Supporting the social integration of migrant women in South Korea through language services: Roles of marriage migrant interpreters in multicultural family support centre counselling services

ABSTRACT

Since the mid-1990s, over 280,000 women, mostly from Asian countries, have settled in South Korea by marrying Korean men, forming so-called ‘multicultural families’. Government-funded multicultural family support centres (MFSCs) play a central role in the implementation of various support programmes for marriage migrant women and multicultural families. MFSC marriage migrant interpreters, who are also marriage migrant women, deliver language services in a wide range of settings. Apart from interpreting and translation work, they perform multiple roles as helpers and mediators, including responding to inquiries from service users and offering basic informal counselling. Based on interviews with marriage migrant interpreters and counselling staff at MFSCs, this paper examines the conflicting perceptions and expectations of marriage migrant interpreters’ role(s) in MFSC counselling settings. Such role confusion creates tension between the role based on the interpreter ethics and the actual enactment in daily practice, and raises further issues of trust and status. This paper argues that the lack of clarity about the occupational identity of marriage migrant interpreters not only jeopardises the professionalisation of community interpreting, but also undermines the empowerment of migrant women, including marriage migrant interpreters.

KEYWORDS:

• Multicultural family
• migrant women
• interpreter
• role
• language service

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. In fact, other types of migrants’ families, such as those comprising migrant workers, are not recognised as multicultural families under Korean law. While migrant workers cannot apply for citizenship, marriage migrants can eventually obtain citizenship.

2. Seven different Korean ministries and government agencies, including the Ministry of Justice and the Ministry of Education, are involved in implementing the multicultural family policy in South Korea, but the Ministry of Gender Equality and Family is the principal government body that handles multicultural family support programmes. It is often the case that various non-government organisations run local multicultural family support centres (MFSCs) under the supervision of the Korea Institute for Healthy Family.

3. There is no national accreditation system for community interpreters, but medical and court interpreter certification programmes were recently introduced in South Korea, albeit on a limited scale.

4. Although many marriage migrant interpreters want to develop their professional careers as well as their interpreting and translation skills (Lee et al. 2014a, 191), the current organisational structure of MFSCs provides little room for growth as an interpreter. Also, limited Korean language proficiency and educational achievement dims the prospect for career advancements in social work, unless individuals obtain further qualifications.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Jieun Lee

Jieun Lee is Professor at Ewha Womans University Graduate School of Translation and Interpretation. Her research interests include legal interpreting, community interpreting, interpreter and translator training, and discourse analysis. Her research work has been published in peer-reviewed journals such as Interpreting, Translation and Interpreting Studies, Applied Linguistics, Multilingua, Perspectives, Meta, and International Journal of Speech, Language and the Law. She authored Sabeoptongyeogui Irongwa Silje (The Theory and Practice of Legal Interpreting) and Damunhwasidaeui Sabeoptongyeok (Legal Interpreting in a Multicultural Society) and coauthored Community Language Interpreting and Gogeup Hanyeong Beonyeogui Gisul (Advanced Technique of Korean English Translation).