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The Status of Conference Interpreters: A Global Survey into the Profession

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The Status of Conference
Interpreters: A Global Survey
into the Profession

Paola Gentile
Università di Trieste
paola.gentile@phd.units.it

abstract

The study of status has so far received scant attention as a research topic in In-
terpreting Studies. Although several authors refer to conference interpreting as
“one of the fairest and loftiest occupations in the world” (Herbert, 1952: 3), no
empirical investigation has been carried out so far to assess the validity of the
myths attached to the profession. Even though the majority of studies have fo-
cused almost exclusively on the status of translators, an empirical study carried
out by Dam and Zethsen (2013) revealed that conference interpreters do not place
themselves at the top of the status continuum, which means that conference in-
terpreters’ considerations on status do not correspond to the assumptions found
in literature about the high standing of the interpreting profession. This paper
illustrates the findings of a global survey addressed to conference interpreters
worldwide, filled out by 803 respondents, whose objective was to assess how con-
ference interpreters perceive their occupational status and how they believe that
conference interpreting is regarded in society. The theoretical framework draws
insights from Social Theory and the Sociology of the Professions, which seek to
shed light both on interpreters’ self-perception of their work and on how the pro-
fession is socially represented.

63
Keywords

status, prestige, conference interpreters, questionnaire, Sociology.

1. Introduction

The interpreter’s professional status can be said to be one of the least debated is-
sues in interpreting research; despite growing awareness of the need for profes-
sionalisation, status has hardly been considered as a research subject in its own
right. Yet, investigating status may contribute to understanding issues concern-
ing codes of ethics, new developments in the T&I market and public opinions
about the interpreting profession, not to mention the interpreter’s roles and
responsibilities. It is only within the last few years that this topic has begun to
receive the attention it deserves, although most studies have focused almost ex-
clusively on translators’ occupational status, their objective being that of assess-
ing to what extent hypotheses on the low status of translators are perceived to
be true (Katan, 2011; Sela-Sheffy and Shlesinger, 2011; Pym, 2012; Dam and Zeth-
sen, 2013). Empirical data gathered from recent studies have clearly shown that
“translation is not a high-status profession” (Dam and Zethsen, 2011: 984), and
that translators often consider themselves as unappreciated and almost power-
less professionals; when asked to compare translation and interpreting, transla-
tors believe that interpreters are better regarded (Katan, 2011: 78).
Conversely, conference interpreting has always enjoyed higher status, due to
the supposed appeal of interpreters’ lifestyles (Dam and Zethsen, 2013). According
to the ideal picture of conference interpreting portrayed in scholarly literature,
few professions can be as fascinating as interpreting; interpreters have the im-
mense opportunity to combine their passion for foreign languages and cultures
with the privilege of witnessing historical events, working in glamorous venues
and meeting the most important personalities of the political and social sphere.
The status and prestige of the interpreting profession has been greatly enhanced
by these myths, whose validity has never been empirically demonstrated, espe-
cially because the allure interpreters enjoyed in the 1950s is not the same as the
prestige interpreters have in contemporary society, whose labour market is rid-
dled with paradoxes and inconsistencies. Some of the sociological complexities
regarding status were addressed by one of the first attempts to study conference
interpreters’ occupational status empirically, carried out by Dam and Zethsen
(2013). Their objective was to study the self-perceived occupational status of EU
Danish staff interpreters and translators through an on-line survey; their main
hypothesis was that interpreters would position themselves at the top of the
status continuum, whereas translators would place themselves at a lower level.
Data gathered from their questionnaires confirmed their hypothesis only par-
tially, and this was a surprising outcome which begged for further research. The

64
aim of the present paper is to analyse conference interpreters’ self-perception
of their occupational status at a global level, as no empirical study focusing ex-
clusively on the interpreting profession has been carried out to date. The first
section of this paper is dedicated to the theoretical framework, which sits at the
intersection between Interpreting Studies, Social Theory and the Sociology of
the Professions, all of which contribute to a more comprehensive understand-
ing of the issues concerning the state of the interpreting profession. Section 3
and 4 focus more in detail on methodology, which consists of an on-line survey
completed by 803 conference interpreters worldwide, whose outcome, which is
part of an on-going Ph.D. project, will shed some light on the factors that might
influence views of conference interpreters’ status and may provide researchers
with insight into the public perceptions of one of the most fascinating and, at the
same time, understudied professions of all time.

2. The Interpreter’s Status: A Theoretical Framework

Status is central both to social structure and social interaction, though it is far
from being an unambiguous concept. Like role, it is a fluctuating notion, which
can either be framed in Durkheim’s functionalist theories of socio-economic
stratification (Dingwall, 2012) or in theories focusing on moral values, which
are detached from economic power (Lane, 2000). Although the notions of sta-
tus and prestige are often used interchangeably, in Sociology they are studied
separately, as they fall into two completely different categories: status is de-
termined by institutional and economic parameters, whereas prestige is in-
fluenced by social and symbolically functional codes. In this study, status and
prestige will be analysed respectively according to the socio-economic and the
lay approach: the first sets out to determine whether conference interpret-
ing could be defined as a profession according to socio-economic parameters,
whereas the second method aims at assessing the degree of prestige enjoyed
by the interpreting profession by focusing on common-sense perceptions that
the general population has of it. Although Dam and Zethsen (2013) argue that
the concept of prestige is related to the enjoyment of power and wealth, soci-
ologist Stolley (2005: 44) maintains that moral evaluations of a profession are
not always related to the above-mentioned parameters. Teachers, for instance,
may not have much economic power but enjoy a great deal of social prestige,
whereas politicians may be very rich and powerful but are not always held in
high moral esteem. In order to make a clear distinction between these two con-
cepts, a snapshot of the central notions of status and prestige will be provided
as a model of analysis.

The Status of Conference Interpreters 65

2.1. The Socio-Economic Approach

Although constant reference will be made in this paper to the concept of status,
it should be pointed out that this word can either refer to social status or to profes-
sional status, which indicate two separate (but at the same time intertwined) no-
tions. Social status corresponds to the position an individual occupies in a social
structure. According to the Sage Dictionary of Sociology (Bruce & Yearley, 2006: 39),
status indicates a specific rank in the society to which a person belongs, which
can be both ascribed and achieved: an individual who enjoys ascribed status has
made no effort to obtain it, as this kind of status is assigned on the basis of race,
sex and date of birth. Conversely, achieved status is reached through choice and
merits, and reflects personal skills and abilities (Ferrante, 2014: 93). The Queen
of England, for example, enjoys ascribed status, whereas athletes achieve their
status through training and personal efforts.1 According to Anthony Giddens, the
notions of social and professional status are linked: in his work Central Problems
in Social Theory: Action, Structure and Contradiction in Social Analysis (1979), he sug-
gested that individuals’ identity and roles are shaped by status, which is not just a
rank in society, but a combination of social criteria such as, for instance, occupa-
tion (ibid.: 118).
As occupation is one of the main factors characterising status, professional
status can be understood as a concept deriving from achieved status; according
to the theory of social stratification (Ganzeboom & Treiman, 1996: 201), profes-
sional status is attributed on the basis of the type of occupation and the level of
education, which are both attained through personal achievements. For example,
medical doctor, teacher and conference interpreter are all professional statuses, which
give information on the level of academic training, expertise and remuneration
of these professionals. Professional status indicates therefore the set of skills
which enable a professional to render a service to society, and is determined
by classifications such as ISCO (International Standard Classification of Occu-
pations, 2012) and by indexes of Socio-Economic Status (Reynolds e Fletcher-
Janzen, 2007), both connoting one’s position in the social hierarchy and how the
hierarchy is structured. According to these classifications, the main parameters
defining professional status are remuneration and education, which are also the
main criteria used in the present survey to assess whether interpreting can be
considered as a high-status profession.

1 This distinction is also of importance as far as the evolution of the interpreting profession
is concerned; the first generation of interpreters were granted the ascribed status of in-
terpreters simply because they were bilingual. From the 1960s onwards, with the spread
of interpreting schools, the status of interpreter began to become achieved through an
academic career, as the majority of aspiring interpreters were not natural bilinguals. This
turning point in the history of the interpreting profession, defined by Baigorri-Jalón
(2004) as the passage “from marvel to profession”, has had some significant implications
for the way society considers interpreting still today.

66
2.2. The Lay Approach

Along with the institutional parameters determined by the socio-economic ap-

proach, the lay analysis takes into account perspectives drawn from the works of
Pierre Bourdieu (1991) indicating the symbolic value of a profession, which is not
necessarily tied to economic parameters. The main determinants of prestige can-
not be objectively pointed out, as prestige does not concern the material rewards
provided by a profession, but the moral worthiness of a specific occupation. Ac-
cording to Pierre Bourdieu (1991), status is one of the main factors contributing
to the creation of economic capital, whereas prestige falls into the domain of sym-
bolic capital. The two parameters of education and remuneration surely have an
impact on evaluations of prestige, but external and irrational components also
play an important role in determining social esteem.
Social psychologist Wertheimer (Luchins & Luchins, 1978) argues that pres-
tige is assigned according to subjective and emotional criteria, as the desire for
social recognition is one of the basic, innate characteristics of mankind. Accord-
ing to this view, the concepts of prestige and profession can be understood as popu-
lar symbols: as prestige is a mental construct which indicates the “social beliefs
on what the characteristics of a profession ought to be” (Pattison & Pill, 2004:
16), a profession can be understood as the social product of popular representa-
tions, which show how lay people morally evaluate the main features of a pro-
fession. By way of example, a survey (Harris Interactive 2009) carried out in the
US showed that the social prestige of fire-fighters increased substantially after
the events of 9/11, demonstrating that, according to American public opinion,
a profession that is considered to have a high social value need not be either a
high-paying job or an occupation requiring a solid academic background. These
findings demonstrate that a profession represents the institutionalisation of al-
truistic values: medical doctors treat diseases, lawyers and judges make sure that
the law is upheld, teachers contribute to the spreading of knowledge and inter-
preters help people who speak different languages to communicate.
However, too often conference interpreting has been considered as a fascinat-
ing but mechanical activity, both by the general public and the academia itself, as
the interest in the neurological and cognitive aspects of interpreting developed
in the 1970s has demonstrated. A different view of interpreting gained ground
only during the social turn (Pöchhacker, 2004) in Interpreting Studies. From the
1990s interpreting was no longer regarded as a luxury reserved to an élite of peo-
ple, as it started to be increasingly defined as a service, which is supposed to meet
the needs of the participants in a communicative situation (Viezzi, 2013: 377).
This notion suggests that interpreting should not just be regarded as a profes-
sion in terms of remuneration, level of education and fame, but also as an expres-
sion of the social value of mutual understanding. A sharper focus on the moral
characteristics of interpreting may also help to shed light on the social purpose
pursued by conference interpreters, which is why the survey proposed in this

The Status of Conference Interpreters 67

study aims at eliciting information on interpreters’ views about the social im-
portance of their work.

3. The Survey

This study is based on quantitative analysis of an on-line distributed question-

naire. Although face-to-face interviews would have been a more appropriate
method for eliciting socio-psychological insights on status and prestige, the
quantitative approach was chosen to provide a picture of the interpreting pro-
fession as a whole, with a view to laying out the basis for further research. The
model of analysis presented in this paper draws inspiration from previous stud-
ies carried out on interpreters’ and translators’ professional status (Katan, 2011;
Dam & Zethsen, 2013). Before sending the survey, a pilot study was carried out
with the first draft of the questionnaire, which consisted of 39 questions. 13
interpreting professors at IUSLIT Trieste, 2 were invited to complete the ques-
tionnaire: 6 of them did so. This small-scale experiment was useful to evaluate
feasibility, time, and statistical variability in an attempt to refine, reformulate or
remove some questions.
The final version of the survey consisted of 35 questions and it took approxi-
mately 10 minutes to complete. The questionnaire was made available at the end
of May 2014 and was closed at the end of July 2014. It was electronically based and
placed on the online survey portal Surveymonkey.com, where respondents were
able to log on from a link provided to them. In addition, 144 comments were
posted in the comment box placed at the end of the questionnaire. A total of 860
respondents began the survey and 803 completed it, which demonstrated the ef-
fectiveness of the on-line link distribution. The link to the questionnaire was ini-
tially sent to 56 professional associations of conference interpreters in 53 coun-
tries and also to personal contacts, such as academics and colleagues. In order to
reach as many conference interpreters as possible, both staff and free-lance, the
link to the questionnaire was also posted on social networks, a method which al-
lowed to gather responses also from free-lance interpreters who do not belong to
any professional association. The questionnaire comprised ten sections:
– Demographics (sex, age, country of residence);
– Professional identity (years of experience, professional associations, free-
lance or staff, interpreting as a full time profession);
– Opinions on public service interpreting;
– Education and opinions on research in interpreting;
– Remuneration;
– Exposure of the interpreting profession in the media;
– Perceptions of status;

2 Department of Law, Language, Interpreting and Translation Studies, University of Trieste.

68
 – Perceptions of the prestige and the social value of interpreting;
– Perceptions of role;
– Considerations on the future of the interpreting profession.
Although data gathered from this first questionnaire yielded interesting results
for all the aforementioned sections, the focus of this paper will be on a compari-
son between the socio-economic parameters defining conference interpreting
as a profession and interpreters’ views on the public image of their profession,
which constitute the core of the lay approach.

4. Results

In this paragraph, data will be presented according to the following macro-cat-

egories: the socio-economic determinants of status and perceptions of prestige.
The first category is divided into two sub-categories, concerning: 1) member-
ship of professional associations, autonomy and full-time job; 2) education and
remuneration. Descriptive statistics frequencies and percentages were used to
analyse data, as they are regarded as a useful method to examine personal in-
formation variables. The results were processed using the statistical software
SPSS Statistics, whose crosstabs function allowed highlighting of the relation-
ships between questions by means of chi-square tests and Cramer’s V tests. Chi-
square tests showed whether or not there was a relationship between variables
(i.e. country of residence and remuneration), but they did not specify how sig-
nificant this relationship was. Therefore, once statistical significance was estab-
lished, Cramer’s V tests were carried out in order to give additional information
on the strength of the association between two variables. The more the result of
a Cramer’s V was close to 0, the higher was the probability that the two variables
were not linked to each other, as its coefficient ranges from 0 (no association) to
1 (perfect association).

4.1. Demographics

Data collected on gender show an interesting though not surprising aspect of the
interpreting profession: out a total of 803 respondents, 75.7% are women. This
figure should raise awareness on the topic of the feminisation of the interpret-
ing profession, which has been widely neglected in Interpreting Studies, as well
as the sociological and psychological repercussions of the increasing percentage
of women in the profession. Although this discussion cannot be held in detail
as it is not the main focus of this study, it would be worthwhile to investigate
the causes and the consequences of this trend. As for the age of participants in
the current sample, 56.2% of respondents fall into the category of 46-65 years
of age, whereas 31.1% ticked the box 26-45 years. Only 0.7% of those interviewed

The Status of Conference Interpreters 69

were 18-25, and 11.8% were over 65. Although the majority of professional con-
ference interpreters are between 50 and 60 years of age, it is encouraging to see
that roughly 30 per cent of professionals are in their thirties. The low percentage
of under-25 respondents is attributable to the fact that respondents in this age
group are still receiving training in interpreting, whereas interpreters who are
over 65 are probably retired or not working full-time. As far as the country of
residence is concerned, although this was meant to be a global survey, data show
a strongly Eurocentric perspective, with the European continent accounting for
78.8% of respondents: the most represented country is Italy, which accounts for
16.4% of respondents (N=132), followed by countries hosting the headquarters
of international organisations, such as Belgium with 16.3% (N=131) and Switzer-
land with 7.5% (N=60).

Europe America Asia What is your country of residence?

132 131
Africa Oceania
4% 1% 0%
60
45
35 32 28 27
16% 26 22 22 19 17 14 13 12 11 10 10
Belgium

France

Austria

C. Rep

Slovakia

Netherlands

Denmark
Germany

Portugal

Finland
USA
UK
Italy

Spain

79%
Switzerland
Brazil

Canada

Greece

Argentina
Figure 1: Breakdown of respondents according to the continents they reside in
Figure 2: Breakdown of the most represented countries in the survey

4.2. The Socio-Economic Determinants of Status

In this section, data will be analysed according to the objective socio-economic

determinants of professional status, which are: 1) membership of professional
associations; 2) professional autonomy; 3) full-time job; 4) education; 5) remu-
neration. The objective is to ascertain whether conference interpreting could be
considered as a fully-fledged profession in economic and social terms.

4.2.1. Membership of Professional Associations, Autonomy and Full-time Job

In order to evaluate the socio-economic status of the interpreting profession,

questions were asked according to some of the parameters which characterise
high-status professions: membership of a professional association, autonomy
and a full-time job. Professional associations are considered as “forums for the
exchange of knowledge and dissemination of new knowledge related to prac-

70
tice” (Greer, Grover & Fowler, 2007: 17). Therefore, membership of a professional
association is an important factor which marks the difference between profes-
sionals and amateurs. In designating who is qualified to practise interpreting,
professional associations exert control over the possession of specialised skills,
therefore guaranteeing trustworthiness and accountability. As the link to the
questionnaire was sent to professional associations worldwide, the majority of
interpreters interviewed (90.6%) belong to a professional organization, which
demonstrates that professional conference interpreters have the opportunity
to collaborate and create networks with their peers in order to share and dis-
seminate best practices in the field. As far as autonomy is concerned, 85.5% of
respondents work as free-lance interpreters, and this shows that professional
conference interpreters have a high degree of control over their job. Autonomy
is regarded as a core feature of a profession, because professionals can make
independent judgements about their work (Bayles, 1989: 21), a characteristic
of established professions such as medicine and law. In addition, 71.3% of re-
spondents declared that interpreting is their full-time profession, which means
that, as most conference interpreters work as free-lance, they can make a living
by exercising the profession. Most sociologists argue that what distinguishes
a profession from an occupation is that professionals harness their skills and
expertise in order to perform a full time job. According to sociologist Volti (2011:
158), in the 1950s many occupations (such as medical doctors) achieved pro-
fessional status because they became full-time jobs, a professional trait which
delineated their domain on a particular speciality. Therefore, according to the
above-mentioned parameters, conference interpreting can be regarded as an
established profession.

4.2.2. Education and Remuneration

One of the main prerequisites to enter a profession is to have a university de-

gree. Sociologists argue that a professional is “a person who masters and applies
a body of knowledge in a specific area of inquiry” (Greer, Grover & Fowler, 2007:
16); in the same way as attorneys master a body of knowledge associated with
the practice of law, conference interpreters harness the linguistic skills acquired
during their academic career. The sample reported in this paper shows that 61.8%
of conference interpreters throughout the world have a degree in translation/
interpreting, which testifies to the increasing importance attached to specialised
and academic training. However, the remaining 38% is made up of conference
interpreters who do not have an MA in translation/interpreting. The figure be-
low provides a breakdown of the level of education of conference interpreters
who do not have a degree in interpreting:

The Status of Conference Interpreters 71

Figure 3: Type of degree held by conference interpreters who do not have an MA in
translation/interpreting

A considerable number of respondents have a degree in Linguistics and For-

eign Languages (42.8%), whereas the other 27.4% have a degree in a subject
other than interpreting, such as Law, Business and Administration, Art, Engi-
neering, Dentistry, Economics, Science, etc. Moreover, 18.3% of respondents
only have a BA in translation/interpreting or in one of the above subjects,
whereas 10.7% have a post-graduate diploma, which is a certificate obtained af-
ter a BA and is generally compared to a master’s level degree. 4.6% of respond-
ents have no degree at all, which may be due to the fact that in they live in a
country which does not offer specialised training in conference interpreting,
or could also be attributable to the fact that up until the 1960s there were not
many institutions providing academic training in conference interpreting:
some respondents declared that they do not have an MA in interpreting simply
because it did not exist in the days when they trained. The hypothesis was that
older generations (from 56 years of age) do not have a degree in translation/in-
terpreting, whereas younger generations (18-45) do, as a result of the increas-
ing specialised training offered by universities. A chi-square test (sv .000, p
<0.05) indeed demonstrated that there is a correlation between age and the
possession or non-possession of an MA in T&I, which was also confirmed by a
Cramer’s V test (.25, p <0.05), employed to test the strength of the association,
as shown in the figure below:

72
Contingency table: Do you have an MA in translation/interpreting? * What is your age group?
What is your age group? Total
18-25 26-35 36-45 46-55 56-65 65+

Count 5 83 113 139 111 45 496

YES
Expected 3,7 59,9 94,5 144,5 134,7 58,7 496,0
Do you have
count
an MA in
translation/ Count 1 14 40 95 107 50 307
interpreting?
NO
Expected 2,3 37,1 58,5 89,5 83,3 36,3 307,0
count

Count 6 97 153 234 218 95 803

Total
Expected 6,0 97,0 153,0 234,0 218,0 95,0 803,0
count

Figure 4: Results of a chi-square test comparing the following variables: age and possession
of an MA in translation/interpreting

If we look at the yes column, we notice that in younger generations (18-45) the
number of people who have an MA exceeds the expected count, whereas in older
generations (46-65+) fewer people than expected have an MA. The reverse is
true for the no column: the number of people who do not have an MA in trans-
lation and interpreting exceeds the expected count as far as older generations
(46-65+) are concerned. On the one hand, these findings empirically confirm
the hypothesis that conference interpreting is becoming increasingly promi-
nent in university curricula; on the other, they suggest that there is a huge gap
between older and younger generations, which is reflected in considerations on
how the status of conference interpreter could be achieved. Older generations,
which account for 51.2% of interpreters who do not have an MA in interpret-
ing, are more likely to champion the myth according to which interpreters are
“born, not made”, as they learnt to interpret on the spot or through experience.
Younger generations, instead, appear to value more the importance of academ-
ic education, which contributes to enhancing the belief that interpreters can
also be “made”. As for remuneration, considering that the surveyed population
is made up of interpreters coming from different countries, a quantitative as-
sessment of remuneration was not feasible. Therefore, respondents were asked
to evaluate qualitatively on a scale from 1 (absolutely) to 5 (not at all) whether
they considered the financial remuneration of conference interpreters to be ad-
equate or not. The answers are as follows:

The Status of Conference Interpreters 73

Figure 5: Degree of satisfaction with remuneration, as assessed by interpreters themselves

Also in this case, a chi-square test (sv= 0.48, p <0.05) showed that there is a
correlation between the country of origin and evaluations of the adequacy of
interpreters’ remuneration, and that the pattern is the same for every country.
However, a Cramer’s V test showed that the association between these two vari-
ables (.34, p <0.05), is not very significant, which means that, regardless of the
country they live in, conference interpreters are overall fairly well remuner-
ated. In the light of these results, it may be safely argued that conference in-
terpreting is a high-status profession, at least according to the socio-economic
parameters, which give information about the desirability of a profession in
terms of material rewards.

4.3. Perceptions of Status and Prestige

This section analyses conference interpreters’ professional status from a subjec-

tive perspective. Interpreters’ considerations on status and prestige will be com-
pared with their opinions on how society considers the interpreting profession,
in order to provide a comprehensive view on how the profession is defined and
regarded at a global level.

4.3.1. Interpreters’ Perceptions of Status

Respondents were asked to assess how they think that the general population
considers their status. In order to do so, interpreters had to specify in which pro-
fessional group they believe society places them: four groups of professions were
provided, divided into the categories issued by the Standard Classification of
Occupations (ISCO, 2012), which are calculated by the International Labour Or-

74
ganisation (ILO). If status and prestige are here to be scrutinised from a personal
point of view, we should consider whether there is a discrepancy between the
internal perception of status, which indicates how interpreters perceive them-
selves in their own eyes (and how they see themselves compared to other pro-
fessionals), and the external perception of status, which sheds light on how in-
terpreters think they are perceived by society. Responses concerning conference
interpreters’ internal perception are hereunder illustrated:

Figure 6: Professional status as perceived by conference interpreters

The graph clearly shows that 56.5% of conference interpreters relate their sta-
tus to that of medical doctors and university lecturers, which indicates that
interpreters’ self-perception of status is consistent with responses given as
regards the objective parameters of education and remuneration. Interpreters
thus believe that conference interpreting is a high-status profession, as it is
a job requiring a very high level of education and is generally well remuner-
ated, a consideration which is also consistent with assumptions found in lit-
erature about conference interpreters, who are positioned by translators at the
top of the status continuum (Dam and Zethsen, 2013). However, when asked
to evaluate how society regards their status, i.e. their external perception, they
answered as follows:

The Status of Conference Interpreters 75

Figure 7: Professional status which conference interpreters think people outside the pro-
fession attribute to them

These findings demonstrate that there is a high level of status discrepancy in the
interpreting profession, which means that interpreters consider themselves as
fully-fledged professionals, but they believe that they are not accorded the sta-
tus they deserve. This pattern is observed across all nations: a chi-square test (sv
.000, p <0.05) revealed that in the most represented countries (with a number of
responses higher than 20), in which conference interpreting is also well estab-
lished, the number of responses corresponding to low status (3-4 category, rep-
resenting secondary school teachers and primary school teachers respectively)
were higher compared to those expected, as shown in figure 8.
A Cramer’s V test (.198, p <0.05) also showed that considerations on percep-
tions of status do not change according to the country of residence: the only ex-
ceptions seem to be countries such as Belgium and Switzerland, in which the
presence of international organisations allows conference interpreters to enjoy
higher status, even though one respondent remarked that:

Interpreters are nowadays often seen as a necessary evil in the EU institutions and
sometimes as an unnecessary expense. The constant checking done by delegations in
meetings, with nodding and twitching as we work, shows a lack of confidence in our
abilities and destroys morale. This is a new phenomenon and is a clear demonstration
of our reduced status (Female, Belgium, 26-30 years of experience).

As for countries in which interpreters rely almost exclusively on the private mar-
ket, data are particularly surprising as far as Italy is concerned: the contingency
table reveals that only 19 out of 132 respondents think that society considers con-
ference interpreters as akin to lawyers or medical doctors (the expected count
for that value was 30), whereas 37 respondents believe that interpreters are con-
sidered on the level of nurses or primary school teachers, which are classified as

76
Contingency table: What is your country of residence? * According to the general
population, which of the following professions has a status similar to that of a
conference interpreter?
According to the general population, which
of the following professions has a status
similar to that of a conference interpreter?
CEO, Lawyer, Secondary Primary
finance medical school school Total
manager, doctor, teacher, teacher,
legislator university architect, nurse,
lecturer journalist social
worker
Count 0 3 23 0 26
Austria Expected
count ,3 6,2 15,1 4,4 26,0

Count 2 45 66 18 131
Belgium Expected
count 1,4 31,1 76,3 22,2 131,0

Count 1 9 30 5 45
Brazil Expected
count ,5 10,7 26,2 7,6 45,0

Count 0 5 12 5 22
Canada Expected
count ,2 5,2 12,8 3,7 22,0

Count 1 9 20 5 35
France Expected
count ,4 8,3 20,4 5,9 35,0
What Count 0 5 25 2 32
is your
Germany Expected
country of ,3 7,6 18,6 5,4 32,0
residence? count
Count 1 19 75 37 132
Italy Expected
count 1,4 31,4 76,8 22,4 132,0

Count 0 5 14 3 22
Spain Expected
count ,2 5,2 12,8 3,7 22,0

Count 0 22 31 7 60
Switzerland Expected
count ,6 14,3 34,9 10,2 60,0

Count 1 4 11 11 27
United
Kingdom Expected ,3 6,4 15,7 4,6 27,0
count
United Count 0 7 19 2 28
States of Expected
America count ,3 6,7 16,3 4,8 28,0

Count 6 133 326 95 560

Total
Expected 6,0 133,0 326,0 95,0 560,0
count

Figure 8: Chi-square test comparing interpreters’ status as perceived by the general

population and interpreters’ country of residence

The Status of Conference Interpreters 77

semi-professions, i.e. occupations possessing some features of professional work
but requiring less in terms of education, skills and judgement. This data dem-
onstrate that the professional status of conference interpreters is still ambiva-
lent and blurred even in those countries with a long professional tradition in the
field, a condition which is consistent with the remarks made by Sela-Sheffy & Sh-
lesinger (2011), who believe that interpreting can be considered more as a semi-
profession than a fully-fledged profession. The reason for this definition may be
found in a lack of understanding on the part of the general population of what
interpreting really is and involves, which drives interpreters themselves to feel
considered as an “expensive luxury” (Female, France, 31-35 years of experience)
and think that the profession is little understood, because “the public has strange
– and quite erroneous – ideas about interpreters: wizards, secretaries, machines,
among them” (Female, Peru, 21-25 years of experience). As years have passed, the
interpreter’s status and cannot be said to have endured the test of time: many
years have gone by since Herbert (1952: 3) described interpreting as “one of the
loftiest occupations” a man could perform, and many historical events, as well
as changes in the labour market, have occurred since the birth of the profession.
As one interpreter remarked: “People would be happy to do without interpret-
ers, mainly because they find them too expensive and also because resorting to
English seems to them a better solution” (Female, Belgium, 16-20 years of experi-
ence). In the light of these data, it could be safely argued that the perceived status
of conference interpreting in society is lower than expected.

4.3.2. Interpreters’ Perceptions of Prestige

According to Linda Hargreaves (in Saha e Dworkin, 2009: 217), status is consid-
ered as a social rank, whereas prestige is defined as “influence, reputation or
popular esteem derived from characteristics, achievements and associations”.
Considerations on prestige regard whether society thinks that the interpreting
profession is an activity that goes beyond an automatic act of translation, and
consequently attributes a value to it. Therefore, respondents were asked to as-
sess whether society considers the interpreting profession as a job which can be
regarded as socially and morally valuable to society. The results are summarised
in figure 9.
These findings confirm what was pointed out by Dam and Zethsen (2013) in
their study on Danish conference interpreters, in which interpreters’ scores on
questions regarding prestige and value to society were surprisingly low, with a
minimal difference from translators’ responses. In the present survey, which
analyses conference interpreters at a global level, 415 out of 803 respondents be-
lieve that society considers interpreting as important only “to some extent”, and
224 respondents believe that the general population “does not really” regard inter-
preting as a socially valuable job. A chi-square test (sv=.175, p <0.05) and a Cramer’s V

78
Figure 9: Degree of importance that conference interpreters think society attributes to them

test (.303, p <0.05) also revealed that the country of residence was not a signifi-
cant factor in interpreters’ opinions on how society considers their work. This
means that, although Ollivier (2000: 2) argues that status could be framed in the
post-modern paradigm consisting of a “multiplicity of local status orders”, the
findings of the present survey show that there are no context-dependent popular
evaluations concerning prestige, but that at a global level the interpreting profes-
sion seems to be misunderstood and underestimated. One possible explanation
for these result patterns is that admiration for conference interpreting has been
more attributable to the sense of wonder caused by simultaneous interpreting
than to the importance that interpreting (and consequently communication) has
for society. The data reported in this paper suggest that conference interpreting
has invested only in the enhancement of its appearance rather than the values
it represents, such as its role in facilitating dialogue and intercultural commu-
nication. This is perhaps one of the reasons why, education and remuneration
being equal, interpreting does not enjoy the same societal prestige as established
professions such as medical doctor, lawyer or university lecturer, as for society in
general the most important trait of a profession is the willingness to serve others
altruistically. In this respect, Freidson (1989: 424) emphasised that a profession
is distinguished by some as being “dedicated to public service rather than be-
ing concerned only with their own economic interest like other occupations”.
This is why scholars in the field, academics and professional associations should
explain to students and lay people that interpreting is not an artistic trick, but a
social activity seeking the highest realisation of the common good, which has in-
tegration, dialogue, cooperation and mutual understanding as its main pillars: as
one interpreter commented on the questionnaire: “if interpreters are not proud
of their profession and don’t understand and value it, there is no chance others
will” (Female, Brazil, 21-25 years of experience).

The Status of Conference Interpreters 79

5. Conclusion

The objective of this paper was show the provisional findings of an on-going
Ph.D. project whose aim is to shed some light on the perceived status of con-
ference interpreters, an under-studied topic in interpreting research. The theo-
retical premise underlying this study is that status and prestige are two different
sociological concepts which have to be analysed according to two different ap-
proaches: the socio-economic and the lay methods of investigation. The first con-
cerns status and provides a series of socio-economic criteria to assess whether
interpreting may be considered as a fully established profession (i.e. member-
ship of a professional association, autonomy, full-time job, education and remu-
neration), whereas the second regards prestige, and provides some insights into
the social and popular representations of the interpreting profession. An on-line
distributed questionnaire, completed by 803 respondents, confirmed only par-
tially the general belief that conference interpreters are “the stars of the trans-
lation professions” (Dam and Zethsen, 2013: 229) and that enjoy a high status.
However, contrasting perceptions of status were found not in the socio-econom-
ic criteria defining the profession, but rather in how interpreting is considered
by society in general. Although conference interpreters consider themselves as
highly-skilled and high-status professionals, globalisation and changes in the
T&I market have inevitably tainted popular beliefs about the prestige enjoyed by
the interpreting profession. To reverse this trend, a rapprochement between pro-
fessionals and academics could be fruitful, as they can teach future generations
of interpreters to adapt to a constantly-changing market, to learn that what they
translate in the booth can have an impact on people’s lives and to tell their clients
that interpreting is not an expensive luxury but a social instrument promoting
understanding and cooperation. As history shows, the costs of miscommunica-
tion can be much higher than the costs of hiring an interpreter.

80
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