The idea for this book emerged out of the discussions that took place during a series of seminars held at the University of Modena and Reggio Emilia from 2004 to 2006. Through these workshops, we met Ian Mason and Cecilia Wadensjö, who were the first to explore dialogue interpreting as a type of communicative inter action (and who inspired the volume), and Bernd Meyer, whose work on ad hoc interpreting has challenged professionals and institutions in many places around the world. We also (re)established contacts with the colleagues and friends from interaction studies who have contributed to the book, including Laurie Anderson, Francesco Straniero Sergio, Véronique Traverso, Daniela Zorzi. Their contribu tions go well beyond the writing of single chapters, since we are indebted to them for ideas, support, feedback, and assistance with data interpretation and presen tation. We are grateful for their encouragement throughout these years. Special thanks go to Laurie for applying her writing expertise to the final stages of editing. We are also indebted to the other contributors, who have enriched the vol ume with a wealth of different perspectives. Among these, we would like to men tion Franz Pöchhacker, who helped us make connections between research on empirical/conversational data and on the interpreting profession. We realize that editors of collected writings do not normally thank their contributors, but we would like to acknowledge the truly collaborative nature of the effort and we feel privileged to have taken part. We wish to thank the Benjamins Translation Library series editors, Yves Gambier and Miriam Shlesinger, for their close reading of the text and for their choice of anonymous referees, who were extremely helpful. To them, too, we are highly indebted. We would also like to thank Isja Conen, at Benjamins Publishers, for her patience and support throughout the publishing process. In July 2010, the contents of the volume, in a provisional shape, were presented at the 6th Critical Link International Conference (Aston University, Birmingham) and in July 2011 some issues emerging from it were discussed in a panel at the 12th IPRA International Conference (University of Manchester, Manchester). We are grateful to the conference organizers for accepting our proposals and giving us this important opportunity and, furthermore, to the researchers who partici pated in the discussion. hroughout the years, useful feedback on this project has been provided by many friends and colleagues, including Amalia Amato, Guy Aston, Mona Baker, Anna Ciliberti, Antonio Chiarenza, John Heritage, Ian Hutchby, Tom Koole, Lorenza Mondada, Franca Orletti, and Jocelyne Vincent. We wish to thank them for their interest and belief in this project, as well as their invaluable advice and assistance. We also wish to thank a number of young researchers, PhD students and post-docs who have enriched the debates surrounding this project, among them: Viola Barbieri, Letizia Cirillo, Federica Comastri, Elena Davitti, Federico Farini, Olga Keselman, Laura Luppi, Sara Merlino, Natacha Niemants, and Sergio Pasquandrea. Our final thanks go to those institutions and people who have helped and are still helping us collect the recordings. This volume would not have been possible without their competence and support, and their faith in this type of research. We sincerely hope we can at least partly repay our debt to them with the findings of the research that has depended on their highly qualified services. Foreword Cecilia Wadensjö Stockholm University To a large extent social interaction is coordinated through language. Through lan guage we show how we take responsibility as participants in interaction, how we relate to co-participants, to what they say and to who they are. Through language we show who we are. Through language we can appear as more or less competent – socially and professionally. Interestingly, interpreter-mediated interaction, indeed language-based practices, implies that communication simultaneously becomes public and veiled, variously transparent to those who take part in it. How then, do people understand and cope with this particular kind of encounters? In recent decades, much knowledge has been gained about the nature of social and discursive practices in public institutions, thanks to studies in applied linguis tics, social psychology, anthropology, conversation analysis and other branches of research. A growing number of these studies draw on interpreter-mediated discourse data and constitute an area of research in its own right, known as dia logue, community or public service interpreting. Arguably, there is still much to explore concerning institutional interaction, and not least when it comes to the peculiarities and particularities of dialogue interpreting, including the work of non-language , or non-verbal means in these settings, a theme that has received increased attention lately (e.g. Davitti 2012 and Mason, this volume). The present book provides considerable insight into this vast, varied and challenging field. The contributions included in the volume are based on empirical data, collected in such diverse social contexts as talk show interviews, healthcare encounters and legal proceedings. The theoretical and analytical approaches also vary, as do the foci, even if the contributors share an interest in language use and understanding and in the organisational nature of interpreter-mediated encounters. Coordination, mediation and participation are the key concepts, put forward and extensively dis cussed in Claudio Baraldi’s and Laura Gavioli’s introductory chapter.
