Resolving comprehension problems in a telephone-interpreted screening interview

This chapter analyzes two sequences from a telephone-interpreted screening interview in which the interpreter and the asylum seeker communicate in French, and the agent and the interpreter communicate in Finnish. The asylum seeker and the interpreter are both second-language speakers of French, with different levels of proficiency in this language. The analysis shows that comprehension problems are mostly due to mismatching linguistic resources between the asylum seeker and the interpreter. Constraints related to telephone interpreting, namely the lack of access to non-verbal communication, aggravate these problems. The quality of remote dialogue interpreting characterized by mismatching linguistic resources could be improved by verbal indication of turn changes, decelerated speech rate, and plain language.