The Role of the Interpreter in International Trade Fairs

- 5 - 
1 Analytical and methodological approach 
 
 
1.0 Introduction  
The traditional view of the interpreters’ role in three-party conversations has been focused, 
since the early studies, on a view of them as mere “conduits” or “voice-boxes”. This approach 
conceives of interpreters’ activity as a strict reproduction of the source texts into the target texts, 
without any possibility for the interpreters to act differently. It is, however, a normative and 
prescriptive approach that is not based on the observation of the ways in which interpreters actually 
act during conversations. More recent works on the topic have contributed to downplay the 
importance of such prescriptive views because they do not take into account what interpreters 
actually do when interpreting, which is much more than merely translate utterances. This theoretical 
shift in the study of interpreters’ practices is based on a change in a more general view of language 
and discourse. If the interpreter’s activity is only regarded as a systematic linguistic transformation 
of single utterances into another language, the primary interlocutors’ contributions are considered as 
complete entities that make sense by themselves. This entails a monological view of discourse. A 
dialogical perspective, by contrast, makes every primary interlocutor’s action as dependent from 
that of the other participants. The recent works on interpreting take this as a point of departure, and 
make it reasonable to look at the interpreters’ and the primary parties’ contributions as reciprocally 
shaped.  
The approach I adopted here is based on this view of language and discourse, which 
involves the contribution of all participants to the exchange. In order to analyse the actual behaviour 
of the interpreter in the interactions, it is necessary to consider any face-to-face encounter as the 
result of the actions of all the interlocutors together, and not as a simple addition of the single 
contribution. The present section of the work will explain the main assumptions that shape the 
theoretical point of departure that I have shortly explained. The literature on which I draw provides 
the basic concepts that are useful for the empirical examination of real conversations, which are 
provided by the literature on Conversation Analysis (henceforth CA). In fact, it provides theoretical 
observations that stimulate a critical analysis of the data. It is interesting to notice that it is possible 
to find a common thread between the literature on interpreting studies and the findings of CA. In 
fact, the works on interpretation on which I draw adopt the analytic methods of CA, and 
successfully apply them to observe interpreter-mediated conversations. 
 
- 6 - 
1.1 Talk as interaction 
The conversations that I analyse in this study comprise a series of characteristics that make 
these events socially important. Conversation Analysts have concentrated their efforts on 
discovering the dynamics of ordinary, or “mundane”, conversation, and have demonstrated that the 
importance of any encounter between speakers lies in the fact that what is talked about is the result 
of a joint construction of meaning. Therefore, interpreter-mediated encounters can be analysed in 
this light too. As Schegloff writes, 
 
(…) the conversation-analytic angle does not let go of the fact that speech-exchange systems are involved, in 
which more than one participant is present and relevant to the talk, even when only one does any talking. 
(Schegloff 1982: 72) 
 
He suggests that interlocutors at talk-in-interactions are “co-participants” and that everyone’s 
contributions are significant even when only one is actually speaking. In this respect, Conversation 
Analysis has focused its studies on the ways in which listeners participate to speakers’ contributions 
by providing feedback signals, pauses, completions of others’ utterances etc. Hutchby and Wooffitt 
(1998) explain that the joint accomplishment of talk between the participants in a conversation is 
first observable in the mechanisms that lie behind the sequential construction of turns-at-talk. In 
fact, Conversation Analysts have observed that in the development of conversations there is a 
sequential order through which the turns of the interlocutors follow each other, that is, turns are 
linked together according to a system of rules (Hutchby and Wooffitt 1998:38). The fact that 
successive turns-at-talk by different speakers are linked together naturally leads to attach 
importance not only to one turn at a moment, but to its connection with the subsequent and previous 
turns. Hutchby and Wooffitt suggest that the implications of such a sequential view of talk are 
several, and explain that turns contribute to meaning when looked at in sequences, and that a 
meaning can often be attributed to a turn only on the basis of the next turn: 
 
First of all, the ‘next turn’ is the place where speakers display their understanding of the prior turn’s possible 
completion. That is, it displays the result of an analysis that the next speaker has performed on the type of 
utterance the prior speaker has produced. (…) Another aspect of this is that the relationship between turns 
reveals how the participants themselves actively analyse the ongoing production of talk in order to negotiate 
their own, situated participation in it. (Hutchby and Wooffitt 1998: 38) 
 
 
 
- 7 - 
1.1.1 Adjacency pairs 
The most evident manifestation of such a link between subsequent turns-at-talk can be 
identified in the dynamic of “adjacency pairs”. These are sequences of turns in which the first turn 
requires a particular second one, which is considered relevant to the first one. For example, if a 
question is the first part of an adjacency pair, the speaker expects that he is given by his interlocutor 
a relevant answer as a second pair part. This mechanism throws a spotlight onto the activities the 
interlocutors undertake during conversations, namely that speakers constantly monitor others’ 
understanding of what is uttered, and hearers constantly attend to what speakers say in order to 
identify when and how to take their turn (Hutchby and Wooffitt 1998: 43). This shows the way all 
the participants in a conversation orient towards the coordination of their activities and that “talk-in-
interaction is not just a matter of taking turns but is a matter of accomplishing actions.” (Hutchby 
and Wooffitt: 1998: 43) 
The importance of the linkage between subsequent turns at talk has also been generalised 
beyond the system of adjacency pairs, and the interaction system can be seen in terms of a response-
initiative structure: 
 
(…) each contribution is defined, in part, by its response links, i.e. its relations to the prior contribution(s) in 
discourse, and its initiative links, i.e. its relations to the anticipated, and hence ‘created’, context for possible 
continuations in discourse. Through the latter aspect, the contribution itself creates elements of discourse and 
contexts, elements which will be ‘prior context’ for the next contribution and to which that contribution will be 
responsive. The responsive and initiatory aspects are thus intrinsically linked to each other. (Linell 1994: 165-
166, emphasis original) 
 
1.1.2 Turn-taking and overlaps 
The first concrete consequence of this collaboration between speakers and hearers concerns, 
for Conversation Analysts, first and foremost the ways in which participants take their turns in 
conversation, therefore the way they negotiate their participation. Analysts have observed that the 
organisation of turn-taking is systematic in its development, and that there are “rules” to which the 
interlocutors orient as how, when and how long they can take their turns. The system is assumed to 
be an ordered one, with speakers formulating “projectable turn constructional units”, meaning that 
their interlocutors can guess when the speakers’ turn is likely to end. Participants can take their turn 
at any possible “transition relevance place” in the speakers’ turns, with minimal gap or overlap 
between the two turns. In addition, the next speakers can self-select as such, or they can be selected 
by the current speaker. Otherwise, talk can be continued by the same speaker (Hutchby and 
Wooffitt 1998: 47-53). 
- 8 - 
The system, however, allows for a certain degree of disorder, which is however discovered 
to be only apparent. This apparent disorder may be identified in cases of “overlapping talk” and 
“repair” (Hutchby and Wooffitt 1998: 53). When speakers overlap, they systematically do it at a 
possible transition relevance place (Hutchby and Wooffitt 1998: 54), that is, the talk by one 
interlocutor overlaps with the end of the prior speaker’s turn. Following is a clear example of such a 
practice. 
 
1 R: in fact they must have grown a culture, you 
2  know, they must’ve- I mean how long- he’s  
3  been in hospital for a few days right? 
4  Takes a[bout a week to grow a culture] 
5→ K:                [I don’t think they grow a] I don’t 
6  Think they grow a culture to do a biopsy. 
(Hutchby and Wooffitt 1998: 79) 
 
It can be seen from the example that one speaker can begin his talk when the other is still speaking, 
but it is not perceived as an interruption because the new turn is started when the first turn is about 
to end. Thus, the overlapping practice shows that the participants are oriented towards the respect of 
the rules of the turn-taking system. The same happens with repair, that is, in the cases in which one 
participant intervenes to correct or substitute part of another’s turn, thus causing the latter to drop 
his talk before the end of his turn constructional unit (Hutchby and Wooffitt 1998: 57). An example 
of how speakers participate through repair is provided below.  
 
1 Zoe: an’ he sorta scares me 
2 Amy: Have you see ‘im? 
3 Zoe: .hhh We:ll I- I’ve met ‘im, 
4→ Amy: .hhhhh Well uh actually: [when she’s- 
5→ Zoe:                                               [An’ the way the:y 
6  Pla:y. Oh:- 
(Hutchby and Wooffitt 1998: 57) 
 
Again, this phenomenon displays the participants’ orientation to the rules of the turn-taking system 
because the repair occurs towards the end of a turn constructional unit, but especially because 
through the repair the participants work for “the maintenance of mutual orientation to common 
topics and field of reference in talk-in-interaction.” (Hutchby and Wooffitt 1998: 66) 
 
1.1.3 Minimal responses and completions 
It is especially through the joint actions accomplished by speakers and hearers that the 
interactional nature of conversation emerges. Schegloff (1982) points out that: 
 
- 9 - 
(1)The discourse should be treated as an achievement; that involves treating the discourse as something 
‘produced’ over time, incrementally accomplished, rather than born naturally whole out of the speaker’s 
forehead, the delivery of a cognitive plan. (2) The accomplishment or achievement is an interactional one. (…) 
The production of a spate of talk by one speaker is something which involves collaboration with the other 
parties present, and that collaboration is interactive in character, and interlaced throughout the discourse. 
(Schegloff 1982: 73, emphasis original) 
 
Schegloff continues by explaining that the mechanisms through which the joint achievement of 
discourse is possible are systematically displayed by the participants to the conversation across its 
entire development (1982: 73), and he takes into account one particular class of those mechanisms, 
namely the so called back-channel signals that are uttered by the listener of another speaker’s 
extended talk. He claims that at any possible transition relevance place of any unit of a multi-unit 
turn, the listener may contribute with a full utterance; otherwise, s/he usually contributes through 
“small behavioural tokens by which interactive management of the possible transition occasion is 
effected” (Schegloff 1982: 77). Such means, like ‘uh huh’ or ‘yeah’, are called “continuers” and 
display a double understanding on the part of the recipient of the extended talk. First, ‘uh huh’ and 
the like claim the recipients’ understanding of what is uttered. Second, they display the 
understanding that an extended talk is being formulated and that it may not yet be complete. 
(Schegloff 1982: 81) For this reason, “continuers” contribute to the correct unfolding of the 
interaction, and they are an integral part of its “going smoothly” (Schegloff, p. 78).  
Participants’ responses have been looked at extensively in a study by McCarthy (2003). 
McCarthy shows that responses of the type described by Schegloff (1982) with the function of 
shaping the interaction can also be “less minimal”. In this paper, McCarthy draws on the intuitions 
of Schegloff (1982), but goes some steps further in the analysis of different types of continuers, 
which he calls “response moves” or “nonminimal responses”. These are acknowledgment responses 
that occur during extended talk by one speaker, but they differ from continuers in that they add 
affective connotations toward the conversational partners and “consolidate interactional and 
relational bonds” (McCarthy 2003: 43). Simple instances of such items are “lovely”, “definitely” or 
“great”, and McCarthy distinguishes several occasions and purposes for which they can be used. 
Another mechanism that has been observed as frequent in the listeners’ activity is called 
“other-completion”. In a study of English-Italian data, Zorzi Calò (1990) has observed that in both 
English and Italian a precise and usual request is often interrupted by an anticipated response, which 
can often take the form of other-completion, that is, the assistant completes the customer’s request. 
(Zorzi Calò 1990: 93) For a better understanding of this mechanism, it is probably necessary to take