Research on television interpreting: a case of flouted norms

The present article illustrates a corpus-based analysis conducted on two multimedia parallel corpora, OB.0811 and DEB.04. Both corpora are collections of televised U.S. political speech events and their interpretations broadcast live on Italian television. The aim of the study is to identify discourse elements in the original texts (OTs) which operationalise the principle of infotainment, i.e., the merging of agendas between politics and television, and then to verify the presence –or absence– of such elements in the interpreted texts (ITs) broadcast on Italian television. Outcomes are discussed in terms of the significance of entertainment (discourse) devices, and the extent to which their presence or absence in the ITs affects what is said (content) in the original and how it is said (form).