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Mediation through personal pronoun shifts
in dialogue interpreting of political meetings
Cheng Zhan
Guangdong University of Foreign Studies
This paper examines the mediation role of government staff interpreters in
China. Based on data collected from six political meetings involving senior
officials of Guangdong Province, with interpreting performed by staff interpreters in the Protocol Department of the Foreign Affairs Office of the People’s
Government of Guangdong, the paper analyzes cases of personal pronoun shifts
in the rendition of the interpreters. Results show that personal pronoun shifts
occur in all of the interpreted dialogues, and can be divided into: (1) personal
pronoun shifts with the same footing, including shifts between first person
and third person pronouns and shifts between second person and third person
pronouns, (2) personal pronoun shifts with a different footing, for purposes of
avoiding misunderstanding or impoliteness, coping with frequent changes of
speaking subjects, and correcting an error in the rendition. The paper argues that
government staff interpreters of dialogues, with all the constraints posed by the
political settings, do not always conform with the norms and rules, but perform
a mediation role in communication.
Keywords: role, staff interpreters, China, dialogue interpreting, political settings,
personal pronoun shifts
1. Introduction
The activity of dialogue interpreting is described by Pöchhacker (2004: 59) as a
situation in which the interpreter assumes a pivotal role of mediation in a threeparty interaction, “not as a broker or conciliator in a negotiation, but as an agent
regulating the evolution of understanding”. Such a communicative process, it can
be argued, has to take place in a given social and cultural context, in which the
interpreter’s role as a co-constructor of discourse is essential to the progression
of the dialogue. The interpreter’s role in dialogue interpreting has been widely
Interpreting 14:2 (2012), 192–216. doi 10.1075/intp.14.2.04zha
issn 1384–6647 / e-issn 1569–982X © John Benjamins Publishing Company
Personal pronoun shifts in dialogue interpreting 193
discussed in interpreting studies over the past 15 years. Using authentic ethnographic data from the interpreters’ workplaces, many researchers (e.g. Wadensjö
1998; Metzger 1999; Roy 2000; Angelelli 2001, 2004a, 2004b; Ren 2010) have argued that dialogue interpreters apparently go beyond being “an invisible translating machine” (Pöchhacker 2004: 147) without personal agency.
Despite the amount of literature discussing the interpreter’s role in dialogue
interpreting, previous research has been conducted mostly in community settings,
where interpreters are not only directly involved in the communicative process,
but are also drawn into decision-making in cases of unequal power relations and
diverging interests. An area that has yet to be investigated in depth is dialogue
interpreting done in international political settings.
Settings as the “social context of interaction” (Pöchhacker 2004: 13) not only
constitute the social context of professional interpreting, but also place certain
constraints on how interpreting is done. In contrast with community interpreting,
where one of the parties “is an individual human being, speaking and acting on
his or her own behalf ” (Pöchhacker 2004: 17), political encounters across nations
constitute a scenario in which none of the parties to the communication can be
said to be speaking or acting totally on his/her own. The interpreter, in this situation, interprets not only between two persons, but also between the political institutions that they represent.
More than a decade ago, Baker (1997: 124) argued that “ ‘political’ interpreting
as a genre deserved to be studied more closely in view of its importance in shaping
cultural images and aiding or obstructing the cause of world peace,” and that it is,
with its many non-cognitive constraints, a distinct area of study in the domain of
interpreting studies. However, mostly due to lack of access to authentic data and
the sensitivity of political interpreting itself, considerably less research has been
conducted in this area.
This paper analyzes how interpreters can be influenced by the socio-cultural
context of political dialogue interpreting and by their own political awareness and
thus perform a mediation role that does not always conform with the norms and
rules. With authentic data from meetings involving senior officials of the People’s
Government of Guangdong Province and interviews with the staff interpreters
working in these meetings, the paper focuses on the interpreter’s mediation as
manifested by personal pronoun shifts.
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194 Cheng Zhan
2. Research background
2.1 The role of dialogue interpreters in political settings
Interpreting in political settings has been an under-represented area of dialogue
interpreting. For the purposes of the present study, “political settings” is defined as
a general working environment of interpreter-facilitated official meetings in which
high-level government officials are involved, and the topics of discussion center on
politics and international relations.
Discussing dialogue interpreting done in quasi-political settings, such as military and police settings, researchers have raised questions related to interpreters’
power and duties, the nature of their work, their facilitation of communication,
the rules that guide their work, and the training they receive. Lipkin (2008) studied the role of dialogue interpreters in military (court) affairs, based on on-site
observations, and found that such interpreting work requires more than performing interpreting per se. Based on their analysis of the complex mission of military
interpreting and the training of interpreters in such settings, Monacelli and Punzo
(2001: 265) argue that the ethical role of interpreters in such settings “should be
seen as situated and enacted rather than as responding to pre-established norms.”
The nature of dialogue interpreting in political settings, or more specifically,
diplomatic interpreting, involves certain constraints that are not always seen in
other (more general) interpreting settings. Based on a historical account of anecdotes of interpreting, Torikai’s (1998) work reveals the complexity of diplomatic
interpreting, in which, as she suggests, the interpreter is expected to remain transparent and not to explain, empower and mediate outside the simple role of interpreting. Such constraints, imposed by the setting, are more explicitly described
by Xu (2000: 35), who believes that the biggest difference between diplomatic
interpreting and other types of interpreting lies in “the highly political contents
and great sensitiveness of policies,” which leads to a higher demand for “accurate
rendition” on the part of the interpreter. Similarly, Ren (2000: 40–42) summarizes the features of diplomatic interpreting as including “seriousness of the topics,
policy nature of the contents, sensitiveness of the language, commonalities of the
topics, and knowledge of the information recipients,” and argues that diplomatic
interpreting is low in flexibility, and that the interpreter is not expected to show
personal emotions, because such interpreting “generally or ultimately represents
national interests, and not a personal activity.”
In the People’s Republic of China, interpreting for official political meetings
is done by staff interpreters affiliated with governments from the central level and
the various local levels. These staff interpreters are recruited into the civil servant team to provide interpreting services to the foreign affairs departments of the
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Personal pronoun shifts in dialogue interpreting 195
government. A typical employer of interpreters is the Foreign Affairs Ministry, the
local version of which is the Foreign Affairs Office of the provincial and municipal
governments across the nation.
The civil service status of staff interpreters gives them a sense of security and
pride, as having such status and providing translation and interpreting for the government is generally considered a very decent job. The dual role of professional
service provider and government functionary does, however, make the job of these
staff interpreters more complicated and arguably more risky. Interpreters therefore
abide by a distinct set of norms. Evidence of codes of conduct requiring the interpreter to perform as a faithful echo of the speaker is found not only in guidebooks
and training manuals of the Foreign Affairs Ministry and Foreign Affairs Offices
on the local level, but also in the reflections by staff interpreters of the Chinese
Government and in their interviews with the press. Zhu Tong, an official interpreter
for the Central Government of China during the 1990s, for instance, was quoted
as saying, “The greatest difference between diplomatic interpreting and interpreting in other settings is that diplomatic interpreting has a very high demand for
the interpreter’s handling of politics and policies. … He/she needs to convey in the
most accurate manner the guidelines and policies of the country.” (Zhu in Li 2010, my
translation, my emphasis). Fei Shengchao, the current Chief of the English Division
of the Department of Translation and Interpreting of the China Foreign Affairs
Ministry, explicitly states that the most important quality of the interpreting officers
of the Chinese Government is “loyalty to the motherland, loyalty to the people, political reliability, and a strong political stance” (Fei in Huang 2010, my translation).
2.2 Interpreter mediation in dialogic communication
The above arguments about the role of the dialogue interpreter as a faithful echo in
political settings seem to point to a mechanistic view of the interpreter’s role, one
in which he/she functions like “a machine, giving a more or less literal translation
of what is said in language A in language B” (Knapp-Potthoff & Knapp 1986: 152).
However, the dialogic structure of political meetings also means that interpreters
cannot work outside the communicative process and are in fact co-constructors
of the discourse. Roy’s (2000) qualitative analysis of the dynamics of interactive
discourse devotes special attention to turn-taking as an interdependent exchange
process with its own unique and complex features. Her analysis has revealed the active role of the interpreter in dialogue interpreting as a cultural mediator. Metzger
(1999) too, analyzing the participation framework, has questioned the long-held
norm of interpreter neutrality, and shown that interpreters do not merely serve as
impartial intermediaries facilitating dyadic interaction, but function within the
discourse, in the form of triadic interaction.
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196 Cheng Zhan
Wadensjö’s (1998) investigation of dialogue interpreting, based on Goffman’s
(1981) model of the participation framework, takes a descriptive discourse analytical approach, and shows the interpreter’s agency by coordinating rather than
just translating the primary parties’ utterances. She concludes that “in dialogue
interpreting, the translating and coordinating aspects are simultaneously present,
and the one does not exclude the other” (Wadensjö 1998: 105). The presence of the
interpreter makes him/her a co-constructor of discourse, influencing the interactive sense-making of the primary parties to the communication. Not only is the
interpreter charged with mediating in cases of unequal power relations and sociocultural discrepancies, but the triadic communicative pattern of dialogue interpreting makes it difficult, if not impossible, for him/her to stay totally invisible.
Angelelli’s (2001, 2004a, 2004b) survey-based revisiting of the role of dialogue
interpreters also calls the neutral and invisible role of the interpreter into question,
as her analysis shows that the way dialogue interpreters perceive themselves as
well as how they perform in the process of interpreting do not conform with their
expected role as a conduit.
What researchers have found out about the actual role performance of dialogue interpreters in various community settings, when juxtaposed with the aforementioned norms and rules of dialogue interpreting in political settings, generates
the question of whether or not interpreters in the latter type of interpreting do perform a mediation role, which can only be answered through analysis of authentic
data of naturally occurring oral encounters in political meetings.
2.3 Interpreters’ rendition of pronouns in dialogue interpreting
In the exploration of interpreters’ role performance in dialogue interpreting, interpreters’ rendition of pronouns offers a useful perspective, as interpreting involves
personal interactions that take place in certain socio-cultural contexts. The way interpreters deal with pronouns reveals how they understand interpersonal relations
and intervene as participants in the dialogue when they feel the need to do so.
In his discussion of the norms of professional interpreting, Harris points
out that using first person pronouns to refer to themselves and second person
pronouns to refer to the recipient of the target utterance, while referring to all
other participants, including the source speaker and the source addressee, with
third person pronouns, if he or she is not identical to the addressee of the target utterance, is more commonly found in the performance of non-professional
than professional interpreters (Harris 1990: 115–116). Such a view is echoed by
Torikai (1998: 263–264), who also believes that the interpreter should align with
the speaker and use the first person pronoun to signify the speaker’s — rather than
the interpreter’s own — stance.
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Personal pronoun shifts in dialogue interpreting 197
The difference between using the speaker’s “I” and the interpreter’s “I” relates
to Goffman’s theory of “footing” in dialogic communications, which describes the
alignment or stance that an individual takes in an interaction towards the other
participants and his or her own role in it (Goffman 1981: 128). Changes in footing thus imply changes in the interactional situation and may correlate with nonverbal cues as well as linguistic features on various levels. Applied to interpreting,
Goffman’s theory provides a suitable framework for describing subtle shifts in the
interpreter’s footing; in other words, in his or her relationship with the primary
participants. A change in footing, therefore, may imply changes in the interpreter’s
role or mode of translation (Angermeyer 2005: 205), changes in how he/she relates
his/her own utterances to the talk of other participants, and how these other participants relate to him/her. The professional interpreter is expected to use a direct
form of reporting, or what Tannen (1989) calls “direct reported speech” in a language different from the one the speaker uses, while strictly adhering to the speaking subject of the speaker. The interpreter, in such a situation, is “instructed to
repeat speech” (Bot 2005: 204, emphasis in original). As for the primary speakers,
they are also expected to know the rules of direct reported speech and understand
that these are their own words rather than utterances made at the interpreters’
initiative.
Based on the above views, if the interpreter shifts personal reference or footing, it is generally considered to be a deviation from the norm and is thus seen as
unprofessional. However, if shifts in pronoun usage can be observed in professional interpreters, as with Bot’s (2005) analysis of interpreting in psychotherapeutic
interviews and in Chang and Wu’s (2009) investigation of Q&A sessions in (simultaneously) interpreted conferences, we may learn more about the interpreter’s role
performance as a mediator involving stance-taking. Both studies show pronoun
shifts to be an indication of the interpreter’s position as intermediary.
3. Research questions and data
This study aims to investigate the mediation role of staff interpreters in political
settings. It looks at a specific phenomenon in interpreted oral encounters — shifts
of personal pronoun usage, as they indicate how the interpreter participates in
the communication, and point to how he/she perceives and performs the role of a
mediator as against the expected/normative role. As Davies and Harré (2001: 263)
suggest, the processes of acquisition and development of personal sense
… arise in relation to a theory of the self embodied in pronoun grammar in
which a person understands themselves as historically continuous and unitary.
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198 Cheng Zhan
The experiencing of contradictory positions as problematic, as something to be
reconciled or remedied, stems from this general feature of the way being a person
is done in our society.
Davies and Harré see pronoun use as related to a person’s identity construction
and representation, offering us useful cues for understanding the interpreter’s role.
As a participant with multiple roles in an oral encounter, the interpreter may assume different angles and positions, which can be analyzed with Goffman’s (1981)
notion of footing and his participation framework. Using this as a theoretical
framework, the present study tries to answer the following research questions:
1. What types of personal pronoun shifts may be observed in dialogue interpreting in political settings?
2. How may these personal pronoun shifts be explained, in relation to the role
performance of the interpreter?
Table 1. Political meetings studied for this research
No.
Time &
Length
Party A (Chinese)
Party B (Foreign)
Name
Position
Name(s)
Position
M1
14/12/2007
00:56:02
WANG
Yang
Secretary of the
CPC Guangdong
Committee
Robert
Zoellick
President of the
World Bank
M2
08/05/2008
01:20:36
WANG
Yang
Secretary of the
CPC Guangdong
Committee
Piotr
Members of
Slawinski the Foreign
and others Consuls Group in
Guangzhou
M3
03/07/2008
01:39:24
HUANG
Huahua
Governor of
Guangdong
Erik
Solheim
Minister of
Environment and
Development for
the Kingdom of
Norway
M4
31/07/2008
01:26:44
WAN
Qingliang
Vice Governor of
Guangdong
Amos
Nadai
Israeli Ambassador
to China
M5
24/03/2009
00:54:53
ZHU
Xiaodan
Member of the
Standing Committee of
the CPC Guangdong
Committee, Secretary
of the CPC Guangzhou
Committee
Goh Chok Senior Minister of
Tong
Singapore
M6
14/04/2009
00:53:25
WANG
Yang
Secretary of the
CPC Guangdong
Committee
N/A
© 2012. John Benjamins Publishing Company
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Reporter from a
press agency in
Germany
Personal pronoun shifts in dialogue interpreting 199
For the purpose of this study, authentic data from interpreted meetings were collected. As the role performance of the interpreter is influenced by a number of factors, including the speakers and their styles, the context and themes of the meetings, the competence of the interpreters, and the format of the meetings, it was
important to ensure that the data were as homogeneous as possible. Data were
selected from six meetings of the People’s Government of Guangdong Province,
which were recorded or videotaped and made into electronic files with a total
length of about 7.5 hours.
3.1 The primary parties to the communication
The primary parties in the interpreted political meetings are four senior officials
of the People’s Government of Guangdong Province and their foreign visitors. The
former are all senior provincial officials with ministerial ranking in China. As the
speakers are of similar ranking and authority, as top leaders of the province, their
discursive features are similar and consistent.
On the foreign side, the speakers of the six meetings belong to three distinct
categories: ministerial-level officials of foreign governments, the head of an international organization and a reporter of foreign media.
3.2 The languages used in the meetings
Mandarin Chinese and English were used in all of the meetings studied for this research. The provincial leaders all spoke Mandarin Chinese, while the foreign visitors all spoke English. It is worth noting that a number of speakers are from nonEnglish speaking countries, such as Norway, Israel and Germany, so English in this
context was used as a lingua franca. However, the English level of these speakers
was quite high, and seemed to pose no particular challenge for the interpreter.
3.3 The interpreters involved
The six meetings were interpreted by a total of three female staff interpreters from
the Protocol Department of the Foreign Affairs Office in Guangdong. Having
worked as government staff interpreters for the past eight years, the three interpreters shared similar backgrounds in terms of their professional competence
as well as their experience working at political meetings with provincial leaders.
Interviews with these interpreters as well as people in the Personnel Department
of the Foreign Affairs Office showed that the recruitment, training and professional conducts followed a set of codes typical of interpreters working in the central or
provincial level governments in China. In terms of what should be done and what
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200 Cheng Zhan
should not be done in political meetings in the Chinese context, all the three staff
interpreters followed the same codes of conduct and followed a similar pattern in
their interpreting, thus ensuring consistency in their interpreting practice.
4. Analysis
All six meetings analyzed for this study showed a similar pattern of communication. Turn-taking in the dialogues appeared in a quite systematic order, with no
overlaps or observable long pauses. One reason for this may have been the high
level of formality of these dialogues as well as the identity of the speakers as senior
officials. The formal-to-solemn nature of communication in this type of highly
political situation and the rigid protocol arrangements in diplomatic services have
reduced the likelihood of out-of-convention turn-taking, such as interruptions or
long gaps. The exchanges of utterances during the whole process of every one of the
six meetings followed this pattern, with the provincial official of Guangdong initiating the conversation by greeting the visitor and making opening remarks about
the province or issues of interest to both parties, after which the foreign visitor
spoke, with occasional exchanges of messages with the host, and the Guangdong
official closed the conversation with a conclusion and expressed goodwill for the
visitor. In all the six meetings there was only one interpreter, working both ways
between Mandarin Chinese and English.
The meetings were transcribed, with the source texts and interpreter renditions presented in a parallel format. The total number of turns and shifts away
from the use of a certain personal pronoun by the speaker to the use of a different
personal pronoun by the interpreter were counted and recorded, excluding obligatory shifts dictated by differences between linguistic systems. Thus, only optional
shifts were taken into account — those that were opted for by the interpreter for
stylistic, ideological or cultural reasons (Baker 2001: 228) and were generally the
outcome of deliberations of the interpreters in terms of adequacy and acceptability
of the translation (Toury 1995). Table 2 shows the number of shifts in personal
pronoun usage as against the total turns in each meeting.
On the basis of the above data shown in Table 2, personal pronoun shifts were
further analyzed and divided into two types: personal pronoun shifts that do not
incur a change of footing, and those that do. A detailed analysis of the two categories and of the ways in which such shifts show the interpreter’s mediation of
discourse is presented below.
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Personal pronoun shifts in dialogue interpreting 201
Table 2. Number of turns and shifts in personal pronouns in the data
Meeting
­analyzed
Interpreter
Number of turns
Number of shifts
in personal pronouns
Percentage
(of turns)
M1
B
  95
18
19%
M2
C
234
57
24%
M3
A
103
23
21%
M4
B
180
35
19%
M5
A
142
23
16%
M6
C
135
25
19%
4.1 Personal pronoun shifts with the same footing
In the category of personal pronoun shifts with the same footing, with 160 instances observed, the interpreter renders a personal pronoun in the original utterance into a different one, without changing the personal reference. Despite the
fact that the interpreter remains on the same footing with the speaker, the way she
makes personal pronoun shifts indicates how she approaches the situation being
discussed in keeping with her identity, and offers a reference with which the message of the speaker may be understood differently.
4.1.1 Shifts between first person and third person pronouns
The 92 instances of shifts between first person and third person pronouns are situations in which the speaker uses a first person pronoun, either singular or plural,
and the interpreter renders it into a third person pronoun, either singular or plural, animate or non-animate, or vice versa. Cases show that the interpreter introduces such shifts based on her understanding of who is talking and who is being
addressed.
Example 1 (M1 00:15:29–00:17:43)
Wang: 我昨天，刚刚从广东的山区回来。在那里看到的情况，我说
了，恐怕你和你的同事都不一定相信。我们山区的农民，现在一天，
一年大概只能吃到几次肉。
(I just returned from the mountainous areas in Guangdong yesterday. The
situation I saw there, if I tell you this, I’m afraid your colleagues and you may
not believe it. The farmers in our mountainous areas now every day, every
year may be able to eat meat dishes for just a few times.)
Interpreter: And I have just come back from the mountainous west area of
Guangdong yesterday, and um, the situations there may be well, um, be
surprising to you. The rural residents in the mountainous areas, um, they
can only have several meals of, um, meat every year.
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202 Cheng Zhan
Wang: 呃，还比如讲，在经济快速发展的同时，社会的治安，啊，由
于流动人口，社会快速发展的同时，人口流动增加，给社会治安也带
来了许多新的问题。
(Another example is that with the rapid economic development, social
security, due to a migrating population, in the rapid development of the
society, the increasing migration of the population has brought about many
new problems to social security.)
Interpreter: And with the rapid development, we also have the challenge of
social stability, brought by immigration of, the migration of population.
Wang: 我们中国用三十年的时间，走完了许多发达国家上百年走完的
工业化、城镇化的道路，所以呢，这些问题也是快速的积累，呃，和
形成的。
(We in China have used thirty years to finish industrialization and
urbanization, which took many developed nations over a hundred years.
Therefore, these problems have also rapidly accumulated and formed.)
Interpreter: These problems are, um, partly attributed to the, um, rapid
growth of China, um, because the industrialization of China is much faster
than the average in the world.
Wang: 所以这个问题啊，已经引起了，我们的高度重视。为了解决这
些问题，我想你一定注意到了，我们提出了一个，新的理念，或者叫
重要的战略思想，就是科学发展观。
(This issue has drawn our high attention. To solve these problems, I think
you must have noticed that we have proposed a new idea, or an important
strategic thinking, that is the Scientific Outlook on Development.)
Interpreter: And the Government has paid great attention to these
challenges. To meet these challenges, the CPC has proposed a new, um, ideal
of development, which maybe you have already known. That is the scientific
outlook on development.
In Example 1, the speaker is Wang Yang, Secretary of the CPC Provincial
Committee, who is considered to be the top leader of the province in the Chinese
political system, talking to Robert Zoellick, President of the World Bank. In the
first few turns, the speaker talks about some problems that Guangdong Province
is facing (as indicated by “I returned from the mountainous areas in Guangdong
yesterday”) and gradually moves on to commentaries on challenges to the Chinese
Government (as indicated by “We in China”). The interpreter somehow fails to
interpret “三十年的时间” (thirty years), but gives a simplified comment that “the
industrialization of China is much faster than the average in the world”. Therefore
when the speaker goes on in the next turn to use the possessive pronoun “我们的”
(our) and the personal pronoun “我们” (we), the boundary of these first person
pronouns is quite fuzzy. One may need to ask whether “we” means the leaders of
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Personal pronoun shifts in dialogue interpreting 203
the province, the province itself, the central government, or something else. The
interpreter in this case renders the first of the two pronouns into “the Government”
and the second into “the CPC”, not only a shift from first to third person pronoun,
but also a different rendition for the two “我们” (we). It can be argued that this
reflects the belief system of the interpreter that the Communist Party of China is
the ruling party of the country and is responsible for the orientation of China’s
development. Though this rendition is certainly not erroneous, it nevertheless is
an indication of the interpreter’s interpretation of the party system as well as the
political structure of the country.
This hypothesis is confirmed by a follow-up interview with the interpreter.
When asked what “我们” (we) in the original means, the interpreter answered,
“Many possible things, which the speaker didn’t make clear, but since Wang is the
Party Secretary, and that the Scientific Outlook on Development is the most important policy of the current CPC Central Committee, I think it is more accurate to
translate it into ‘the CPC’ ”. The interpreter therefore chooses to share with people
from the World Bank what she believes to be the standard form of the political
narratives.
Example 2 (M4 01:11:23–01:15:32)
Wan: 对以色列人的优秀品质和创业精神，我是一直是深深地敬仰的。
你们创造了奇迹。所以我们呢很愿意跟以色列展开真诚的合作。
(I have always been admiring the fine qualities and entrepreneurship of the
Israeli people. You have created miracles. We are therefore more than willing
to conduct sincere cooperation with Israel.)
Interpreter: I appreciate the enterprising spirit and good manners of Israel
people. Israel creates miracles. So we’d like to carry out sincere cooperation
with Israel.
Wan: 有关具体的工作，这个，可以请大使啊，跟我们联系。包括这个
领事馆的这个，筹建问题，包括签订广东跟以色列战略合作的框架协
议问题，包括展开旅游合作。
(As for the specific work, [we] may ask Mr. Ambassador to contact us,
including the preparation for the consulate, signing a framework agreement
of strategic cooperation between Guangdong and Israel, and tourism
cooperation.)
Interpreter: For the details, you can firstly contact the Foreign Affairs Office
of Guangdong, including the building up of the consulate general, including
the signature, signature, uh, the signing of the agreements between Israel
and Guangdong, and including the cooperation in tourism industry.
Wan: 把你们的设想，你们的这个建议和要求啊，这个形成一个文件。
先跟我们对接。以后我们再把相关的部门召集到一起来具体研究。你
看怎么样？行不行？
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204 Cheng Zhan
(Make your plans, your suggestions and needs into a document. First contact
us, and we shall gather relevant departments to study them. What do you
think? Is that okay?)
Interpreter: Please draft a paper, and that paper can include all your
thoughts. First contact Foreign Affairs Office, and then we can call on all the
related departments to research on these projects. What do you think of it?
Nadai: Thank you! Thank you! Excellent!
Interpreter: 很好！非常感谢！
(Excellent! Thank you very much!)
In Example 2, the Vice Governor in charge of foreign affairs of Guangdong meets
the Israeli Ambassador to China. Towards the end of the dialogue, the speaker
expresses his willingness to engage in cooperation with Israel, and asks the ambassador to “contact us”. As the speaker mentions “我们” (second person object
pronoun) twice in the turns in this case, no clear contact person is given. Instead
of rendering “我们” into the simple “us”, the interpreter twice renders it into “the
Foreign Affairs Office”, of which she is a staff. The interpreter therefore brings an
un-talked-about institution into the discussion as a third party which now becomes talked about. As there is no clear reason for such a rendition, one may
understand it as a reflection of the interpreter’s knowledge of the operation of the
political mechanism of the province.
To find out why such a shift in personal pronoun occurs, a follow-up interview
was conducted with the interpreter for this meeting. When asked what was in her
mind when she decided to render the first person pronoun into the name of a
certain government department, the interpreter answered, “I am not sure why this
shift happens, but since Vice Governor Wan is in charge of foreign affairs, and that
it is the convention that the work of providing assistance for a foreign diplomatic
function in Guangdong lies with my department, the contact person has to be us
anyway.” Again in this case, the interpreter plays the role of a discourse mediator,
rather than an echo of the speaker’s messages.
4.1.2 Shifts between second person and third person pronouns
The 58 instances of shifts between second person and third person pronouns are
situations in which the speaker uses a second person pronoun, either singular or
plural, and the interpreter renders it into a third person pronoun, either singular
or plural, animate or non-animate, or vice versa.
Example 3 (M3 00:47:22–00:51:06)
Huang: 这个我们现在可能，我们现在可能面临的问题，就是近海海域
的环境污染，可能是对我们挑战更大的事情。
© 2012. John Benjamins Publishing Company
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Personal pronoun shifts in dialogue interpreting 205
(The problem that we may be faced with now is the environmental pollution
of the near-shore area. That may be a greater challenge for us.)
Interpreter: And now the, the big, big challenge for us is the protection of the
ocean just close to the coast.
Huang: 所以这方面呢，我们愿意学习你们这方面的一些经验。
(So in this respect, we are willing to learn from some of your experience in
this area.)
Interpreter: So we believe that developed countries have a lot to offer to us to
learn.
Solheim: Mr. Governor, it is very nice of you to say that. Developed countries
have some really advanced technologies in the areas you just mentioned, and
can certainly be of some help to Guangdong.
Interpreter: 黄省长，感谢您的美言！发达国家确实在您刚刚提到的领域
有非常先进的技术，这个，而且我认为是能够对广东有帮助的。
(Governor Huang, thank you for your nice words. Developed countries
indeed have very advanced technologies in the areas you just mentioned.
And I think they can be of help to Guangdong.)
Huang: 但是现在的所有的这些学习确实都有个结合中国国情的问题，
因为我们知道这个发达国家所有的这些技术啊，这个在引进的过程中
间，是好东西，但是确实也是价格昂贵的东西。
(However, our learning should be combined with the national conditions of
China, as we know these technologies of developed countries, in the process
of introduction, are good things, but are indeed very expensive things.)
Interpreter: And in terms of all the introduction and digestion of the foreign
technologies, it is, um, very important to adapt them to the Chinese reality.
You have very good technology, but it’s very expensive.
Huang: 所以怎么能够把你们先进的技术，和我们的市场有机地结合起
来，那是可能我们将来合作要探讨的一个重要问题。
(So how to combine your advanced technologies with our market
organically is an important issue that we may need to address in our future
cooperation.)
Interpreter: And how to make your advanced technology more marketable in
China is an important issue that both of us need to discuss in the future.
This excerpt is from the meeting between Governor Huang Huahua of Guangdong
Province and Minister Erik Solheim of Norway. The speaker in this case talks about
the need to combine experience and technology of the group his addressee represents, as indicated by “你们” (the plural form of the second personal pronoun)
in the second turn. As Solheim is having this dialogue with Huang in the capacity of a minister of Norway, the second person form of address in these instances
may be understood as the Kingdom of Norway, which the addressee represents.
© 2012. John Benjamins Publishing Company
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206 Cheng Zhan
However, the interpreter in the second turn renders “你们” (you) into “developed
countries”, thus establishing the binary opposition of us (Guangdong? China?) as
a representative of the developing world and Solheim (or arguably Norway) as a
representative of the developed world. Such mediation through pronoun shifts,
here in the case of dialogue interpreting, shows “discursive presence” (Hermans
1996: 27), and as scholars of written translation would argue, “is inspired by ideological motivations, or produced under ideological constraints” (Lefevere 1992: 7).
Interestingly, in the turn following the interpreter’s rendition of the Governor’s
remarks, the Norwegian minister makes further comments on the advanced technologies of “developed countries”, and when this message is relayed back to the
Governor, the latter responds by saying “发达国家所有的这些技术” (the technologies of developed countries), the subject of which in fact should be “你们”
(you) as it was in the second turn. It is obvious that the Governor shifts his subject
of commentary from “you” to “developed countries” because he was influenced by
the interpreter’s previous rendition. This shows that interpreter mediation has occurred in such a way that the evolution of understanding in the dialogue has been
altered. In this turn, the interpreter quite naturally renders “发达国家” (developed countries) into “you”. Here again, the scope of “developed countries” is actually different from “you” as the addressee of the message, who represents an entity
that is undoubtedly not equal to the collection of developed countries. However,
in rendering “发达国家” (developed countries) into “you”, the interpreter equates
the addressee with the developed world as the “other” of the cultural and political
construct, as can be seen from the last turn, where the concepts of “us” and “other”
are juxtaposed and unified in the rendition of “我们” (we) into “both of us”. As the
socio-cultural construct of identity is not fixed and final but is rather continuously
reconfigured and adjusted by linguistic means in different contexts, the interpreters have established the identities of the “other” (who are you) in relation to the
narration and re-narration of human experiences, and through this, constructed
the identities of the “self ” (who are we).
4.2 Personal pronoun shifts with a different footing
In this category, with 21 instances observed, the interpreter renders a personal
pronoun usage in the original utterance by the speaker into a different one, thus
shifting from the speaker’s “I” to the interpreter’s “I”. With such a change in footing, the interpreter changes her role in the participation framework from talking
as the speaker to talking about the speaker, which seems to be a means of aligning
with the addressee of a particular utterance.
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Personal pronoun shifts in dialogue interpreting 207
4.2.1 Avoiding misunderstandings or impoliteness
In many instances, the interpreter shifts the personal pronoun in the original utterance to cope with a situation wherein the (monolingual) participant in the communication may feel confused, possibly because of the indirectness of an interpreter-mediated encounter. As a recapitulator, the interpreter may find it useful,
or at least perceive it to be useful, to give up the role of author (Wadensjö 1998: 92)
and reports the situation to the addressee from a personal angle different from that
of the original speaker.
Example 4 (M2 00:00:54–00:02:09)
Wang: 呃，我就任广东省委书记以后，有不少总领事给我写信表示祝
贺，而且希望我能尽快地会晤。
(After I took the post of Secretary of the CPC Provincial Committee of
Guangdong, many consuls-general wrote to me to congratulate me, and
expressed the hope to meet with me as soon as possible.)
Interpreter: Since I took office, many consuls-general have written to me
expressing the wish to meet with me.
Wang: 而我呢也有这样强烈的愿望，但是呢，由于这个工作太忙，而
我的工作水平又不高，所以一直到现在才安排这样的时间。
(I shared this strong desire. However, as I have a very busy work schedule,
and my quality of work is not high, I haven’t been able to arrange the time
until now.)
Interpreter: And I also, I personally, have the strong wish to meet all of you.
However I have to say because I have a very tight work schedule. And to
be honest, uh …, and …, Mr. Wang is just modest to say that he is not so
efficient so I haven’t arranged this meeting earlier.
Wang: 所以我借这个机会呢，对那些给我写信祝贺的领事们呢，表示
感谢。对于到现在，我已经来了快六个月了咱们才能见面表示歉意。
(So I shall take this opportunity to thank those consuls who have written to
me to congratulate me. I would also like to apologize to you for only being
able to meet you after almost six months of my arrival here.
Interpreter: And taking this opportunity, I want to express my sincere thanks
to all of you for expressing your congratulation to me.
In Example 4, Wang Yang, Secretary of the CPC Provincial Committee of
Guangdong, is meeting the foreign consuls-general in Guangzhou. The Secretary
has been in office for five months, and explains why he was not able to meet the
foreign diplomats sooner despite his “strong willingness” to do so, by saying that
he has been very busy since he was transferred to his new post in Guangdong,
and that his “quality of work is not high” (工作水平又不高). This can be viewed
as a combination of Chinese modesty, which includes underrating oneself, and a
form of teasing. However, as the speaker depreciates his work, he may also appear
© 2012. John Benjamins Publishing Company
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208 Cheng Zhan
to be slightly insincere, as his addressees for sure know that he does not mean
what he says about the quality of his work. This therefore poses a paradox to the
interpreter, and may be the reason why she shifts from using the speaker’s first
person pronoun “I” to an address form of title plus family name (Mr. Wang) followed by a reporting verb “says” and a third person pronoun. As can be observed
from the transcript, the interpreter uses direct reported speech at the beginning (“I
personally, have the strong wish to meet all of you. However I have to say because
I have a very tight work schedule”). Then, on the point of being not “efficient and
qualified”, she pauses (as indicated by the “uh” and “and” in the transcript) and
shifts to indirect reported speech, saying “Mr. Wang is just modest to say that he is
not so efficient”. This is undoubtedly an indication of the interpreter’s intention to
separate herself from the speaker, lest the addressees misunderstand that the comments on the quality of the Party Secretary’s work are hers. One probable explanation is that saying somebody is “not so efficient” already constitutes slight criticism, and since in a conversation, criticism is mostly understood as coming from
the last speaker, one might assume that it was the interpreter who was producing
such a rendition. This is a face-threatening situation in interpreting. According to
Tannen (1989), assuming that a “reporting person” is not responsible for the reported words means that the conveyor is seen as “an inert vessel” transmitting information and that the sole responsibility for this information lies with the quoted
party. This is certainly related to the conduit role (Roy 2000: 101–103) assigned
to the interpreter, who is expected to be neutral and impartial. But in this case,
the interpreter may fear that she will be held responsible, so that she chooses to
report what the speaker said and makes it very clear that her commentary reflects
the speaker’s own opinion. Interestingly, the interpreter seems to be aware of the
norm of not introducing herself into the interpretation, and quickly changes her
footing and shifts back to using the speaker’s “I”, by saying “so I haven’t arranged
this meeting earlier”.
Example 5 (M6 00:37:42–00:41:40)
Reporter: Thank you, Mr. Secretary Wang Yang. Since about four months you
are heading one of the most important and most famous provinces of China.
Interpreter: 我知道您在广东就任省委书记已经四个多月了，而这是中国
最重要的一个省份之一。
(I know you have been the Provincial CPC Secretary of Guangdong for more
than four months, and this is one of the most important provinces in China.)
Reporter: Most important, because it is one of the biggest provinces
population-wise or one of the biggest or the biggest contributor to the GDP
total of China.
Interpreter: 无论是从人口总量的角度还是从对GDP的贡献这个程度，
广东都是中国一个大省。
© 2012. John Benjamins Publishing Company
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Personal pronoun shifts in dialogue interpreting 209
(Guangdong is a major province in China no matter in terms of its total
population or its contribution to GDP.)
Reporter: Most famous, because in province started the transformation of
China, some thirty years ago.
Interpreter: 那么，更重要的是在三十年以前，这个中国发生了这个翻天
覆地的这个变化，也就是改革开放的伟大政策是从广东开始的。
(More importantly, thirty years ago, China experienced earthshaking
changes. The great policy of reform and opening-up started from
Guangdong.
Reporter: Initiated by one of your famous compatriots Deng Xiaoping.
Interpreter: 是由我们中国一个著名领导人邓小平先生提出来的。
(…, which was proposed by Mr. Deng Xiaoping, a famous leader of us
China.)
In this case, the speaker is a German reporter who interviews the Secretary of
the CPC Provincial Committee of Guangdong. Halfway through the interview, he
mentions China’s late leader Deng Xiaoping and talks about him as “one of your
famous compatriots”. By saying this, the speaker has signified his identity as nonChinese, or Western. The interpreter renders it into “我们中国一个著名领导人”
(a famous leader of us China), which brings about a total change of the personal
angle. This shift in footing is not unmotivated. The speaker of the original utterances has implied the difference in his stance from that of the Chinese official. The
interpreter assesses the situation and opts to align with the Chinese official, while
excluding the foreign reporter, who in this instance is the speaker as well as the
one that the interpreter is expected to align with. In a follow-up interview with the
interpreter, she recalled that she was aware of this change in the personal angle but
had felt that addressing the CPC Secretary with “你们中国” (you China) sounded
impolite and disrespectful, and showed her siding with the foreign reporter rather
than with the institution she was working for. In this instance, the interpreter admitted that she was not a pure linguistic helper of the foreign reporter, but also
“somebody with hybrid identities, a Chinese and a government staff interpreter at
the same time”.
4.2.2 Coping with frequent changes of speaking subjects
In one instance of the analyzed data, the regular communicative pattern of one
speaker with one addressee was broken, when the host official asked the members
of the other party to each introduce themselves. A recording of the meeting shows
that as the speaking subjects kept changing, what the interpreter did was to turn
the respective speaker from an interlocutor into an exhibit (Wortham 1996), so as
to cope with the complexity of the situation.
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210 Cheng Zhan
Example 6 (M2 00:06:03–00:10:41)
Wang: 现在也让我们相互认识一下。
(Now let us get to know each other.)
Interpreter: Now please introduce yourselves.
Consul: Secretary Wang, thank you very much for meeting us today. Starting
from me, I am Piotr Slawinski, Consul-General of Poland. I have been
working in Guangzhou since 2001.
Interpreter: 非常感谢您今天百忙之中抽空跟领团会见。首先我是波兰总
领事史良文，我是2001年来到广州就任。
(Thank you very much for making time out of your busy schedule to meet
the foreign consular group today. Starting from me, I am Shi Liangwen,
Consul-General of Poland. I have been in this post in Guangzhou since
2001.)
Consul: I am Hannu Toivola, Consul-General of Finland.
Interpreter: 芬兰驻广州总领事杜汉龙先生。
(Mr. Du Hanlong, Consul-General of Finland in Guangzhou.)
Consul: Friedrich-Carl Bruns, Consul-General of Germany in Guangzhou
and Guangdong Province since almost 2005.
Interpreter: 白平凯先生，是德国驻广州总领事，他是2005就任。
(Mr. Bai Pingkai, Consul-General of Germany in Guangzhou. He took this
post in 2005.)
Consul: Jens Alsbirk, Consul-General of Denmark.
Interpreter: 欧阳博先生，丹麦驻广州总领事。
(Mr. Ouyang Bo, Consul-General of Denmark in Guangzhou.)
Consul: Werner Nievergelt, Consul-General of Switzerland.
Interpreter: 聂伟先生，瑞士驻广州总领事。
(Mr. Nie Wei, Consul-General of Switzerland in Guangzhou.)
Consul: Paolo Miraglia del Giudice, Consul-General of Italy.
Interpreter: 意大利驻广州总领事，米儒意先生。
(Mr. Mi Ruyi, Consul-General of Italy in Guangzhou.)
Consul: I am Consul-General of Sweden since January this year, and I was in
charge of the establishment of the Swedish Consulate General in Guangzhou
since 2002. 谢谢您。
Interpreter: 瑞典驻广州总领事斐霓女士，她是今年一月初到达广州就任
的，但是早在2002年的时候她就已经一手筹备了瑞典驻广州总领馆的
开馆工作。
(Madam Fei Ni, Consul-General of Sweden in Guangzhou. She arrived in
Guangzhou early January this year and took the post. However, as early as
2002, she prepared for the opening of the Swedish Consulate-General in
Guangzhou.)
© 2012. John Benjamins Publishing Company
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Personal pronoun shifts in dialogue interpreting 211
In this excerpt, which comes from the same meeting as Example 4, the Secretary
of the CPC Provincial Committee asks the foreign consuls-general to introduce
themselves. A videotape of the meeting shows that none of the consuls-general had
their official interpreters. It was the staff interpreter of the Protocol Department of
the provincial Foreign Affairs Office that provided two-way interpreting throughout the meeting. As the foreign diplomats introduced their names and countries
one by one, the interpreter seemed to break the norm of using the first person
footing and to assume the speaker position, as can be observed in her pronoun
shifts from “I” into “他/她” (he/she). When the first consul-general spoke, the
interpreter adopted the same footing, as if she was the speaker, by rendering “I
am Piotr Slawinski, Consul-General of Poland” into “我是波兰总领事史良文”
(I am Shi Liangwen, Consul-General of Poland). Notice that the interpreter in
her Chinese interpretation uses the Chinese name of the speaker (a transliteration of his Polish family name). After that, however, the interpreter introduces
the consuls-general to Secretary Wang Yang, rather than speaking for them introducing themselves. A videotape of this five-minute dialogue shows that the interpreter, seated behind the Secretary and half-facing him, reads from a written list
of names and frequently points to the foreign diplomats with her palm and faces
the Secretary. All of the first person pronouns in the speakers’ utterances are either
not rendered, or rendered into third person pronouns. It should be noted that the
interpreter adds a title to each name she utters, which indicates the interpreter’s
awareness of making a report about the speaker(s).
In the last turn, the Swedish Consul-General introduces herself, and talks
about her role in the preparatory work for the establishment of the Swedish diplomatic function in the province. In interpreting her original utterances, the interpreter, as in the previous turns, renders the entire turn in indirect reported
speech, translating every “I” into “she” and adding the name of the speaker with
an honorific title “斐霓女士” (Madam Fei Ni, or Winni Fejne as in the original
name). Rather than speaking as the speaker, the interpreter thus speaks about the
speaker, which creates a distancing effect and differentiates the interpreter’s self
from the speaker’s self. This also clearly shows the interpreter’s alignment with the
provincial government, or her institution, rather than the speakers.
4.2.3 Correcting an error in the rendition
A few other instances reveal that when an error occurs in the interpretation, the
interpreter may change her footing so as to offer explanations and corrections.
Example 7 (M5 00:35:16–00:36:18)
Goh: In this collaboration to build a Knowledge City, I can anticipate there
will be many road bumps, bumping in the road where the vehicles may just
hit it and bump and this is not going to be a smooth ride.
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212 Cheng Zhan
Interpreter: 所以在这个意义上，我肯……我……可以说，将来”知识城”
项目的合作是非常顺利的，没有什么障碍我们需要逾越的。
(So in this sense, I can …, I … can say that in the future cooperation for the
“Knowledge City” Project will be very smooth. There will be no barriers for
us to overcome.)
(Someone whispers to the speaker.)
Goh: OK, what I mean is, the road will not be smooth. There must be some
obstacles here and there.
Interpreter: 对不起，刚才吴资政的意思是说，在这条路上也许还是有很
多障碍我们需要跨越的。
(I’m sorry. Just now Senior Minister Goh meant that on this road there may
be many obstacles that we need to overcome.)
Goh: If you tell me it’s going to be smooth, I will not believe you. If I tell you
it’s going to be smooth, you will not believe me. There will be problems.
Interpreter: 因为我们所有的合作当中，肯定会存在一些障碍和困难，如
果您告诉我这条是一条通坦的大路，我也会表示怀疑的。
(Because in all our cooperation, there must be some obstacles and
difficulties. If you tell me this is going to be a smooth road, I shall doubt it.)
Example 7 is an excerpt of the dialogue between Goh Chok Tong, former Prime
Minister and the then Senior Minister of Singapore, and Zhu Xiaodan, Secretary
of the CPC Committee of Guangzhou, the provincial capital of Guangdong. In
this instance, the interpreter makes a mistake in translating the speaker’s previous
turn, changing the prospects for the project from “not going to be a smooth ride”
to “very smooth”. The fact that the interpreter hesitates twice in her delivery clearly
shows she exprienced some difficulties in reorganizing the messages of the speaker. It is therefore not surprising that an error occurs in her rendition. A recording
of the meeting reveals that someone, presumably one of Goh’s assistants, whispers
to him immediately after the interpreter’s rendition. As Mandarin Chinese is one
of the four official languages of Singapore, the distortion in the interpretation can
be monitored and detected quickly by one of the Singaporean officials present. The
speaker then says “OK, what I mean is …” to correct the interpreter, and repeats
the message. The interpreter in this instance, instead of rendering “what I mean
is” into “我的意思是说” (what I mean is), comes up with “吴资政的意思是说”
(what Senior Minister Goh meant was). Such a personal pronoun shift is understandable, particularly with the apology “对不起” (I’m sorry) from the interpreter.
She wants to correct her mistake, and if she continued using the speaker’s “I”, it
would sound as if it was a mistake made by the speaker and that he was trying
to rephrase it for accuracy. By introducing the shift in the speaking subject, the
interpreter shifts from being solely “a sounding box from which utterances come”
to being an animator and author, who “puts together, composes, or scripts the
© 2012. John Benjamins Publishing Company
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Personal pronoun shifts in dialogue interpreting 213
lines that are uttered”. (Goffman 1981: 226) This case shows that the interpreter,
as a co-constructor of discourse, is held responsible for the correctness of the discourse, and may need to step out from her invisibility to make herself accountable
for a mistake that will impair the effective reception and comprehension of the
speaker’s intention.
5. Conclusion
In dialogue interpreting in political settings, interpreter-facilitated communication is often charged with socio-cultural and political factors. Such a professional
field requires interpreters to abide by norms and rules that may not be totally the
same as those that obtain for dialogue interpreting in other settings, such as community interpreting. In the Chinese situation, staff interpreters of political meetings are government civil servants, and are therefore expected to perform the role
of an accurate and faithful echo of the speaker, as meta-discursive texts and paradiscursive texts in the form of codes of conduct or interpreter reflections have
revealed.
Interpreters, however, work in ideological and interactional contexts that grant
interpreters expert status, and in which interpreters operate with a “professional
identity” which shapes and is shaped by the ways in which various actors and institutions inside and outside interpreting perceive interpreters (Diriker 2004: 25).
It is with this and other identities that the interpreter performs different roles.
This study investigated the mediation role of the dialogue interpreter in political settings. To offer evidence of interpreters’ role performance, authentic data
from six meetings in which three staff interpreters in the Protocol Department
of the Foreign Affairs Office of People’s Government of Guangdong Province interpreted were transcribed and analyzed. The study focused on the specific phenomenon of personal pronoun shifts and investigated different types of such shifts
using the participation framework theory, highlighting instances in which the interpreter performs a mediation role motivated by the socio-cultural factors as well
as individual political awareness.
Data analysis shows that in interpreting personal pronouns, interpreters of
political dialogues do not always offer a faithful or even accurate rendition. Shifts
may occur not as a result of linguistic differences between Mandarin Chinese and
English, but in cases where a strict rendition of the original is possible.
A greater proportion of the shifts of personal pronouns involve no change
in the interpreter’s footing. These include shifts between first and third person
pronouns and between second and third person pronouns. The decision may be
based on the interpreter’s perception of her role in the interpreted oral encounter,
© 2012. John Benjamins Publishing Company
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214 Cheng Zhan
and influenced by the way she approached the communicative situation and its
context. However, due to the on-site stress of the political and official dialogue
involving high-ranking government officials and the linguistic or cognitive constraints, some of the personal pronoun usage shifts did not necessarily generate
a very effective outcome. In these cases, the interpreter’s decision to make such
shifts may be explained, but not justified.
There are also personal pronoun shifts which incur a change in footing of
the interpreter, which should not be seen as random shifts reflecting hesitancy or
personal style. Further investigation shows three situations for such changes in
footing, pointing to three discrete aims: to avoid misunderstandings or impoliteness, to cope with frequent changes of speaking subjects, and to correct an error
in the rendition. In all of these cases, the interpreter broke away from the norms
and chose to assume the role of a reporter, using the interpreter’s “I”, rather than
the speaker’s “I”.
With data analysis of a corpus of six authentic meetings, together with the interpreters’ own reflections, this paper has shown that government staff interpreters
in political settings do not always act in strict accordance with professional norms
and rules. Despite the prescriptions and expectations regarding the role of the
interpreter, dialogue interpreting in a face-to-face mode is far more complex than
what codes of conduct prescribe. Given the limited access to data from dialogue
interpreting of political meetings, this paper offers a perspective towards understanding how interpreters perform their role(s) in an under-represented area of
interpreting studies. It can be seen that even staff interpreters, who may be taken
as a very special type of interpreter, in a highly constrained setting, still act as mediators of communication. This paper has at least been able to contribute evidence
with which the normative role of dialogue interpreters working in political settings as a faithful echo may be called into question.
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Author’s address
Cheng Zhan
School of Interpreting and Translation Studies
Guangdong University of Foreign Studies
No.2 North Baiyun Avenue
Guangzhou, 510420
P. R. China
[email protected]
About the author
Cheng Zhan is an Associate Professor at the School of Interpreting and Translation Studies as
well as the Centre for Translation Studies, Guangdong University of Foreign Studies. He obtained his MA in Translation and Comparative Cultural Studies from the University of Warwick
and his PhD in interpreting studies at Guangdong University of Foreign Studies. An active
member of AIIC, his research interests focus on interpreting practice and interpreter training as
well as on translation studies and cultural studies.
© 2012. John Benjamins Publishing Company
All rights reserved