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Part of
Linking up with Video: Perspectives on interpreting practice and research
Edited by Heidi Salaets and Geert Brône
[Benjamins Translation Library 149] 2020
► pp. 47–78

Chapter 2
“You are just a disembodied voice really”

Perceptions of video remote interpreting by legal interpreters and police officers

This contribution is devoted to the voices of users of video remote interpreting (VRI) in a particular setting, namely legal interpreters and police officers. Focusing on an aspect that has received little attention to date, viz. the interpreters’ and legal stakeholders’ perceptions of VRI as a novel configuration in the legal setting, we use the Social Construction of Technology (SCOT) as a theoretical framework to analyse a set of interviews that were conducted with interpreters and police officers after they had completed a simulated VRI session. As a first step, the participants were prompted to compare this simulated experience to their real-life experience to check the degree of reality of the simulated encounters. Next, they were asked to talk about attitudes towards VRI and to reflect on their experience with VRI during the simulation. Among the key outcomes of this investigation is that the two social groups – police officers and interpreters – have different views, but also that there is a considerable degree of variation among the interpreters, indicating a low degree of stabilisation of VRI as a concept and practice among the interpreters.
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.The social construction of VRI in the legal context
  • 3.Methodological approach
  • 4.Findings
    • 4.1Overall perceptions of VRI
      • 4.1.1Adopting VRI: Dependence
      • 4.1.2Usage situations for VRI: Appropriateness
    • 4.2Perceptions of the technological basis
      • 4.2.1Audio feed: Quality
      • 4.2.2Video feed: Presentation
      • 4.2.3Operating the equipment: Control
    • 4.3Perceptions of communication management in VRI
      • 4.3.1Delivery of the interpretation: Effort
      • 4.3.2Turn-taking and interaction: Intervention
      • 4.3.3Embodied and paralinguistic resources: Fragmentation
      • 4.3.4Rapport with the other participants: Involvement
    • 4.4Perceptions of impact on the interpreting performance
  • 5.Conclusions
  • Note
  • References
Published online: 13 January 2020
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/btl.149.03bra
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