In many professions, including the science of language and the science of translation, specialists are invited to consultations and conferences for oral presentation, which may later be recorded in written ‘proceedings’. The implications of these activities might be usefully explored from the standpoint of discourse analysis, which describes the discourse transactions as they are and might be performed. Some guidelines are proposed for designing interactions in ways that support genuine ‘progress’ through long-term, collaborative, and constructive strategies of discourse.