Skilled-based and knowledge-based strategies in Television Interpreting

Abstract

Television Interpreting and Conference Interpreting have always been regarded as profoundly different in terms of the expected performance and the interpreting strategies utilized. Television interpreting is a multi-faceted activity, requiring a particular mind-set and special communicative skills: television interpreters produce their own text, in an attempt to ensure coherence and convey the same effect that the speaker wants to obtain, with little or no possibility of using décalage due to the pragmatic context. The paper investigates how the flow of discourse is managed by television interpreters, with a special focus on the use of prosody and discourse markers. The analysis is conducted on a corpus of recorded texts, interpreted in simultaneous mode by a professional conference interpreter, working for public television. The typology of the interpreted event is the press conference interview, characterized by a rapid question and answer format. Through this analysis, we shall outline a profile of television interpreters and their interpreting strategies.