9interpreting scenarios...

Abstract

The rational behind the selection of papers presented in this volume is discussed as way of introduction. Interpreting with English is a major feature that prevails throughout the eleven chapters which cover genres in as many interpreting scenarios. English is recog-nized worldwide as being a major lingua franca today in numerous interlinguistic com-municative settings and is increasingly being adopted internationally as a language for business, science and international negotiation. Though the principal aim of interpreting to transfer a message from one language to another (be it spoken or signed) remains un-changed, modes of transfer have adapted according to work requirements, from simulta-neous interpreting in traditional conference settings, to consecutive, whispering or remote interpreting in various kinds of meeting or public service encounters. Interpreting follows all areas of human activity, thus, interpreters are confronted with an infinite range of linguistic, textual, cultural and generic features in the workplace. Multiple perspectives and research methodologies emerge from chapters covering media, medical, business, po-litical, literary, military and legal genres.

Interpreting Scenarios: Changing Modes, ELF and Genres

cynthia j. kellett bidoli

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1. Introduction

This opening chapter serves as an introduction to Interpreting across Genres: Mul-tiple Research Perspectives which offers a selected collection of recent research pa-pers that approach a broad range of genres encountered in interpreting today. The wide range of interpreting scenarios addressed in the chapters reflects the great diversity that confronts interpreters in the workplace. The volume offers a contribution towards understanding developments in the field of interpreting that is characterised by the complex interplay of languages, discursive features, genres, communicative events and their appropriate interpreting modes. The idea behind producing this volume emerged when a seminar proposal of mine with a Romanian colleague Daniela Şorcaru1 was accepted for the ESSE 2010 Con-ference (European Society for the Study of English Conference, Turin, 24th-28th August 2010), a biennial event to promote English Studies research in Europe and beyond. Besides my research interests in Interpreting Studies, stemming from long experience in teaching consecutive and dialogue interpreting with English and Italian at the University of Trieste, SSLMIT (Scuola Superiore di Lingue Moderne per Interpreti e Traduttori – Advanced School of Modern Languages for In-terpreters and Translators), at the time I was also a member of a research unit at the University of Turin, host to ESSE 2010, in the Italian National Research Pro-ject Tension and Change in English Domain-specific Genres, coordinated by Professor Maurizio Gotti2. Thus, my intention in proposing a seminar for the ESSE 2010 Conference was to combine interpreting research, English and genre, to which Daniela agreed. A seminar dedicated to Interpreting Studies had never been proposed before at an ESSE conference, and, as any such enterprise was bound to the English language, we decided to focus on the emergence of English as a dominant language in the globalisation of communicative practices in which interpreting plays a major role, not just in Europe, but also worldwide in vari-ous interlinguistic and intercultural settings covering a wide range of domain-specific genres; genre being the main topic of the national project I was working in. Unfortunately, owing to unforeseen circumstances, Daniela was unable to at-tend the ESSE 2010 Seminar and I continued alone to edit this volume.

The ESSE 2010 Seminar Interpreting Scenarios with English explored interpret-ing with English across several scenarios encompassing different European lan-guage combinations within both conference and public service interpreting, as well as new emerging forms (e.g. media, remote, or sign language interpreting), associated with specific fields of discourse (e.g. legal, medical, economic, academ-ic, institutional, socio-political, etc.) and related genres. This volume includes a

1 “Dunărea de Jos” University, Galaţi, Faculty of Letters, Department of English Language and Literature; Senior lecturer, Ph.D.

2 PRIN project prot. 2007JCY9Y9. The Turin research unit, coordinated by Professor Giusep-pina Cortese, dealt specifically with Genre Migration: Intertextuality and Interdiscursivity across Media. See: <http:/www.unibg.it/ cerlis/progetti.htm>.

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selection of papers from that Seminar as well as a number of additional invited research papers. Contributions cover dialogic discourse as well as the more ‘tra-ditional’ monologic conference interpreting genres and subgenres, with a focus on linguistic and terminological aspects, drawing upon text linguistics, dis-course analysis and corpus linguistics. A variety of scenarios emerge across the interpreting spectrum encompassing diverse language combinations and direc-tionalities (English with Finnish, French, German, Italian, Spanish, Swedish, and Auslan – Australian Sign Language). I had initially hoped for a more internation-al array of contributions at the Seminar, but the majority dealt with the English/Italian language combination owing to the fact that ESSE 2010 was held in Italy, and hence, drew the attention of Italian researchers in the field. However, con-tributions are also included by scholars from Australia, Finland, and the U.S. A.

2. Interpreting modes

Interpreting in a primeval form undoubtedly emerged from prehistory as a natu-ral and essential means of communicating across languages and cultures. Over time men and women endowed with the ability to speak two or more languag-es contributed to the rise and fall of civilizations by interpreting during trade, military and diplomatic negotiations and expeditions into unknown territories, as well as interpreting for missionaries of various religious faiths. No matter when and how interpreting originated, the whispered simultaneous or consecu-tive dialogic forms of past ages, rapidly changed to new modes with the aid of modern technology in the 20th century, into what became known as consecutive interpreting (CI)3 and simultaneous interpreting (SI)4, mainly associated with conferences, institutional bilateral and international relations, international or-ganizations and multinational corporations (cf. Bowen 1994; Delisle & Woods-worth 1995; Kellett Bidoli 1999). New forms of professional interpreting have since emerged: such as dialogue or liaison interpreting in the modern business

3 Although French was the language of diplomacy of the ‘world powers’ until the First World War, it was at the Paris Peace Conference from 1919-20, that its privileged position be-gan to wane. Representatives of numerous allied nations met from a vast range of territories many of whom knew no French and thus, ‘interpreters’ (not in the modern sense of the term) were hurriedly sought. They found themselves having to work with several new language combinations, in unfamiliar working conditions and had to elaborate a system of notes to help them through the long sessions of negotiations (Herbert 1978: 6), learning to interpret short portions of speech consecutively; hence the origins of consecutive interpretation.

4 As the interpreting profession became established, and international communication ex-panded, a wider range of language combinations and a quicker and more efficient form of in-terpretation were required. This was made possible by new technology in the 1930s, through systems experimenting the use of headphones and microphones, enabling simultaneous interpretation to begin its tentative debut (Delisle & Woodsworth 1995: 205). It was only after the Nuremberg Trails of 1945-46 that simultaneous interpretation became well established (Bowen & Bowen 1985; Skuncke 1989).

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world, community or public service interpreting, court interpreting as well as sign language interpreting and interpreting for the media.

Furthermore, political instability and civil unrest continue to plague many ar-eas of the globe and these situations close to European borders are on the rise, with a subsequent increase in migration and massive flows of refugees seeking asy-lum in the European Union putting a strain on language services. This is leading to a call for well-trained community interpreters, or ‘mediators’ as they are often called in Italy, with non-European language proficiency, to play an increasingly important role in institutional linguistic and cultural communication (especially in health, court and police settings). Thus, it has become inevitable that “Confer-ence interpreting no longer holds uncontested sway either in the lecture hall or in the researcher’s study” (Snelling 2002: ix) at the beginning of the new millen-nium. All these new scenarios promise considerable expansion in the 21st centu-ry (cf. Garzone & Viezzi 2002), with an unfolding of novel interpreting settings.

The profession has changed profoundly and has now come to terms with its new iden-tity. The interpreter’s status is becoming less sharply differentiated between confer-ence interpreting and other settings. (ibid.: 11)

3. ELF

Not only has there been an expansion of interpreting modes and settings over the centuries but also a continuous change in dominant languages and related interpreting language combinations. Victorious invaders of the past imposed their languages on the conquered, such as Greek or Latin in Europe, Arabic in North Africa, or Spanish in central and south America, to create universal lin-guae francae (Delisle & Woodsworth 1995: 245-6), often becoming the languages of prestige, administration, trade and diplomacy in those territories. Language combinations for the purpose of interpreting depended on geographical loca-tion, historical and political factors. For example, the main languages required by English-speaking American interpreters in the eighteenth century were French, Dutch and native Indian languages (Bowen 1994: 73). By 1898, American inter-preters were sought with Spanish after the signing of the end to the American-Spanish war (ibid.: 74), yet French remained the principle language of diplomacy in North America and Europe until after the First World War Paris Peace Confer-ence, where for the first time, a large number of representatives of allied coun-tries met who could not speak French (Herbert 1978: 6). The term ‘lingua franca’ “has come to mean a language variety used between people who speak different first languages and for none of whom it is the mother tongue” (Jenkins 2005). Today, it is the turn of English to become the prevailing lingua franca worldwide (cf. Crystal 2003); it might become Chinese within 50 years.

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English spread geographically following the advance of British exploration and later colonialism, remaining the official language of many institutions long after independence was obtained in the numerous countries of the former Brit-ish Empire. The advance of English on the world stage was further enhanced by the rise to world power status of the United States of America, rendering it a dominant language in post Second World War politics, trade, science and tech-nology, as well as in today’s media (television, films, Internet). The advent of Glo-balisation is playing a significant role in accelerating the diffusion of English as a Lingua Franca (ELF).

Mauranen (2005: 269) suggests that ELF “has taken on a life of its own”. She points out that there are those language professionals who regret any deviation from standard forms of English and those who are hostile to any form, seeing “English of any kind as a “killer language” eating up smaller languages and put-ting an end to linguistic variety in the world”. She promotes neither of these stances, but a third way: to “face the facts” because ELF is here and here to stay.

Juliane House holds that ELF is a ‘useful tool’, ‘a language for communication’:

[…] a medium that is given substance with the different national, regional, local and individual cultural identities its speakers bring to it. English itself does not carry such identities, it is not a “language for identification”. And because of the variety of func-tional uses of global English, English has also a great potential for promoting inter-national understanding. Its different speakers must always work out a common be-havioural and intercultural basis. […] Using English as a lingua franca in Europe does not inhibit linguistic diversity, and it unites more than it divides, simply because it may be “owned” by all Europeans - not as a cultural symbol, but a means of enabling understanding5.

As far as interpreting is concerned, an interesting point to make is that although English is spoken by a growing number of non-native speakers (NNS) today, na-tive speakers of English “are less and less able to speak (or understand) anything else. Thus English-native speakers are by far the most faithful to and dependent on interpretation (93%)” (Fox 2010: 22), which in part, could explain the increase in ELF used in interpreting scenarios. According to Seidlhofer (cf. 2005), NNS make up as much as three quarters of all users of English. Another issue inter-preters face is the quality of English used by NNS, be they speakers or clients. Fox (ibid.: 23) states that at the European Commission:

It is manifestly a source of continuing professional frustration for interpreters to hear more and more ELF spoken in meetings – often by their own customers, especially when they see very valid arguments failing to get across because of awkward, ambigu-ous or plain bad expression.

5 Retrieved from <http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2001/apr/19/languages. higher-education> on 22nd June 2011.

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At international conferences there is an increasing tendency towards the use of English as the only working language besides the language of the host country.

In liaison interpreting, English ranks high if not first as a corporate language. In immigration-related interlinguistic exchanges, ELF is often used to communi-cate if an interpreter is unavailable (cf. Guido 2008). English is silently pervad-ing interpreting settings in its many varieties and guises so that interpreters are increasingly confronted with a wide range of ‘Englishes’ of different linguistic origin, more often than not with far from standard phonology, lexis and syntax. This can be the cause of considerable stress (cf. Cooper et al. 1982; Mackintosh 2002: 25; Neff 2008). The widespread/global use of English, be it spoken by na-tive speakers or NNS with differing levels of proficiency, coupled with the rising cost of interpreting services, may in the long term end up having a negative im-pact on the interpreting profession as a whole, leading to a decline in the request for services. Reithofer (2010: 153-154) suggests that practising interpreters have to be convinced to:

[…] constructively adapt to the new circumstances that they are not very likely to change. Clearly, there will be those who merely complain about this new development and wish back the old days. But interpreters with less negative bias towards ELF in general may be more effective in convincing their clients of the superiority of their services […]

4. Genre

Interpreting scenarios including English or any other language in the commu-nicative process have traditionally spanned across a variety of settings (e.g. mili-tary, diplomatic, religious, commercial etc., cf. Kellett Bidoli 1999) to incorporate an infinite range of linguistic, textual, cultural and generic features. Interpreters learn to adapt their communication strategies according to the communicative purpose of each interpreting event, and today are also having to learn to adapt to and take advantage of the Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) now available in our modern world (Braun 2006; Donovan 2006; Sandrelli & de Manuel Jerez 2007; Tripepi Winteringham 2010). These range from: real-time re-mote and telephone interpreting (Andres & Falk 2009; Kelly 2007; Ko 2006; Lee 2007; Moser-Mercer 2005; Mouzourakis 2000, 2006); to Computer Assisted In-terpreting (CAI) via laptops or hand-held Personal Digital Assistants used mainly for preliminary preparation to search on the Internet for thematic information and terminology (Tripepi Winteringham 2010: 90); as well as the practical adop-tion of digital pens during consecutive note-taking (Orlando 2010); or voice rec-ognition technology in booth consoles or on laptops “to create termbases through the detection of new or specialised terminology during real-time interpretation, which could be recorded and stored in their source and target versions” (Tripepi Winteringham 2010: 93).

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ICTs, however, have not changed the basic purpose of interpretation which to-day, as in the past, is still essentially concerned with transferring a message con-tained in discourse, be it simple or complex, from one language to another. Inter-preted discourse varies linguistically, textually, and generically in structured and conventionalised forms within the framework of a socially recognized purpose (e.g. a European parliamentary debate, a scientific conference, a patient-doctor interaction, etc.). Interpreting with a well-defined purpose becomes a ‘communi-cative event’ (Russo 1999). During such events interpreters are confronted with different genres in the Swalesian sense: “a class of communicative events the members of which share some set of communicative purposes” (Swales 1990: 58). Interpreters, therefore, not only have to have an excellent and reliable level of language proficiency in both source language and target language, but also a wide knowledge of generic variation and general culture.

Genres, “the specifically discoursal aspect of ways of acting and interacting in the course of social events” (Fairclough 2003: 65), have been studied extensively, from many different perspectives over the past few decades, and have remained a topic of great interest due to their dynamicity and variability (cf. Bazerman et al. 2009; Bakhtin 1986; Bhatia 1993, 2008; Christie & Martin 1997, 2000; Devitt 1993; Fairclough 2003; Swales 1990). Traditional situated genres have undergone modifications and hybridizations through advances in communication via the media and ICTs to form new, highly specialized genres in both spoken and writ-ten forms: genres may be considered established, emerging or declining in their multiple configurations.

Classification of genre is not a recent development, nor a simple task to un-dertake. Indeed, over past decades much has been written on the subject and three principle traditions in genre studies have emerged; the international LSP tradition, the North American New Rhetoric and the Australian Systemic-Func-tional School (cf. Hyon 1996; Swales 2009). Despite their different approaches they all view discourse as a form of well organised and structured communica-tion with well defined linguistic and structural features that mark specific gen-res and subgenres emerging from discursive practices, but conversely, shape new ones, hence, create dynamicity and variability as mentioned above (Bhatia 1997: 359). The intertextual porosity of genres allows for an increased fluidity across generic boundaries. Intertextuality can be seen as the dynamic and flexible en-capsulation of text/speech types in different actualizations of the same generic canon (cf. Candlin & Maley 1997; Cortese & Duszak 2005; Fairclough 1992/1995) with variation in range and distribution. Investigation into the diachronic devel-opment of genres has been also addressed by several ethnographic and sociolin-guistic studies (cf. Bhatia 1993, 2004; Berkenkotter & Huckin 1995; Bondi 1999; Cortese & Hymes 2001; Gillaerts & Gotti 2005; Swales 1990, 2004). Much of the specialised literature on genre dynamics has focused on written professional and academic genres mainly in domains of use such as technical, scientific, busi-ness, economics, political and legal communication. Genre and globalisation

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have been analysed both in monolingual and in multilingual contexts (cf. Can-dlin & Gotti 2004a, 2004b; Cortese & Duszak 2005; Cortese & Riley 2002; Pan et al. 2002; Pavlenko & Blackledge 2003). Academic discourse has been a major re-search focus (cf. Duszak 1997; Mauranen 1993; Hyland & Bondi 2006; Ventola & Mauranen 1996), followed by legal discourse (Bhatia et al. 2003a; 2003b), as well as business communication (cf. Bargiela-Chiappini & Gotti 2005; Bargiela-Chi-appini & Nickerson 1999; Clyne 1994; Del Lungo et al. 2006; Poncini 2004; Ulijn & Murray 1995) and institutional discourse (cf. Boden 1994; Christie & Martin 1997). Genre is being constantly revisited and redefined resulting in an updating of the criteria adopted for generic description and classification; criteria which are adapting to the new semiotic dimensions of various types of specialised text inclusive of the spoken word and, hence, can be applied to interpreting.

Little has been written specifically on genre regarding Interpreting Studies (IS), but the work of many of the authors mentioned above is of great relevance to the discourses typical of the many interpreting scenarios in domain-specific ar-eas; from traditional ‘established’ conference genres to ‘emerging’ public service and new interpreting genres. Outside IS, interest in the language of conferences has been investigated by linguists: Ventola et al. (2002) look at the native speaker versus NNS negotiation of meaning, the generic structures of paper presenta-tions or discussions and how turn-taking operates; Rowley-Jolivet and Carter-Thomas (2005) investigate the ‘Englishes’ of the scientific conference genre; and Mauranen (2002) applies corpus linguistics to the academic speech of monologic and dialogic speech events.

Interpreting research began in the 1950s but ‘blossomed’ from the early 1990s (Pöchhacker 1995), characterised by different trends. Riccardi (2002) provides an overview of IS that draws on the cognitive sciences, psycholinguistics, neurolin-guistics, translation studies and, moreover, the realisation that the interpreted text (IT) can be considered a new text type of oral nature (cf. Ondelli 1998). Thus, investigation of ITs must take into consideration not only language (linguistic and rhetorical features), but also the ‘macro-areas’ of delivery (prosodic features), content (e.g. omissions, additions, register, etc.) and interpretation strategies (e.g. reformulation, anticipation, décalage, etc.) (Riccardi 2002). A natural exten-sion of research in these macro-areas has been the investigation on quality in interpreting and user expectations (cf. Gile 1990; Kopczynski 1994; Kurz 1993; Moser-Mercer 1996; Pöchhacker 2002; Viezzi 1999; to name but a few).

Although interpreting involves the translation of discourses belonging to a wide range of generic varieties containing domain-specific language from the lexical/phraseological point of view, and much is being written on different inter-preting settings, especially in the area of Community Based Interpreting (CBI), to the best of my knowledge little ‘theoretically genre-based’ research has been con-ducted by interpreting scholars. However, the tide may turn as researchers begin investigating new modes of interpreting in CBI, moving towards new horizons offered by studying genre-related domain-oriented discourses in health, legal,

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social service and other settings. Boyd and Monacelli (2010) offer a contribution to IS in this direction by arguing that a clear distinction among the categories of discourse, genre and text among interpreting trainees is crucial for text analysis and understanding from a pedagogical point of view. They adapt a number of important constructs from Critical Discourse Analysis, the Discourse-Historical Approach and IS to propose an interdisciplinary and multi-layered model of con-text, a useful tool with a view to interpreter training. The genre they exemplify, however, is a ‘traditional’ one in IS: the political speech.

The structure and organization of a particular genre is often predictable, in-corporating linguistic structures and features typical of the discourse of mem-bers of a professional speech community (e.g. politicians, sports announcers, medical practitioners, lawyers, military personnel etc.). Interpreters must recog-nize these in order to select appropriate strategies (Riccardi 2002) which they de-velop over time through training and experience. They accumulate convention-alised social knowledge pertinent to different discourse communities in order to be able to transfer information across the language cultural divide from source to target language.

Owing to preparation for the ESSE 2010 Conference Seminar and my involve-ment in the Italian national research project on genre in English domain-specific contexts, I was particularly interested in calling for and later selecting papers covering a wide range of domain-specific genres encountered in the interpret-ing profession in varied scenarios with English. This volume offers a number of papers to this purpose through multiple research perspectives covering diverse fields of discourse: business, literary, legal, medical, media, military, political, sports, and veterinary. Some chapters explore the rhetorical and microlinguistic features encoded in the language of specific genres such as political speeches or presidential debates, others look at examples of strategies used by interpreters to cope with particular scenarios and situations and one in particular adopts a non-linguistic approach by looking at quality through investigating the reactions and views of participants at an interpreting event within a specific genre type. Thus, chapters in this volume fit neatly into the macro-areas of research mentioned above (Riccardi 2002) and through their diversity aim to explore a variety of gen-res across several scenarios.

5. Scenarios

Following the brief discussion about the changing modes of interpreting, the global expansion of ELF and the relevance of genre studies to IS, a brief outline is provided of the interpreting scenarios covered in coming chapters.

Interpreting in media settings is still a largely unexplored area (Gambier 2008: 20). It is a research area that was of particular interest to Francesco stranie-ro sergio who sadly passed away prematurely before publication of this volume

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which I dedicate to his memory. In his chapter he uses data taken from a large subcorpus of talkshow interpreting, contained in CorIT (Italian Television Inter-preting Corpus) at the University of Trieste. He describes corpus-driven research on the relevance of repetition in interpreter-mediated Italian talkshows (a form of dialogue interpreting). Using a conversation analytical approach he explains how interpreter repetitions, a particular linguistic feature of talkshow interac-tion, are adopted to enable cohesion and coherence to transpire from interpreted utterances in this media subgenre. He shows how repetition is closely related to the sequential and interactional dimension of dialogue interpreting through ample exemplification of turns produced by speakers of two different languages; English and Italian.

Media interpreting in the television studio continues as the focus of the next chapter. eugenia Dal Fovo describes work in progress on a corpus-based analy-sis of topical coherence in simultaneously interpreted American presidential debates broadcast on Italian television and taken from the CorIT corpus (men-tioned above). She looks in detail at the ways in which dialogue format and ques-tion/answer structure are handled by the interpreters. Indeed, an interesting as-pect of this scenario is team work. She identifies the types of question/answer in the source and target languages (English and Italian), and their incidence, before turning to question/answer topical coherence in the interpreted versions, exam-ining whether it is achieved, and in which ways its achievement is influenced by the type of question and the changes that occurred during the interpretation process.

The following contribution, again linked to the media, deals with the sports genre, a topic little covered in IS literature. annalisa sanDrelli focuses on a sports setting within the world of football by discussing the simultaneous interpreta-tion of pre-match and post-match press conferences during the EURO2008 Eu-ropean football championships. The conferences were attended by international journalists who then reported events in their newspapers and magazines or on their TV channels. As Italy’s interpreter she obtained permission from UEFA to study the recordings. Simultaneous interpreting was carried out in both transla-tion directions (A to B and B to A) and English was used as a pivot language when-ever necessary. She has since gathered much material which is being transcribed to compile a corpus (FOOTIE, Football In Europe) in order to carry out semi-auto-matic analysis of certain features particular to this kind of communicative event which pose specific challenges for interpreters.

Another conversation analytical perspective is offered by letizia cirillo who introduces the first of two chapters covering medical scenarios. In particular she investigates how interpreters’ initiatives may either enable or exclude affective communication in the triadic management of doctor-patient talk, looking close-ly at ‘zero-renditions’ and ‘non-renditions’ (Wadensjö 1998). The examples pro-vided and discussed are authentic recorded samples of consultations between Italian healthcare providers and migrant patients from English-speaking coun-

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tries. Although affective displays seem fairly numerous from her preliminary findings, the interpreters were not always at ease in dealing with them.

A second medical scenario, offered by clara Pignataro, is the highly technical veterinary conference. She looks in particular at the specialised knowledge in-terpreters have to acquire in terms of terminology in order to produce adequate target texts, hence, the necessary terminological preparation and the process of preparing specialised glossaries for memorization before the interpreting event, an area in which little attention has been paid in IS (cf. Gile 1995; Kellett Bidoli 2006; Will 2007). She draws examples from a corpus of authentic pre-confer-ence material (abstracts and slides) on veterinary medicine paying particular attention to complex English noun phrases. She compares two methodologies for the creation of glossaries in the medical and veterinary domains. The first is manual compilation which represents the most frequently adopted approach among conference interpreters, the second is electronic compilation supported by WordSmith Tools.

Interpreters are continually expected to handle the oral translation of dis-course containing Language for Special Purposes (LSP) covering a wide range of genres, and, as already mentioned, they may find themselves having to inter-pret between non-native English speaking interlocutors. Following on from the previous chapter on specialised terminology preparation, this chapter by sarah triPePi Winteringham covers three different scenarios providing authentic exam-ples taken from medical and business (fashion and engineering) genres. She ex-plores and discusses the role and responsibility of the interpreter (across three interpreting modes), at encounters where English is the main channel of com-munication. These encounters involve peer relations between the interlocutors, their knowledge of English for Special Purposes (ESP) and their English language proficiency which may vary and affect the outcome of the communication. She discusses how the interpreter’s intervention can effectively facilitate communi-cation, not only by providing a linguistically accurate rendition, but also, if the interpreter understands the non-native English speakers’ language level and needs, s/he can maintain the clients’ expectations.

A traditional area covered by IS has long been SI in political contexts. anna-riitta vuorikoski looks at speech acts that emerge from an analysis of the politi-cal rhetoric adopted in the European Parliament. In particular she focuses on ‘requests’ and the way they are interpreted. European Parliament discourse can be considered a genre composed of subgenres incorporating several speech acts constituting integral rhetorical elements. Her analysis is based on an authentic corpus comprising a collection of over 100 speeches recorded at plenary part-sessions in four languages: English, Finnish, Swedish and German. The theoreti-cal framework of the study is a combination of interpreting theories, speech act theory and new rhetoric, combined with pragmatics. The results can be directly applied to interpreter training, while also providing criteria for research on in-terpreter quality assessment.

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A new area of research in IS, interpreting in literary contexts, is offered by Peter meaD. He describes and discusses issues related to interpreting in the con-secutive mode at a Literature Festival, a mode to which less attention is generally paid compared to SI. The subgenre he has chosen to exemplify is the literary in-terview, i.e. the interpretation of interviews with well known English-speaking authors for an Italian-speaking audience. He examines some short extracts from live interviews comparing the original English with their Italian interpretation. He comments on the demands and dynamics of interpreting in this scenario and covers features like establishing a rapport with the audience, authors’ views on their characters and emotional participation.

Discourse analysis includes the notions of text, genre and discourse as essen-tial to understanding both discoursal and social practices (Boyd 2009; Chilton 2004; Fairclough 2003, 2006, 2010; Toolan 2002; Wodak & Meyer 2009), in writ-ten and spoken modes and has been adopted in Translation Studies (Saldanha 2010; Schäffner 2007). Its adaptation to Interpreting Studies (cf. Beaton-Thome 2007; Boyd & Monacelli 2010; Mason 2006; Monacelli 2009), is less widespread because interpreting as a form of translation is essentially an oral activity com-posed of sounds that dissipate in thin air unless recorded and transcribed for analysis, which greatly complicates investigation. clauDia monacelli and michael s. BoyD introduce a novel scenario in the military context reporting the initial stage of a wider research project on the nature of interpreting in military/dip-lomatic contexts at the Italian Ministry of Defence. Although hampered by is-sues regarding secrecy and confidentiality in obtaining authentic data, they fo-cus on the role played by genre and, in particular, the “hyper-genre” (Giltrow & Stein 2009) of Memorandum of Understanding. They apply Critical Discourse Analysis-inspired constructs and look in particular at the important role military translators and interpreters play in recontextualizing and disseminating genre.

Court interpreting is the topic covered by the last two chapters. It is a form of interpreting which poses particular challenges owing to great differences in legal systems and procedure worldwide and hence, difficulties in the mutual understanding of all parties involved in interlinguistic legal undertakings. In-terpreters of legal genre are confronted with complex LSP, legal concepts from different branches of law (criminal, civil etc.), in many legal scenarios ranging from property transactions to trials and asylum hearings. But as holly mikkelson explains, they also have to deal with different registers “including the erudite language of legal arguments, the legal jargon often used in colloquies between attorneys, the technical register of expert witnesses, the speaking style unique to law enforcement personnel, the street slang of gang members, and the “baby talk” used by children”. However, not always is the language used by legal profes-sionals clearly expressed. She looks at the genre of courtroom discourse in adver-sarial settings, and in particular the quality of the legal source language, drawing on her experience in the U.S. A. interpreting from English to Spanish for poorly educated immigrants. In particular, she attempts to provide a thorough analysis

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of the problem with some suggestions of strategies interpreters can adopt. She discusses the issue of quality in interpreting and its definition in different con-texts with a view to user and interpreter expectations for their performance.

Court interpreting in the form of remote court interpreting is the focus of the last chapter by Jemina naPier through a completely different mode of communica-tion: sign language. Deaf like hearing clients may seek legal support and advice with the additional need for interpreting to enable communication to take place. In Australia where geographical distance and remoteness may cause difficulties in the provision of interpreting services, remote interpreting has developed in the form of an exciting new area for dialogic interpreter-mediated discourse through the use of videoconference facilities, also known as audiovisual link (AVL). Research on AVL is challenging for spoken language interpreters (Braun 2007) but possibly more so from a psychological point of view than physical (Roziner & Shlesinger 2010: 243). Yet AVL provides the visual contact which is essential in sign language communication. The author reports on a project, con-ducted to investigate the feasibility of providing remote signed language court interpreting services through AVL commissioned by the New South Wales De-partment of Justice and Attorney General in Australia. Remote access to signed language interpreting was tested across five scenarios, involving deaf people and Auslan interpreters in remote locations, to assess its feasibility and to study the stakeholder perceptions of the interpreted interactions.

6. Concluding remarks

The chapters in this volume cover research on a range of work settings with in-terpretation, some of which were presented as papers at the Seminar Interpret-ing Scenarios with English at the ESSE 2010 Conference in Turin, Italy. All chapters include English as one of the working languages employed, because the focus of the Conference was on research in English Studies. Past ESSE conferences have dealt with a wide range of topics on the English language, the cultures of English-speaking peoples and literatures in English. English in interpreting scenarios is of particular relevance owing to the rise of English as a lingua franca worldwide in many interlinguistic/cultural settings, covering a myriad of domain-specific genres: from the north African illegal immigrant seeking political asylum to the European Member of Parliament’s speech.

The use of English is an important and central element in this volume as are the modes of interpretation which must adapt to cater to different genres in ‘tra-ditional’ and new scenarios. Contributors to the Seminar which included young researchers as well as experienced authors were asked to focus on the use of spe-cialised terminology within genres and subgenres, or on various rhetorical-tex-tual architectures and features found within monologic and dialogic discourses, drawing upon text linguistics, discourse analysis, pragmatics and corpus linguis-

22

tics. Indeed, the selected authors have done so offering a wide range of research methodologies investigating linguistic and pragmatic aspects, using conversa-tion analytical approaches and/or offering much corpus-based data adjusting to the new tendency in IS of resorting to authentic data collection and electronic analysis.

What I believe emerge from this volume are realistic snapshots of interpret-ing scenarios. Although much research reported in the volume is work in pro-gress, interesting multiple perspectives are offered from both traditional con-ference interpreting and new scenarios which are adapting quickly to modern developments in our global economies driven by fast-paced technologies and new social and market requirements.

Acknowledgements

First I would like to thank Professor Giuseppina Cortese, chair of the ESSE 2010 Academic Programme Committee and my Turin research unit coordinator, for having encouraged me to propose a seminar on Interpreting Studies at the ESSE 2010 Conference in Turin which I believe was the first seminar entirely dedicated to interpreting at an ESSE event. Secondly, as mentioned above, Daniela Şorcaru, my co-convenor for our ESSE 10 Conference Seminar, was unable to attend it and accompany me in the editing of this volume. I thank her wholeheartedly for her initial contribution, support and youthful enthusiasm, without which the Semi-nar would not have been made possible.

23interpreting scenarios...

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