Interaction Management Skills in Telephone Interpreting

Abstract

Over the last decade, telephone interpreting (TI) has consolidated its presence in the public services of many countries around the world, including Spain. That is why increased attention is being paid to the need for training TI professionals who are able to face the challenges that this type of remote interpreting entails. Despite TI’s specificities (the use of the telephone as the channel of communication, the interpreter’s physical absence from the place of interaction, the lack of visual information and the immediacy with which the interpreter is accessed), it shares many features with face-to-face dialogue interpreting, one of them being the role of the interpreter as interaction coordinator to ensure communication flow between the primary parties. Nonetheless, the way coordination is performed when interpreting over the phone necessarily differs from on-site interpreting. This article aims to identify and describe the specific skills needed by telephone interpreters to manage interaction between participants in conversation. Some of them are not exclusive to TI, but must be readapted for use with the telephone. These skills could potentially be used as the starting point to design a specific comprehensive training in TI.