The author starts the paper by giving some background information on her PhD project and some of the factors that shaped it. Like in the rest of the paper, the emphasis in this section is on the question of data. Next, she briefly outlines how the issue of data has been dealt with in the literature on interpreting. Afterwards, the author discusses the status of data in research projects in general and in projects on interpreting in particular. Finally, the author presents and discusses some examples of preparatory data manipulations from her PhD dissertation, including transcription, translation and segmentation.