Journal of new advances in English Language Teaching and Applied Linguistics

Journal of new advances in English Language Teaching and Applied Linguistics

Ideological Manipulation in Political Power Relationships: A Case Study of English Translation of Political News in MEMRI Website Based on CDA Model

Document Type : Original Article

Author
Department of English Language Teaching, Shi. C., Islamic Azad University, Shiraz, Iran,
10.22034/jeltal.2025.7.1.12
Abstract
The present study aimed at analyzing the ideological manipulations in the English translation of Persian news articles. To this end, fifteen Persian political articles, were extracted from the online Fars, Tasnim, Yjc, Kayhan, Mehr, Ilna, Isna, and Mashregh news agencies, as well as their corresponding English translation from MEMRI News Website. Fairclough's (1989) CDA model was selected to extract and analyze the ideological manipulations at three descriptive, interpretive, and explanatory dimensions. The results at the micro level revealed that from the whole 184 experiential values found for vocabulary items, synonyms and antonyms were the most and least frequent strategies with 32% and 3%, respectively. Indeed, negative sentences (47%) were the most frequent grammatical strategy at the experiential values, compared to active sentences (11%) as the least frequent one. Data analysis showed the same frequency of formal words in 90 Persian sections and the English translations, and no manipulation in rendering formal words occurred. Moreover, analyzing the experiential, relational, and expressive values of vocabulary and grammatical items as translation strategies revealed various examples of ideological shifts in rendering. It was concluded that the MEMRI news website selectively and purposefully translated the Persian political news articles according to the social necessities and the political and power struggles between Iran and U.S. Indeed, MEMRI shifted many vocabulary and grammar values, resulting in the occurrence of different ideological manipulations in the translation of political discourse in Iran. Consequently, the claimed loyal and faithful translation of news articles proposed by the MEMRI team was rejected.
Keywords

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Volume 7, Issue 1
March 2025
Pages 301-332

  • Receive Date 02 July 2025
  • Revise Date 20 August 2025
  • Accept Date 12 September 2025