Television is one of the means of communication which influence society and its development the
most, including language, both as reflection and expression of specific socio-cultural settings.
Relational aspects and complex participation and organization structures guiding communication on
television play a major role in the shaping of a text – i.e. television text – whose features and
functions go beyond those of a mere script, as it entails a linguistic activity which is primarily
discourse practice (Straniero Sergio 1999). Specific choices and behaviour in terms of discourse and
translation attitudes and tendencies – either of television interpreters or those taking up their role
(eg. Journalists, hosts, newscasters), together with qualitative evaluation of the interpreting
performances outline a use of language specific to the television environment. This generates
specific users’ expectations and more or less prescriptive norms regarding translation in particular
and the profession of television interpreter in general. Expectations and norms may vary in relation
to interaction types and discourse models involved in a given broadcast.
On the basis of these assumptions, the aim of the present paper is studying specific aspects
of television interpreters’ language regardless of the topic at hand – which is generally closer to the
concept of special language. Peculiar aspects are identified through the analysis of comparable
corpora made up of homogeneous items – i.e. interpreting performances from various source
languages into Italian, sharing interaction types and discourse models, delivered in similar
contexts/settings. Such corpora (sub-corpora) are selections of items contained in CorIT (Television
Interpreting Corpus) (cf. Straniero Sergio / Falbo 2012). Following the research lines set by
corpus-based translation studies, the objective of the present analysis is designing a corpus
interrogation which would enable the analyst to identify – if any – an existing language of
interpretation (Baker 1993, 1995, 1996, 2004).
