Evaluating Professional Interpreters under Appraisal Theory: The Case Study of Rouhani’s Address at UN General Assembly

Abstract

Being of a nascent and interdisciplinary nature, Translation Studies constantly draws on the findings of other established disciplines. Among these, linguistics had a crucial role to play with many scholars in the field applying Systemic Functional Linguistics theories and concepts to translation. This study drawing on Appraisal Theory, a recent development of SFL, aimed to explore the critical points at which interpreters might fail in the course of interpreting. In doing so, the researcher tried to analyze the Iranian president Rouhani's address at United Nations General Assembly in 2013, elaborating on the Attitude sub-system of the Appraisal Theory. The main aim of this study is to pin down those moments in the speech that are highly rich in Attitude and figure out whether they remain unchanged or are likely to change in the course of interpreting and ultimately shed light on the possible shifts that might occur during interpreting. By making a comparison between the original speech (Persian) and its translation (English), the study revealed that the critical moments in the interpreting remained unchanged with no sign of variation, underlining the very important role of translation/interpreting in this highly sensitive global stage.