Does Translation (Ex)Change Everything? A Framework for Political Translation

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Titela Vîlceanu

Abstract

The paper focuses on the translation of the political discourse, embedding linguistic and cross-cultural perspectives. The choice is motivated by the fact that in the first decades of the new millenium we have witnessed an exponential increase in the quantity, quality and urgency of this discourse within the international political sphere. The political discourse can be said to unearthen the hidden agenda of the contemporary large-scale crises: the financial crisis, shifts of power, terrorist attacks, etc. In this light, the question arises: Does translation objectively and accurately reflect the strategies in the discourse of political leaders, and the problematisation of supranational identities such as the European one (more specifically, referring to membership to the European Union)? Answers to such questions are attempted starting from the premise that the translation of the political discourse or political translation (Trosborg, 1997; Biel, 2017) is an emerging sub-type of institutional translation struggling to assert its own identity. Keywords: political discourse; political translation; hiding and highlighting strategies

Article Details

How to Cite
Vîlceanu, T. “Does Translation (Ex)Change Everything? A Framework for Political Translation”. Linguaculture, vol. 9, no. 2, Dec. 2018, pp. 146-55, doi:10.47743/lincu-2018-2-0129.
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Articles
Author Biography

Titela Vîlceanu, University of Craiova, Romania

Titela VÎLCEANU is an Associate Professor and Doctoral supervisor at the Department of British, American and German Studies, Faculty of Letters; Director of The Translatio Centre for Translation, Communication and Interpretation, University of Craiova. In February 2017 she was elected Chair of RSEAS (The Romanian Society for English and American Studies) and Member of the ESSE Board (The European Society for the Study of English). Her research focus is on translation studies, pragmatics, intercultural communication, and legal English. She is also a methodologist accredited by the British Council Romania and by the University of Edinburgh, Institute for Applied Language Studies, a Romanian language linguistic administrator (AD5) in the field of translation, certified by the European Personnel Selection Office (EPSO)-European Commission, a Bologna expert certified by EACEA, and an ARACIS (Romanian Agency for Quality Assurance in Higher Education) evaluator in the field of Applied Modern Languages, as well as an international evaluator with other bodies. She has attended numerous international conferences in Romania and abroad and authored more than 60 articles and 5 books. She has participated in 12 international interdisciplinary research programmes.

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