Linguistic and Non-linguistic Challenges in Consecutive Interpreting: Case Study of Interpreting Barack Obama's Speech

Interpreting political speeches is a very difficult task because an inappropriate rendition may cause international conflicts and some problems for nations. This qualitative study uses data collection techniques including in-depth interview, retrospective interview, and observation, and grounded theory was used for data analysis. Two short segments of Obama’s political speeches were used and purposively selected participants were asked to consecutively interpret them into Persian. The results show that the six novice interpreters received their lowest scores from the rendition of phrasal verbs, technical words, and neologisms, verbs with auxiliaries and passive verbs. Limited background knowledge about the speech content, listening problems, and lack of concentration were among the main interpreting challenges. It was observed that the fast pace of the speech had been problematic in long sentences.