Linguaggio inclusivo in interpretazione consecutiva dall'Inglese in Italiano: Analisi delle tendenze traduttive di interpreti professionistə in un contesto reale

Language plays a crucial role in shaping its speakers' perception of reality and, on a societal level, in promoting cultural norms, values, and collective identities. Consequently, language may also perpetuate stereotypes and prejudices that negatively impact certain social groups. Many researchers argue that a shift towards gender-neutral language could help eradicate these social biases and stereotypes, contributing to gender equality. While much of the research in interpreting has focused on how interpreters' gender identities affect their communicative styles and the mediated interactions, less attention has been given to how interpreters handle gender-neutral expressions when translating into masculine-feminine gender languages. To address this gap, this paper examines how five interpreters approach these linguistic challenges during English-to Italian consecutive interpretation, assessing the inclusivity of their strategies and their impact on the target text. The results show that interpreters predominantly chose masculine forms when referring to mixed-gender groups or individuals whose gender was not specified. As for inclusive strategies—used sparingly—interpreters primarily opted for non-gendered solutions and non-exclusive grammatical structures, followed in order of frequency by gender splitting and the use of feminine forms for mixed-gender groups. Furthermore, the analysis of the disfluencies near inclusive solutions revealed that interpreters often struggle when attempting to implement any form of inclusive language. Given the limited academic literature on this topic, along with the data collected, it remains crucial to raise greater awareness of the links between language and the perception of reality as it contributes to fight the social marginalisation that linguistic sexism inflicts on women.