Türkiye'de toplum çevirmenliği ağı: Meslekleş (Eme) meye yönelik algılar ve ötesi

The need for communication across the world leads the need for community interpreters to increase especially in governmental institutions, such as courts, hospitals, and immigration offices. Considering the cruciality of such settings in terms of the lives of the language deficient people, community interpreting is of high importance, and the profession requires the application of ethical principles for quality interpreting accordingly. Therefore, this study aims to analyze how the community interpreters from different subfields perceive the ethical principles, the conditions within the field and the actors involved in this process. It is presumed that there is a lack of professionalization in the field of community interpreting. In this sense, the perceptions of 12 community interpreters were analyzed through semi-structured in-depth interviews by adopting a phenomenological approach to understand how they perceive the phenomenon of ethical principles and professionalization. The interview questions consist of 5 parts as General Qualifications and Experiences, Role, Ethical Principles, Actors, and Institutionalization and Professionalization. Within the framework of Actor-Network Theory by Callon and Latour, these questions were used to map the network of community interpreting in Turkey and to define the actors within with the aim of understanding how the interpreters see the profession and the effect of other human and non-human actors. Through the data obtained from these interviews, it is aimed to demonstrate whether it is possible to speak of norms in the field within the concept of professional norms by Chesterman. According to the findings, each sub-network has its own human and non-human actors that vary depending on their interests in the network. The lack of professionalization in Turkey leads the interpreters to adapt themselves to the expectations of the other actors causing their roles to change continuously and to turn into more active than necessary. As a result, the adoption of ethical principles also varies according to these expectations which shows that the actors through their expectations affect the perceptions, behaviors and roles of the community interpreters. It is concluded that the lack of an association in the field of community interpreting in Turkey causes the prevalence of other actors' expectations to exercise control over the behaviors of the community interpreters. This study is thought to contribute to the field in terms of understanding the perceptions of the community interpreters as the central actor, but the perceptions of the other actors need to be analyzed to understand and evaluate the network thoroughly as a whole.