Diana Singureanu

Video mediated interpreting (VMI) remains perhaps one of the most controversial topics in interpreting studies. The practice of VMI has, however, grown rapidly during the Covid-19 pandemic, and the global shift towards working online for prolonged periods has also shifted the focus of research on VMI from investigating the feasibility of VMI to developing a better understanding of the factors that can contribute to sustaining it. Pre-pandemic research on VMI has spanned all fields of interpreting: conference (e.g., Moser-Mercer, 2003; Mouzourakis, 2006; Roziner and Shlesinger, 2010), legal (e.g., Braun and Taylor, 2012a; Braun, Davitti and Dicerto, 2018; Fowler, 2018) and medical (e.g., Locatis et al., 2010; De Boe, 2020; Hansen and Svennevig, 2021). This research has generated mixed, sometimes contradictory results. In relation to legal settings, the main lines of enquiry revolve around the classical aspects of interpreting quality (Balogh and Hertog, 2011; Braun, 2013, 2014; Braun and Taylor, 2012b; Miler-Cassino and Rybinska, 2012), interpreters’ working conditions (Fowler, 2018), the interpreter’s role (Devaux, 2016) as well as participants’ behaviour (Fowler, 2016), the communicative ecology of VMI (Licoppe and Verdier, 2013; Licoppe, 2015; Licoppe and Veyrier, 2017) and the impact of VMI training on interpreting performance and stakeholders’ perceptions of VMI (e.g. Braun et al., 2012; Braun, 2014).

The existing research conducted within legal settings indicates that VMI creates a range of challenges, but also that some of them are specific to the actual configuration of VMI that is used, especially the distribution of participants. For court hearings in which the interpreter is not co-located with the participant requiring the interpretation, two of the main challenges identified in previous research are a lack of rapport between the interpreter and the remote end user (Fowler, 2016) and limitations regarding the mode of interpreting. Licoppe and Verdier (2013), for example, found that interpreters could only work in consecutive mode in this setting and were thus reliant on the other participants’ awareness or willingness to pause for the interpretation. However, further studies of authentic legal proceedings are needed to confirm the identified challenges and to establish best practices for each configuration. There also seems to be a lack of consensus among interpreters regarding their perceptions of VMI, with some interpreters expressing a more positive attitude towards it and others struggling to see beyond the ‘cost-cutting’ implications (Devaux, 2016; Braun, Davitti and Dicerto, 2018). This poses the question whether there are also individual differences at play influencing how interpreters renegotiate the video-mediated modality with its added layers of complexity (Braun, 2018).

In this chapter we examine one particular configuration of VMI in which a defendant takes part in the proceedings via video link from prison whilst all other participants including the interpreter are physically present in the courtroom. Drawing on observation and interview data collected between March 2019 and March 2020 in magistrates’ courts in the London area, with a focus on extradition hearings, we examine the complexities of VMI in this configuration, and the associated strategies employed by the interpreters who participated in this study. We focus on three aspects, namely a) challenges encountered by interpreters when working in the described VMI configuration, i.e. factors that have a negative impact on the interpreting process or outcome and/or on the proceedings in this configuration, and interpreters’ responses (strategies); b) aspects that compensate for the challenges; and c) positive aspects of VMI. This is a first step towards answering our central question in this study, namely to what extent the selection of interpreting strategies is related to individual differences between interpreters.