Medical Ethics and Authorial Voice: Translating the Physician’s Witness in The Insider: Trapped in Saddam’s Brutal Regime (2005)

Situated at the intersection of translation ethics and medical humanities, this study examines how ethical witnessing is negotiated in Ala Bashir’s memoir The Insider: Trapped in Saddam’s Brutal Regime (2005) and its Arabic counterpart (كنت طبيباً لصدام). The research addresses the central question of how a physician’s testimony, shaped by translation, conveys moral responsibility under political oppression. The main aim is to explore how Bashir’s authorial voice mediates between medical duty, artistic expression, and survival within Saddam Hussein’s authoritarian context. Using the method of close bilingual textual analysis, the study investigates how translation transforms the physician’s ethical position from a local act of witnessing into a transnational discourse on professional conscience. The findings reveal that translation operates not merely as a linguistic transfer but as a moral rearticulation, reframing the physician’s complicity and resistance within global narratives of trauma and healing. The study contributes to the growing field of Arab medical humanities by demonstrating the ethical and translational significance of physician memoirs. It concludes by recommending further interdisciplinary research into translated medical testimonies as resources for cross-cultural discussions of medical ethics and moral resilience