Pragmatic equivalence as a challenge for interpreters of political discourse

Abstract

The article offers a discourse-analytic examination of original (English) and interpreted (Polish) versions of several extracts from plenary speeches by three Members of the European Parliament (Janusz Korwin-Mikke, Nigel Farage and Guy Verhofstadt). Controversial statements that have met with adverse reactions of the audience and/or the media are selected for analysis. The author endeavours to assess the degree to which pragmatic equivalence has been achieved by Polish interpreters. Another pertinent question is whether the identified shifts are due to some systemic differences between the pragmatics of the source and target languages or to other factors, such as the constraints typical for simultaneous interpreting or specific, local problems.