Can you count on interpreters to have “super-skills”? Professionalization and the interplay between education, practice, and research in Public Service Interpreting (PSI)
| Dates: | 27 April 2023 |
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| Times: | 14:00 - 15:30 |
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| What is it: | Seminar |
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| Organiser: | School of Arts, Languages and Cultures |
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| How much: | Free |
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| Speaker: | Professor Hanne Skaaden |
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CTIS Research Seminar 3
The talk explores factors that influence professionalization within Public Service Interpreting. From the vantage point of a general model of professionalization as a process resting on a performative and an organizational aspect (Molander & Terum 2008, Molander & Grimen 2010) attention is drawn to the interplay between education, practice, and research in PSI (Skaaden 2018, 2020, 2023). Analysing the interpreter’s role in terms of the exercise of professional discretion I point to issues both at the micro-level of the institutional dialogue and the macro-level of the interpreter’s societal function: What should the interpreter’s domain for the exercise of discretion cover? How is the interpreter’s agency to be understood? How may the interpreters’ professional status affect the professional integrity their clients? Where may research that documents the actions of layperson interpreters lead the interpreter profession and its knowledge base?
The theoretical discussion is supported by empirical data from interpreting students’ reflections on their professional status. The reflections are excerpted from students’ online chats and focus groups during and after attending BA courses on PSI at Oslo Metropolitan University. The title of the talk is inspired by the students’ reflections about their clients’ expectations of what interpreters can take upon themselves. The analysis shows that although the interpreter fulfils the performative criteria of a profession, an underdeveloped organizational aspect hampers the process of professionalization. In conclusion I hold that the state of affairs may threaten not only interpreters’ professionalization but even the professional integrity of the professionals served by interpreters, i.e., the classic professions within medicine and law. For professionalization to progress, the organizational aspect needs to develop in an interplay between education, practice, and research.
Speaker
Professor Hanne Skaaden
Organisation: Oslo Metropolitan University
Biography: Professor Hanne Skaaden teaches interpreting at Oslo Metropolitan University and has developed a blended learning model for interpreting courses based on an experiential-dialogic approach. Addressing professionalization from the vantage point of the interpreter’s double alegiance to speaker and listener, Skaaden is co-author of Ethics in Public Service Interpreting (Routledge, 2020). In addition to interpreters’ education and the process of professionalisation, Skaaden’s research interests also cover remote interpreting.
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Bragg Theatre
Schuster Building
Manchester
