Negotiating territories of knowledge: on interpreting talk in guided tours

The problem of interpreting what is “behind the turns”, not explicitly said by participants in their utterances, has presented a dilemma in studies of dialogue interpreting, leading to controversies about how far interpreters should engage in dealing with implicit issues they know about, but which are not made clear by the interlocutors. In this paper, I analyse data where a guide and an interpreter present a group of tourists with locations where the history and tradition of local products are exhibited. In my data interpreters expand the guides’ presentation in their rendition, adding quite a lot of information they know about, but which has not been explicitly mentioned by the guide. I suggest that the notion of epistemics, developed in conversation analysis, may help explain the dynamics regulating the distribution of responsibilities of guides and interpreters in dealing with relevant contents and I conclude that rights and obligations to explicate what is behind the guides’ talk can largely be seen as a product of the interaction.