As ”there always exist some elements of untranslatability which provides room for various modifications of the source text according to the structure of representation of the target language or culture” (Carbonell 1996: 81) translation may result in some ideological changes in the TTs. Whether these modifications are optional or obligatory, the changes imposed on the translated texts change the image of authors and the ideology behind their texts in the target language/ culture. In short translation is an act which may change the ideological image of the source author/ culture in favor of the ideological positioning of the target language culture.
The present study hypothesizes these points with the hope of confirmation through the process of this research. The translated texts especially political ones undergo some subtle alterations like implied ideological and cultural changes during the process of translation. Farahzad’s Translation Criticism model can be an accommodating tool for perceiving and extracting the afore-mentioned changes.
Significance of the Study
When Norman Fairclough (1995: 13) discusses the “discourse practice” dimension of his analysis framework, he states that his dimension is concerned with text production consumption and distribution and defines distribution as “how texts circulate within orders of discourse”. He mentions that the issue of distribution of texts merits more attention. This research follows this line which is depicted in Farahzad’s model of translation criticism and tries to pay attention to translation as a way of text distribution. This purpose was carried out within Farahzad’s framework of CDA. According to Bennet (cited in Duarte J.F. et al, 2006:111), translators working with academic texts need a critical distance with regard to the discourse they use. When a translator becomes familiar with critical approaches to texts, s/he, in fact, recognizes the traces of power in text production, distribution and consumption. This conscious awareness, or in Faircough’s words (1995:18) ”critical language awareness” is the milestone for “resistance” and eventually “emancipation” in this course. This means that translators are no longer the unconscious slaves of power relations. These matters can be traced in Hooshang Mahdavi’s translation of Blum’s Killing Hope (2003) and also in Khavvajian’s rendering of All the Shah’s Men (2003). Blum as a renowned critic of U.S. foreign policy probes his country’s interminable intervention in political affairs of over fifty countries worldwide. He scrutinizes and investigates these political issues to the extent that the book pages allow. He allocates each country some pages including Iran. Seemingly, the amount of emphasis put o Iran is not Satisfactory for the translator because he believes that Iran and the harm done to it deserves more mention and attention thus accordingly, accentuates the matter more. The mentioned reasons can be appointed to the translation of All the Shah’s Men, as well.
Moreover, translation studies (TS) scholars have recognized the dichotomy of linguistic and cultural approach in recent years. The linguistic approach applies descriptive studies focusing on textual forms and fails to address ideological issues. Cultural approach, for its part, targets these issues but has no methodical formal framework of analysis. Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA), and especially Farahzad’s model thereof, can play this role for a systematic analysis because of its interdisciplinary tools and common theoretical background.
The act of translation is not a purely linguistic activity; translators must attend to political, social, and ideological backgrounds of writers to be able to render a message from source to target language. Due to the fact that translation encompasses the close links between language and culture, CDA researches carried on in Translation Studies aim at analyzing the translated texts to realize how much the ideology of writers is visible in the translated texts, and to what extent ideological standing of the translators affect the process of translation and renditions (Venuti, 1998). Considering these issues, the translator does not overlook Blum’s being an American despite his being an outspoken critic of U.S. foreign affairs. These points will be fully discussed in the forthcoming chapters.
In Blum’s work: “Killing Hope, US Military & CIA Interventions since World War II”, the term USA and all words associated with it like CIA, American, America, the States, etc. were put under scrutiny. The reason behind the mentioned words being chosen as the key term in the investigation was that the author put emphasis on USA by bringing it on the cover page. The title of Blum’s work manifests vividly that the content thereof revolves around the pivot of the US and its interventions in a multitude of countries around the globe.
The key terms opted for the second book, kinzer’s “All the Shah’s Men, an American Coup and the Roots of Middle East Terror” were USA and the words pertinent to it as well as Britain and its related words like England, British, MI6, etc. Since, in the title of the book, Kinzer mentioned “an American Coup”, it became clear that U.S plays a pivotal role in the Coup; moreover, the content of the book vividly manifests Britain’s position toward this the Coup in Iran.
1.7 Limitations of the Study
Analyzing the representations of meaning within discourse provides insight to how language is utilized as part of methodology to achieve specific ends for reproduction and legitimations of power. However, making sense of the methods used and the patterns employed is dependent upon the not only the grammatical and semantic knowledge of each individual analyst, but also the social contexts through which the discourse and the language are shaped via outside texts and reference. In analyzing the two books, “Killing Hope” and “All the Shah’s Men” I have strived to be as objective and knowledgeable as possible. I have attempted to analyze the sociosemantic features of the mentioned books and their corresponding translations. One of the limitations of such an analysis of representations is that while I have been able to discuss what I believe to be some of the key representations within the texts; another analyst may find features or patterns that they consider to be more significant. Although the researcher has done his best to analyze the texts as objectively as possible, there may be some different vantage points in interpreting the way both the writer and the translator represented their ideas.
The reason I hose the aforementioned books was that CDA mostly was applied on political texts so I had to narrow down my options to political ones and since the USA was considered to be as the big enemy for Iran again I narrowed the works down to the ones with direct interference of the USA.
Regarding Blum’s “Killing Hope”, since the translator was part of the Iranian community and the translation was asked to be done by an Iranian governmental organization, only the parts of the book considered being in a close relationship with the Iranian government-Asian and Islamic countries-were selected.
Since the writers themselves were among the outspoken critics of the USA’s policy, it was really difficult finding strategies which tried to darken even more the face of USA.
Definition of Key Terms
Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA): CDA is an interdisciplinary approach to the study of discourse, which views ”language as a form of social practice” (Fairclough, 1998: 20) and tries ”to read the traces and effects of power in language and discourse, in text and syntax” (Hodge & Kress, 1993: 153).
Ideology: Ideology ”a systematic body of ideas, organized from a particular point of view” (Hodge& Kress, 1993:
6).
Discourse: Discourse is ”the use of language seen as a form of social practice” (Fairclough 1995: 7).
Power: Power is defined as ”asymmetries between participants in discourse events” and also ”unequal capacity to control how texts are produced, distributed and consumed in particular sociocultural contexts” (Fairclough 1995: 7).
Text: “Texts are social spaces in which two fundamental social processes simultaneously occur: cognition and representation of the world and also social interactions” (Fairclough 1995: 7).
CHAPTER II
REVIEW OF THE RELATED LITERATURE
Introduction
Critical science in each area asks questions such as those of responsibilities, interests, and ideologies; and instead of focusing on purely academic or theoretical problems, it starts from existing social problems, and in doing so it chooses the view point of those who suffer the most, and seriously analyzes those in power, those who are responsible, and those who have the resources and the opportunity to resolve such problems (Van Dijk cited in Wodak & Meyer, 2001: 1)
Critical science has found its way in linguistics; thus the term Critical Linguistics (CL) and Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) are known to those in the field. CDA regards ‘language as social practice’ (Fairclough and Wodak cited in Wodak & Meyer, 2001: 1), and takes consideration of the context of language use to be central.
The particular interest of CDA is the relation between language and power. The term CDA is used nowadays to refer more specifically, ‘to the critical linguistic approach of scholars who find the larger discursive unit of text to be the basic unit of communication’ (Wodak & Meyer, 2001: 2).
Thus, CDA may be defined as ”fundamentally concerned with analyzing unclear as well as clear structural relationships of dominance, discrimination, power, and control as manifested in language” (Wodak & Meyer, 2001: 2). In Wodak’s words (Wodak & Meyer, 2001: 3) ”CDA aims to investigate critically social inequality as it is expressed, signaled, constituted, legitimized and so on by language use”. Most critical discourse analysts would thus support Habermas’s claim that language is a means of domination and social force and it serves to legitimize relations of organized power to the extent that legitimations of power relations are not expressed; language is also ideological (Wodak & Meyer, 2001: 5).
“CDA tries to avoid positing a simple deterministic relation between texts and society” (Wodak & Meyer, 2001: 3). Taking into account the insights that discourse is structured by dominance; that every discourse is historically produced and interpreted, that is, it is situated in time and space; and that dominance structures are legitimated by ideologies of powerful groups, the complex approach advocated by proponents of CDA makes it possible to analyze pressures from above and possibilities of resistance to unequal power relationships that appear as shared principles. In this line, Fairclough and Kress (Wodak & Meyer, 2001: 13) state that resistance is then seen as the breaking of conventions, of stable discursive practices, in acts of ”creativity”. According to this view, dominant structures stabilize conventions and naturalize them, that is, the effects of power and ideology in the production of meaning are obscured and acquire stable and natural forms: they are taken as given.
The History of Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA)
The 1970s saw the appearance of a form of discourse and text analysis as recognition of the role of language in structuring power relations in society. At that time, much linguistic research elsewhere was focused on formal aspects of language which represented the linguistic competence of speakers and which could theoretically be isolated from specific instances of language use (Wodak & Meyer, 2001: 5). Attention to texts, their production and interpretation and their relation to societal impulses and structures indicated a very different kind of interest in the works of some prominent scholars afterwards serves to explain and illustrate the main assumptions, principles and procedures of what had then become known as CL.
Kress 1979 (in Wodak & Meyer, 2001: 11) gave an account of the theoretical foundations and sources of critical linguistics and indicated that the term CL was quite self-consciously adapted from its social-philosophical counterpart, as a label by the group of scholars working at the University of East Anglia in the 1970s. By the 1990s, the label CDA came to be used more consistently with this particular approach to linguistic analysis.
Fairclough and Wodak in 1997 took these criteria further and established ten basic principles of a CDA program. To set out the social theories behind CDA and, as in other critical linguistic works, a variety of textual examples were analyzed to illustrate the field, its aims, and methods of analysis. Particularly the language of the mass media was examined as a site of power, of struggle and also as a site where language was apparently transparent. Fairclough explained and elaborated some advances in CDA, showing not only how the analytical framework for investigating language in relation to power and ideology developed, but also how CDA was useful in disclosing the discursive nature of much contemporary social and cultural change.
Van Dijk’s earlier work in text linguistics and discourse analysis in 1977 showed the interest he took in texts and discourse as basic units and social practices. Like other critical linguistic theorists, he traced the origin of linguistic interest in units of language larger than sentences and in text and context dependency of meanings. Van Dijk and Kintsch in their work in 1978 considered the relevance of discourse to the study of language processing. Their development of a cognitive model of discourse understanding in individuals slowly developed into cognitive models for explaining the construction of meaning on a social level (Wodak & Meyer, 2001)
2.3 Ideology
