Business Interpreting: A world of Dialogue between Conferences and Communities

The present article looks at definitions of “business interpreting”, contrasting them with “community interpreting”, “conference interpreting” and “dialogue interpreting”,with a brief focus on the status quo in Polish sources. A preliminary comparison leads to the conclusion that “business interpreting” does not share two of the most important and distinctive characteristics of community interpreting, namely: the institutional setting and languages of the minority and the majority, along with the unequal relationship it implies. The paper goes on to discuss “dialogue interpreting” (DI) and claims that business interpreting can be seen as DI, with some features of both conference and community interpreting. The article also argues for “business interpreting” to be regarded as a separate, independent type of interpreting.