Television Interpreting and its playful macro-function

The paper examines interpreting and its interactional aspects in the context of the televised interview. In this preliminary study the aim is to explore the active role of the interpreter as a ratified participant in the interaction. Data are taken from a larger corpus of televised interviews, pertaining to the infotainment genre, interpreted in simultaneous voice-over by an Italian conference interpreter and broadcast on Italian television. Both the source and target texts are transcribed and analyzed, in order to investigate the interactional strategies. In the first part the pragmatic features of broadcast talk and its playful macro-function are outlined; in the second part, drawing on conversational analysis, I explore how the role and identity of a television interpreter is shaped by the interaction’s participants. I assume here that on television, interpreters act as ratified participants displaying greater involvement and interactional skills. Keywords - television itnerpreting; infotainment; ratified participant; playful function; interactional skill.