A taxonomy of manipulative operations in political discourse translation

Translation may not always be understood in the way the writer of the original text intended it to be. This is particularly true in political discourse translation in which the target text has to be re-contextualized and tailored to suit the ideologies, values and socio-political needs of the target community. In so doing, translators, more precisely trans-editors, consciously or unconsciously appeal to certain operations, thus manipulate the source text. Manipulation can be analyzed at a contextual and textual level. By adopting a micro perspective (textual) and inspired by critical discourse analysis, this study tends to propose a rather inclusive typology of such manipulative operations in Persian translation of English opinion articles. Four global manipulative strategies are identified that are linked to certain local techniques.