Confessions of Belonging: My Emotional Journey as Medical Translator

Abstract

Different social situations compel us to attach ourselves to different self-identities. These different selves lead to constructed images dichotomized between what we want to be (the ideal self) and how others see us (the limited self). Many different social contexts concerning my identity roles at the hospital are developed within this self-questioning, autoethnographic study of my life as a part-time medical translator. My perceptual self within those social subgroups changed—and continues to do so—as a result of hidden agendas and other manifested selves interacting with each other. The result was a negotiated identity. Thus this relived journey demonstrates the inseparable duality existing within aspects of fieldwork and self-reflexive qualitative research.