Simultaneous Conference Interpreting and Mediation: An Application of a Cognitive-linguistics Approach to Professional Interpreting from English into Arabic

Generally speaking, the literature on simultaneous interpreting and professionals within the field tend to take norms like the interpreter's faithfulness to the speaker and accuracy for granted, without making scrupulous research descriptions or investigations. The simultaneous interpreters' 'mediation' is one of those norms. They often than not describe it as being unprofessional. In a globalized world where the need for such an activity increases, it becomes necessary and even inevitable to account empirically for the norms and principles of this practice. Therefore, the present paper studies and evaluates mediation in the context of professional conferences. It attempts to determine whether there is mediation on the part of the simultaneous interpreter, and if so, to what degree this can be acceptable.
The paper applies a multidisciplinary approach to English speeches given at real conferences and their simultaneous interpretations into Arabic. The Interpretive Theory, a pragmatic model, and some political theories formed the theoretical basis of analysis. Content analysis and comparative study constituted a perfect methodology to this end. It comes to the conclusion that there is a mediation on the part of interpreters and there are cases where it is acceptable and others where it becomes unacceptable(very few due to the high degree of professionalism presented).