MANIPULATION IN TRANSLATION: A COMPARATIVE ANALYSIS OF “THE FUTURE OF PAKISTAN” BY COHEN AND ITS URDU TRANSLATIONS

Abstract

The paper analyses the phenomenon of manipulation in two Urdu translations of the political historical text “The Future of Pakistan” written by Cohen (2011) and translated by Akhter (2011) and Somro (2012), hereinafter be abbreviated as TTI and TT2 respectively. Lefevere’s theory of manipulation is employed to investigate the ideological manipulation in Urdu translation. Findings reveal that different perspectival and ideological positions of the translators are involved in the manipulation of the source text. The translation produced by TT1 assimilates to the original text and does not show any change in the depiction of political condition of Pakistan as described by the source text author. Unlike TT1, TT2 uses ideologically embedded choices of words and strategies of omission and addition to manipulate the text in order to lessen the intensity of the political matters. This research paves the way for future researchers to probe the idea of manipulation in other genres.