ABSTRACT
On the assumption that humour may form part of what simultaneous interpreters are called upon to translate in international conference settings, the paper makes a conceptual as well as empirical contribution to the subject. Given the dearth of literature on humour in interpreting, the authors first review various forms and functions of humour in conference settings, with illustrations from authentic corpora. Against this background, a pilot survey among conference interpreters carried out by the first author is reported. Responses from a sample of fifty interpreters working from German and/or English confirm that simultaneous interpreters sometimes face the challenge of rendering humour. The findings suggest that humour in conferences mostly takes the form of anecdotes, irony and jokes, mainly for purposes like introducing a subject or speaker, easing tension, or breaking up a difficult subject, and that English speakers are more inclined towards humorous language use than speakers of German.
