Identity Construction of Government Staff Interpreters in China —A Corpus-based Study of Shifts in Political Interpreting

Abstract

This paper presents the findings of a corpus-based empirical study on the role of government staff interpreters in the political context of China. Based on a qualitative analysis of discourse documented in authentic encounters between top leaders of Guangdong Province and their foreign visitors in interpreter-facilitated communication, the paper attempts to question the long-held view that government staff interpreters serve as a neutral, transparent non-person. To provide perhaps a new perspective from which the interpreter’s role may be revisited, this paper looks at personal angle shifts in the interpretation done by six staff interpreters of Guangdong Foreign Affairs Office, including shifts between first person and third person angles, and second person and third person angles. With what corpus data reveal, the paper argues that the interpreter’s role as a mediator is conspicuous even in high-level political interpreting. Rather than a transparent non-person, the interpreter constructs and represents her identity as well as the identity of the institution she belongs to by discursive means, and therefore acts as an active party of communication.