Understanding Community Interpreting Services

This book investigates community interpreting services as a market offering that satisfies the needs of Culturally and Linguistically Diverse (CALD) members of the Australian community, with an additional chapter on the Turkish context. Bringing together the disciplines of interpreting studies and management, the author analyses a variety of challenges which still arise in various fields of interpreting and suggest possible solutions, as well as future directions for other global contexts where changing demographics mean that community-based interpreting is increasingly relevant. Based on interviews with various stakeholders including directors, interpreters, and trainers in the private sector or state-run institutions, the book's main focus is the real experiences of people working on the ground in community interpreting. This book will be of interest to students and scholars of translation, interpreting and migration studies, as well as interpreters and their trainers, and government policy-makers. 

• refugees
• professionalisation
• Australia
• stakeholders
• policy-making
• migrants
• settlement
• language service units
• diversity
• recruitment
• White Australia Policy
• sustainability
• social inclusion

“The book is a welcome addition to the field. Eser explores the various challenges facing the provision of community interpreting services in Australia, with a particular focus on provision in the very culturally and linguistically diverse (CALD) state of Victoria. Its novelty lies in its analysis of the interpreting industry through a management studies lens, through which Eser has managed to explore and link the many different challenges and issues involved in offering quality and sustainable community interpreting services. I have no doubt that the issues and strategies discussed by Eser here apply to the situation in many other countries.” --Ineke H. M. Crezee, Auckland University of Technology, New Zealand.

"This book is an invaluable contribution to community interpreting studies. For a very long time, we in Australia have felt our industry to be quite unique and despite the many real challenges that are documented in this book, those involved share a deep commitment and pride in this industry. We are proud of Dr Eser's work which has taken us to the world stage and we hope that our lifelong 'experiment' will provide a solid template for global communities to follow. Dr Eser's book combines not only a history and descriptions of the industry, but delves deeper and confronts the practical reality of community interpreting: the daily challenges facing interpreters and translators as well as those that threaten the sustainability of such an essential service. A thought provoking read for anyone contemplating a career in language services or language services' policy!" --Niki Baras, ProfessionalsAustralia.

• Department of Translation and Interpreting, Amasya University, Amasya, Turkey

  Oktay Eser

Oktay Eser is Associate Professor and Head of the Department of Translation and Interpreting at Amasya University, Turkey. 

Policies and ethics