ABSTRACT

For the past 25 years, the Graduate School of Interpretation and Translation (GSIT) at Hankuk University of Foreign Studies in Seoul has produced professional interpreters for the Korean interpretation market. The graduates of GSIT and a few other graduate schools of its kind with similar programs dominate the Korean market, both in conference (simultaneous) interpretation and in-house (consecutive, corporate) interpretation.

It would be safe to say that conference interpretations are now being completely performed by such professionally trained interpreters, while some self-made interpreters may still be functioning in their own organizations such as the Ministry of Foreign Affairs & Trade and the Ministry of Defense.

Most self-made interpreters are capable of performing their interpretation tasks without serious failings or mishaps because they have successfully learned pertinent skills on the job that includes a thorough knowledge of the tasks involved in their respective organizations. In other words, they may have more difficulties or shortcomings in linguistic or verbal aspects of their interpretation as compared to professionally trained interpreters, but their command of knowledge of the pertinent subject matter adequately compensates for those disadvantages. Still, there have been some reports of various obvious mistakes in their interpretation which have sometimes caused diplomatic or other disputes.

This paper analyzes a few examples of recent disputes caused by interpretation errors of self-made interpreters and concludes that some organizations are in increasing necessity to replace them with younger, professionally trained interpreters.

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