Interpreters’ Roles In Power Relations Of Diplomatic Settings

The paper aims to study interpreters’ roles in the power relations of diplomatic milieu under the framework of Foucault’s Power Theory,in which the correlations among power,knowledge and discourse are expounded.Ren and Mason’s categorization of interpreters’institutional and interactional power is drawn upon for analyzing the video clip of the beginning of the second session of the 2021 China-US Strategic Dialogue in Alaska.Considering the verbal,para-verbal and non-verbal features of the interpreters’ delivery,the study resorts to knowledge on such fields as linguistics and psychology for an analysis of the two interpreters’ respective performance to figure out how they exerted institutional and interactional power.Since interpreters are typically at the lower reach of the hierarchy in formal dialogues,they are largely restricted by the speaker’s fixed scripts and susceptible to the pressure from their superiors,thus not bestowed any institutional power.Yet the study reveals that both interpreters in the 2021 China-US talk exercised a decent share of interactional power,which is embodied in three facets.At the verbal level,they employed the strategies of additions,omissions and revisions for a coherent and intelligible output;in terms of the para-verbal level,they overall managed to adopt proper intonation and rhythm,which facilitated comprehension for the audience;non-verbally,both interpreters showed limited kinestic movements while seated close to the center,their dressing consistent with their own sides.It is also noteworthy that a strong resemblance is discovered between the pair of interpreters despite their differences in rhythm of speech and attire.