Effects of the interpreter’s political awareness on pronoun shifts in political interviews: A perspective of interpersonal meaning

• Yijun Guo ^[1]
  1. [1] Kunming University of Science and Technology

     Kunming University of Science and Technology

     China

     
• Localización: Babel: Revue Internationale de la Traduction = International Journal of Translation, ISSN 0521-9744, Vol. 64, Nº 4, 2018, págs. 528-547
• Idioma: inglés
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• Resumen

  • This paper investigates the critical role of the interpreter’s political awareness in interpreting high-level political interviews in China, and its effects on pronoun shifts. Using former Chinese Premier Zhu’s debut press conference in 1998 as a case study, the study examines in detail the pronoun shifts of a China’s Foreign Ministry senior interpreter prompted by her political awareness. It identifies four types of pronoun shifts: (1) from first-person singular pronoun (“I”) to first-person plural pronoun (“we”); (2) from active voice with first-person plural pronoun as subject to passive voice; (3) from pronoun to a third-party noun; and (4) replacement of a noun with an interactant pronoun. The paper considers implications of these findings in relation to relevant studies and to the macro-social institutional context in which the political interpreting is conducted. The paper argues that this type of political awareness is a form of socio-institutional cognition inculcated and developed through the interpreter’s diplomatic identity, their understanding of socio-institutional requirements, strict training and a large quantity of supervised practice.