Investigating the Representation of Ideological Foregrounding and Journalistic Translators’ Agency: Iran-U.S. Relations in Focus

Document Type : مقالات علمی پژوهشی

Authors
M. Latifi Shirejini 1
M. Afrouz 2
1 English Translation student, University of Isfahan, Isfahan, Iran
2 Assistant Professor of Translation Studies, Department of English Language and Literature, University of Isfahan, Isfahan, Iran
10.29252/LRR.12.2.20
Abstract
Ideology can increase the rivalry or socio-political clashes between political powers within a society. People, political parties and organizations set their policies following a dominant ideology. News agencies are among the highly influential organizations which can affect ideological and political thinking. News agencies, by means of translation, try to direct people’s way of thinking toward a special direction. Therefore, the role of translation in highlighting political rivalry among parties is undeniable. Meanwhile, translators’ word choice can reflect the differences between the Reformists and the Conservatives. The aim of the current study is to examine the representation of ideological foregrounding in journalistic translators’ word choice. The corpus includes 200 journalistic sentences collected from foreign news websites. Then collected data were analyzed based on Fairclough’s three-dimensional model. The results showed that the conflicts between two main parties are reflected in translators’ word choice. The phenomenon can potentially increase clashes and tensions in a society and challenge social stability.





Human life and affairs are not just limited to a particular country or region. Today, everything that happens in a corner of the world can easily affect people’s lives in other countries. Consequently, people want to know what happened in other parts of the world. Therefore, a wide range of communication tools has been developed in recent decades. News media is one of the most important communication tools that has greatly affected human life in the contemporary era. But news media is not just for communication. It is a proper tool to advance the ideological goals of organizations, institutions, and even political parties. Therefore, one of the important elements that should be considered in the news media is ideology. News media also needs some efficient tools to advance its ideological goals. Translation is an effective tool that can be very helpful and supportive for media to put forward society in a predefined path. News agencies, using translation, can direct people’s way of thinking toward a special direction. Therefore, the role of translation in highlighting political rivalry among parties is undeniable. Meanwhile, translators’ word choice can reflect the differences between the Reformists and the Conservatives.

The current research aims to investigate the representation of ideological foregrounding in journalistic translators’ word choice through critical discourse analysis. To achieve this goal, a corpus of 200 journalistic sentences collected from foreign news agency’s websites. As the political rivalry between Iranian Conservative and Reformist parties was to be examined, the Persian translation of this news was also collected. Then collected data were analyzed based on Fairclough’s three-dimensional model. The main question of the present study was to what extent the ideology of the news translator had been reflected in his/her choice of words and to what extent this plays a role in increasing the political confrontation of the parties. Since only translators' word choice is considered, only those parts of Fairclough’s model have been selected that were suitable for lexical analysis. The main hypothesis of the research was that the translator’s word choice could play a key role in ideological clashes between parties.

After analyzing collected data, the results revealed that the conflicts between the two main parties are reflected in translators’ word choice. This can potentially result in clashes and tensions in society and challenge social stability. In addition, it was found that news translating is one of the most challenging translations that is associated with applying the ideologies of political parties, organizations and groups. Furthermore, it became clear that the mode of translation can affect the way of thinking of the society in different situations.

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Subjects

منابع فارسی
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News and their translations retrieved from the following websites:
http://etemaadonline.ir/ http://www.latimes.com/ https://sputniknews.com/
https://www.bloomberg.com/ https://www.farsnews.com/ https://www.ilna.ir/
https://www.khabaronline.ir/ https://www.reuters.com/ https://www.sltrib.com/
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Language Related Research
Volume 12, Issue 2 - Serial Number 62
May and June 2021
Pages 629-657