Interpreting Issues of Metaphors in Official Speech
Interpreting Issues of Metaphors in Official Speech

Summary/Abstract: The article focuses on issues which occur when interpreting metaphors in official speech. Metaphor as a figure of speech and a tool that helps to understand a way of thinking is inevitable in official speeches to make them more vivid. However, using metaphors in a native language and interpreting them are two different instances. Therefore, interpreters, presented with metaphors in relatively short official speeches, face a great number of difficulties. Even though official speeches have a special subject, intentional topic, and consistency, they can be filled by various tropes as well. Thus, the interpreter should be prepared that the speaker might be influenced by his/ her personal ideas about various figurative speech expressions. This raises the following questions: Do interpreters manage to construe all metaphorical expressions during simultaneous interpreting session of official speech? What specific professional knowledge is required for interpreters who mainly work with official register? The analysis of simultaneous interpreting session of one-minute Lithuanian and English official speeches provided by the European Parliament members has made it possible to conclude that interpreters manage to convey most of the metaphors from original language to target language even though they face quite a lot of difficulties.

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