Investigation of Interpreting Education at the Undergraduate Level in Turkey from the Angle of Interpreting Competences

The effect of globalization is apparent in both interpreting profession and the market, as in all other professions. Thus, the fields of expertise and the requested languages are diversified, creating a demand for new knowledge and skills in the interpreting service. Knowledge and skills required in interpreting process become evident when the areas of interpreting are examined. In order to be comprehensible in these areas, arising with the phenomenon of globalization, professional interpreters, who have interpreting competence, are needed. Hence this study aims to analyze the extent to which the interpreting competences are given in the curricula of translation and interpreting departments in the light of current developments. Document analysis method was employed in the study as the data collection method to conduct an interpreting competency-oriented analysis of interpreting lessons offered in the translation and interpreting departments in Turkey. Interpreting courses in four state and two foundation universities offering bachelor degrees in translation and interpreting were selected as sample and then analyzed. The contents and objectives of the interpreting courses presented in these departments were employed as the corpus and analyzed with the content analysis method. Content analysis method was administrated as the data analysis method, in which themes and codes were structured based on the interpreting competence matrix and the learning objectives presented by Kautz (2002). The interpreting competence matrix was based on the interpreting competence models presented by Kutz (2010), Pöchhacker (2000) and Albl-Mikasa (2012). First of all, each university was taken into consideration one by one and competence-focused evaluation was conducted; the results were presented in graphs in terms of hours of courses. Afterwards, the analysis was detailed and the departments were compared with each other. The analysis revealed that interpreting competences were presented to the trainee interpreters at different degrees. In addition, it was uncovered that fewer lessons aiming to make the students gain emotional competence were presented in the analyzed departments, compared to other competences.