Language is said to be the primary domain of ideology in various ways and at various levels (Fairclough, 1989, 1995). A number of textual features such as the choice of lexical items, the use of rhetorical devices, metaphors, grammar, and implicatures are regarded to be potentially ideological (see, for instance, van Dijk, 1997; Fairclough, 1995). Indeed, it is through using language that we impose our classifications of the world on others and on ourselves. As translation is a linguistic activity—the transmission of a verbal message from one language into another—the process of rendering can be potentially ideological, more echoing the translator’s world-view rather than that of the original author. In this study, the researcher, adopting a critical discourse analysis approach and applying the textual-analytical framework of Halliday’s (1994) systemic functional linguistics, has investigated the extent to which the translation of a children’s literary text from English (Matilda, by Ronald Dahl) into Persian reflects the ideological orientations of the translator.

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