The Effect of Ideology on the Choice of Referential Concepts: A Comparison Between Journalistic and Freelance Translators

Every discourse, written or oral, is the conveyer of some hidden agenda of the producer, most importantly in such genres of speech as journalism, politics, propaganda, and advertisements. Theeffect of ideology on discourse calls for research. Given the role of translation in discourse, adifference is predicted to be observed between when the translator carries the ideological beliefs of the dominant ideology of the elite in contrast with instances which represent the personal preferences of the translator. This study tries to investigate the effects of ideology on the product of translation.The concepts which are loaded with ideological bias were chosen from news media for comparison. The aim was to examine the effects of exercising ideology on translations realized in two groups of performers namely the professionals working for the elite in contrast with the freelancers with onlytheir own sort of ideological effect. The results of our comparisons showed that there exist differences which could be divided into two aspects: representing the dominant accepted ideology of the elite on the one hand, and the effect of preferred political and cultural preferences on the other. It was revealedthat both groups translated under the influence of a specific type of influence. Employing strategies of manipulation would be considered as an identity marker showing translators` ideological belonging. The effect could in principle be either individual cultural preferences or the elite’s dominant ideology imposed on both the translator and the translation.