Abstract
The COVID-19 pandemic has accelerated the growth of remote interpreting, yet research on several aspects of remote medical interpreting (RMI) remains limited. Against this backdrop, this study reports key findings from a survey of professional healthcare interpreters with experience in RMI (N=47), addressing various gaps in RMI research, including interlocutor distribution and technology use, factors affecting interpreters’ perceived impact of RMI on their performance, medical settings in which RMI is used, and working conditions. Results indicate that most interpreters have experience with both telephone interpreting (TI) and video interpreting (VI) in the healthcare context, encountering various medical settings, distribution patterns and technological configurations. Quantitative findings reveal four similar normative configurations of interlocutor distribution in both TI and VI, each with slightly different normative technologies. TI is perceived to have a more negative impact on overall performance than VI, which receives more positive evaluations regarding source text comprehension, target text production, rapport between interlocutors, concentration, stress, and fatigue. Qualitative results reveal common challenges shared by TI and VI, with COVID-19 exacerbating some of them. This study contributes to establishing a systematic understanding of the complexity of RMI across multiple dimensions and provides a nuanced perspective on both TI and VI.