Journal Article

Interpreting Persuasion Techniques in Political Debates

Meribai, Souhila

2023

Overview

Interpreting has emerged along with events live television broadcasting, and went beyond conferences rooms. It is considered as one of the most difficult types of interpreting as the interpreter is not only required to transfer the discourse from the source language to the target language, but he has to take into consideration other factors imposed on him in order to achieve equity between the debate's counterparts. In fact, the kind of political debates that has recently been prevalent is that of presidential elections candidates. Therefore, we have selected the last debate between the current American president Biden and his counterpart the previous president Trump in which we will see, to what extent is the interpreter able to keep the acuity of debate? And does the counterpart tactic have an influence on the quality of interpreting especially when the interpreter is under the pressure of time? The techniques employed by interpreters in translating debates are similar to those used in conference interpreting, but they may not always be sufficient. As a result, interpreters may need to resort to tactics such as omission, delay, filler words, or even abandoning the message due to challenges unique to debates, including impromptu interventions and rapid speech due to limited time.

• Publisher: جامعة الجزائر 2 - كلية اللغة العربية وآدابها واللغات الشرقية
• Subject: الترجمة الفورية / المناقشات السياسية / فن الإقناع / نقل الخطابات