Cover not available
Article published In:
Interpreting
Vol. 25:1 (2023) ► pp.27–60

From remote control to tweets

How viewers’ use of Twitter shapes quality criteria in interpreting the Oscars

| Bahçeşehir University
| University of Massachusetts Boston
This study examined the role Twitter reactions play in (re)shaping the quality criteria in TV interpreting (TVI) during the Oscars ceremony in Turkey, extending over a ten-year period. The secondary goal of this study was to shed light on the extent to which tweets affected the interpreting practice, recruitment of interpreters, and the discourse about TVI in general. The thematic analysis of the tweets showed that the viewers generally criticized interpreters based on their delivery, use of voice, and word choices. Complementary interviews conducted with TV interpreters and one executive revealed that tweets were instrumentalized by executives and recruiters both in real time and during the recruitment process; in this way they became a quality instrument with which to evaluate TV interpreters’ performance. The findings are discussed in the light of the literature on TVI and are used to advance both practical and theoretical implications for the practice of TVI.
Keywords: TV interpreting, media interpreting, Twitter, quality criteria in interpreting, Oscars ceremony
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Literature review
    • 2.1Quality expectations: TVI standards
    • 2.2Live tweeting and TVI
  • 3.Study context and research questions
  • 4.Methodology
    • 4.1Twitter data
    • 4.2Interviews
    • 4.3Data analysis
  • 5.Results
    • 5.1Content-related criteria
      • 5.1.1Cultural inconsistency
      • 5.1.2Editorial decisions (jokes, songs, ads)
      • 5.1.3Use of old Turkish words
    • 5.2Delivery-related criteria
      • 5.2.1Fluency of delivery
      • 5.2.2Intonation
      • 5.2.3Accent
      • 5.2.4Voice quality
      • 5.2.5Inaccurate pronunciation of proper names
    • 5.3Twitter reactions, the practice of interpreting, and recruitment
  • 6.Discussion
    • 6.1Twitter reactions to the Oscars and quality criteria in interpreting
    • 6.2Effect of Twitter reactions on interpreting the Oscars
    • 6.3Impact of tweets in interpreter recruiting
    • 6.4Twitter communication about interpretation of the Oscars
    • 6.5Implications
    • 6.6Limitation and future directions
  • 7.Conclusion
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 28 July 2022
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/intp.00083.arz
References (50)
References
Amato, A. & Mack, G. (2011). Interpreting the Oscar night on Italian TV: An interpreter’s nightmare? The Interpreters’ Newsletter 161, 37–60.Google Scholar
Andres, D. & Fünfer, S. (2011). TV interpreting in Germany: The television broadcasting company ARTE in comparison to public broadcasting companies. The Interpreters’ Newsletter 16 1, 99–114.Google Scholar
Arzık Erzurumlu, O. (2016). Gatekeepers as a shaping force in TV interpreting. PhD dissertation, Istanbul Dogus University.
Auverset, L. A. & Billings, A. C. (2016). Relationships between social TV and enjoyment: A content analysis of the Walking Dead’s story sync experience. Social Media + Society 2 (3), 1–12. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Bühler, H. (1986). Linguistic (semantic) and extra-linguistic (pragmatic) criteria for the evaluation of conference interpretation and interpreters. Multilingua 5 (4), 231–235.Google Scholar
Cesar, P. & Chorianopoulos, K. (2008). Interactivity and user participation in the television lifecycle: Creating, sharing, and controlling content. In Proceedings of the International Conference on Designing Interactive User Experiences for TV and Video, 125–128. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Cheung, A. K. F. (2013). Non-native accents and simultaneous interpreting quality perceptions. Interpreting 15 (1), 25–47. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
(2015). Accent. In F. Pöchhacker (Ed.), Routledge encyclopedia of interpreting studies. New York: Routledge, 1–3.Google Scholar
(2020). Interpreters’ perceived characteristics and perception of quality in interpreting. Interpreting 22 (1), 35–55. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Chiaro, D. & Nocella, G. (2004). Interpreters’ perception of linguistic and non-linguistic factors affecting quality: A survey through the World Wide Web. Meta 29 (2), 278–293. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Clement, J. (2020). Social media – statistics & facts. [URL] (accessed 20 October 2020).
Collados Aís, A. (1998/2002). Quality assessment in simultaneous interpreting: The importance of nonverbal communication. In F. Pöchhacker & M. Shlesinger (Eds.), The interpreting studies reader. London/New York: Routledge, 326–337.Google Scholar
Dal Fovo, E. (2020). Media interpreting. In M. Baker & G. Saldanha (Eds.), Routledge encyclopedia of translation studies. London/New York: Routledge, 315–320.Google Scholar
Gile, D. (2005). Directionality in conference interpreting: A cognitive view. Communication and Cognition 38 (1/2), 9–26.Google Scholar
Halliday, M. & Matthiessen, C. (2004). Halliday’s Introduction to Functional Grammar. London: Taylor & Francis.Google Scholar
Highfield, T., Harrington, S. & Bruns, A. (2013). Twitter as a technology for audiencing and fandom. Information, Communication & Society 16 (3), 315–339. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Hou, Y. & Lampe, C. (2015). Social media effectiveness for public engagement. In Proceedings of the 33rd Annual ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, Seoul, Korea. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Iglesias Fernández, E. (2007). La incidencia del parámetro “agradabilidad de la voz”. In A. Collados Aís, E. M. Pradas Macías, E. Stévaux & O. García Becerra (Eds.), La evaluación de la calidad en interpretación simultánea: Parámetros de incidencia. Granada: Comares, 37–51.Google Scholar
(2015). Voice quality. In F. Pöchhacker (Ed.), Routledge encyclopedia of interpreting studies. London/New York: Routledge, 440–441.Google Scholar
Java, A., Song, X., Finin, T. & Tseng, B. (2009). Why we twitter: An analysis of a microblogging community, In Zhang, H. et al., Advances in Web Mining and Web Usage Analysis, LNCS 2009, 5439/2009, 118–138. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Ji, Q. (2019). Exploring the motivations for live posting during entertainment television viewing. Atlantic Journal of Communication 27 (3), 169–182. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Ji, Q. & Raney, A. A. (2015). Morally judging entertainment: A case study of live tweeting during Downton Abbey, Media Psychology 18 (2), 221–242. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Ji, Q. & Zhao, D. (2015). Tweeting live shows: A content analysis of live tweets from three entertainment programs. In Proceedings of Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) Conference on Social Media & Society. Toronto, CA. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Kalina, S. (2005). Quality assurance for interpreting processes. Meta 50 (2), 768–784. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Katan, D. & Straniero-Sergio, F. (2003). Submerged ideologies in media interpreting. In M. P. Calzada (Ed.), Apropos of Ideology. Manchester: St. Jerome, 131–144.Google Scholar
Kemp, S. (2020, July). Digital use around the world in July 2020. [URL]
Khoshrouzadeh, J. & Salleh, H. M. (2016). Social media and TV: A preliminary review of interaction. New Media and Mass Communication 48 1, 1–12.Google Scholar
Kopczyński, A. (1994). Quality in conference interpreting: Some pragmatic problems. In S. Lambert & B. Moser-Mercer (Eds.), Bridging the gap: Empirical research in simultaneous interpretation. Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 87–99. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Kurz, I. (1989). Conference interpreting: User expectations. In D. L. Hammond (Ed.), Coming of age: Proceedings of the 30th Annual Conference of the American Translators Association. Medford: Learned Information, 143–148.Google Scholar
(1990). Overcoming language barriers in European television. In D. Bowen & M. Bowen (Eds.), Interpreting: Yesterday, today and tomorrow. Binghamton, NY: State University of New York at Binghamton, 168–175. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
(2001). Conference interpreting: Quality in the ears of the user. Meta 46 (2), 394–409. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
(2002). Physiological stress responses during media and conference interpreting. In G. Garzone & M. Viezzi (Eds.), Interpreting in the 21st century. Challenges and opportunities. Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 195–202. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Kurz, I. & Pöchhacker, F. (1995). Quality in TV interpreting. Translatio: Nouvelles de la FIT FIT Newsletter 14 (3–4), 350–358.Google Scholar
Lee, J. (2008) Rating scales for interpreting performance assessment. The Interpreter and Translator Trainer 2 (2), 165–184. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Mack, G. (2002). New perspectives and challenges for interpretation – the example of television. In G. Garzone & M. Viezzi (Eds.), Interpreting in the 21st century. Challenges and opportunities. Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 203–213. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Mack, G. & Cattaruzza, L. (1995). User surveys in SI: A means of learning about quality and/or raising some reasonable doubts. In J. Tommola (Ed.), Topics in interpreting research. Turku: Centre for Translation and Interpreting, University of Turku, 37–49.Google Scholar
Mizuno, A. (1997). Broadcast interpreting in Japan: Some theoretical and practical aspects. In Y. Gambier, D. Gile & C. Taylor (Eds.), Conference interpreting: Current trends in research. Proceedings of the International Conference on Interpreting – What Do We Know and How (Turku, 25–27 August 1994). Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 192–194.Google Scholar
Moser, P. (1996). Expectations of users of conference interpretation. Interpreting 1 (2), 145–178. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Ng, B. C. (1992). End users’ subjective reaction to the performance of student interpreters. The Interpreters’ Newsletter Special Issue 1 1, 35–41.Google Scholar
Owen, W. F. (1984). Interpretive themes in relational communication. Quarterly Journal of Speech 70 1, 274–287. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Pöchhacker, F. (2011). Researching TV interpreting: Selected studies of US presidential material. The Interpreters’ Newsletter 16 1, 21–36.Google Scholar
(2018). Media interpreting: From user expectations to audience comprehension. In E. Di Giovanni & Y. Gambier (Eds.), Reception studies and audiovisual translation. Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 253–277. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Pöchhacker, F. & Zwischenberger, C. (2010). Survey on quality and role: Conference interpreters’ expectations and self-perceptions. Communicate! AIIC Webzine. (15 March 2010) [URL] (accessed 14 June 2020).
Shlesinger, M. (1997). Quality in simultaneous interpreting. In Y. Gambier, D. Gile & C. Taylor (Eds.), Conference interpreting: Current trends in research. Proceedings of the International Conference on Interpreting – What Do We Know and How (Turku, 25–27 August 1994). Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 123–131. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Snelling, D., Martinsen, B., Mizuno, A., Russo, M., Strolz, B., Uckmar, M. & Wadensjö, C. (1997). On media and court interpreting. In Y. Gambier, D. Gile & C. Taylor (Eds.), Conference interpreting: Current trends in research. Proceedings of the International Conference on Interpreting – What Do We Know and How (Turku, 25–27 August 1994). Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 187–206. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Straniero-Sergio, F. (2003). Norms and quality in media interpreting: The case of Formula One press conferences. The Interpreters’ Newsletter 12 1, 135–174.Google Scholar
Suler, J. (2004). The online disinhibition effect. Cyber Psychology & Behavior 7 (3), 321–326. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Zappavigna, M. (2011). Ambient affiliation: A linguistic perspective on Twitter. New Media and Society 13 (5), 788–806. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Zubiaga, A., Spina, D., Martínez, R. & Fresno, V. (2015). Real-time classification of Twitter trends. Journal of the Association for Information Science and Technology 66 (3), 462–473. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Zwischenberger, C. (2010). Quality criteria in simultaneous interpreting: An international versus a national view. The Interpreters’ Newsletter 15 1, 127–142.Google Scholar
Cited by (1)

Cited by one other publication

Hu, Bei
2023. Chapter 10. Flowing to the reception side. In Translation Flows [Benjamins Translation Library, 163], ► pp. 183 ff. DOI logo

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 4 july 2024. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.