Swedish interpreter professions – How legislation and public institutions contribute to creation and disruption of work, remuneration and education

ABSTRACT

This article explores how the interpreter professions in Sweden have been forged through different types of legislation and public actions. The study covers the period from 1971 to 2018 and investigates different public documents such as laws, bills, and special investigations in order to trace the development of the three interpreter professions, public service interpreting, sign language interpreting and conference interpreting. Document analysis and content analysis are used to frame how the term interpreter is conceptualised and used. Newspaper corpora and archives are used to explore how different types of interpreters are covered in media. Furthermore, the use, provision, remuneration, and education of interpreters in Sweden are investigated through the same documents. The study concludes that in a number of cases direct links can be found between the development of the profession and special investigations and legislation.

KEYWORDS:

• Public service interpreting
• sign language interpreting
• conference interpreting
• professionalisation
• Sweden

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Correction Statement

This article has been corrected with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

Notes

1. The folk high schools are a post-secondary education common in countries in northern Europe such as Finland, Sweden, Norway and Denmark, Germany, Austria and Switzerland. It is a publicly funded system with a pedagogical philosophy based on the Danish theologist Grundtvig’s ideas on education as universal and common (Frímannsson 2006). Folk high schools may teach academic topics, but do not grant academic degrees. They are based on the principle of universal and common education and depending on the programme they are open to students both with and without secondary education.

2. Swedish SOU:s are publicly available at https://www.sou.gov.se/

3. International Association for Conference Interpreters www.aiic.org

4. https://www.sou.gov.se/

5. https://www.riksdagen.se/sv/dokument-lagar/

6. https://spraakbanken.gu.se/

7. https://tidningar.kb.se/

8. https://tidningar.kb.se/?q = r%C3%A4ttstolk&from = 1881–01-01&to = 1881–12-31

9. All translations of quotes from the sources are made by the author of this paper.

10. En myndighet ska använda tolk och se till att översätta handlingar om det behövs för att den enskilde ska kunna ta till vara sin rätt när myndigheten har kontakt med någon som inte behärskar svenska

11. Komplett och samhällsbärande språk (SOU 2002:27, 411)

12. Up until 2013, the official English name of TÖI was the Institute for Interpretation and Translation Studies.

13. https://www.emcinterpreting.org/emci/core-curriculum

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Elisabet Tiselius

Elisabet Tiselius is Associate Professor in Interpreting Studies and teaches at the public service, conference and signed language interpreting programmes at Stockholm University. She supervises student theses at all levels. She is an active interpreter for spoken French, English and Danish into Swedish and a Swedish state authorised public service interpreter. She is also accredited by the EU and is a member of AIIC. Her research interests include cognitive processes of interpreting, interpreting in healthcare, and training of (deaf) interpreters. Her twitter handle is @tulkur