A Community of Practice for Interpreting: the missing link

Wearing my two hats as Head of Business Engagement for GSBL and Course Leader for the MA Conference Interpreting at  London Metropolitan University , I organised an event that brought together the interest of both worlds. One of my objectives was to promote languages and raise awareness that multilingualism is an underestimated asset in the professional world. Many students across the university speak languages other than English. However, they are often unaware of the value of their language skills.  Rather than a lecture or a workshop, I designed an immersive multilingual event that brought together members of our interpreting Community of Practice (students, ambassadors, alumni and colleagues) who played different roles (organisers, interpreters, helpers, speakers) during the event. All students from the university were invited to join either online, onsite, or on YouTube to discuss the relevance of transferable skills in their professional objective. Why was the event...

Whilst researching Communities of Practice (CoP) as a model for interpreting studies, I increasingly realised, even though I was already aware of it, that interpreters have often been considered to be rare souls and as such quite unique . Rare  and unique  are not the first two features that come to mind when considering Community of Practice (CoP) as a possible framework for interpreting studies or indeed the interpreting profession. Rare and unique But let's take a leap back in time and explore who interpreters were in Antiquity. Interpreters were found where there was a need to solve or avoid conflicts, negotiate business or public relations or indeed, in courts where 'foreigners' were tried. As such their status varied. The Greeks considered interpreters as semi gods; they used the words ' translator'  or  'interpreter'  indifferently which meant ' a human being who performs one of this god's numerous activities (including lin...