Ideology and Translation in Iranian Online Media Guardian Newspaper Claimed in a Report
Subject Areas : All areas of language and translation
Ali Attaran
1
,
Ferdows Aghagolzadeh
2
1 - Department of English Translation Studies, Allameh Tabataba’i University, Tehran, Iran
2 - Department of English Language, Tarbiat Modares University, Tehran, Iran
Keywords: Critical Discourse Analysis, Ideology, Iranian politics, Media, News translation,
Abstract :
This study aims to identify ideologically-laden translation patterns in an Iranian news website. The corpus consists of 40 ST-TT pairs of English news and their Persian translations by Tabnak, a ‘Principlist’ Iranian website. The source texts originate from Western media, mostly based in Europe and the United States, in addition to Israel, and relate to the main points of conflict between Iran and the West such as Iran’s nuclear program. Relying on concepts and taxonomies introduced by Critical Discourse Analysis scholars, the authors examined which ideological shifts had taken place and which had a higher frequency. The study revealed that omission of Our bad actions/properties, lexical manipulation, and omission of Their good actions/properties were the most frequent shifts. The study explains how these ideological manipulations relate to the wider sociopolitical context, i.e. the relations between Iran and the West, and the political viewpoint of Tabnak as an Iranian news source with a conservative bent. It also provides suggestion for rigorous application of CDA framework in Translation Studies.
Review Paper
Ideology and Translation in Iranian Online Media Guardian Newspaper Claimed in a Report…
Ali Attaran1, Ferdows Aghagolzadeh2*
1PhD candidate, Department of English Translation Studies, Allameh Tabataba’i University, Tehran, Iran
2Professor, Department of English Language, Tarbiat Modares University, Tehran, Iran
2022/10/07 2022/11/16
Abstract
This study aims to identify ideologically-laden translation patterns in an Iranian news website. The corpus consists of 40 ST-TT pairs of English news and their Persian translations by Tabnak, a ‘Principlist’ Iranian website. The source texts originate from Western media, mostly based in Europe and the United States, in addition to Israel, and relate to the main points of conflict between Iran and the West such as Iran’s nuclear program. Relying on concepts and taxonomies introduced by Critical Discourse Analysis scholars, the authors examined which ideological shifts had taken place and which had a higher frequency. The study revealed that omission of Our bad actions/properties, lexical manipulation, and omission of Their good actions/properties were the most frequent shifts. The study explains how these ideological manipulations relate to the wider sociopolitical context, i.e. the relations between Iran and the West, and the political viewpoint of Tabnak as an Iranian news source with a conservative bent. It also provides suggestion for rigorous application of CDA framework in Translation Studies.
Keywords: Critical Discourse Analysis, Ideology, Iranian politics, Media, News translation
INTRODUCTION
This paper is an attempt to explain how ideological interests may render a specific translation product as it is, through the examination if the translation of English-language news from international media into Persian by Tabnak, a ‘Principlist’ Iranian website. The relation between translation and ideology has become a mainstream subject in Translation Studies in recent decades, owing to the influence of cultural studies and deconstruction (Fawcett, 1998). Translation is no more viewed as a pure linguistic practice, but rather as a social practice that is inevitably influenced by the surrounding social factors. This social-situatedness of translation shows itself best in the field of media, where interests and conflicts at various levels impose themselves on translation practice and product.
Our study conceptually falls within the framework of Critical Discourse Analysis (henceforth CDA) and is methodologically informed by van Dijk, particularly his seminal paper “Opinions and Ideologies in the Press” (1998). In that paper, van Dijk introduces the concept of ‘polarization’, a “general strategy for the expression of shared, group-based attitudes and ideologies through mental models” by the text producer which aims at “positive ingroup description” and “negative outgroup description” (1998, p. 33). Polarization has an abstract evaluative function, the “ideological square”, which is defined as:
Emphasize Our good properties/actions;
Emphasize Their bad properties/actions;
Mitigate Our bad properties/actions;
Mitigate Their good properties/actions. (p. 33)
Considering the ideological contrast between the values of Tabnak and English-language foreign media; 1) we presume that a strategy of polarization is at work in translations carried out by Tabnak which dictates ‘ideological shifts’ in translation, and 2) we aim to discover is which of those shifts occur more frequently in translation and thus form ‘patterns of manipulation’. Note that by using the term Principlist, we are referring to the political camp whose members “tend to advocate a return to the “pure” principles of the revolutionary era”, are “very suspicious of the West”, and “value alliances with non-Western nations, such as Russia and China”. Regarding Iran’s nuclear program, the key point of conflict between Iran and the West since 2003, Principlists “emphasize Iran’s indisputable right to pursue nuclear enrichment, and they portray international disagreement over the program as a technical issue that should be dealt with by the IAEA”, as defined by Thaler, Nader, et al. (2010, p. 71).
CDA in Translation Studies
The advantages of introducing CDA in Translation Studies has been discussed by translation scholars since the early 2000s. Among translation scholars who have paid special attention to the application of CDA in Translation Studies we can name Ian Mason, Christina Schäffner, Maria Calzada-Perez, and Roberto Valdeón.
Mason (2006a) believes that CDA can serve as a bridge between culture- and linguistics-oriented approaches to translation. CDA, he states, can provide empirical evidence for claims on the translators’ agency and influences on their behavior. Christina Schäffner argues that a translation product bears traces of discursive, ideological and social factors, and emphasizes the benefits of employing political discourse analysis (2004, 2007) and CDA (2008) in TS.
Calzada-Perez also draws on CDA in her research, with a special focus on the linguistic element of transitivity and its ideological implications ((2002), and more comprehensively (2007)). Valdeón has also extensively worked in the field of news translation relying on CDA models, particularly Fairclough’s, to study subjects including ideological implications in translation of headlines and main bodies (2005), and textual and lexical processes that can lead to political and sexist bias in news translation (2017).
In the Iranian context, a significant number of studies explore the translation of news drawing on the CDA framework. These include Shojaei and Laheghi (2012) (ideological manipulations at the level of word, sentence, and discourse), Aslani and Salmani (2015) (ideological manipulation of lexicalization, modality, presupposition and intertextuality), and Khanjan, Amouzadeh et al. (2013) (ideological aspects of news translation with a focus on headlines).
Taki and Amid (2012) and Aghagolzadeh and Firoozian Pooresfahani (2016) examine ideological manipulations in terms of frequency. Taki and Amid (2012) combine statistical methods with Hodge and Kress’s CDA model (1993) in three broad categories of grammar, modality, and vocabulary and show that ideological manipulation took place mostly in translation of non-transactive structures and passivization, less so in translation of transactive and relational structures, modal structures, and nominalization. The study by Aghagolzadeh and Firoozian Pooresfahani (2016) compares 600 pairs of English texts and their Persian translations to find ideological syntactic manipulation used by translators and computes the frequency of each category. Findings of the study show that deletion and addition were the two main strategies used by the translators (forming 44% and 38% of the entire number of manipulations respectively) with word order following with a significant gap (6%). However, a major problem with these studies is their focus on quantitative aspects and limited explanation of the sociocultural context which rendered those translations as such.
METHOD
Categorization of Shifts and Corpus Design
CDA scholars agree that there is not a one-size-fits-all procedure to carry out critical examination of text (van Dijk (1998, p. 61), Ruth Wodak (2001, pp. 69-70, 93)). Munday (2008) speaks of a “toolkit approach” (p. 101), i.e. selective use of linguistic categories to describe shifts based on the settings of the study. Following the same line, while we basically relied on van Djik’s model, we also from Translation Studies and Media Studies wherever necessary.
Selection of texts for examination was carried out according to three criteria. First and foremost, it was limited to texts which discussed ‘politics proper’. Thus, if Tabnak had translated a report on how international airlines complained about ban on flights following volcanic eruptions in Iceland ("انتقاد شرکتهای هواپیمایی از منع پرواز," 2010), this was not included in our study. Secondly, out of the news stock which could be considered as political, only texts which related to the key sites of conflict between Iran and the West were selected, leaving out those pieces that covered political developments irrelevant to Iran-West relations. Thirdly, we limited our corpus to those texts with a single, identifiable origin (ST), not those which were either a combination of multiple sources or a mix of translated quotes plus commentary. This was in order to make our examination and comparison of the data meaningful. After all, van Doorslaer (2011) reminds us that multiple source text, information processing, and procedures such as transformation, reworking and rewriting, make the study of the position and role of translation proper in the journalistic context “very challenging, but not necessarily rewarding” (p. 29).
Eventually, we limited our corpus to the first 40 translations (in terms of date of publication) by Tabnak which fulfilled the above criteria. Statistical data on the corpus can be found in (Table 1). Shifts which were regarded as non-ideological (e.g. due to interlanguage differences or stylistic norms of the target culture) were not taken into account. Informed by van Dijk’s dichotomy of Us (Tabnak and political ideas and values that it represents) vs. Them (West, in its broad sense, and its various actors such as the United States, Israel and major European powers), the researchers explained why they interpreted each shift as ideological. After the analysis stage was complete for each pair, the frequency of each type of shift was quantified.
Table 1
Corpus Features
Corpus Size | Volume (words) |
|---|---|
English (ST) | 22690 |
Persian (TT) | 15437 |
Overall | 38127 |
Year of Publication | |
2007 | 2 |
2008 | 12 |
2009 | 24 |
2010 | 2 |
Source | Number of translations |
Reuters | 14 |
The Guardian | 5 |
The New York Times | 4 |
Haaretz | 3 |
The Washington Post | 2 |
CNN | 1 |
Der Spiegel | 1 |
El Universal (Venezuela) | 1 |
Herald Tribune | 1 |
Newsweek | 1 |
Macedonia Online | 1 |
RIA Novosti | 1 |
The Associated Press | 1 |
The Independent | 1 |
The Jerusalem Post | 1 |
Time | 1 |
Yedioth Ahronoth | 1 |
RESULTS
In this section, we will introduce ideological manipulations which we observed in our corpus according to the frequency of their occurrence (see Table 2). Shifts with low frequency (e.g. passivization with 1 instance) are left out. Each section starts with a brief definition of the category, continues with introduction of one or two examples, and is accompanied with explanation on why we view the specific shift as ideological.
Omission of Our Bad Actions/Properties
Omission of Our bad actions/properties corresponds to the third side of van Dijk’s ideological square, i.e. ‘mitigate Our bad properties/actions’, and with what van Dijk (1998) calls ‘unmentionables’, i.e., negative information and opinion about Us which are left unsaid. We discuss an instance of this shift in from our corpus, which is a report published by Reuters in 2008. Tabnak’s Persian translation and its back-translation in brackets follow the original quote. Note that all emphases in quotes are added by the researchers.
1) a) The pontiff has repeatedly encouraged dialogue to resolve differences over Iran's disputed nuclear program, which the West says is aimed at making nuclear bombs.
("Iran's Ahmadinejad requests meeting with pope," 2008)
b)
رهبر كاتوليكهاي جهان مكررا خواستار استفاده از ديپلماسي براي حل بحران اتمي ايران شده بود.
[The leader of the world’s Catholics had repeatedly called for diplomacy to solve Iran’s nuclear crisis.]
("ادعاي درخواست احمدينژاد براي ديدار با پاپ [Claim of Ahmadinejad's Request to Meet the Pope]," 2008)
Since the early 2000s, Iran’s nuclear program has been the major point of conflict between on the one side, and Western powers (particularly the United States, and Israel) on the other hand. The latter accused Iran of pursuing a secret nuclear weapons’ program, which Iran categorically rejected. Up until 2015 and the historical Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action agreement between Iran and six world powers, there was a constant diplomatic struggle between the two sides over Iran’s nuclear activities. The nuclear deal put a temporary halt to these disputes, only to resume after the US President Donald Trump withdraw from the agreement in May 2018. In translation of Reuters’ report, Tabnak has decided not to translate that accusation or negative attribution, i.e. the phrase “which the West says is aimed at making nuclear bombs”.
Consistent omission of Our bad actions/properties can affect the global coherence or semantic macrostructure (van Dijk, 1998, p. 33) of the text and produce a discoursal shift. This is what we observed in 10 ST-TT pairs in our study. For example, Guardian published a 460-word report under the title of “Tehran to lose status as Iran capital” (2009), on the Iranian government’s likely decision to change the capital due to earthquake risks. The original account contained a review of Tehran’s sociopolitical developments, including a reference to the 2009 post-presidential election unrests following the controversial re-election of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. However, this background was not transferred in the 286-word TT. Hence, the target text read as an apolitical, purely scientific piece focusing merely on the challenges of earthquake for Tehran.
Manipulation of Lexical Items
Manipulation of lexical items is one of the most noticeable indicators that reveals how the translator’s ideology drives them to produce TT words with different values from the ST. Frequent manipulation of lexical items was observed in this corpus and in two main categories: manipulation of verbal processes and manipulation of animate/inanimate actors. Both are explained below:
Verbal Processes
Verbal processes refers to processes which can be lexically manifested in verbs such as say, ask, order etc. The following samples from our corpus show how this type of manipulation works (Example 2):
2) a) Last night the Mail on Sunday claimed Goldsmith wrote to Blair in July 2002, eight months before the war, telling him that deposing Saddam Hussein was a blatant breach of international law.
(Helm & Syal, 2009)
b)
در همین حال، شب گذشته نیز روزنامه the Mail on Sunday در مقالهای از نامه گولد اسمیت به بلر در جولای سال 2002، هشت ماه پیش از آغاز جنگ، خبر داد که در آن هشدار داده بود سرنگونی رژیم صدام حسین نقض آشکار قوانین بینالمللی است.
[Meanwhile, also last night the Mail on Sunday newspaper reported in an article of Goldsmith’s letter to Blair in July 2002, eight months before the war, in which he had warned that overthrowing Saddam Hussein’s regime is a blatant breach of international law.]
("رسوایی انگلیس با افشای رسمی پشت پرده حمله به عراق," 2009a)
What the source text sees as Mail on Sunday’s unverified claim, Tabnak views as verified, hence translating “claimed” as خبر داد [reported]. Also, “telling him” has been translated into هشدار داده بود [had warned], which puts then British PM Tony Blair, a supporter of war on Saddam Hussein, in a weaker position vis-à-vis Goldsmith. The manipulation becomes meaningful if we know that the Iran’s official stance, also Tabnak’s, was strong opposition to the United States’ invasion of Iraq in 2003.
Animate/inanimate actors.
Translation of actors in an ST segment can betray ideological motivations and (de)emphasize relations of agency, causality and responsibility, as we can see in Example 3.
3) a) A Russian newspaper claimed today that suspected pirates who boarded the freighter Arctic Sea were actually agents of the Israeli secret service trying to stop it from smuggling arms into Iran.
("Russian Media: Arctic Sea ship was hijacked by Israel's Mossad," 2009)
b)
رژيم صهيونيستي كه همواره ايران را بهانهاي براي جنايات و اقدامات تروريستي خود قرار ميدهد، اين بار در اقدامي ديگر موجب شده تا روسيه مدعي شود، سازمان جاسوسي اسرائيل (موساد) براي جلوگيري از فروش قاچاقي اسلحه به ايران! كشتي متعلق به اين كشور را ربوده است.
[The Zionist regime who has always used Iran as an excuse for its crimes and terrorist actions, has this time taken an action which has made Russia claim that Israel’s spy agency (Mossad) has hijacked a ship belonging to this country in order to prevent secret sale of weapons to Iran!]
("كشتي دزدي موساد، به بهانه ايران [Mossad's Ship Hijacking, with Iran as Excuse]," 2009)
While the ST attributes the claim to a Russian newspaper, Tabnak has translated the phrase as روسیه [Russia]. That is, the claim of Israel’s sabotage of Iranian interests has been attributed to the Russian state which is a more credible and powerful entity, rather than a newspaper. Also, pay attention that Tabnak has used the phrase رژیم صهیونیستی [Zionist regime] instead of Israel, since the Islamic Republic of Iran refuses to acknowledge Israel as a legitimate state.
Omission of Their Good Actions/Properties
Omission of Their good actions/properties relate to the fourth side of van Dijk’s ‘ideological square’, i.e. mitigate Their good actions/properties. One such case was Tabnak’s translation of the final paragraph of Guardian piece “Mohamed ElBaradei warns of new nuclear age” (2009). The original segment reads as such (Example 4):
4) a) ElBaradei won global fame – and the Nobel peace prize for himself and his agency – by standing up to the Bush and Blair governments over claims of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction. His relationships with the Obama administration, and to some extent the Brown government, are better, since both have embraced banning nuclear weapons. Obama has started talks with Moscow on mutual cuts in arsenals.
(Borger, 2009)
Tabnak, a critic of then Director General of the International Atomic Energy Agency Mohamed ElBaradei for what it saw as his biased treatment of Iran’s nuclear dossier, has decided to ignore this paragraph, which is a positive description of ElBaradei’s career, and replace it with a shorter conclusion which is devoid of any positive attribution:
b)
البرادعي كه يك ديپلمات مصري است به مدت 12 سال بعنوان مديركل آژانس بينالمللي انرژي اتمي فعاليت كرده و قرار است در ماه نوامبر سال جاري كرسي رياستش را به شخص ديگري واگذار كند.
[ElBaradei, who is an Egyptian diplomat, served as Director General of the International Atomic Energy Agency for 12 years and is going to hand his managerial seat to another person in November of this year.]
("هشدار برادعي: NPT در معرض متلاشي شدن," 2009)
In two ST-TT pairs, this type of manipulation was applied consistently and thus influenced the global coherence of the text and rendered a discoursal shift.
Addition of Metaopinion
Metaopinions are opinions about other opinions. According to van Dijk “opinions may apply to speech acts of others. Doubts about the contents of the assertions of others may thus be expressed by discrediting them as mere ‘claims’ or ‘submissions’” (1998, p. 59). In translation, the translator can cast doubts on the data provided by the original news texts through metaopinions. Given the ideological difference between ST producers and Tabnak, we observed several cases where the website explicitly tried to question the factuality of a ST proposition when it referred to Our bad actions/properties or Their good actions/properties. To express its metaopinion on ST propositions, Tabnak employed two major mechanisms:
Addition of ‘ادعا’ [claim] and its derivatives.
Examples 5 and 6 illustrate this common form of manipulation. The headline below belongs to a report published by Yedioth Ahronoth, a popular Israeli daily:
5) a) Chabad Hasidim smuggle matzot into Iran
(Eichner, 2009)
b)
ادعای قاچاق نان یک یهودی به ایران
[Claim of a Jew Smuggling Bread into Iran]
("ادعاي قاچاق نان يك يهودي به ايران [Claim of a Jew Smuggling Bread into Iran]," 2009)
The report narrates a successful smuggling operation carried out by Chabad, a global Jewish group, into Iran. While the Yedioth Ahronoth headline (and indeed the entire report) narrates the story as a fact, Tabnak casts doubt over the factuality of the story by adding the word ادعا [claim] to the headline. Example 6 also illustrates another similar case:
6) a) Essar backs off Iranian refinery - Minnesota governor
("Essar backs off Iranian refinery - Minnesota governor," 2007)
b)
آمریکا مدعی انصراف شرکت هندی از کار در ایران
[United States claiming Indian company to resign from work in Iran]
("آمریکا مدعی انصراف شرکت هندی از کار در ایران [United States Claiming Indian Company to Resign from Work in Iran]," 2007)
The original report, the ST, quotes the Governor of Minnesota that Essar, an Indian company also running business in the state of Minnesota, has decided not to take part in development of an energy utility in Iran due to US-led sanctions which restricts investment in Iran’s economy. Tabnak has tried to cast doubt on the verity of the report by adding the word مدعی [claiming] to the headline.
Addition of exclamation mark.
This punctuation device can be used to express doubt, surprise or contempt. Valdeón (2012) and Khanjan, Amouzadeh et al. (2013) have brought authentic examples of its use in news translation to reflect the translator’s attitude towards the original proposition. Example 7, a quote from then Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak reported by Reuters, exemplifies this type of manipulation:
7) a) “Israel is strong, I don’t see anyone who could pose an existential threat” (quotes in original)
("Israel defense chief: Iran not an existential threat," 2009)
b)
اسرائیل آنقدر قدرتمند! است که هیچ کشوری نمیتواند تهدیدی علیه موجودیت آن کشور باشد!
[Israel is so powerful! that no country can be a threat to its existence!]
("وزیر دفاع اسرائیل: ایران تهدیدی برای ما نیست," 2009)
The TT in Tabnak sees addition of an exclamation mark after the adjective ‘powerful’ to express doubt over or perhaps to ridicule the statement by Barak. A second exclamation mark has been used to cast doubt over the entire sentence about the strength of Israel.
Manipulation of Modality
Modal auxiliary verbs, adverbs and adjectives are a number of linguistic features which indicate the ‘commitment’ of the speaker to a proposition. As Fairclough (1992) maintains, media “systematically transform into ‘facts’ what can often be no more than interpretation of complex and confusing sets of events” (pp. 160-161). Similar to addition of metaopinion, manipulation of modality is about translators’ attitude to the verity of propositions in ST. This research differentiates between addition of metaopinion and manipulation of modality. In the former, the TT producer explicitly states its attitude towards ST propositions, while in the latter, the attitude may not be expressed as explicit, and the reader may not be aware of the subtle shift. In our corpus, manipulation of modality took place in two main forms:
Manipulation of Lexical Items
Where the TT modal device was not correspondent to the ST modal device and demonstrated a different level of commitment to the specific proposition. Example 8 from our corpus is from “Gordon Brown urged to lift Iraq inquiry secrecy” (Helm & Syal, 2009):
8) a) According to reports, a five-page secret document known as the Manning memo records the White House meeting on 31 January 2003. It allegedly shows that Bush and Blair made a secret deal to carry out an invasion regardless of whether weapons of mass destruction were discovered by UN inspectors.
(Helm & Syal, 2009)
b)
بنا بر گزارشهای منتشره، در اسناد محرمانه پنج صفحهای به نام یادداشتهای مانینگ، جلسه 31 ژانویه 2003 کاخ سفید ثبت شده است و آشکارا نشان میدهد بوش و بلر بدون توجه به تأیید یا عدم تأیید وجود سلاحهای کشتار جمعی توسط بازرسان سازمان ملل متحد درباره حمله به عراق به توافقی محرمانه دست مییابند.
[According to published reports, in a secret five-page document named the Manning memo, the White House meeting on 31 January 2003 has been recorded and it clearly shows that Bush and Blair reach a secret deal on invasion of Iraq regardless of whether existence or non-existence of weapons of mass destruction was confirmed by UN inspectors.]
("رسوایی انگلیس با افشای رسمی پشت پرده حمله به عراق," 2009b)
While the Guardian speaks about the secret Manning memo with caution and views its content as allegations, Tabnak has fully committed itself to the accuracy of the unpublished record, replacing the adverb “allegedly” in the ST with the word “clearly” in translation. Tabnak’s manipulation follows the official line of the Islamic Republic, more so that of the Principlists, in their opposition to invasion of Iraq by US and Britain and places the blame strongly on Bush and Blair.
Omission of modal phrases
Omission of modal phrases can manipulate the level of commitment to the proposition, as we can see in Example 9 from Reuters:
9) a) Pentagon press secretary Geoff Morrell said: “We firmly believe, based upon our understanding of the situation, that the Iranians will not be receiving that Russian anti-aircraft system this year."
("No Russian missiles expected for Iran this year-US," 2008)
b)
جف مورل، سخنگوی پنتاگون، گفت: «ما بر اساس اطلاعی که از اوضاع و احوال داريم، معتقديم که ايرانيان اين سيستم ضدهوايی را در سال جاری ميلادی دريافت نمی کند.
[Geoff Morrell, Pentagon speaker, said: ‘based upon our knowledge of the situation, we believe Iranians will not receive this anti-aircraft system this year.]
("موشک روسی تا پايان سال به ایران نمیرسد [Russian Missile Will Not Reach Iran Until the End of the Year]," 2008)
The sale of advanced S-300 anti-aircraft missile system to Iran by Moscow was a point of difference between Washington and Moscow for several years and White House strongly objected to the deal due to its geopolitical ramifications. As we see in this case, while a top US military official expresses certainty that Iran would not find access to the system by using the adverb “firmly”, this certainty has been mitigated in the translation by the removal of the adverb.
Addition of Their bad actions/properties
This category relates to the second side of van Dijk’s ideological square, i.e. emphasize Their bad properties/actions (1998, p. 33). Addition of Their bad actions/properties were embodied in different forms in our corpus, from addition of an adjective to addition of a sentence or an entire paragraph. Example 10 relates to Guardian piece “Help end Gaza blockade, aid groups urge EU” (2009):
10) a) Amnesty International, Oxfam International, Cafod, Christian Aid, Medical Aid for Palestinians and 11 other agencies […] lambast world powers for not doing enough to help after last year's three-week Cast Lead offensive, in which some 1,400 Palestinians and 13 Israelis were killed.
(Black, 2009)
b)
به گزارش "تابناک" امروز گاردین نوشت: سازمان های عفو بین الملل، آکسفام اینترنشنال (Oxfam International)، کافود (Cafod)، کریستن اید (Christian Aid)، و سازمان کمک های پزشکی برای فلسطینیان (Medical Aid for Palestinians) به همراه 11 سازمان دیگر قدرت های جهانی را به دلیل عدم کمک رسانی لازم پس از حمله خونین سه هفته ای صهیونیست ها که در جریان آن 1400 فلسطینی و 13 اسراییلی کشته برجای گذاشت را سرزنش کردند.
[According to Tabnak, Guardian wrote today that Amnesty International, Oxfam International, Cafod, Christian Aid, Medical Aid for Palestinians and 11 other agencies … lambasted world powers for failure to provide adequate aid after the bloody three-week offensive by the Zionists, in which some 1,400 Palestinians and 13 Israelis were killed.]
("اروپا هم به خاطر محاصره غزه شاکی شد [Even Europe Complains for Gaza Siege]," 2009)
As we see, the negative attribute خونین [bloody] has been added to the phrase “three-week offensive” to emphasize the bad actions of Israel. Interestingly, out of the 14 cases of addition of Their bad actions/properties, eight cases related to Israel and related actors. Example 11 is another instance from our corpus, where Addition of Their bad actions/properties come in form of a paragraph:
11) a) Essar Group has backed away from development of a new oil refinery in Iran that would violate U. S. sanctions on Tehran, Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty said on Wednesday.
("Essar backs off Iranian refinery - Minnesota governor," 2007)
b)
آمریکا که تاکنون با بیاعتنایی دیگر کشورها در تحریم یکجانبه ایران روبهرو شده، اکنون مدعی انصراف شرکت هندی از کار در ایران شده است.
یک مقام آمريکايی روز چهارشنبه اعلام کرد: گروه هندی «اسار»، با هدف همراهی با تحریم های آمریکا، از طرح دو میلیارد دلاری احداث يک پالايشگاه نفتی جديد در ايران کنار کشيده است.
[The United States who has faced indifference from other countries for unilateral sanctioning of Iran, has now claimed that an Indian company has backed off from business in Iran.
On Wednesday, an American official announced that the Indian group “Essar” has backed off from the two-billion-dollar plan to construct a new oil refinery in Iran.]
("آمریکا مدعی انصراف شرکت هندی از کار در ایران [United States Claiming Indian Company to Resign from Work in Iran]," 2007)
The first paragraph of the TT, added by Tabnak, aims to portray as unsuccessful Washington’s pressure for international sanctions on Iran. It also casts doubt on the verity of the news that Essar has decided not to pursue the energy project, which relates to the category of addition of metaopinion discussed earlier. This manipulation becomes more meaningful if we know the added paragraph has occupied the prominent position of lead, the first paragraph of the report which serves to direct the audience’s interpretation of the text.
Skewing Headline/Lead
Skewed headlining is defined by van Dijk in “Structures of news in the press” (1985), this way: “one topic from this text, organizing only part of the information in the text, is promoted to the main topic” (p. 78). Lead, the first paragraph appearing in the body of news, which covers the central event of the story and holds a key role in interpretation of the news text (Bell, 1998)can also be skewed in translation. In this study, the term ‘skewing headline/lead’ was coined by the researchers to describe a phenomenon occurring in the translation of headlines and leads in this specific corpus, where the TT producer had decided to promote a different theme from the text to the headline or lead of the news. Out of the 40 text analyzed in this study, thirteen cases of skewing, either in headline or the lead, were identified.
Translation of the headline of a report produced by Associated Press and republished by Washington Times on March 28, 2008 (Example 12) can explain this pattern:
12) a) 5 Ex-Chief Diplomats: Close Guantanamo
("5 Ex-Chief Diplomats: Close Guantanamo," 2008)
b)
5 وزیر خارجه آمریکا: با ایران رابطه برقرار کنید
[Five US Secretaries of State: Engage with Iran]
("پنج وزیر خارجه آمریکا: با ایران رابطه برقرار کنید," 2008)
Although the ST headline can be interpreted as a reference to Their bad actions/properties, i.e. extrajudicial detention of terrorism suspects in Guantanamo military prison by the US administration, Tabnak has preferred to promote the next major theme of the report, call from former secretaries of the state of the US to communicate with the Islamic Republic of Iran. This TT equivalent is not only more relevant for the Iranian audience of Tabnak, but also places Iran at a position of power vis-à-vis the United States.
Another illustrative case, this time for skewed lead, is NY Times’ report (Example 13) “U. S. Envoy Presses Iraq to Act Against Guerrillas” (2007). The lead in ST reads:
13) a) Ambassador Ryan C. Crocker said Thursday that Iraq should disrupt supply lines and develop a “lookout list” of senior leaders for the Kurdish guerrillas who use the northern Iraqi mountains as a safe haven for attacks inside Turkey.
(Glanz & Kramer, 2007)
b)
روزنامه «نیویورك تایمز» نوشت، رایان كروكر سفیر آمریكا در بغداد از عملكرد شركت امنیتی بلك واتر در عراق دفاع كرد.
[The New York Times newspaper wrote that Ryan Crocker, US Ambassador in Baghdad, defended the conduct of security firm Blackwater in Iraq.]
("دفاع كروكر از عملكرد بلك واتر [Crocker's Defense of Blackwater's Conduct in Iraq]," 2007)
Here, Tabnak has preferred to select a different theme from inside the report as the lead of the TT in order to emphasize Their bad actions/properties. US Ambassador Ryan Crocker’s defense of the notorious American security firm Blackwater happened while the company was implicated in the Nisour Square shooting spree in the capital of Iraq which had led to death of dozens of Iraqi civilians. The lead in Tabnak is a translation of this segment from the ST: “Just before the Nisour Square shooting, Mr. Crocker had strongly defended the use of security contractors like Blackwater in testimony to Congress.”
Manipulation of Local Coherence
van Dijk reminds us that the arrangement of sequential sentences in a text is not arbitrary but follows extensional (causal, conditional) or intensional (generalization, specification, contrast, example) relations (pp. 36-37). Coherence, which gives form to a text, may involve opinions and ideologies. Thus, in translation, ST coherence is susceptible to manipulation. In our corpus, manipulation of local coherence had taken place mostly through the omission of Our bad actions/properties category which we discussed above. The translation of the following paragraph from Washington Post’s opinion piece on Iran’s nuclear program, “The Clock Is Ticking on Settling With Iran” (2009) illustrates this type of manipulation (Example 14):
14) a) Administration officials want a slow clock, in the sense that they favor a careful process of sustained, direct dialogue. But they also realize that a fast clock is ticking on the Iranian nuclear program and that by next year the Iranians could have enough fuel to make a bomb.
(Ignatius, 2009)
b)
مقامات دولت آمريكا ميخواهند كه با آهستگي و با صبر مسائل خود را با تهران بر سر ميز مذاكره حل كنند، اما در طرف مقابل برنامه هستهاي ايران با سرعت زياد در حال پيگيري و گسترش است.
[Officials of the government of the United States want to settle their issues with Tehran at the table with slow pace and patience; however, on the other side, Iran’s nuclear program is proceeding and expanding at high pace.]
("تصميمگيرنده هستهاي ايران از نگاه واشنگتن پست," 2009)
While the ST establishes a direct relation between Iran’s nuclear program and an alleged consequence, i.e. production of “enough fuel to make a bomb”, in Tabnak’s translation, this consequence which serves as Our bad actions/properties, has been omitted.
Table
Frequency of shifts
Shift | Frequency |
|---|---|
Omission of Our bad actions/properties | 61 |
Manipulation of lexical items | 35 |
Omission of Their good actions/properties | 21 |
Addition of metaopinion | 17 |
Manipulation of modality | 15 |
Addition of Their bad actions/properties | 13 |
Skewing headline/lead | 13 |
Manipulation of local coherence | 12 |
TOTAL | 187 |
DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSION
This study was an attempt to understand how ideology influences translation in a media setting. Our aim was to discover which ideological manipulations were the most frequent in translation of news and could be regarded as patterns. For this, we examined translations by a Principlist Iranian website which is ideologically opposed to Western values. In our study, we were guided by van Dijk’s ‘ideological square’ (1998) and presumed that a sharp difference in terms of ideology and values between Tabnak and Western media would result in ideological manipulations.
Omission of Our bad actions/properties, manipulation of lexical items and Omission of Their good actions/properties were the most frequent shifts that we observed in our corpus. Interestingly, shifts such as manipulation of modality, manipulation of agency, and nominalization which have received considerable attention in the literature of CDA, especially in works by Fairclough (1992), did not have a high frequency in our corpus. Our findings were in relative accord with Aghagolzadeh and Firoozian Pooresfahani (2016): deletion was the most frequent type of manipulation, followed by addition, while categories such as tense shift, passivization, and nominalization held a low frequency (their frequency was 1, 1, and 7 in our research respectively). Compared with the work by Taki and Amid (2012), passivization had a low frequency in our corpus, while the manipulation of modal structures was higher. This may be attributed to the different directionality of the corpuses (English-Persian translations in our study and Persian-English translation in Taki and Amid), and thus, to different patterns of ideological manipulations in these two settings. However, further studies which compare larger and more diverse corpora could help to show if this is a general trend.
In nearly half of the ST-TT pairs (19 from 40), consistent omissions had taken place, changing global coherence of the target text and hence rendering a discursive shift. The two other cases of discursive shift had taken place through consistent manipulation of modality and manipulation of agency (the latter category was not discussed in this paper due to its low frequency.)
This study also touched on manipulations in generic news elements (i.e. headline and lead). Manipulations at these two prominent news elements were not limited to ‘skewing’ and were carried out through other means such as addition of metaopinion and lexical manipulation. Our study showed that more than half of the headlines (24 from 40) and more than a quarter of the leads (11 out of 40) in our corpus had been ideologically manipulated. The findings of this study corroborate that of other studies in the Iranian context, e.g. Khanjan, Amouzadeh et al. (2013) and reaffirm the prominent position of these two generic elements in news genre.
In line with the common practice in CDA, an interpretive method was applied in this study. Nonetheless, triangulation is necessary for the researchers to render their interpretations and findings more robust. This includes various methodological approaches such as comparative analysis (to see how media outlets with opposing ideological views translate the same ST), semi-structured interviews with translators (e.g. Farahzad (2003)) to discuss and negotiate interpretation of the data, focus group discussions with readers of the translated material, and examining comprehension and interpretation of the texts (suggested by Mason (2006b)) to enrich critical examination of translations.
References
5 Ex-Chief Diplomats: Close Guantanamo. (2008). https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2008/mar/28/5-ex-chief-diplomats-close-guantanamo/
Aghagolzadeh, F., & Firoozian Pooresfahani, A. (2016). The Role of Syntactic Strategies in the Representation of Persian Translators’ Ideologies in English Socio-Political Texts: CDA Approach. International Journal of English Language & Translation Studies, 4(2), 63-73.
Aslani, M., & Salmani, B. (2015). Ideology and Translation: A Critical Discourse Analysis Approach towards the Representation of Political News in Translation. International Journal of Applied Linguistics & English Literature, 4(3), 80-88.
Bell, A. (1998). The Discourse structure of news stories. In A. Bell & P. Garrett (Eds.), Approaches to Media Discourse (pp. 64-104). Oxford CA and Cambridge MA: Blackwell.
Black, I. (2009). Help end Gaza blockade, aid groups urge EU. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2009/dec/22/gaza-blockade-israel-eu-report
Borger, J. (2009). Mohamed ElBaradei warns of new nuclear age. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2009/may/14/elbaradei-nuclear-weapons-states-un
Calzada-Perez, M. (2002). A three-level methodology for descriptive-explanatory Translation Studies. Target, 13(22), 203-239.
Calzada-Perez, M. (2007). Transitivity in translating: the interdependence of texture and context. Bern: Peter Lang Pub Incorporated.
Eichner, I. (2009). Chabad Hasidim smuggle matzot into Iran. https://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3698787,00.html
Essar backs off Iranian refinery - Minnesota governor. (2007). https://www.reuters.com/article/idINIndia-30262120071101
Fairclough, N. (1992). Discourse and Social Change. Cambridge: Polity Press.
Farahzad, F. (2003). Manipulation in translation. Perspectives: Studies in Translatology, 11(4), 269-281.
Fawcett, P. (1998). Ideology and translation. In Routledge Encyclopedia of Translation Studies (pp. 106-111). London and New York: Routledge.
Glanz, J., & Kramer, A. (2007). U.S. Envoy Presses Iraq to Act Against Guerrillas. http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/26/world/europe/26turkey.html
Helm, T., & Syal, R. (2009). Gordon Brown urged to lift Iraq inquiry secrecy. https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2009/nov/29/iraq-inquiry-secrecy-brown-manning
Hodge, R., & Kress, G. (1993). Language as Ideology (Vol. 2). London: Routledge.
Ignatius, D. (2009). The Clock Is Ticking on Settling With Iran. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/03/06/AR2009030602071.html
Iran's Ahmadinejad requests meeting with pope. (2008). https://www.reuters.com/article/us-pope-iran/irans-ahmadinejad-requests-meeting-with-pope-idUSL272939920080527
Israel defense chief: Iran not an existential threat. (2009). https://www.reuters.com/article/us-israel-iran/israel-defense-chief-iran-not-an-existential-threat-idUSTRE58G0ZF20090917
Khanjan, A., Amouzadeh, M., Eslami Rasekh, A., & Tavangar, M. (2013). Ideological Aspects of Translating News Headlines from English into Persian. Meta: Journal des traducteurs/Meta: Translators’ Journal, 58(1), 87-102.
Mason, I. (2006a). Ostension, inference and response: analysing participant moves in Community Interpreting dialogues. Taking stock: Research and Methodology in Community Interpreting, 103-120.
Mason, I. (2006b). Ostension, Inference and the Visibility of Translator Moves. Citeseer. citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.119.8851&rep=rep1&type=pdf
Munday, J. (2008). Introducing translation studies: Theories and applications. London: Routledge.
No Russian missiles expected for Iran this year-US. (2008). https://in.reuters.com/article/iran-usa-missiles/no-russian-missiles-expected-for-iran-this-year-us-idINN2541530720080725
Russian Media: Arctic Sea ship was hijacked by Israel's Mossad. (2009). http://macedoniaonline.eu/content/view/8497/56/
Schäffner, C. (2004). Political Discourse Analysis from the Point of View of Translation Studies. Journal of Language and Politics, 3(1), 117-150.
Schäffner, C. (2007). Politics and Translation. In P. Kuhiwczak & K. Litta (Eds.), A Companion to Translation Studies (pp. 134-147). Clevedo, Buffalo, Toronto: Multilingual Matters.
Schäffner, C. (2008). 'The prime minister said...': voices in translated political texts. Synaps(22), 3-25.
Shojaei, A., & Laheghi, F. (2012). A Critical Discourse Analysis of Political Ideology and Control Factors in News Translation. Theory and Practice in Language Studies, 2(12), 2535-2540.
Tait, R., & Hoseiny, N. (2009). Tehran set to lose status as Iran capital. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2009/nov/01/tehran-iran-capital
Taki, S., & Amid, S. (2012). The Effect of Ideology on the Rendition of Political Texts in Iranian Persian Newspapers and Western English Newspapers. Journal of Language, Culture, and Translation, 1(3), 37-50.
Thaler, D. E., Nader, A., Chubin, S., Green, J. D., Lynch, C., & Wehrey, F. (2010). Mullahs, Guards, and Bonyads: Rand Corporation.
Valdeón, R. (2005). Media Translation in BBCMUNDO Internet Text. Revista canaria de estudios ingleses.
Valdeón, R. (2012). From the Dutch corantos to convergence journalism: The role of translation in news production. Meta: Journal des traducteurs/Meta: Translators’ Journal, 57(4), 850-865.
Valdeón, R. (2017). Political and sexist bias in news translation: Two case studies. Trans. Revista de Traductología, 11, 231-243.
van Dijk, T. (1985). Structures of news in the press. In T. van Dijk (Ed.), Discourse and Communication (pp. 69-93). Berlin: De Gruyter.
van Dijk, T. (1998). Opinions and ideologies in the press. In A. Bell & P. Garrett (Eds.), Approaches to media discourse (pp. 21-63). Oxford CA and Cambridge MA: Blackwell.
van Doorslaer, L. (2011). The Relative Neglect of Newspapers in Translation Studies Research. In Theory, Methodology, State of Research Théorie, méthodologie, état de la recherche (pp. 25-33).
Wodak, R. (2001). The discourse-historical approach. In R. Wodak & M. Meyer (Eds.), Methods of Critical Discourse Analysis (pp. 63-94). London and Thousand Oaks: Sage.
ادعاي درخواست احمدينژاد براي ديدار با پاپ [Claim of Ahmadinejad's Request to Meet the Pope]. (2008, May 28). Tabnak. Retrieved from https://goo.gl/ezVLDu
ادعاي قاچاق نان يك يهودي به ايران [Claim of a Jew Smuggling Bread into Iran]. (2009, April 11). Tabnak. Retrieved from https://goo.gl/bDYkoQ
اروپا هم به خاطر محاصره غزه شاکی شد [Even Europe Complains for Gaza Siege]. (2009, December 22). Tabnak. Retrieved from https://goo.gl/3tJFCn
انتقاد شرکتهای هواپیمایی از منع پرواز. (2010). https://goo.gl/Ji6sCo
آمریکا مدعی انصراف شرکت هندی از کار در ایران [United States Claiming Indian Company to Resign from Work in Iran]. (2007, November 1). Tabnak. Retrieved from https://goo.gl/LZKg4J
پنج وزیر خارجه آمریکا: با ایران رابطه برقرار کنید. (2008). 5 وزhttps://goo.gl/stGMi1
تصميمگيرنده هستهاي ايران از نگاه واشنگتن پست. (2009). https://goo.gl/fsotHV
دفاع كروكر از عملكرد بلك واتر [Crocker's Defense of Blackwater's Conduct in Iraq]. (2007, October 27). Tabnak. Retrieved from https://goo.gl/cJWXah
رسوایی انگلیس با افشای رسمی پشت پرده حمله به عراق. (2009a, November 29). Tabnak. Retrieved from https://goo.gl/XeiuWa
رسوایی انگلیس با افشای رسمی پشت پرده حمله به عراق. (2009b). https://goo.gl/XeiuWa
كشتي دزدي موساد، به بهانه ايران [Mossad's Ship Hijacking, with Iran as Excuse]. (2009). https://goo.gl/TrazTT
موشک روسی تا پايان سال به ایران نمیرسد [Russian Missile Will Not Reach Iran Until the End of the Year]. (2008, July 26). Tabnak. Retrieved from https://goo.gl/xr6Tq9
وزیر دفاع اسرائیل: ایران تهدیدی برای ما نیست. (2009). https://goo.gl/J7mmYJ
هشدار برادعي: NPT در معرض متلاشي شدن. (2009). https://goo.gl/JdMVbX
Biodata
Ali Attaran is a Ph.D. candidate of Translation Studies in Allameh Tabataba’i University, Tehran, Iran. His research interests include translation and social media and the application of Critical Discourse Analysis in translation.
Email: attaran_ali@atu.ac.ir
Ferdows Aghagolzadeh is a professor of Applied Linguistics in Tarbiat Moddares University. He has published several books and articles in the field of linguistics and research writing, and presented many articles both at national and international conferences. His areas of interest are Linguistics, Discourse, and Pragmatics.
Email: aghaglolz@modares.ac.ir