Abstract

Our paper contends that interpreters and translators cannot be regarded as mere conduits of non-contextualized meanings, but rather that they perform ‘readings’ of texts against situational and cultural contexts. Such performers are also liable to be constrained by their position as perhaps unconscious agents of their employers or ‘patrons’, whose influence is exerted on the ways in which the interpreters produce their readings. Using an analysis of two live televised presidential interviews and speeches with real-time translation for an Iranian audience, we suggest that extra-linguistic factors such as the ideological stance of the ‘patron’, led to attitudinal shifts during interpretation tasks in the Iranian political context of the time. These shifts were traced using the Appraisal framework (Martin and White 2005), where literal (English) translations of both the source texts and the interpreted texts by one of the authors allowed us to compare the evaluative resources used in each. The results of analysis demonstrate an interdependency between what is being said in the original language and the degree of the interpreters’ mediation in the communicative process. We present evidence of the interpreters’ inclination to mediate in the communicative process, apparently to ensure preserving the patrons’ stance in the political and ideological context in which they operate.