Examining the Effect of Ideology and Idiosyncrasy on Lexical Choices in Translation Studies within the CDA Framework

Abstract

Using a critical discourse analytic model of translation criticism, the present study attempts to explore the effect of ideology and idiosyncrasy on the lexical choices in translation studies. The study employed a descriptive approach to answer two research questions: Is there any relationship between ideology and idiosyncratic features of translators' lexical choices? And if yes, can it be analyzed within the framework of critical discourse analysis? The corpus used for the analysis in this research consisted of three political novels that enjoy ideological, political, and socio-cultural lexemes. The selected novels were <em>Animal Farm, Nineteen Eighty Four, </em>and<em> The Gadfly</em>. The results of the analysis revealed that ideology and idiosyncrasy affect the translator's lexical choices. The analysis of the data also verified that CDA can be a good tool for deconstructing the texts to disclose the translators' ideologies.