From English to Arabic: Style Shifts in the Simultaneous Interpreting of U.S. Presidential Speeches

Alsager, Noah (2025) From English to Arabic: Style Shifts in the Simultaneous Interpreting of U.S. Presidential Speeches. Doctoral thesis, University of East Anglia.

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Abstract

This thesis investigates how political style is transformed during the simultaneous interpreting (SI) of U.S. presidential speeches into Arabic as broadcast by four major satellite channels: Al-Jazeera Arabic, Al-Arabiya, France 24 Arabic, and RT Arabic. While existing scholarship has highlighted ideological and institutional dimensions of political interpreting, less attention has been paid to the linguistic mechanisms through which style and evaluative meaning are reshaped in real time.

Drawing on a corpus of Arabic interpretations of speeches by Trump, Obama, and Biden, the thesis develops a multi-layered analytical framework combining Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL), Appraisal Theory, and Li’s (2015) taxonomy of interpreting strategies. This approach enables a fine-grained analysis of how political discourse is reconfigured at the levels of transitivity, modality, evaluation, and rhetorical force. Particular attention is given to strategies such as omission, compression, modulation, and paraphrase, which recurrently mediate shifts in stance and tone.

The analysis demonstrates that Arabic SI frequently results in a softening of presidential style, marked by reduced modality, simplification of clause structure, and attenuation of explicit evaluation. Such tendencies are shaped by both cognitive constraints inherent in SI and the institutional contexts of broadcast media. While not claiming systematic channel-level bias, the findings reveal patterned differences across interpreters and outlets, underscoring the importance of situating SI within its discursive and media environments.

By foregrounding the interaction of style, strategy, and context, this thesis contributes to Translation and Interpreting Studies in three ways: it extends the application of SFL and Appraisal Theory to real-time interpreting, it highlights the underexplored role of style in Arabic political SI, and it offers a linguistically grounded account of how presidential discourse is reframed in cross-cultural communication.

Item Type:	Thesis (Doctoral)
Faculty \ School:	Faculty of Arts and Humanities > School of Media, Language and Communication Studies
Depositing User:	Chris White
Date Deposited:	01 Dec 2025 11:48
Last Modified:	01 Dec 2025 11:48
URI:	https://ueaeprints.uea.ac.uk/id/eprint/101164
DOI:

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