FORMS OF ADDRESS IN CONFERENCE INTERPRETING (CASE OF SPANISH-UKRAINIAN LANGUAGE PAIR)

Serhii B. Fokin,

Email: sergiyborysovych@ukr.net

ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3920-1785

PhD in Philology, Associate Professor

Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv

DOI: https://doi.org/10.17721/StudLing2026.28.120-135

PDF  (UKRAINIAN)

ABSTRACT

Forms of protocolary address in official communication require careful attention from interpreters because different institutional positions may call for different forms of address even within the same speech community, and cross-cultural differences are not merely linguistic. Beyond structural and semantic differences in communicative etiquette, a form of address that is conventional in one culture may be modified, simplified, or omitted in another. The Spanish language is characterized by a wider variety of traditional forms of communication etiquette than Ukrainian, which emphasize the status of the participants in the communication; despite attempts to simplify them, these forms continue to be actively used in formal communication.The correct decision on intercultural adaptation should be made by taking into consideration the following factors: positions, titles, or communicators’ status; the domain of communication; means of communication (oral or written); communicators’ countries of origin; translation traditions, etc. The most common forms of address are mentioned in the respective official documents or academic guides on diplomatic communication patterns, whereas, in particular cases, questions about correct usage may be addressed only by resorting to corpora, such as ParlaMint, which provides comprehensive coverage of political discourse and other domains of official communication. Besides some polemical issues in monolingual sources, bilingual guides for interpreters are lacking in most language combinations. This article aims to bridge this gap for the Spanish–Ukrainian language pair across the diplomatic, political, and religious domains. Despite attempts to address this issue by creating tables or glossaries, simple bilingual glossaries are insufficient for comprehensive translation, as conference interpreting requires consideration of a range of factors beyond the text itself.

Keywords: conference interpreting, form of address, honorifics, diplomatic etiquette, intercultural adaptation, international relations.

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