The Challenge of Dealing With Speech Acts Involving Threats and Cultural Insensitivity by Novice Interpreters

Abstract

This study discusses interpretation errors made by novice interpreters during simultaneous interpreting of threats and cultural insensitive statements from French into English. It highlights how these errors shift the original intention of a message from a speaker. Political speeches are used as a representative sample of the study as they are part of public discourse. The study also sought to find out the common errors in the interpretation of speech acts with threats and cultural insensitivity. The data is extracted from sample speeches interpreted by trainee interpreters. The study then uses Speech acts theory (SAT) to analyze the interpreted material in order to determine if they effectively communicate or deliver the intended message. The study categorizes the interpretation errors into three categories which are discussed and analyzed as depicted in the study data. These errors are categorized into lexical, syntactic and semantic errors. The causes of the errors in English are also discussed alongside the coping strategies employed by to ensure proper interpretation of the original speech. Similarly, the coping strategies are identified and analyzed to check if they were effective or not.