Against the background of current literature on media interpreting and journalism, this
paper presents an analysis of a corpus obtained from the Italian state TV programme
Unomattina in 2001. The corpus was built with the aim of comparing two roles: journalists
as in-the-field professionals reporting the latest news on the Iraq war from abroad
(Journalists-as-Journalists: JJ); interpreters watching CNN and Al Jazeera from a booth in
the studio, and giving journalistic updates from these to the Italian audience (Interpretersas-
Journalists: IJ). If we assume that audiences judge the journalists and interpreters by the
same standards, differences between JJ and IJ could be seen as failings on the part of IJ to
be as effectively telegenic as their JJ counterparts. Combining notions from Conversation
Analysis, Sociolinguistics, and Media Studies this paper sets out to characterise interpreters’
linguistic behaviour when they play this hybrid role of interpreter/journalist. Are there
linguistic differences between JJ and IJ? And are there additional skills interpreters need to
develop in order to be more telegenic and better meet the needs of TV programmers and
audiences?
