The present study is a corpus-based exploratory study aimed at comparing and
contrasting three subcorpora of English interpreted vs. non-interpreted texts. Its
general objective is to isolate any linguistic features of interpreted discourse – as
opposed to original production – in the restricted set of texts analysed, which could
be ascribed to interpretese, namely the way in which interpreters speak, irrespective
of the language pair they are working in and the source text interferences they
might be exposed to. The three subcorpora contain speeches delivered by native
speakers in national and international settings, as well as speeches interpreted
into English by professional interpreters working at the European Parliament. In
the first part, the study focuses on the existing notions of simplification and explicitation
as interpreting universals, to test whether interpreted speeches are actually
simpler and more explicit than original ones. The second part analyses the distribution
and use of different parts of speech (POS) in the three subcorpora as well
as the use of figures of speech by the speakers in the three identified groups and
settings. The results obtained seem to suggest that the time pressure interpreters are exposed to as well as the interpreting strategies adopted might play a decisive
role in the production of the interpreted text. More specifically, interpreted texts,
despite showing a lower degree of language variety, especially as concerns lexical
words, appear to be more informative. Furthermore, their level of explicitness is
similar to that of non-interpreted texts. Finally, the use of figures of speech appears
to depend more on the speaker’s personal style or type of event rather than on the
audience it is addressed to, i.e. national or international.
