Introducing corpora in Interpreting Studies: From EPIC to DIRSI

In this paper I briefly illustrate the development of the corpus-based approach to the study of spoken language interpreting. Drawing on the seminal works by Miriam Shlesinger (1998) and Robin Setton (2011), I describe the main challenges and opportunities that have been found in interpreting corpora, from the early studies, based on small data sets analyzed manually, to more recent ones in which larger, machine-readable corpora have been created. In particular, I present two major corpusbased projects concerning simultaneous interpreting at the European Parliament and at international medical conferences held in Italy. The two projects led to the creation of the European Parliament Interpreting Corpus (EPIC) and the Directionality in Simultaneous Interpreting Corpus (DIRSI) respectively. Similar methodological challenges can be related to each setting, but the fundamental differences in data access and the specific features of the communicative situations considered provide for alternative solutions. These are described together with the opportunities afforded by interpreting corpora in terms of research, teaching, and professional practice.