Conference interpreting is a particular form of orality. Placed at the core of communication between a speaker and his/her audience, the interpreter is, at the same time, text producer and receiver. In his/her function as linguistic and, above all, cultural mediator, the interpreter produces an interpreted speech on the basis of an original speech ; hence the subordinate nature of his/her role. The orality of the source text (original speech) and of the target text (interpreted speech) has been, to this day, the Cinderella of interpreting studies. In terms of both quantity and quality, results obtained so far do not yet enable us either to provide a comprehensive description of orality in interpreting, or to compare and contrast it with other forms of oral language.