Non-professionals Translating and Interpreting. Participatory and Engaged Perspectives

Translation studies finds itself today at a stage where its traditional focus on translator and interpreter training and on the advancement of the status of translators and interpreters as professionals is no longer sufficient to address the complexity of real-life situations of translating and interpreting. As increasing numbers of non-professionals translate and interpret in a wider range of contexts and in more diversified forms, their work emerges not only as an alternative to established professional practice, but also as a distinctive phenomenon, which the discipline has yet to recognize as a noteworthy area of study. This article looks into the relatively uncharted territory of non-professional translation and interpreting, drawing mainly on Arjun Appadurai’s conceptualization of global transactions, and offers a number of insights into what these new developments might mean for the discipline at large.