For Hatim and Mason, ideology encompasses ‘the tacit assumptions, beliefs
and value systems which are shared collectively by social groups’ (1997:144).
They make a distinction between ‘the ideology of translating’ and ‘the
translation of ideology’.Whereas the former refers to the basic orientation
chosen by the translator operating within a social and cultural context (the
choice, for example, between Venuti’s domesticating and foreignizing
translation), in the translation of ideology they examine the extent of
mediation supplied by a translator of sensitive texts.‘Mediation’ is defined as
‘the extent to which translators intervene in the transfer process, feeding their
own knowledge and beliefs into processing the text’ (Hatim and Mason 1997:
147). In many ways this is a parallel to the translator’s discursive presence in
literary texts discussed in Unit 12.
