Optimizing turn-taking in interpreter-mediated therapy: on the importance of the interpreter’s speaking space

This paper highlights two types of turn-taking problems that can occur in dialogue interpreting within the context mental healthcare. Although health care has received some scholarly attention over past decades, multimodal dimension such encounters not been investigated detail so far.Based on a dataset video recorded psychotherapeutic sessions with refugees, study aims to show how interpreters deal issues during conversation and this affectsboth their ownrolein encounter interaction itself. Both verbal nonverbal behavior (gaze orientation gestures) were taken into account. The data analyzed qualitatively by drawing insights from Conversation Analysis (CA). analysis suggests may arise when interpreter is able negotiate moment turn transfer or his/her space talk.Such coordination even result loss information. We argue therapeutic counseling an onsite collaborative achievement between both speakers interpreter, acknowledging as co-participant rights for speaking supports process.