This paper analyzes accuracy in authentic telephone-interpreting data in which the
migrant and the interpreter communicate in French as a lingua franca, namely a language
that is not their first language. The data consists of an interview conducted by a
law-enforcement officer in Finland. The analysis is based on the ideational, interpersonal,
and textual metafunctions of language theorized within systemic-functional grammar.
The analysis shows that the particularities of both telephone-mediated interpreting and
lingua-franca interpreting engender significant communication problems. As a result,
accuracy is not achieved, and the interpreter has to use strategies that are questionable
in terms of the codes of conduct of community and legal interpreters. The interpreter is
an active agent in the co-construction, maintenance, and erasure of indexical meanings
such as speaker identities. In addition, due to linguistic and contextual constraints, the
interpreter takes a prominent role as a coordinator of turns. The paper suggests that interpreters’
deontological codes are based on monolithic language ideologies and unrealistic
expectations that should be reconsidered to correspond to the specific features of lingua
franca and telephone interpreting.
