Organised by UNSW: Recent Developments in Community Interpreting Training and Certification in South Korea

Hosted by UNSW, School of Humanities & Languages (Linguistics, Interpreting & Translation Program)

In South Korea, professional interpreter training has been restricted to conference interpreter training. Conference interpreter training, offered by graduate programs, have traditionally focused on interpreter training in high demand languages in international conferences and businesses. Despite the increasing population of migrants from non-Korean speaking backgrounds, there has been a lack of formal training programs designed to meet the demand for quality community interpreting. Institutions and organisations, including courts, police, government ministries, and NGOs, have offered ad-hoc, short-term training programs with duration of a few hours or above for interpreters working for them. However, there have been some encouraging developments toward the certification of interpreters working in medical and legal settings, albeit on a limited scale. Medical interpreter training and certification started a few years ago under the auspice of the Ministry of Health and Welfare, but its main goal is to attract medical tourists, not to serve migrant communities. This presentation will largely focus on the current state of legal interpreter training and certification programs, which separately run by police, court, and the Ministry of Justice.