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8 The Linguist Vol/59 No/2 2020 ciol.org.uk FEATURES "welcomed" him, saying that he had "the charisma of a damp rag and the appearance of a low-grade bank clerk". In a second impoliteness event, with a different target, Farage described the president's native Belgium as "pretty much a non-country". Each impoliteness event in English was compared with its counterpart in Polish to assess whether the pragmatic effect was the same or somehow modified by the interpreter. The detected modifications fell into three categories: strengthening, attenuation and elimination. Both attenuation and elimination mitigate the original impoliteness; the former weakens it and the latter removes it entirely. If we ascribe to the conduit model of interpreting, which assumes that the interpreter should transfer the speaker's intent accurately and completely under all circumstances, preservation of the pragmatic effect would be the only acceptable option. However, only 22.87% of impoliteness events were rendered in this way (which does not always involve adhering very closely to the form of the original message). The modifications introduced by Polish interpreters gravitate very strongly towards mitigation: 62.46% of impoliteness events were attenuated while 10.24% were eliminated. Strengthening accounts for only 4.44% of interpreting solutions, and seems to appear almost exclusively as compensation for impoliteness that was mitigated elsewhere in the same speech. Mitigation is achieved through a wide range of interpreting strategies, the most common of which are illustrated in the table below. Deictic shifts are frequent. If a target is addressed directly with 'you', this is likely to be transformed into the third person (1a) or impersonalised (2a). By the same token, the plural 'you' may be replaced by the inclusive 'we' (1a). Euphemisation is common, whereby a strong word is rendered by a milder one, so 'be sacked' becomes 'lose one's job' (1a). Omission is probably the most popular interpreting strategy. A whole fragment may be deleted (3a), or only some of the offensive elements (4a). The opposite strategy, i.e. addition, may also serve as mitigation when what is added are some hedges (5a). Certainly, some mitigating shifts are not introduced intentionally, but appear to be a side effect of problems the interpreter is experiencing. For instance, when we compare 6 and 6a, practically the only common The modifications introduced by Polish interpreters gravitate very strongly towards mitigation English original 1. Yes, I want you sacked, Mr Schulz, as well – I want you all fired! 2. I have no intention of apologising, I have no intention of leaving this Chamber: you must have me escorted out, sir! 3. If this was a company, the directors, or in this case the Commission, would all be in prison. 4. Now they are gonna be, it would appear, subsumed by some sort of EU overseer, consisting no doubt of ignorant bureaucrats, Scandinavian housewives, Bulgarian mafia and Romanian peg-makers. 5. I saw for the first time even your own supporters shaking their heads. They don't believe in what you're saying. The European people don't believe in what you're saying, and I don't really think even you now believe in what you're saying. 6. I don't trust this place, which gives a veneer of democracy, which is largely made up of placemen. Back-translation of the Polish 1a. Yes, Mr Schulz will lose his job at all, too, well, we all will. 2a. I have no intention of apologising and I have no intention of leaving this Chamber, one will have to escort me out. 3a. – 4a. And now it appears that a regulator or a European overseer is to take over its tasks and, as a matter of fact, these will only be halfwits, housewives and I don't know who else. 5a. I even had the impression that actually even your supporters did not particularly believe in what you were saying. Actually nobody believed in what you were saying. I even don't know if you yourself believe it. 6a. I believe in real democracy. UKIP: Unparliamentary words HEATED DEBATE Plenary chamber of the European Parliament in Brussels (right) PLENARY SESSION: Nigel Farage © EUROPEAN UNION 2019 - SOURCE: EP; PHILIPPE BUISSIN