Political motivation in media interpreting : 2020 US presidential debates livestreamed by two Taiwanese TV stations

Media interpreting has received intensifying attention from interpreting scholars over the past few decades. Live transmissions with on-site simultaneous interpreting of influential political events have proliferated especially during the COVID-19 pandemic and have become accessible via digital media platforms. This article analyses the corpus of the COVID-19 topic from the first and final presidential debates in the 2020 US election transmitted by two TV stations in Taiwan holding opposite political orientations — pro-China and pro-Taiwan independence, respectively. A detailed evaluation of the corpus suggests how word choice, self-correction and intonation by interpreters are leveraged to influence viewers. Ethically, interpreters are expected to provide neutral and faithful interpreting. However, the findings reveal that the interpreters were aligned with the TV stations’ dominant ideologies and altered their presentations to achieve political objectives.