Topical coherence in Television Interpreting: question/answer rendition

The present paper is part of a more comprehensive study being carried out within the framework of an ongoing PhD research project. It analyses topical coherence in television interpreting, and, specifically, interpreted American presidential debates broadcasted by the Italian television. Its aim is to investigate the ways in which dialogue format and question/answer structure are managed by simultaneous interpreters in absentia. The study is based on data collected in the CorIT by Falbo (2009) and Straniero Sergio (2007) and is a practical example of a corpus-based interpretation study. The first part of the paper identifies the types of question featuring in American presidential debates, their Italian equivalent, the incidence of each type of question and the major difficulties they pose. The analysis focuses on question/answer topical coherence in the interpreted versions. It examines whether topical coherence is achieved, and in which ways its achievement is influenced by the following factors: type of question; changes (omissions, substitutions and transformations) occurred during the interpretation process and observed through a contrastive analysis of the original and the interpreted version; presidential debate structure; teamwork within the interpreters’ équipe. Examples will be provided to highlight the cases in which a correct question rendition is prominent for the achievement of topical coherence within the question/answer group. From a preliminary observation, it would appear that unsuccessful renditions and a consequent lack of coherence in the interpreted version, i.e. as perceived exclusively by the Italian audience, are not generally due to changes in the information content. On the other hand, changes in the question structure, which require a higher degree of teamwork within the interpreters’ équipe, are likely to lead to coherence problems much more evident to an Italian listener. The second part of the paper is a further step into the investigation. Firstly, the need to include interpreted debates which weren’t part of the original sample will be underlined, with the aim of enhancing the representativity of the preliminary results. Secondly, problematic aspects emerging from the first part will be discussed, with particular attention devoted to theoretical points of reference for the analysis. The data thus obtained are the starting point for a more thorough analysis of topical coherence, as the present research paradigm can be applied to other forms of television interpreting in which the interpreter shares the hic et nunc with the primary speakers.