ABSTRACT
Interpreting has evolved across time and space out of the influence of a myriad of players. This chapter sets out to explore the development of the interpreting profession from within. Adopting a relational and dynamic approach to the development of interpreting, it examines the unequal and changing power that internal players exert in shaping the ways in which interpreting is theorized, practised, provided, learnt and taught in our societies, and in so doing, in developing the interpreting profession. The development of the profession has been a matter of concern in interpreting studies
(Tseng 1992; Fenton 1993; Pollitt 1997; Agger-Gupta 2001; Mikkelson 1999, 2004; Ozolins 2000; Wadensjö et al. 2007; Swabey and Gajewski Mickelson 2008). This is not surprising, given that our fairly recent discipline was born out of the very rationale of turning this ancestral, societal practice into a recognized profession. In her foreword to the Proceedings of the fourth Critical Link Conference which addressed the “professionalization of interpreting in the community” (Sweden, 2004), Wadensjö sketches various lines of action taken by interpreting players:
People working with interpreting in various spheres of society and various parts of the world are now involved in a process of professionalization. This implies a range of individual and collective efforts, including struggles to achieve a certain social status, suggestions to define standards of best practice, to control access to professional knowledge – theoretical and practical skills – and to control education and work opportunities.
