ReTrans Survey Report

In order to outline current practices and identify challenges of interpreting in the context of refugee transit zones and reception centres, the first project phase (WP1) in our project “ReTrans – Working with Interpreters in Refugee Transit Zones: Capacity building and awareness-raising for higher education contexts” includes a survey among public service institutions as the end users of interpreting services and other involved parties in the project’s partner countries. Their responses provide comprehensive and up-to-date information on the needs that interpreters and service users (institutional representatives, refugees) have in such contexts, as well as the kinds of dilemmas they are faced with, including the perspectives of actors in the field, whose voice is often unheard.

More specifically, public service personnel and humanitarian aid workers in the field were asked to fill in a questionnaire on working with interpreters, focusing on their perceptions, experiences and expectations. The questionnaire comprised 33, both closed and open-ended, questions and was designed in the English language by students of the Department of Foreign Languages, Translation and Interpreting of the Ionian University, Corfu. After it had been evaluated by the University of Vienna and tested by all partners, the questionnaire was distributed to the local teams of each project partner, in order to be translated in their national languages. Then, it was distributed by the local teams to the end-users of interpreting services in their countries and was made available for completion online from the 15th September until the 31st November 2022.

After that period, a total of 64 valid questionnaires were collected, allowing for an insight into issues of language combinations, duties and responsibilities of interpreters, best practices, ethical challenges, etc. and serving as a basis for the production of the results to be produced in the subsequent work packages of the ReTrans project.