ABSTRACT

This chapter reviews past and ongoing shifts in the conceptualisation of interpreting. Positing a set of definitional criteria, including humanness, bilinguality, interlinguality, immediacy, and fidelity, various forms of practice, many of which involve the use of digital technologies, are examined with regard to extensions of the conceptual boundaries of interpreting. Less typical and novel forms of interpreting are discussed under the headings of extra-temporality, extra-spatiality, intermodality, intra-linguality, and automaticity, and brought together in a concentric-circles model that suggests an inner and outer circle making up the ‘core area(s)’ of the field, as well as an ‘expanding circle’ pointing far beyond the age-old conception of interpreting as a single human interlingual speech-to-speech process.