Competition of Discourses in Journalistic Translation: Diplomatic Negotiations in Focus

We sought to understand  whether,  how, and  why the translated journalistic texts  related  to  the  Iranian  nuclear  negotiations  were manipulated. To this end,  we  monitored  a news agency’s Webpage in a time span of 46 days that began 3 days before Almaty I nuclear talks and ended  3  days  after  Almaty  II  talks.  Monitoring  resulted  in  a  corpus  made  up  of  36  target  texts  plus  their  source texts. Data were, then, approached from the perspective of van Dijk’s sociocognitive theory of discourse and ideology. Findings indicated that the published texts in the name of translation, as Their voice, were exploited to emphasize in-group favoritism and out-group derogation.  Linking  the  textual analysis  to  the context  demonstrated  that  the manipulations  might  have intentionally been  done  so  that the translations  conformed  to  the  narratives  of  resistance  and  independence  prevailing  in  the  country after the 1979 Revolution. Results seem to suggest that manipulated translation can be a more effective tool of manipulation because it is, most of the time, presented and accepted as proxy for what out-groups say.