Methodological Challenges of Multimodal Corpus Analysis of Interpreter-Mediated Conversations

In this contribution we will describe methodological challenges of multimodal corpus analysis, providing the project PRAGMACOR as an example. PRAGMACOR is the acronym for Corpus pragmatics and telephone interpreting: analysis of face-threatening acts. The project runs from the 1st of September 2022 to the 31st of August 2026 with funds obtained in the national competitive Spanish Program for Scientific, Technical and Innovation Research 2021–2023. Specifically, we will focus on the corpus compilation procedure, including ethical and practical issues concerning the formalization of agreements and permissions, and challenges related to the collection and formatting of the compiled conversations. The goal of this project is to develop tools that will allow for the preparation of interpreters and the automation of different tasks within the interpretation practice, such as the documentation process and the elaboration of glossaries (prior to the assignment), the automated search of terms and multi-word expressions or the integration of real-time machine translation during the assignment. The project will thus contribute to the development of computer-assisted interpreting tools, which are at the core of the paradigm of human-machine interaction in interpreter-mediated contexts.