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Article published In: FORUM
Vol. 18:2 (2020) ► pp.179–196

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Professional identity development among student interpreters

A case study

 | Hankuk University of Foreign Studies
Published online: 11 November 2020
DOI logo with link
https://doi.org/10.1075/forum.20003.lee
Abstract
Conference interpreting is a professional field that requires specialized knowledge, skills, and ethics, and becoming a professional in the field involves the adoption of a relevant professional identity. To understand how a professional identity begins to emerge among students and what factors influence the process, a case study was conducted involving four participants who were attending a graduate school of interpretation and translation in Korea. Multiple types of data were collected for qualitative analysis. The results show that the students initially tended to connect professional identity primarily with linguistic identity. Over time, the participants began to develop a better understanding of the profession through authentic learning experiences, real-world interpreting experiences, and interactions with the instructors as mentors, all of which contribute to their professional identity formation process.
Résumé
L’interprétation de conférence est un domaine professionnel qui requiert des connaissances, des compétences et une éthique spécifiques, et devenir spécialiste du domaine implique d’adopter une identité professionnelle adéquate. Afin de comprendre comment cette identité émerge chez les étudiants et quels facteurs influencent ce processus, nous avons mené une étude de cas sur 4 étudiants inscrits en école supérieure d’interprétation et de traduction en Corée du Sud. Des données de natures différentes ont été rassemblées pour une analyse qualitative. Les résultats montrent une tendance chez les étudiants, dans un premier temps, à relier leur identité professionnelle principalement à leur identité linguistique. Avec le temps, les participants ont commencé à développer une meilleure compréhension du métier via des expériences d’apprentissage authentiques, des expériences de l’interprétation dans le monde réel et des interactions avec des enseignants mentors, toutes contribuant au processus de construction de leur identité professionnelle.
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Literature review
  • 3.The study
    • 3.1Participants
    • 3.2Data collection and analysis
  • 4.Results
    • 4.1The setting: First-year at graduate school
    • 4.2Professional identity development of the four participants
    • 4.3Implications for interpreter education
  • 5.Conclusion
  • References
References (29)
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