Abstract
Translation is not simply a linguistic transfer of meaning from one language intoanother; it is an ideological and socio-political act that reconstructs narratives, identities, andrelations of power. This study examines ideological and power shifts in Urdu translations ofPrime Minister Imran Khan's 2019 United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) speech,comparing versions produced by 92 News and Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI). Using a mixedmethods, triangulated design, the analysis draws on Critical Discourse Analysis (Fairclough'sthree-dimensional model), translation theory (Vinay and Darbelnet's procedures, Nida'sequivalence, Lefevere's rewriting), and functional-equivalence frameworks to examine lexicalchoices, syntactic restructuring, omission, addition, paraphrase, semantic modulation, andpersuasive framing across thirty parallel extracts. The 92 News translation reliedpredominantly on direct, semantically equivalent strategies that preserved informationalneutrality and formal equivalence, whereas the PTI translation showed substantial ideologicalintervention through oblique procedures emotional amplification, mitigation of criticism,selective omission, and patriotic reframing. These results indicate that political translationoperates as a mechanism of ideological mediation and public persuasion rather than as aneutral reproduction of source content. The study contributes to translation studies, politicaldiscourse analysis, media linguistics, and applied linguistics by showing how institutionalaffiliation systematically shapes translation practice in politically sensitive contexts.