Research Information System
EST Congress Oslo 2022, Oslo, Norway, 22 - 25 June 2022, pp.631-632
Working with traumatized individuals can be challenging for professionals and continuous
exposure might cause psychological conditions such as burnout, secondary traumatic stress,
vicarious traumatization and refugee interpreters are no exception. With respect to the
unique and complex nature of refugee interpreting, the issue of empathy and emotion
management comes to the fore as a promising area of research. Such research has the
potential to contribute directly to the daily practice of interpreters working with asylumseekers and refugees. Taking this potential as a point of departure, this study explores the
psychological and emotional status of refugee interpreters through questionnaires and semistructured interviews with a view to gathering data from freelance and in-house public
service interpreters working with refugees and asylum-seekers. The questionnaires
investigate the self-perceptions of refugee interpreters regarding stress, pressure, changes
they go through as a result of their work as well as empathy, satisfaction, and psychological
support besides personal information contributing to a broader perspective of this specific
field of interpreting. The interviews, on the other hand, seek further information on the
interpreters’ emotional conditions, aiming at gaining a deeper understanding. Both
questionnaire and interview questions were officially approved by the Ethics Committee of
DEU and permissions were taken from the involved institutions as a prerequisite to conduct
the study. The results of data analysis will be discussed in this paper which aims at
presenting a picture of refugee interpreters in Turkey with a focus on empathy and emotion
management. This picture is expected to pinpoint specific needs in the field as regards the
issue, and the future prospects of the present study include cooperating with the involved
institutions in order to plan training sessions for refugee interpreters intended for improving
their coping skills/mechanisms with such a psychologically demanding task