The Impact of Ideological and Non-Ideological Factors on the Quality and Quantity of Error in the Simultaneous Interpreting of Contemporary American Political Discourse

The present study attempts to investigate the factors attributed to error in English into Arabic media simultaneous interpreting of contemporary American political discourse. It suggests that, regardless of their alleged professionalism, well-known Arabic-speaking satellite channels provide the audience with relatively erroneous renditions. Various ideological and/or non-ideological factors may contribute to errors committed. In order to examine the validity of such hypothesis, it analyses four Arabic renditions of Donald Trump s speech in Kingdom of Saudi Arabia in 2017. The target texts are the simultaneous interpreting broadcast live by Al-Arabiya, Al-Jazeera, France 24, and Russia Today. These texts are analyzed and classified according to Jassem Ali Jassem s (2000; 2009) model of Error Analysis. With the help of Daniel Gile s (2009) Effort Model and Mona Baker s (2005;2006) Narrative Theory, the study outlines the most important factors attributed to errors. These errors can either be ideologically or non-ideologically motivated. The study ends up with a number of conclusions and recommendations that may be adopted to reduce the impact of the above-mentioned factors on simultaneous interpreters.