Ideological Loss and Pragmatic Dilution in Political Interpreting: A SAT–CDA Analysis of English Interpretations of Abbas’s UN Speeches

Abstract

This study investigates the interpretation of 50 Palestinian colloquial expressions used by President Mahmoud Abbas in his speeches at the United Nations General Assembly (2022–2025), examining the extent to which their pragmatic force and ideological significance were preserved or altered in the English simultaneous interpretations. By applying Speech Act Theory (SAT) and Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA), this study identifies a high frequency of omissions (50%) and modulation (32%), which contribute to rhetorical weakening and ideological dilution. The analysis shows that these interpretive strategies tended to silence expressions of defiance, frustration, and resistance that are central to the speaker’s political message. In addition, the findings demonstrate that omission and semantic flattening led to the non-performance or distortion of key illocutionary acts, while discursive sanitization turned politically loaded language into forms more acceptable within the institutional framework of neutrality. They also highlight how interpreter choices, shaped by real-time cognitive constraints and cultural unfamiliarity, mediate political meaning and reconfigure the speaker’s identity positioning. This study adds to the growing body of research on political interpreting by highlighting how interpreting strategies shape the transmission of emotionally and ideologically loaded content in sensitive diplomatic settings like the UN General Assembly. It emphasizes the need to incorporate pragmatic and cultural competence in interpreter training and to put forward targeted recommendations for improving interpretive accuracy in international contexts. This research encourages conducting comparative studies on how colloquial expressions are interpreted across various political contexts and language pairs.