This study explores the image of the Jew as portrayed in an Arabic translation and a retranslations of an Elizabethan play, Christopher Marlowe's The Jew of Malta. It draws on insights of key theoretical concepts of Translation Studies, especially the polysystem theory, discourse analysis and pragmatics, to demonstrate their relevance to the analysis of drama translation, and in particular, the image of the Jew in Arabic translations and retranslations. The study proves the influence of background cultural, political and historical factors on the translator's rendering of the source text into the target text. The study attempts an in-depth literary analysis of the relevant texts with the purpose of finding out how the essential lexical, semantic and pragmatic components of the work of art can be wittingly or innocently manipulated to create a certain image that may not have been intended by the original author of the work. The question the study attempts to answer is whether ideological and cultural backgrounds interfere in the translation.