The issue of directionality in Translation Studies has been predominantly one of a binary opposition of translation into the mother tongue against translation into the foreign language. With respect to interpreting, apart from verbal language, non-verbal means are also important as spoken discourse elements. Given that each linguistic and cultural community uses non-verbal means to accomplish communication, this constitutes a major problem for interpreting as cross-cultural communication. Non-verbal means that are specific to the source culture apply to discourse patterns that only become understandable to the target culture through adaptation. Particularly in terms of simultaneous interpreting and its qualitative input, this places high demands on the cultural competence of the interpreter. Its is the aim of this paper to illustrate the significance of non-verbal means for simultaneous interpreting on the basis of a contrastive pragmatic approach between Greek and German non-verbal discourse patterns and also to raise awareness of a necessary change of emphasis in interpreting directionality in simultaneous interpreting.