Abstract
This paper explores how and whether the different institutional and organisational contexts affect translators’ professional activities and professional identities. The site researched is the European Commission, where the changing political impetus has recently instigated a new role for some of the translators. For them, the institutional framework has thus changed substantially. This presents an opportunity to research how institutionally expressed status affects the status as experienced by the translators themselves. The data consists of institutional documents as well as interview and observation data from two different settings, a traditional translation unit in Luxembourg (2004) and the local representation of the European Commission in Helsinki (2008). The results indicate that the institutional and physical space occupied by the translators can drastically change their experienced status and motivation even within a single organisational setting.
Highlights
The translator’s profession is vast and varied, and people employed as translators work in numerous different settings, with different working conditions, professional roles and statuses
I will approach this question from the perspective of one single organisational setting, the European Commission
The emerging institutionalised image of the translators is compared to the findings of an ethnographic study, in particular, of the focus group discussions conducted in a Finnish translation unit in June 2004. This set of data is further contrasted with new group interview data, collected in March 2008 from the local representation of the European Commission in Helsinki, where three translators are currently employed as part of the implementation of “Plan D”, the Commission’s new communication strategy
Summary
The translator’s profession is vast and varied, and people employed as translators work in numerous different settings, with different working conditions, professional roles and statuses. The emerging institutionalised image of the translators is compared to the findings of an ethnographic study (see Koskinen 2008), in particular, of the focus group discussions conducted in a Finnish translation unit in June 2004 This set of data is further contrasted with new group interview data, collected in March 2008 from the local representation of the European Commission in Helsinki, where three translators are currently employed as part of the implementation of “Plan D”, the Commission’s new communication strategy. The question I wish to explore in this article is: how has this shifted institutional framework affected the role and status as experienced by the translators?
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