A Socio-Cognitive Account of Ideological Manipulation in Chinese Translation of Political Opinion Articles

In the realm of politics and media, particularly in situations of conflict, translation plays a critical role in resisting the discourse of news texts towards the socio-political correctness of the target society. Translation researchers have long focused on ideological manipulation and related techniques, notably in the translation of political news, linking ideologically motivated translation techniques to their macro functions (socio-political factors) via critical discursive approaches, but rarely have they examined what mediates these techniques and the social context. The main aim of the present study is to provide a socio-cognitive account of such ideological manipulations based on van Dijk's notion of Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA). The corpus of the study consists of opinion articles covering the Ukrainian conflict, originally published by American news institutions, and their corresponding Chinese translations in Chinese newspapers. Documented and supported by several examples, the findings suggest that the manipulations are mainly motivated by the polarization of "US" and "THEM".