The interpreter as a “national star”

Abstract Despite numerous studies revealing how interpreters are rendered invisible and marginalized in media discourse, less scholarly attention has been devoted to cases where interpreters are portrayed as central figures in the news media. Few attempts have been made to examine the narrative dimension of image projection, particularly the ways in which semiotic resources are maneuvered to transform past events into interpreter-centered narratives, constructing an image of interpreters both diverging from and associated with prevailing public perception. Drawing on the notions of news narrative and framing, the current study reveals an unusually prominent and independent image of the Chinese interpreter featured in the Chinese social media news coverage of the 2021 China–US Alaska talks. The study identifies the interpreter’s core image as a “national star” that encompasses three key connotations: a beautiful star, a role model and a national representative. It also unveils three framing strategies that orchestrate multimodal resources to construct the image in news narratives: selective contrasting, temporal reframing and causal configuration. It finally explores the underlying reasons behind the image projection, positioning this atypical image of the diplomatic interpreter against the multiple backdrops of prevailing public stereotypes of interpreters, self-representations of practitioners and broader Chinese political and diplomatic narratives.