The Role of the Interpreter in International Trade Fairs

This work is an analysis of a corpus of authentic interpreter-mediated interactions taking place at an international trade fair. These encounters involve at least four people: two Italian exhibitors, one interpreter, and at least one foreign visitor. The data were collected within the period of an apprenticeship at a small company dealing with the trade of fishing articles. The study collocates in the field of liaison interpreting, and its aim is that of analysing the mechanisms that lie behind the organisation of authentic interactions mediated by an interpreter. In particular, the focus of the exploration is placed on the ways in which all the interlocutors, the interpreter as well as the primary parties, participate in the interactions, and it takes, as a point of departure, a view of the interpreter as an active participant in the exchanges. The approach this study takes is based on the empirical observation of the transcriptions of the three-party conversations. The purpose here is that of describing some of the realities that characterise the data, and not that of evaluating or prescribing. The description takes into account some of the most recurrent practices on the part of the interpreter and of the primary interlocutors, but it is by no means conceived as an exhaustive research. In fact, it must be considered as a contribution to the literature on interpreting that needs further investigation. The paper is organised in four chapters. The first chapter takes into account the theoretical and methodological approaches on which this study is based. This chapter presents a coherent review of the literature that was the basis for the analysis of the interpreter-mediated interactions. This literature combines studies on Conversation Analysis and studies on interpreting. Nonetheless, this theoretical exploration introduces some of the main themes that are treated in the analysis. The second chapter takes into account the materials on which the study is based. In particular, it sets the data into their context, and it deals with the collection, the selection and the transcription of the conversations. In addition, it provides the analytical method that was followed for the analysis. Chapter 3 includes the actual analysis of the data. This part is structured into different sections, which correspond to the practices undertaken by the interpreter that were identified as the most recurrent. The end of this chapter includes a short summary of the empirical results the analysis led to. The analysis is followed by the conclusions, where I summarise the main findings deriving from the data. After that, some suggestions for further research are provided.