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For years translations were considered as derivatives, copies, and translators as mechanical devices replacing linguistic codes (equivalents) from one language into another, and the translator's autonomy was always questioned (and is still being questioned) by those who thought of him/her 'as a monkey, with no choice save to make the same grimaces as his master' (Leppihalme, 1997: 19), until recent years when, under the influence of poststructuralism and functionalism, the focus of attention has been shifted to the issue of translator's agency and subjectivity, and the notions of originality and (absolute) equivalence and also author's superiority over translator have been severely questioned. Bassnett (1996) stresses the need for reassessing the role of the translator by analyzing his/her intervention in the process of linguistic transfer, when she argues 'Once considered a subservient, transparent filter through which a text could and should pass without adulteration, the translation can now be seen as a process in which intervention is crucial' . Awareness of complexity of translation process and avoidance of the simplistic view of regarding translation as mere process of transferring words from one text to another, Бlvarez & Vidal (1996) claim, will result in realizing the importance of the ideology underlying a translation. They argue that behind every one of the translator's selections, as what to add, what to leave out, which words to choose and how to place them, 'there is a voluntary act that reveals his history and the socio-political milieu that surrounds him; in other words, his own culture [and ideology]'. (Бlvarez & Vidal, 1996: 5).

The exercise of ideology in translation is as old as the history of translation itself. According to Fawcett (1998), 'throughout the centuries, individuals and institutions applied their particular beliefs to the production of certain effect in translation' . He claims that 'an ideological approach to translation can be found in some of the earliest examples of translation known to us' . Nevertheless, the linguistics-oriented approaches to translation studies have failed to address the concept of ideology through years of their prevalence, because such approaches are limited to their scientific models for research and the empirical data they collect, so that 'they remain reluctant to take into account the social values [and ideologies] that enter into translating as well as the study of it' (Venuti, 1998a: 1). The deficiency of old linguistics-based approaches - which 'are mainly descriptive studies focusing on textual forms' (Calzada-Pйrez, 2003: - in accounting for social values in translation and other aspects of language use resulted in developing a new trend of research called Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) 'whose primary aim is to expose the ideological forces that underlie communicative exchanges [like translating]' (Calzada-Pйrez, 2003: 2). According to CDA advocates, all language use, including translation, is ideological and this means that translation is always a site for ideological encounters. Similarly, Schдffner (2003) claims that all translations are ideological since 'the choice of a source text and the use to which the subsequent target text is put are determined by the interests, aims, and objectives of social agents' . She evidently opts for van Dijk's definition for ideology as 'basic systems of shared social representations that may control more specific group beliefs' (van Dijk, 1996: 7). However, there are a profusion of diverse definitions of ideology defining the term from different perspectives - amongst them is van Dijk's definition - some of which are deemed necessary to be overviewed here.