Tension in translation: Spain’s and Catalonia’s discourse on independence

Abstract

In the aftermath of the 2010 legal and political crisis surrounding the status of Catalonia within Spain, the Catalan pro-independence civil society undertook an extensive campaign during which they produced, translated, and distributed many documents in favour of independence. The aim of this campaign was to make the international community, especially the European Union, aware of the Catalan independence cause, and ultimately to garner support from outside Catalonia and Spain.Our study aims to understand the way pro-independence discourse in translation depicts the crisis at large, and more specifically the relationship between Catalonia and Spain in the early stages of the crisis. To this end, we conducted a critical discourse analysis using Chilton and Schäffner's strategic functions (1997, 2011), drawing on three books produced, translated, and distributed between 2010 and 2014 and that deal primarily with the independence of this autonomous community of Spain.

Introduction to the Special Issue: Translation in Political Discourse and Global Narratives

“…A growing interest among translation scholars has prompted an examination of how political agents strategically employ translation as a tool of manipulation (Baker 2006;Salama-Carr 2007) and how political translators entwined with various theoretical frameworks advocate a plethora of causes, ranging from abolitionism, women's rights, and labour rights, anti-colonialism, to environmentalism. These translation scholars have criticised the process of framing political messages to amplify or downplay certain aspects of the original text to evoke desired emotional responses (McLaughlin & Muñoz-Basols, 2016) and to advance specific agendas (Vandaele, 2016;Pomerleau, 2023). Notable instances abound; for instance, the Japanese government has manipulated translation to downplay and deny the existence of the comfort women system, also known as IANFU (慰安婦), a reprehensible network of forced prostitution established by the Japanese military during World War II, during which women were forced into sexual slavery.…”

Grup Kararlarinda Azinlik Etki̇si̇ Kavraminin “12 Kizgin Adam” Fi̇lmi̇ Üzeri̇nden İncelenmesi̇

“…"Critical discourse analysis is a kind of discourse analytical research that examines (Pomerleau, 2021) the method of reproducing and counteracting social power abuse, dominance and inequality in the social and political context." (Van Dijk, 2001).…”