This study explores three real-life interactions involving a young language broker who performs lay interpreting from English for his Macedonian-speaking family members. Drawing on Goffman's concepts of ‘footing’ and ‘participant roles’ which a speaker can adopt, this study investigates how a broker deals with the conversational moves of precursors to adopt the role of animator, author, and also principal. This paper shows a broker's positioning to the role of principal and how this is parleyed and re-negotiated in alternations of footing in which the broker can adopt this role and then abandon it. Transcribed speech shows evidence of features that are characteristic of interpreter speech: ‘relayed inter-lingual transfer’ and ‘recipient design’. At the same time, inter-lingual transfer is punctuated cyclically by responses and prompts from others to engage with the broker as a speaker in his own right. This paper shows a broker's positioning to the role of principal and how this is negotiated and re-negotiated in changes of footing in which the broker can assume this role and then relinquish it.