on a pilot study which investigates the different intercultural pragmatic functions of the expression ‘insha’a Allah’ in the speech acts of seven non-Arab, non-Muslim participants who speak Arabic as a second language, and who have been aware of the expression ‘insha’a Allah’ for at least four years. Accordingly, this qualitative study is unique because it is the first that aims to (1) contribute to the fields of intercultural communication and pragmatics; and (2) shed light on misunderstandings of the expression ‘insha’a Allah’ before and after individuals become familiar with it. To obtain data, the researcher constructed a questionnaire to generate factual and attitudinal information (Dörnyei, 2003). The questionnaire consisted of twelve open-ended questions to provide the participants with the opportunity to answer freely (Creswell, 2014). The results revealed that the intercultural pragmatic functions of the expression ‘insha’a Allah’ as recognised by the participants serve six illocutionary and two perlocutionary functions. Also, the results showed that the participants’ motivations for using it reflect their deep understanding of the importance of integrating with Arabs in order to communicate successfully

A Cognitive Theory-based Approach for the Evaluation and Enhancement of Internet Security Awareness among Children Aged 3-12 Years

In the age of technology, the Internet has spread widely and used for multiple purposes by users of all ages, especially children who start using it frequently to play in their spare time. With the use of the Internet, children must have a sufficient security awareness to avoid security risks found online. This study takes us through the journey of evaluating and enhancing the level of the Internet security awareness among a group of Saudi children aged 3-12 years. The developed evaluation survey shows that there is some awareness among the Saudi Children; however, they still need more concrete ways of ensuring secure practices as they showed a poor knowledge of proper Internet security practices in areas such as interacting with anonymous advertisements as well as understanding some of the Internet Security symbols. The study also presents a suggested Awareness Enhancement solution to raise the security awareness among children. The solution’s design takes into consideration the Piaget’s theory of children’s cognitive development, which states that children in different age groups have different perceptual and learning abilities. The test of the suggested solution shows a significant increase in the sample’s Internet security level. The work of this study emphasizes on the importance of targeting the Saudi children with interactive training sessions to raise their Internet security awareness level

Educational Dimension of Woman's Character in the Narration's of Prophets as Stated in the Holy Qur'an

The Holy Qur'an has addressed the needs of women and their status in a way never done before in any other religious text. Woman's exalted position in Islam is due, primarily, to her role as a child rearer. It is she who is considered the "first madrasah" (first school) by Islam, and it is from her that children will learn about their responsibility as future 'standard bearers' of Islam and society. The research examines stories and biographies of women in the Qur'an, narrated by various prophets (peace be upon them) through the ages. These stories have been drawn from sound Islamic sources. not the doubtful narrations of Israelite scriptures, showing, through their life stories, women's attitude nature, some positive and others negative. This provides an authentic and comprehensive view of Muslim women from the Qur'anic perspective. It puts forward an educational model for women to realize their true role in the challenging times in which we live. By studying the attitudes and dispositions of women in the Holy Qur'an and the Sunna of the Prophet Muhammad (peace and blessings be upon him) the research illustrates the merits. morals and role of women as educators in the family, as well as society. It also shows the extent to which a Muslim women can harm or benefit each member of her family. The study also shows the scope of educational techniques in the Holy Qur'an and their impact on the attitudes and character of women. It delineates the educational role of women and the features of women's character through investigation of previous religions and comparison with those in Islam. In this way, we can become more acquainted with the characteristics of women, her tasks, rights, duties and the type of work suited to her outside the family

The max-plus finite element method for solving deterministic optimal control problems: basic properties and convergence analysis

We introduce a max-plus analogue of the Petrov-Galerkin finite element method to solve finite horizon deterministic optimal control problems. The method relies on a max-plus variational formulation. We show that the error in the sup norm can be bounded from the difference between the value function and its projections on max-plus and min-plus semimodules, when the max-plus analogue of the stiffness matrix is exactly known. In general, the stiffness matrix must be approximated: this requires approximating the operation of the Lax-Oleinik semigroup on finite elements. We consider two approximations relying on the Hamiltonian. We derive a convergence result, in arbitrary dimension, showing that for a class of problems, the error estimate is of order $\delta+\Delta x(\delta)^{-1}$ or $\sqrt{\delta}+\Delta x(\delta)^{-1}$, depending on the choice of the approximation, where $\delta$ and $\Delta x$ are respectively the time and space discretization steps. We compare our method with another max-plus based discretization method previously introduced by Fleming and McEneaney. We give numerical examples in dimension 1 and 2.Comment: 31 pages, 11 figure

Management of urinary tract infections in elderly at the Rehabilitation Hospital Karin Grech

OBJECTIVE: To assess the percentage of patients suffering from urinary tract infections (UTIs) who were treated at the Rehabilitation Hospital Karin Grech (RHKG) and to evaluate treatment choices used to manage UTIs at the same hospital during a one-year period. METHOD: A retrospective and current study were carried out to collect information about patients who were diagnosed with UTIs namely age, gender, medical history, medications and presence of a catheter. This information was obtained from patient profiles in each of a total of 9 wards in the hospital. Analysis of data was carried out using Microsoft office Excel® 2010 and SPSS® version 20. KEY FINDINGS: Out of 165 UTI patients, 67% were female (n=111) and 33% were male (n=54). Thirty-seven percent of the patients were diabetic. Ninety patients had a catheter prior to the period of infection and an association between catheterisation and type and number of UTI pathogens was reported. Presence of a catheter increased the chance of being affected by two or three different types of UTI pathogens which are more resistant than pathogens which were contracted by non-catheterised UTI patients in one episode. The majority of UTI cases at RHKG were treated with nitrofurantoin (41.8%), the first line agent as mentioned in hospital guidelines, followed by ciprofloxacin and co-amoxiclav at 27.3% and 20.0% respectively. Out of the 41.8% of patients who were treated with nitrofurantoin, 30.4% had an estimated glomerular filtration rate (eGF R) and/or urinary pH unsuitable for nitrofurantoin use. CONCLUSION: A prevalence of UTIs in hospitalised patients at RHKG of 11% was identified. Catheterisation increased risk of UTI and presented with a higher number of different pathogens. Nitrofurantoin was the main antibacterial used in the management of UTIs.peer-reviewe