Abstract   

Translation is hailed as a cross-cultural mediation process which plays a great role in bridging linguistic and cultural gaps and paves ways of rapprochement between peoples. However, translation is also a complex operation and an influential vehicle that transports values, both positive and negative, across cultures. It is an activity that perpetually involves conscious acts of selection and manipulation at various levels by any of the two main agents involved a) the translator whose ‘motivations are inextricably bound-up with the socio-cultural context in which the act of translating takes place’ (Hatim and Mason 1990: 12-13), and b) patrons whose constraints force translators to be biased or subversive. The decisions taken by translators in this regard are not always idiosyncratic, but are, as O’Connell (2000) argues, often constrained by factors such as the languages involved, the text genre, and the audience.

The present study aims to discern various ideological and socio-cultural forces behind the manipulation of political discourse by examining a number of translated speeches delivered by a number of influential political figures.

I am drawing on Lefevere’s ‘patronage, poetics, and ideology’ (1998) to detect ideological intervention at a macro level, and Martin’s Appraisal Framework (2005) to pinpoint various tools used by translators/agents and the structural markers at a micro level.

Applying Critical Discourse Analysis within the Appraisal Framework, the source texts are juxtaposed with the target texts and analyzed for discrepancies.  Many shifts are identified across all samples which are attributed to deliberate manipulation by agents other than the translator with the exception of one which could be due to the degree of translator’s competence.

KEYWORDS: ideology, translation, manipulation, Appraisal, political discourse