Türkiye bağlamında Suriyeli mültecilerin iletişim ihtiyaçlarını karşılayan toplum çevirmenleri

The need for public service interpreters in Turkey has gradually increased in recent years following the inflow of a large number of Syrian refugees. In the most general sense, public service interpreters are individuals establishing communication between refugees/migrants and the host country's public officials. Turkey does not have an institutionalized public service interpreting policy with comprehensive training programs, certification examinations, accreditation, and professional organizations, since the country has only recently faced such a large mass-migration movement. Yet still certain initiatives have been undertaken to meet Syrian refugees' communication needs, and public service interpreters have been recruited at various institutions to this end. In this regard, the present doctoral research addresses the interpreters bridging refugees' communication needs in the units of the Association for Solidarity with Asylum Seekers and Migrants (ASAM), in the legal context including courthouses and police stations, and in the healthcare institutions within the scope of the EU-funded SIHHAT project. The study aims to explore the interpreters' social, cultural, educational, and professional backgrounds; the institutional and other external conditions surrounding them; and the implications of the mentioned issues for the interpreters' interpreting activities and for their attitudes, perceptions and expectations towards public service interpreting. As an agent-oriented study conducting a discussion in the realm of the sociology of translators/interpreters proposed by Chesterman (2006, 2009), the current doctoral research intends to foreground the place and importance of the social context in public service interpreting and to discuss the problem of professional identity formation within this framework. In the study, which adopts a qualitative research method, the data was obtained through an extensive fieldwork conducted in the provinces of İzmir, Mersin, Adana and Gaziantep. Semi-structured interviews conducted with the interpreters in the mentioned contexts are used as the main data source. The descriptive questionnaires for the interpreters, the interviews with the relevant officials/service providers involved in interpreting processes in the mentioned contexts, and the context-specific documents regarding the interpreters' work procedures are used as supplementary data sources. The findings relevant to the research aims are discussed through the French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu's concepts of habitus (Bourdieu, 1977, 1984, 1998, 2000), capital (Bourdieu, 1986, 1989, 1998), and illusio (Bourdieu and Wacquant, 1992; Bourdieu, 2000). And accordingly, the present study has revealed that public service interpreting in general is an unrecognized and undervalued service area in Turkey, and most of its practitioners lack the relevant resources to form a professional identity. Keywords: public service interpreters, Turkish context, habitus, capital, illusio, professional identity