City of Parks and Gardens-Melbourne
Research on Community Interpreting in Australia
Assoc. Prof. Dr. Oktay ESER who is a lecturer in Translation and Interpreting Department in School of Foreign languages, made a qualitative research within the scope of TUBİTAK’s (The Scientific and Technological Research Council of Turkey) Post-Doctoral Research in RMIT University, which located in Australia’s Victoria State with the consultancy of Dr. Miranda LAİ, entitled Community Interpreting and Professionalization: Stakeholders, Problems and Strategies. Establishments who joined the research include Government of Victoria, Professionals Australia Union, universities, NAATI, AUSIT and translation enterprises. According to UNHCR’s report of 2016, because it was housing more than 3 million refugees, Turkey was in first place. Because of this, actively enabling the public service to the refugees’ need and in socializing, professionalization of community interpreting becomes very important. In Ozolin’s work entitled Communication Need and Interpreting in Multilingual Settings (2000) in what can be specified as the quadruple spectrum (4: sophistication 1: negligence), while Australia is in category four, Turkey is in first category. Research results will also be helpful to institutions like Ministry of Health, Ministry of Education, Ministry of Justice and Department of Immigration Affairs besides the researchers working on professionalization of translation in Turkey.
Victoria State
Australia, with its varied immigrants and refugees, continues to fund professionalization of translation services since around 1970. According to the census of 2016 around 6 million people live in the state of Victoria and Victoria houses immigrants and refugees who speak 234 different languages and are from 247 different countries. The number of people who cannot speak English continue to grow.
RMIT University
RMIT University City Campus
RMIT University, established in 1887. Is Australia’s biggest university with more than 80,000 students. According to the QS World University Ranking, RMIT Universityis placed 15th in Australia and 250th in the world.
RMIT University – The Welcome Dinner of Translation and Interpreting Department
The variety in the state of Victoria also reflects to the staff and teaching of RMIT University’s Department of Translation and Interpreting. Ranging from Chinese to Spanish and Arabic, Turkish to Tamil and Japanese, RMIT University gives education in many languages.