This book provides a glimpse into the world of politics and diplomacy from the perspectives of diplomats, politicians, and interpreters. All of them are participants in interpreted communicative situations, albeit with different statuses and roles. In contrast to other forms of interpreting, interpreting in political and diplomatic contexts has an exclusive, high- profile image due to the involvement of high- ranking individuals from the fields of politics and diplomacy and the potential impact of communicative interaction in these domains, such as peace negotiations, whose outcome is visible and of consequence to large audiences. Training and research interest in this interpreting setting is starting to grow. A reason for the lack of (empirical) research in particular is that it is difficult to gain access to this domain of interpreting to obtain reliable data. Political and diplo matic negotiations are usually confidential and the parties involved are very reluctant to share any information about their process. The details of such negotiations are expected to not be made public and, conse quently, anything related to interpreting them is also only addressed cautiously. Moreover, the already great confidentiality with which interpreters treat the information they are privy to in the course of their work becomes even more pronounced when dealing with sensi tive or classified topics. Nevertheless, a number of reports, documents, interpreters’ memoirs, and research papers have been published over the years that make it possible to gain some insight into the character istic features, expectations and requirements, as well as the contexts and conditions of interpreting in political and diplomatic settings. This book looks at the relevance of interpreting for politics and dip lomacy and the ways these professions interact and work together. It starts with a short presentation of its history, illustrating the role of interpreting in world politics and diplomacy with some examples. The information gathered for this book comes from literature (espe cially interpreters’ memoirs) and from interviews conducted with 20 diplomats, politicians, and interpreters who have many years of experience working for governments and international organisations, as well as the authors’ own experience and reflection as researchers, educators, or interpreters. The focus of the book is on interpreting at official high- level bilat eral meetings and multilateral diplomatic negotiations between representatives of several countries. Both the content and the expres sive dimension of interpreted political and diplomatic communica tive interaction is addressed in a systematic way. The experiences of politicians, diplomats, and interpreters are woven through the entire book. In the introductory chapter to this book, the Austrian diplomat Peter Krois gives a short overview of the historical development of diplomacy and describes the current situation of international politics and diplomacy. The following chapters cover types and contexts of communica tive interaction (Chapter 2) and the characteristic features of com munication in politics and diplomacy (Chapter 3). The largest part of the book is devoted to the question of how interpreters manage information (Chapter 4), expressiveness and interaction (Chapter 5), and their degree of involvement in doing so. The final chapters (6 and 7) address both practicalities of preparing for assignments, working together as a team, and requirements of the interpreting brief, as well as overarching themes of interpreters’ independence, ethics and responsibility, and (multi)partiality in political and dip lomatic interpreting. We interviewed 14 diplomats, politicians, and interpreters for this edition of the book, and also used six interviews with interpreters from a previously published German- language manual on which this book is based.
