Professionalizing PSI in Greece and Norway

Public Service Interpreting has long been defined as “[…] interpreting in public services to facilitate communication between staff and laypeople meeting for a particular purpose.” (Wadensjö, 1998: 49). Since this definition, other competitive and complementary views of PSI have attempted to take into account a variety of ‘institutional-driven characteristics’, dictated by institutional policies which differ from one country to another and affect the degree and extent of PSI as a full-fledged profession. (c.f. Ozolins, 2000). However, as Valero-Garces points out (2023: 17) it is only recently that PSI “has […] been defined as a professional and communicative activity”.

This online workshop, co-organized by the Oslo Metropolitan University and the Ionian University, attempts to shed some light on the degree of professionalization of PSI in two countries, namely Norway and Greece, where perceptions of the role and function of public services, multilingualism among users of public services and interpreters providing specialized services for multilingual/multiethnic users differ considerably, thus affecting the extent of professionalization, the corresponding legal framework, and the prevailing administrative culture.

Please join in Zoom on Thursday March 30, 2023 (4 pm CET) in discovering different PSI landscapes and in engaging in a discussion on how to initiate professionalization or advance/improve the latter where it already exists.