Interpreter intervention in the management of mediated business talk

This contribution deals with a particular type of talk, interactions in business settings involving two speakers (or groups of speakers) of different languages and an interpreter mediating between them. This type of talk is generally referred to as “interpreter-mediated interaction” (Wadensjö 1998: 6) or “dialogue interpreting” (Mason 1999a). This paper provides an analysis of dialogue interpreting in two business settings, in-house business negotiations and business exhibitions. It is part of a wider project dealing with dialogue interpreting in institutional settings, also involving medical and legal interaction (see Gavioli / Baraldi 2005). The focus of inquiry in this chapter is on the interpreter role in the interactional organisation of the mediated exchange, and in particular on the types of intervention that interpreters produce. The analysis considers procedures used by the interpreter to produce recognisable translations of principal participant talk, and then focuses on interpreter productions of non-translation interventions. We have two purposes here: the first is to show how interpreter contributions, translational and non-translational, are organised within the business talk activity; the second is to discuss and think about some of the possible implications of our analysis for interpreter training in the business environment.