To Örebro University

Language of presentation: Spoken English

The Swedish Video Relay Interpreting (VRI) Service is a facility that people who use a video phone can call in order to get in touch with people who use a telephone, or vice versa. The interlocutors have different access to the visual arena and the auditive space, and are physically separated from each other. The interpreters need to enable interaction across the different media, since the interpreter is the only one who has direct contact with both users of the service.

The study is based on twenty-five authentic calls from the regular Swedish VRI Service, Bildtelefoni.net. The analysis of the recordings draws on Conversation Analytical (CA) methodology, in combination with dialogical theory (Linell 1998), and focuses on actions and activities within the calls on a moment-to-moment basis.  

The presentation focuses on what techniques and strategies that the interpreters use in order to enable the establishment of communicative projects, and how these communicative projects are dialogically managed among all of the interlocutors. The interaction is systematically laminated by the interlocutors’ establishment of more global and local communicative projects that are dependent on the contingencies of the VRI service, e.g. who called the service and who is called, the different phases of the call, the different media used (videophone or telephone), the modalities of interaction (Swedish, and Swedish Sign Language), social and institutional conventions, and the characteristics of the interlocutors.

Communication on a distance, utilizing services such as the VRI, is becoming more and more common. Since the communicative projects are highly dependent on the interpreter, it is important for interpreters to reflect upon, and get a deeper understanding of the intricate details of (inter)action.