Dialogue interpreting is a highly complex interactional process that requires close coordination of linguistic content and embodied semiotic resources between the participants. Such coordination greatly depends on how participants relate to the “ecology of action” (Mondada 2016), i.e. their immediate environment. In remote interpreting (RI), the reduced visual access or lack hereof makes that not all participants share the same visual ecology. This compromises the efficiency of using embodied resources such as gaze and gesture in turn-taking. As a result, common interactional issues, such as overlapping speech, can disrupt the communication and may even lead to communication breakdown (De Boe 2020). Yet, the ways in which turn-taking is managed multimodally in RI remains underexplored. Therefore, this paper investigates the effect of overlapping speech on the progressivity of the communication in face-to-face interpreting, telephone interpreting and video interpreting in three simulated doctor-patient consultations. With visual access between the interpreter and the primary participants ranging from no access (by telephone) to limited access (by video) and full access (face-to-face), these interpreting methods provide a fruitful ground to analyse the interplay between the different resources used for turn-taking. The analysis shows how the management of overlapping speech is determined by the specific ecologies of action and contributes to our knowledge of multimodal processes at work in RI.
