Abstract
This study investigates the quality assessment of simultaneous interpreting at official press conferences, a critical communicative situation for information dissemination through local and foreign mass media. The purpose of the study is to identify the applicability of assessment model suggested by Wu to simultaneous interpreting in the context of the press conference and analyze factors influencing its quality. Fairclough’s 3-D critical discourse analysis is used for identification of linguistic and discursive features of the presidential press conference in Kazakhstan. Comparative analysis of variations of TL text in different sources is used to obtain the data for the experimental part of the study. Research experiment is based on analysis of data collected from assessment lists of research participants. The results show the discrepancies between interpreter’s fundamental abilities and audience perception, as well as challenges in speed of interpretation delivery impacted by ear voice span and the impact of syntactic differences between languages. The research concludes that the lack of a quality evaluation for interpreters shows the need for standards of assessment criteria. The study contributes to bridging the gap between the theory and practice of oral interpreting. Practical significance is identified by demonstration of main challenges in high-stakes settings, underlining the need for professional standards to ensure high-quality interpretation.