Exploring The Construction Of Interpreting Students’ Professional Identity

Interpreter ranks among the most attractive professions for Chinese students and many of them choose to pursue a degree on interpreting to start their career in this field,yet little is known about how interpreting students construct the professional identity as interpreters and how it contributes to their career choice.Identity related issues are important for its central role in constituting one’s believes and values,and professional identity,defined as constellation of attributes,beliefs,and values people use to define themselves in specialized,skill-and education-based occupations or vocations(Benveniste,1987;Ibarra,1999),provide us a chance to have a glimpse on how these interpreting students view themselves and the profession,which might shed light upon the academic understanding of the long-neglected aspect of professional identity construction in the field of interpreting studies.This thesis aims to examine this under-explored issue of professional identity construction of interpreting students,and figure out how they form an identity as an interpreter-to-be and what influence this professional identity may pose upon their career choice.At the methodological level,this thesis adopts a narrative analysis approach,and conducts semi-structured interviews with participants.This analytical methodology takes personal narratives,or stories as the research data and by analysing these narratives this thesis summarises themes from different levels to illustrate key factors that underpinned their behaviours and choices.In adopting such an approach,this thesis values more personal experience rather than massive quantitative data.And the research is conducted among limited numbers of interpreting students.It is individual experience rather than the general phenomenon that interests the researcher.As a result,the conclusions are drawn from case study.Based on the results of the data analysis,it is concluded that interpreting students started to construct their professional identity when they first learned foreign languages and cultures.Factors influencing their identity construction includes expectation of family and teachers,role models in the profession,reward of their learning and training etc.A solid professional identity contributes to their career choice to be an interpreter after graduation while hesitations and concerns remains.