Abstract

This article discusses how labeling as a transframing device alters an audience’s experience of a political conflict. Drawing on socio-narrative theory to translation, 150 Arabic original posts from the official Palestinian Authority (PA) Facebook page and their English translations by the Israeli watchdog group Palestinian Media Watch (PMW) are analyzed. The results reveal that PMW’s labeling system both rejects and corrects Palestinian “inaccurate narratives,” emphasizing Israel’s territorial sovereignty and its narrative of victimization and of its historical and religious right to exist. More importantly, it produces a hybrid/double-voiced narrative that aims at “exposing” Palestinian “radical voices” and influencing how the world perceives and responds to them (e.g., by condemning or cutting off funding to PA). In this hybrid narrative, the Palestinian voice is often depicted as violent, deviant, and false, while the Israeli as victimized, normal, and right. The combination of voices may sacrifice textual elements like comprehensibility, readability, and fluency, but it seems that PMW prioritizes political legitimacy and security over any translation or reading measures.