Interpreter’s Mediation In Interpreting War Metaphors On The COVID-19 Pandemic In Political Discourse

Since the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic at the end of 2019,many media and official conferences have used war metaphors to describe the virus,with the aim to emphasize the urgency to respond and call for solidarity.When the war concept offers the audience a useful framework to comprehend the crisis,it also imbues the situation with antagonistic connotations.This poses a great challenge to interpreters.However,current studies mainly focus on the benefits and drawbacks of the war metaphor.Few studied corresponding interpreting strategies and interpreter’s role.The foreign minister’s press conference serves as an important channel for understanding government policies.Based on the verbatim transcript of the conversations at the foreign minister’s press conferences from 2020 to 2022,and by following the metaphor identification procedure,this thesis examines whether and how the interpreters mediate and their interpreting strategies when dealing with war metaphors on the pandemic from the conceptual metaphor perspective.It is discovered that four interpreting strategies are adopted: keeping the image,omitting the image,shifting the image,and adding the image.When the source text aims to encourage cooperation and restore people’s confidence,the severe consequences represented in war metaphors are mitigated by using the strategy of omitting or shifting the image.When the source text seeks to depict China as a friend in adversity,the confrontational overtones in war metaphors are introduced by using the strategy of adding the image.The interpreters chose these strategies in a flexible way to achieve maximum political equivalence and mitigate the confrontational connotations.In this study,the interpreters’ mediation on the target metaphor is over40%.And the war metaphors that are not mediated are mainly about war concepts that are commonly used by both Chinese and English users.This research can provide insights for future research on interpreting strategies for pandemic-related war metaphors as well as the role of interpreters and offers advice for trainee interpreters to learn from veteran interpreters.