Interediting: Revealing the Dual Role of Staff Interpreters on Turkish News Channels

Abstract

Full-time interpreters serving on TV outlets in Turkey hold two roles: they serve both as editors for the world news desk and as simultaneous interpreters. Drawing on interviews made with editor/interpreters and editors-in-chief and corroborating these with real-life interpreting instances, this paper investigates the relationship between editing and interpreting. It is found that the editing task assumed by interpreters/journalists bears upon the lexical choices made in interpreting on television news channels in Turkey. It is therefore claimed that familiarization with the language of the news helps staff interpreters in making renditions that follow the institutional policies of the outlets they serve, thus informing the interpreting output. Drawing on the term transediting, coined by Karen Stetting (1989) to describe the role of journalists, it is asserted that the role of these editor/interpreters might be described as that of ‘intereditors.’ It is the contention of the paper that interediting might prove useful in describing the TV interpreting of staff interpreters in Turkey.

Keywords

• TV interpreting; transediting; interediting; news translation; interpreting

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