Mátyás Bánhegyi: The Effects of Politics and Ideology on the Translation of Argumentative Political Newspaper Articles
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Chapter 1: Introduction
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1.1 General introduction

1.1 General introduction

Jegyzet elhelyezéséhez, kérjük, lépj be.!

In several countries, the interaction between Political Science and Translation Studies has created prolific new research areas and trends in the past few decades. As politics in Hungary was delegated to the competence of some power elites before the 1989 political changes, Translation Studies cannot benefit from research accumulated in Hungary before this date as such research was virtually non-existent in the Hungarian context.

Jegyzet elhelyezéséhez, kérjük, lépj be.!

On the other hand, politics in Hungary tends to be regarded as a highly contested, controversial and, in some cases, even taboo topic. Furthermore, certain political circles maintain the view that lay persons should not deal with politics in depth and had better leave any political decision, activism and activity to competent and politically skilled professionals.

Jegyzet elhelyezéséhez, kérjük, lépj be.!

Nevertheless, Hungary has also seen the creation, development and boom of political organisations and movements, which declare their opinions about high priority political issues. These organisations and movements are often seen and interpreted as a power of balance to the political agendas created, influenced and sustained by political parties.

Jegyzet elhelyezéséhez, kérjük, lépj be.!

In international – and sometimes, in the case of certain bilingual countries, even in national – contexts, translation may play a prominent role in, and be a vital vehicle and means of, publishing and communicating political agendas as well as maintaining political power. In this respect, translation itself may easily become a political tool. This is especially so since translation in the political sphere is in fact textual “rewriting and reformulation” that publicly credits the author of the text (but not the translator) for authorship, and pretends that it is the author him- or herself who has solely created the translated text. At the same time, in the case of the translation of political texts, the translator, who is sometimes tasked with the rendering job and has the potential to effect textual changes, is typically hidden from the public eye. In this context, translation can serve the purposes of gaining, maintaining and even abusing political power in the interests of certain political groups.

Jegyzet elhelyezéséhez, kérjük, lépj be.!

One way of combating and avoiding such misuses of translation is to create a civilian and professional counter power in Translation Studies, which can identify and pinpoint such surfacing textual features that possibly support and/or contribute to political manipulation and power abuse. Such a counter power is in fact mental power, some kind of knowledge, capacity, skills and tools that enable translators to spot manipulative translation practices in their own and others’ work. Usually, the pinpointing of such manipulative practices will inevitably involve the discussion and criticism of political texts (Conover and Searing 1994) and power elites (including translators who work for such power elites) that, through political discourse, may – in certain cases – create and maintain social and political inequality and injustice and take advantage of such scenarios. Consequently, the criticism of such discourse will inevitably involve social and political science as well as social and political criticism and activism.

Jegyzet elhelyezéséhez, kérjük, lépj be.!

Thus, the work of those who analyse political discourse is “admittedly and ultimately political” (van Dijk 2001, p. 252) and aim to achieve “a change through critical understanding” (van Dijk 2001, p. 252) of translations. At the same time, works of this kind are hoped to generate increased professional awareness in translators of political texts. The current book wishes to contribute to increasing translators’ professional awareness of using potentially scheming textual practices: it wishes to offer a tool for the identification and analysis of manipulative textual practices. In line with van Dijk’s views (1993, p. 249), the approach presented in this book “prefers to focus on the [political] elites and their discursive strategies” and the ways such strategies contribute to the maintenance of political power and political persuasion through translation.

Jegyzet elhelyezéséhez, kérjük, lépj be.!

The current undertaking offers and provides translators and translation scholars with a text linguistic analytical tool for discovering textual instances of political manipulation in source and translated texts as well as for interpreting such manipulations. In line with this, on the one hand, the current work provides a text linguistics-based analytical tool for the fight against the corruption of translation. On the other hand, the social and professional purpose of the present undertaking is to prevent translation from being abused, and relegated to a simple tool, in political power games.
 
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