Over the last twenty years, fieldwork in dialogue interpreting has painted a complex picture of what it means (and can mean) to interpret talk in contexts of bilingual interaction. Analyses of recordings and transcriptions have made it clear that in terpreted conversations in the public services such as healthcare, schooling and policing, in business settings such as trade fairs, and in media events such as talk shows and interviews, are complex, co-constructed, and tightly coordinated. Traditional models of dialogue interpreting regarded turns at talk as short monologues, but this no longer appears sufficient as a way of accounting for the dynamics of interpreted talk. Research on interpreting “as interaction” (Wadensjö 1998) has highlighted that rendition turns are to be considered as both text- and interaction-oriented, where both these may be relevant to achieving the goals of the interaction. For instance, the function of claiming innocence may be accomplished in different ways depending on the sequential context (which may vary in the two languages), but also on the language conventions: a “yes” in language A (“yes, I don’t confess to the crime”) may need to be translated by “no” in language B (“No, I don’t confess to the crime”). Or again, a place, a name, or a procedure may be clear to one of the interlocutors and not to another, requiring explanation for the benefit of the latter; similarly, the relevance of an utterance may need to be clarified in a rendition, in order to make it clear that it is answering a previous question or is a request for attention (Wadensjö 1998; Davidson 2002; Mason 2006). Such actions may modify the structure of the sequence of turns in order to make their function clear. These actions are termed coordination by Wadensjö (1998, 103‒151), and the ability to produce them has to be considered part of the interpreter’s technical competence (see Hale this volume). Studies of naturally-occurring interpreter-mediated interaction have however enriched the training and learning environment. Such data show that effective ren dition does not imply that interpreters act as “neutral voice-boxes”: rather, they need to be active participants in talk, whose choices orient to the achievements of the interaction, as they make sense of what is said for the other interlocutors. Learners need to be provided both with opportunities for observing how this is done and for practising doing it (Aston 1988). On the one hand, observing naturally-occurring instances of interpreter-mediated interaction may allow learners to compare actions which favour participant communication with ones that may impede it. At the same time, in order to practise performing as interpreters, learners need opportunities to select between actions which may favour or inhibit understanding and rapport. They may need to be trained to find lexico-grammatical structures with equivalent meanings in the two languages and in the context of the interaction, to explain what may not be equally clear in different languages or for different speakers, to capture the point of what is being said and render it for other participants. This may well be achieved through activities where skills can be developed gradually, including listening and summarizing as well as various types of role-plays. Research on naturally-occurring interpreter-mediated interaction has high lighted a range of aspects that may characterize the interpreter’s competence. How best to construct instruments to develop such skills is the next step in interpreter training research, and this is the principal issue this volume examines.
