The Community Interpreter’s Role: Students’ Perceptions in the Context of Growing Needs in Türkiye

This study aims to assess community interpreting students’ perceptions of the inter preter’s role. The migrant and refugee population in Türkiye has grown following global developments, wars and crises in the country’s neighbouring geography. This has increased the need for community interpreters who play a key role in over coming language and communication barriers between the host community and foreigners. Growing community interpreting needs requires adjusting the structure and content of community interpreting courses offered at the academic level in the relevant university programmes. As future community interpreters, students’ understanding of and attitude towards the community interpreter’s role is vital for their effective performance of the job and the tasks it entails. This study utilises data collected from 14 community interpreting students enrolled in the Department of Translation and Interpreting at a state university. The students’ perceptions of the community interpreter’s role, task boundaries, and status were explored through an open-ended questionnaire including scenarios based on ethical dilemmas that com munityinterpreters may face in different contexts and a Likert scale survey designed accordingly. The data were analysed under the following headings: communication issues, conveying emotions, impartiality and neutrality, addressing cultural differ ences, and managing power differentials. The analysis revealed findings pointing to the transgression of the boundaries of the mechanistic role traditionally attributed to interpreters. This indicates a developing awareness among the students of the mediating role of interpreters as active agents in different humanitarian contexts. It is hoped that the findings will contribute to the structure and content of community interpreting courses offered in the relevant programmes of higher education insti tutions and to prospective students’ understanding of the community interpreter’s role.