English as a lingua franca (ELF) in international conferences - Current and future developments in interpreting studies

English as a lingua franca (ELF) in international conferences - Current and future developments in interpreting studies

The global spread of English as a lingua franca (ELF) has major implications for the interpreting profession. Not only is English the main conference language, but source speeches are increasingly produced by non-native English speakers. Research into ELF has concentrated on the description of ELF as a legitimate use of English in its own right and as an asset to achieve communicative goals in international contexts (Seidlhofer, 2011). Interpreting studies, by contrast, address the critical stance of professional conference interpreters towards ELF developments and seek to explore the challenges ELF presents to their profession and to successful communication. Empirical evidence regarding ELF and interpreting is still scarce and not very robust. The paper brings together the results produced so far. Major problems identified on the part of ELF speaker source text production are lack of express-ability, varying proficiency levels, register shifts, and massive L1 transfer on the part of ELF speakers (Albl-Mikasa, 2010, 2013a, 2013c), but also difficulties arising from the specific nature of interpreter-mediated working conditions (Reithofer, 2010, 2013). The paper concludes by outlining the new research questions these challenges put to the study of interpreting.

The global spread of English as a lingua franca (ELF) has major implications for the interpreting profession. Not only is English the main conference language, but source speeches are increasingly produced by non-native English speakers. Research into ELF has concentrated on the description of ELF as a legitimate use of English in its own right and as an asset to achieve communicative goals in international contexts (Seidlhofer, 2011). Interpreting studies, by contrast, address the critical stance of professional conference interpreters towards ELF developments and seek to explore the challenges ELF presents to their profession and to successful communication. Empirical evidence regarding ELF and interpreting is still scarce and not very robust. The paper brings together the results produced so far. Major problems identified on the part of ELF speaker source text production are lack of express-ability, varying proficiency levels, register shifts, and massive L1 transfer on the part of ELF speakers (Albl-Mikasa, 2010, 2013a, 2013c), but also difficulties arising from the specific nature of interpreter-mediated working conditions (Reithofer, 2010, 2013). The paper concludes by outlining the new research questions these challenges put to the study of interpreting.