Linguistic Benefits of Social Interaction in the K-Pop X (Formerly Known As Twitter) Communities for Translation Trainees

Translators have a great opportunity to acquire a language in an immersive environment through social networks, with native and non-native speakers, which helps to strengthen their language skills and therefore increase their confidence in understanding and using it with others, this results in an increase in student motivation to continue learning (Ghafar 2023, Putra Nasution 2022). The purpose of this study was to identify the linguistic benefits that social interaction in K-Pop communities on X brings for translation trainees. We adopted a mixed exploratory and descriptive research approach, and one-on-one interviews were conducted on five students from the BA in Modern Languages (in the field of translation) from a Mexican university. Findings of this study show that translation trainees can take advantage of social networking as a way of immersion for language acquisition. Hence students can take advantage from their personal preferences and learn things that they can use in their professional careers. We hope that this research opens a new window of opportunity to what could be a new form of language immersion.