Translating Obama’s Political Discourse from a Critical Discourse Analysis Perspective

Abstract

The present study tackled the effect of ideology on the translators’ work, which may intensify when they have a different religion or culture. It was located within the framework of political discourse in the field of Translation Studies. It aimed at analyzing both political discourse and its translation from a critical discourse analysis perspective. The study at hand analyzed both political discourse and its translation, taking into account Fairclough’s perspective of discourse analysis as a linguistic analysis and texts from contexts in which discourse is produced. Moreover, the study analyzed political discourse from Van Dijk’s perspective of critical discourse analysis to find implied meaning either in discourse or in its translation and the translator’s intervention in the translation process. It highlighted the power existing in the political discourse by stating that it is loaded with ideology and by proving that translation is considered to be a production of a new discourse and a social, political, and cultural act. The study adopted a qualitative approach based on the use of the Critical Discourse Analysis approach adopted by Fairclough (1989) and the notion of interpretation. Working within the framework of this approach, the study revealed that many translation strategies were used to achieve functional equivalence. By using some strategies such as deletion, explicitation, addition, and literal translation, the study concluded that translations did not fulfil the semantic and contextual criteria of the “fidelity rule” and the “coherence rule’. The study also showed that the use of techniques and selection of excerpts to be translated played an important role in monitoring the target culture audience in the sense that translators affect the translation process by producing their own ideology.