integrating imagology into translation studies: exploring the role of news translators in the constitution of political images

Images we have in our minds from different entities, such as those of political and social ones, have not been formed independently. they are the result of many influences, including ideology. as news translation is inherently formed ideologically, news translators can possibly mediate in creating political images from different governments, parties, organizations, or institutions. thus, this study uses ditze's (2006) three-dimensional framework and appraisal model proposed by martin and white (2005), integrating theories from imagology into translation studies to explore news translators' probable mediation in the constitution of the political images. the corpus of the study included 250 english news stories and their persian translation. english news stories have been extracted from western supported news websites, and persian translations also belonged to iranian mainstream news agencies like fars news and tasnim. after data analysis, the results confirmed the role of the translator's mediation role in forming political images. moreover, it has been found that political images shaped in every news story reflect the ideology followed by translators and their sponsoring agencies. consequently, the current research is valuable because it can help the audiences be aware of the hidden side of news translation as an ideological activity.