https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6645-1849
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ABSTRACT
The paper investigates possible ideological shifts introduced by interpreters during plenary debates in the European Parliament when dealing with strongly Eurosceptic statements. The material undergoing this discourse analysis are Polish and English plenary contributions by a highly controversial politician, Janusz Korwin-Mikke, and the corresponding interpretations into the other language of this pair. The focus is on his Eurosceptic credo which appears at the end of many speeches and on a specific lexical label, i.e. explicit ideological elements that reoccur often in the corpus and, consequently, possess numerous interpreted versions. There is some evidence of strengthening, weakening, elimination and omission of Euroscepticism, while the trend towards reduction and suppression seems stronger than the reverse. The detected shifts are discussed against the backdrop of the constraints inherent in simultaneous interpreting and the strategies routinely used by interpreters to overcome difficulties in the source text.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Notes
1 The comfortable speed is about 90–120 words per minute (wpm) for an English ST (Pöchhacker, Citation2004, pp. 129–130) and about 80–90 wpm for a Polish ST (Gumul, Citation2017, p. 108). JKM typically speaks both Polish and English at the rate of 140–160 wpm, occasionally even exceeding 180 wpm in Polish.
Additional information
Notes on contributors
Magdalena Bartłomiejczyk
Magdalena Bartłomiejczyk holds a PhD (2004) and a post-doctoral degree (2017) in linguistics. She is a professor at the University of Silesia in Katowice, where she currently teaches conference interpreting and is responsible for diploma seminars in translation studies. Her scholarly interests include interpreting studies, pragmatics, sociolinguistics and the newest developments in the Polish language. Since 2002, she has authored over 30 scholarly articles (including a few in highly reputable journals such as Interpreting, The Interpreter and Translator Trainer, Pragmatics) and a book focusing on interpreting face-threatening statements in the European Parliament.