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ABSTRACT
Over the past ten years, employability has been one of the key issues in translation and interpreting (T&I), both in professional practice and in academic settings. However, very few studies focus specifically on the employability of the graduates in the Public Service Interpreting and Translation (PSIT) sector. This article focuses on the latter in a postgraduate programme taught in several language pairs in Spain. Its objectives are to identify aspects that characterise the graduates’ professional situation within the PSIT labour market, to analyse the graduates’ perception regarding the training received and its applicability to the labour market, and to identify tendencies and differences by language pairs. The results, based on a questionnaire sent to eleven cohorts of graduates, will be used to assess the extent to which the programme prepares for market needs, to analyse adaptation possibilities, and provide information that can be useful for programmes that involve several language pairs. Moreover, programme designers, researchers, and PSIT employers can also benefit from the differentiation of the findings by language pairs, which shows different interests within the labour market, and the reflection on skills that may affect employability in the T&I sector.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Notes
1. See section 3.2 for references.
2. ‘Competence’: the ‘proven ability to use knowledge, skills and personal, social and/or methodological abilities, in work or study situations and in professional and personal development’ (EMT Citation2017, 3); ‘skill’: a specific ability that can be considered as part of a more general competence.
3. The author is a member of FITISPos group at Universidad de Alcalá and an academic coordinator of the programme.
4. Spanish and Arabic/Chinese/ English/ French/Russian as well as Polish and Romanian for several years.
5. For additional details see ANECA (Citation2021a, 19).
6. See Curriculum Competences (Citation2020).
7. OPTIMALE (2011–2013), Employment and the future of the profession (2015–2016), and LSP Network survey (2016–2017).
8. ANECA is ‘the leading Spanish quality assessment body in Higher Education whose remit is to conduct evaluation, certification and accreditation activities in the Spanish University System, facilitating its continuing enhancement and adaptation to the European Higher Education Area’ (ANECA (Spanish National Agency for Quality Assessment and Accreditation) Citation2021b, n. pag.). It conducts evaluation procedures on different types of degrees and programmes (n. pag.).
9. Not discussed in this article.
10. Not discussed in this article.
11. Not discussed in this article.
12. This language pair was only taught between 2006–12 and 2013–14.
13. Note that the master’s has been taught in Spanish-Chinese and Spanish-Russian since 2009–10 and in Spanish- Romanian only for seven academic years.
14. The mean was calculated considering the six groups referenced.
15. This percentage is the result of the average between the six groups referenced considering that only respondents from the English group had participants who worked in this field (2%). None of the respondents from the rest of the groups worked in this field so the percentage considered was 0%.
16. 1 − no applicability; 2 − some applicability; 3 − applicable; 4 − highly applicable; 5 − extremely applicable.
17. This will be referred to as ‘highly applicable’.
18. This could include the education and event coordination sectors, but those were included as separate categories in the study.
19. This threshold was chosen as referent as it involves close to three-quarters of the participants, which can give more reliability to the findings.