ABSTRACT
With increasing academic interest in sociological perspectives on translation and interpreting, questions of identity and status have begun attracting attention in Translation Studies. While academic studies and public debates over identity focus primarily on typically political categories of stereotypization and hierarchy, such as ethnicity, race, gender, or religion, the occupational dimension is given scant attention. However, the role of occupations or professions in shaping identities can hardly be overstated work, after all, is what many people do during large parts of their lives. Their insecure status as a profession is especially paradoxical today when so much attention is being devoted to cross-cultural processes such as globalization, migration, and trans-nationalism, as well as cultural translation in general. The study of the professional status and identity of translators and interpreters began in earnest only in the second half of the 2000. From then on, research into these topics has expanded.
