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This paper broadly reflects on the identity and status of community-based interpreting as a field of practice and academic study. With a focus on research and its role in the process of professionalization, it explores the kinship among the various domains of interpreting from a historical, conceptual and socioacademic point of view. Based on a review of the recently emerged discipline of interpreting studies in terms of different paradigms, an analysis of common ground and interrelations is undertaken for interpreting studies as part of the wider field of translation studies and for community interpreting as such. The picture that emerges from this analysis shows the dialogic interactionist approach developed mainly for research on community interpreting as a distinct paradigm which offers great potential for a synergistic relationship with other theoretical and methodological approaches in interpreting studies.