Bilingual English Editor: Bridge Arabic and English

English Editor About The Role

MBN reports and writes in both English and Arabic, with much of its original sourcing and reporting now coming out of Washington, DC. The English Editor sits at the center of that operation, shaping work filed in English by MBN’s DC and international correspondents and, when needed, adapting Arabic-origin reporting for English-language audiences. The role calls for someone who understands that Arabic and English are not parallel systems — they carry different sentence logic, rhetorical rhythms, cultural registers, and audience expectations.

Whether a story originates in English or in Arabic, the editor makes it land with the same force and authority. That requires more than language skills. It requires cultural literacy in both directions: an instinct for how English-speaking readers receive and trust, and an understanding of how Arabic-speaking journalists think and frame.

• Edits English-language reporting filed by MBN’s Washington, DC and international correspondents — sharpening clarity, accuracy, tone, structure, and platform fit, and ensuring each piece meets MBN’s editorial standards.
• Writes and edits English headlines, subheads, social captions, and newsletter subject lines, recognizing that each platform has its own copy conventions and audience behaviors. Ensures English-language discoverability across search, social, and newsletters reflects the quality of the underlying journalism.
• Maintains a consistent editorial voice across all English-language products — newsletters, website, podcast scripts, and social content.
• Collaborates closely with correspondents, producers, and editors across the newsroom — in DC and abroad — on story development, framing, and editorial decisions, working in both English and Arabic as needed.
• Adapts Arabic-origin reporting and commentary for English-language and Western audiences — preserving the argument, sourcing, and editorial intent of the original while applying the structure, rhythm, and register English-language journalism demands. Exercises independent editorial judgment on when a piece requires added context, background, or explanation that an Arabic-speaking reader would not need but an English-speaking audience requires to receive the story with full force — without diluting the original or distancing the reader from the source.
• Identifies cultural references, idiomatic constructions, and framing conventions in Arabic-origin material that require recontextualization for English-language audiences, and makes those adjustments without losing the authenticity of the source or the voice of the journalist who filed it.
• Serves as the final editorial check on all English-language content before publication — for accuracy, tone, legal exposure, and consistency with MBN’s editorial standards. This includes verifying that sources, places, and institutions are rendered correctly in English, particularly proper nouns that transliterate differently across Arabic dialects and regions.
• Owns and maintains MBN’s English-language style guide — covering tone and voice across platforms, conventions for spelling Arabic names and places, transliteration standards, and usage rules tailored to a newsroom publishing for both English- and Arabic-speaking audiences.
• Uses AI and machine-translation tools to accelerate preliminary translation, transcription, and drafting workflows, treating their output as a starting point rather than a finished product.
• Applies editorial judgment to AI- and machine-translation output — identifying mistranslations, flattened nuance, hallucinated facts, awkward phrasing, and tone errors, and rewriting where the technology falls short.

Perform additional job-related duties and take on new responsibilities as needed based on organizational requirements and circumstances.

• Bachelor’s degree in Journalism, English, Communications, Translation, Middle Eastern Studies, or a related field, or equivalent professional experience.
• 5+ years of professional editing experience in journalism, digital media, publishing, or international news environments.
• Nat…