The Interpreters' Newsletter n. 28 - 2023

The digital turn has changed every aspect of our lives, including the media ecosystem, which is today dominated by new digital media (Jensen 2021). In addition, the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on both our private and professional lives has been both unexpected and profound. Interpreting services have been no exception. Drawing upon examples of Italian<>English film festival interpreting, the present paper investigates this digital turn. Data are taken from authentic performances provided at Giffoni, one of the most important Italy-based international film festivals. Some of its events are live-streamed and are therefore open to a remote audience made up of online users; moreover, in 2020 because of the pandemic, the Festival used video-mediated interpreting (Braun/Taylor 2012). Consequently, the data sets include onsite streamed events, distance streamed events and onsite non-streamed events. This corpus is analysed qualitatively, focusing in particular on the concept of audience design (Bell 1984, 1991), and more specifically on the renditions of some film scenes. The results show that both the live-streaming and the remoteness features have significant repercussions on the interpreting performances in the three interactional contexts.

The Interpreters’ Newsletter of the Dipartimento di Scienze Giuridiche, del Linguaggio, dell’Interpretazione e della Traduzione, Sezione di Studi in Lingue Moderne per Interpreti e Traduttori (SSLMIT) is an international journal promoting the dissemination and discussion of research in the field of Interpreting Studies.

The recent pandemic has unmistakably changed the way conference interpreters perform their work: the transition from the traditional booth with participants in a conference room to the fully online booth at the interpreter’s home came suddenly and under the pressure of (inter)national health regulations. Although developments in interpreting technology are not novel and have been addressed since the 1990s, with first announcements like “conference interpreters in the electronic age” (Moser-Mercer 1992, 2005, 2015), a real technological turn is only happening now and receives increasing scholarly attention (Fantinuoli 2018, 2021; Corpas Pastor 2021). What still needs more scrutiny, however, is how these solutions are implemented in the daily interpreting business and how interpreters evaluate their use. In this study, funded by AIIC (Association Internationale des Interprètes de Conférence), we report on how interpreters experience the use of RI through video-based interpreting platforms (VIP), including virtual booth setups, in their professional life. Findings show that it is not all for the best, but that VIP solutions, preferably with an online booth, definitely are here to stay and that the pandemic has made interpreters discover at least some advantages of the novel work mode.