Translation, rewriting and recontextualisation: forms of mediated discourse

The paper shows that many forms of communication which are generally conceived as originals are in fact mediated in various ways and are hybrid in nature. EU parliamentary reports are a case in point. The original oral ST, which is hybrid in that it is multilingual, is simultaneously interpreted - and thus mediated and recontextualized - by means of a series of relay translations. Speeches delivered in English by non-native speakers are also recontextualized in various ways, which are examined in the paper through a qualitative methodology consisting in the comparison of the verbatim reports and the actual transcription of non-native speakers interventions from the audio-recording of the sitting held on 3 April 2006, the first video-recording available on the EU Parliament website. Findings show that the English of the original oral text is brought to the centre of the written-spoken continuum, thus emphasizing the ideational dimension rather than the interactional one; the language in verbatim reports is made more explicit for the non-participants in the original communicative event and address forms to EU fellow members are normalized. Therefore, in the intralingual mediation process through which the original non-native EU parliamentary discourse is recontextualized in verbatim reports, the translation universal strategies identified by Baker (1996) are clearly recognizable. Such strategies may thus be considered as more general mediation strategies, which are at work not only in translation, but also in intralingual mediation