Trumpslation Analysed: Constraints and Interpreter Strategies in the Simultaneous Interpretation of Donald Trump’s Unscripted Speeches into Arabic

Abstract

heba.fawzy.83@gmail.com Abstract The field of translation has recently been affected by an increasing tendency to use unconventional language in the realm of politics. This study explores the influence of such a tendency on simultaneous interpreting and focuses on the Arabic translations of two simultaneous interpreters who rendered two of Donald Trump’s unscripted speeches into Arabic. The study aims at detecting the constraints involved in the simultaneous interpretating of Trump’s unscripted speeches, exploring the interpreters’ strategies, and revealing how the speaker’s deviation from the norms of language use in politics may have an impact on the performance of the interpreters. The study contributes to the field of translation studies by exploring the territory of political interpretating into Arabic which needs further studying. It addresses the phenomenon of using unconventional language in the realm of politics and broadens our knowledge of the constraints it imposes on simultaneous interpretating and of the ways in which simultaneous interpreters intervene to make the communicated message intelligible. The study also suggests that explanation can be another category of the ways of intervention that interpreters use and can thus be added to the categorisation suggested by Kadrić et al.