The Language of Manipulation: Translation and the Construction of Cultural Imaginaries
Year: 2026
Type: article
Abstract: This article examines the complex role of translation in the production, circulation, transformation, and legitimation of cultural imaginaries shaped by discursive forms of manipulation. Moving beyond the conventional understanding of translation as a primarily linguistic process concerned with transferring meanings from one language into another, the study conceptualizes translation as a symbolic, cultural, and ideological practice through which meanings, identities, representations, and relations of power are continuously negotiated and reconfigured across linguistic and cultural boundaries. From this perspective, translation is understood not as a neutral act of intercultural communication, but as a socially situated practice capable of influencing the ways in which individuals and communities perceive themselves, others, and the cultural realities within which they operate. The article investigates how translation may function simultaneously as a vehicle of intercultural mediation and as an instrument through which dominant narratives, ideological assumptions, and culturally embedded representations are reproduced, legitimized, challenged, or strategically transformed. Particular attention is devoted to the mechanisms through which ideologically charged meanings may be naturalized, softened, intensified, reframed, omitted, or obscured in the process of translation. Such interventions demonstrate that translation participates actively in the organization of discourse and can contribute to establishing certain representations as legitimate, familiar, or seemingly self-evident while marginalizing alternative interpretations. The analysis is grounded in an interdisciplinary theoretical framework that brings translation studies into dialogue with critical discourse analysis and theories of the social and cultural imaginary. Drawing particularly on concepts of symbolic power, discursive control, ideological mediation, and the social construction of meaning, the study explores the relationship between translational choices and broader processes of cultural representation. It focuses on the ways lexical selection, semantic adaptation, omission, reformulation, framing, and discursive normalization can shape the reception and interpretation of translated discourse. These strategies are approached not merely as technical solutions to linguistic differences but as potentially consequential interventions in the construction and circulation of cultural meaning. The article argues that translation plays an active role in constructing cultural imaginaries by mediating how communities, identities, values, social realities, and relations of difference are represented and interpreted across linguistic boundaries. Translation consequently emerges as a significant site in which manipulation can operate subtly and often invisibly. Because translated discourse frequently presents itself as the reproduction of an already existing message, the ideological implications of translational decisions may remain concealed behind an appearance of linguistic equivalence and communicative neutrality. The originality of the study lies in connecting translation with the broader cultural imaginary of manipulation and demonstrating how translated language can simultaneously reinforce symbolic structures of power and obscure the mechanisms through which such power operates. By foregrounding the ideological and symbolic dimensions of translation, the article contributes to a more critical understanding of translated discourse as a space of cultural negotiation, representation, and power. Ultimately, the study proposes that translation should be approached as a culturally, socially, and politically consequential act whose analysis can reveal otherwise concealed processes of discursive manipulation and symbolic legitimation.
Source: Incursions into the Imaginary
Author: Pascalau Raul
Language: English
Subfield: Language and Linguistics
Field: Arts and Humanities
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: diamond
OpenAlex ID: W7225760713
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