A CDA Approach to the Representation of Cultures and Ideologies through Translated Political Texts: A Case Study of "All the Shah’s Men: An American coup and the Roots of Middle East Terror" by S. Kinzer by Mohammad Amin Ebrahimi Fard
Translation, as a social and linguistic phenomenon, had been investigated from various viewpoints by scholars with different backgrounds. This paper aims at investigating the ideological impacts of the process of translation and its consequences on the representation of ideologies and cultures. In pursuing this goal, Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) was found to be an accommodating tool. The theoretical structure of this research is based upon Fairclough's (1989, 1995) & Farahzad’s (2007) framework. The corpus used for analysis in this research is a book and its corresponding Persian translation. The case study of this research is All the Shah's Men by Stephen Kinzer (2003) translated by Shahryar Khavvajian. Examining the text and its translation from the perspectives of macro level & micro level illuminated the fact that the translator employed different devices to change the ideological positioning of the source texts and deviate the readers from the route they might have taken through reading the ST toward the one they presumed it was more ideologically efficient regarding the community the book was translated for. In other words, the power and ideologies have clearly influenced the translation, comparing the source text with the target one which is completely diverged as the situation, policies and preferred politics asked for. Translated texts appeared in a context different from that of the source texts. A text is produced in the context of "Self" and is translated in the setting of "Other" or at least for "Other".
Keywords: Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA), Culture, Ideology, Power, Translation quality