Examining simultaneous interpreting norms and strategies in a South African legislative context: a pilot corpus analysis

Abstract

The Gauteng Provincial Legislature makes provision for simultaneous interpreting services in English, Afrikaans, Zulu and Sepedi for sittings of the House. The speakers at the legislature use primarily legislative discourse, and deliver their speeches at a fast pace, owing to the strict time limits given for speeches. Factors such as technicality and pace can be a major source of difficulty for interpreters in general, but difficulties in a multilingual South African legislative context are compounded by the fact that the interpreted languages are languages of limited diffusion and, in the case of Zulu and Sepedi, also without developed technical registers. Given the very short tradition of simultaneous interpreting in local South African languages, plus the limited number of interpreters in each language combination, there has to date been very little information available on interpreting norms and strategies. In this pilot analysis, I argue that analyses of authentic parallel corpora, consisting of the floor language and interpretations, could provide some insight into interpreter strategies and language-specific norms in a legislative context.

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