Abstract

• Public speeches are ideologically loaded type of political discourse. The purpose of the paper was to identify the use of manipulation techniques in critical discourse analysis of political speech translation based on Daghigh’s (2018) model of political manipulation in translation. When public speeches are translated, they can be manipulated to serve the sociopolitical needs of the target society. State Counsellor Daw Aung San Suu Kyi delivered her public speech on March 25, 2020 when Myanmar identified the first case of Covid-19 disease. Herspeech and its translated text by Aung Khin were used for data analysis in this paper. van Dijk’s (1998) ideological square as well as Daghigh’s model was used as research method in carrying out this analysis. It was found that the translator used promoting manipulation techniques more frequently than demoting manipulation techniques to keep his translation in line with the values set by the government. It is hoped that this study would help translation teachers and professional translators with better understanding of manipulation in political speech translation. It is also hoped that further studies on different genres of political texts could be undertaken in future.