News Translation as a Means of Fake News Dissemination on Social Media

Abstract

As fake news continues to plague the exchange of international news, a growing concern is evolving about the translation quality as well. Social media users exchange international news stories that are translated and manipulated by unknown sources. Inaccurate or untrue translations of international news may reproduce fake news and mislead readers. The present study examined the translation quality of news stories that have been further manipulated when translated from English to Arabic. The dataset comprises 10 verified international news stories on various events. The translation quality was evaluated by the bilingual evaluation understudy (BLEU) metric. The findings revealed that basic information and context were targets of manipulation in the Arabic versions of foreign news. Several manipulating strategies were applied, such as adding new or irrelevant information, eliminating important details, and recontextualizing. The results are thought to shed light on the role of translation in helping identify fake news.